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No one else made a place for me where no place should ever have existed.
That’s what Sigwulf had given me. A place here. I was becoming someone under his watchful eye in the sprawling grandeur of this castle. I could feel it. And it wasn’t that he was shaping me, or creating me. But he was giving me the space, the power, to become who I was meant to be. Who I could have been all along if only given the chance.
I wanted to be that person with him.
I spun and slammed my body to his, my arms wrapping around his waist.
“Thank you,” I said, doing everything in my power to hold back the tidal wave of tears that threatened the backs of my eyes. Tension rolled through Sigwulf’s broad frame. I don’t care if he’s uncomfortable. Just for now, just for this moment, even if this is all I’ll ever get, I’m going to hug him.
But thoughts of him not wanting my touch were literally crushed out of me as his arms closed around me like bars of iron. I gasped as one hand, hot through the thin fabric of my nightgown, pressed hard against my lower back. The other hand, so beautifully rough it made me quake, slid to my jaw, cupping my face and tilting it back until our eyes met.
“I’ve been thinking that I need to extend our contract,” Sigwulf said thickly. “I’m not ready to let you go yet.”
I shook my head.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
A brief tremor of fearsome unhappiness passed over his features. He smoothed his face into emotionless calm.
“Ah.”
He moved to let me go, but I tightened my hold on him.
“Because I don’t think it’s a good idea to keep working for someone I’ve fallen in love with.”
Sigwulf, already a still, stony sort of fellow, seemed to turn to a block of ice in my arms. He didn’t move. I didn’t even feel him breathe.
Wait. Part of him was moving. A hot, merciless drag of swelling flesh against my abdomen.
His cock.
So, he did feel something for me, then. Something beyond cool professionalism. The undeniable ardour of that erection, alongside the dollhouse, must have meant that he –
“I love you.” His words were so raw they almost sounded broken. A curse and a plea. “You don’t know how I love you, how I’ve loved you this entire time. I’m convinced now that I loved you from that very first moment you stepped into my hall with your dirty boots and too-thin cloak and those exquisite, searching eyes.”
“I… I don’t understand! You were always so calm around me! So professional!”
“A bitter mask,” he gritted out. “Inside, there was turmoil the likes of which I’ve never known.”
“But it always seemed like I was just your employee!”
“Then I held myself in check properly, just as I’d designed.” Both his hands had drifted up to the sides of my jaw now, his thumbs sliding gently across my cheekbones. “I didn’t want to scare you. To trap you. To exert my power over you.” His gaze grew dark. “And at the same time, I did want to exert my power over you. To keep you within my grasp. To be the only one to care for you, to be there for you. I hated myself for it. And I pulled myself back from you every chance I had.” The ghost of a smile, almost sad, appeared. “Though that has proven harder and harder to do.”
As if sensing I couldn’t quite believe his words, he continued.
“Did you know I never meant for my assistant to sleep in the Oleana room? Hildfree had prepared an entirely different chamber. But as soon as I saw you, I knew I had to have you beside me at night, even if there was a wall in the way.”
He was telling the truth…
From that very first night, he truly wanted me with him.
“What were you trying to protect me from by pulling away?” I whispered, my heart on fire with longing and relief and terror and love. Love beyond anything I thought myself capable of.
“From myself,” he groaned. “From my lust. My desire. A love grown so rabid it sometimes feels like madness. I used to be a male of control. Of will and reason and sound mind. You’ve stripped those away entirely with a mere brush of your dainty hand. I could not protect myself from you. But I could protect you from me.”
“I don’t need protection,” I said, my voice growing stronger. I reached up to wrap my arms around his neck.
I tugged him down.
