Page 43 of Royal Bargain

My hands find his,lacing our fingers together as I start to move—slow, fluid, like a tide coming in. There’s no rush. Just this rhythm. Just us.

He meets me with quiet reverence, rising to meet every motion with soft, perfect counterpoint. We stay close—foreheads brushing, lips finding each other in between gasps and sighs.

Every kiss is a confession. Every touch, a vow.

And as we move together, bodies tangled and breaths tangled tighter, I realize it’s not just about the pleasure or even the love. It’s about the surrender.

The letting go. The choosing of each other. We come together like a sunrise—slow, radiant, inevitable.

And when it happens, it’s not with a scream, but with a sigh. Like the world exhaling.

Like peace.

Liam falls asleep with his arm draped over my waist, his breath warm against my shoulder, slow and steady in the dark. He looks so peaceful like this. So open. His lashes brush his cheeks, and his mouth is parted slightly, lips still swollen from kissing me like I was something sacred.

I should feel safe. I should feel whole.

But I don’t sleep.

I lie awake beside him, my body still humming from what we shared—still aching in the best way—but my mind is already spiraling. The quiet presses in on me, thick and heavy, and all the warmth in the room suddenly feels like it’s just on the surface.

What have I done?

I let him in. Again. I gave him everything. I let myself believe, just for a little while, that this could be different. That we could be different.

But reality has never cared about our hopes.

We are still standing on opposite sides of a war.

Even now, as his chest rises and falls against my back, I can hear my father’s voice in my head. Brannagans can’t be trusted. I see Rory’s face when he looked at me like I was poison. I think about the Russians Liam’s family has put in the ground. About the Irish blood spilled on my father’s orders.

Liam and I—we come from different worlds.

Different loyalties. Different kinds of damage.

And even if I understand now why things went wrong before—how his ADHD made it hard for him to be there when I needed him, how my own wiring made it hard to explain what I needed at all—it doesn’t change the fact that we live inside two broken empires that were never meant to merge.

This… us… it feels like trying to build a bridge across a battlefield.

His arm tightens slightly in his sleep, pulling me closer with a quiet sigh.

I blink up at the ceiling, my chest aching with the weight of everything I can’t say.

I still love you,I think.

And it still might not be enough.

16

LIAM

The day of the gala arrives, and the apartment feels like a shaken snow globe—tense and glittering with nervous energy. Shane is already pacing by the door, double-checking the rotation schedule for the men who’ll be posted outside the venue. He barely looks up when I walk in with my tie half-knotted and my hair still damp from the world’s fastest shower.

I mutter a curse under my breath and start again on the knot, fingers fumbling. This whole thing—Burns’s gala, the campaign, the Russians—it’s all balancing on a knife’s edge. And yet all I can think about is whether Ana will let me dance with her tonight.

The sound of heels against the metal stairs draws my eyes upward, and then I forget how to breathe.

She descends like something out of a dream.