Page 27 of Twins For His Majesty (Royally Tempted #1)

‘T HIS IS ALL in the past—none of it matters any more.’

Phoebe replayed those words through her mind over and over again in the days that followed.

Days that turned into nights and bled into days, which all took on a predictable, comfortable pattern.

Days separated from Octavio—often he was gone by the time she woke up, but that was fine, she’d come to expect it.

Even when she craved him and wanted to see him, she refused to feel disappointed, because this was the schedule they’d tacitly agreed to stick to.

Besides, in the evenings, she received her compensation.

They shared dinner each night, and then they shared a bed, and it was in bed that she felt as though pieces of her were slotting into place—pieces she hadn’t even realised were missing.

It was there that she felt as though all their barriers slipped away and they were just two people communicating in the most basic and essential way.

Neither sought to protect themselves, they were both totally open to and subjugated by the passion they shared.

It commanded and controlled them; it was them.

It was in bed, a week after their troubling conversation on the matter of his upbringing, that Phoebe lay with her head pressed against Octavio’s chest, listening to his heart, and she felt her own heart beating in perfect unison.

As though they had been designed to run at the same time, to the same beat.

As though they had their own beat, and her heart had somehow managed to find his.

It was a thought that came totally out of nowhere and almost took her breath away with how fully formed and strong it was. But also, how wrong it was.

There was no such thing as a silent matching of hearts. How fanciful.

Besides, her heart had nothing to do with Octavio and their marriage. Her heart had nothing to do with anything—Christopher had made sure of that.

But the next night, curled around him, naked and covered in a slight sheen from their lovemaking, her body stretching with the new life they’d created, she felt it again.

This time, a physical tug in the region of her heart, as though her body were trying to force her to reach out and grab him.

Not just grab him, but to take his broken heart in her own and make it better.

She fell asleep with a small frown on her lips and the undeniable sense that things were morphing beyond her control, in a way she was entirely uncomfortable with.

And then, she had the dream.

The dream that had perhaps been forming on the periphery of her mind for some time. A dream that was born of all the experiences she’d had recently. Her feelings on becoming a mother, her missing her own mother, Octavio’s admissions about his treatment at the hands of his uncle.

‘All I want is for him to be loved , ’ a woman’s voice whispered through her mind.

Phoebe was standing beyond the palace, looking through a locked glass window at Octavio. He sat in a chair in the middle of an empty room, staring straight ahead, not seeing her. Phoebe went to knock on the glass, but her hand couldn’t quite reach it.

‘As a mother, it’s what you want most for your child, Phoebe. To know that someone sees them as they are and loves them for that person—flaws, dreams, ambitions, all of it. My Tavi deserves to be loved.’

All Phoebe wanted was to make Octavio see her. She tried for the glass again, but it was as though an invisible barrier was holding her just far enough away that she couldn’t break through.

And then, in that way dreams had, everything changed, and suddenly Octavio was fading before her eyes, slowly losing colour and becoming invisible.

‘I could accept dying but for one thing. Leaving my child behind, knowing that he would be alone and how he would miss us. I hoped someone would love him, would hug and hold him and make the hurt better. But no one did. He hurt so much, for so long.’

She could only see his eyes now…jet-black, staring straight ahead. The rest of his body had faded into nothing, leaving the most haunting, awful sense that churned Phoebe’s insides.

Then even his eyes disappeared, and Octavio was completely gone…

She woke, screaming, so Octavio woke, too, reaching for her instantly, looking around to ascertain if there was a danger.

‘Phoebe?’

‘It’s—’

Her heart was racing, her body was covered in sweat.

She stared at him, reaching for him, sobbed when her fingers connected with warm flesh.

There was no barrier here. Octavio was in their bed, close enough to touch.

She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him, listening to his heart again—racing now at the shock of being woken by a scream, as her own was racing from the shock of watching him disappear.

‘Are you okay?’

She nodded, her throat thick. She wasn’t sure she could speak.

‘It was a dream. A terrible dream.’

She felt him stroking her back, seeking to reassure her. All she could think about was the way he’d disappeared before her eyes. And a voice, his mother’s voice, though Phoebe had never heard it, pleading with her to love him.

Her throat felt thick. She was caught between the dream and reality, between who they were and what the dream had seemed to push her towards.

Sadness clawed at her insides.

It was a construct of her own pregnancy. An amalgam of her hopes for their babies and a reflection on the things Octavio had endured.

‘Would you like to talk about it?’

She instinctively shied away from that. How could she talk about it when she barely understood it? How could she talk about it to Octavio, of all people?

She forced a smile but the effort physically hurt. ‘That’s okay.’ Her voice was hoarse. She cleared her throat. ‘It was just a dream.’

Except, it wasn’t just a dream. It was a tangible force that prevented her from sleeping, so for once she was awake when Octavio stirred and stepped from their bed a while later.

Naked, glorious, but broken. Broken in a way she hadn’t fully understood before now.

Broken in a way she saw and wanted to fix.

But why?

Why should she?

Would he even want that?

‘My nannies taught me to be tough. To rely on no one.’

Was it a lesson that could be unlearned? Would he come to understand that she could be trusted?

Phoebe stared at his back, rigid and strong, and her insides swirled.

More importantly, could she trust him? What she’d been through with Christopher had been devastating, but Phoebe had been a grown woman who’d known herself to have been loved by her mother for her most formative years.

Octavio had had the rug pulled from under him at a vital age and had then been raised by a man who—from the outside—seemed determined to destroy the young Prince.

‘Octavio?’ she said his name into the room, as the dawn light softened their surrounds and made everything seem almost coated in gold. He turned, frowning.

‘You’re awake?’

She nodded.

‘Because of the nightmare?’

‘In part.’ She hesitated. ‘Do you need to go straight away?’

His frown was infinitesimal. ‘Do you want me to stay?’ he asked as he moved back to the bed and sat next to her.

Her stomach was a tumble of nerves. She did.

She wanted him to stay desperately, but she was terrified of this conversation.

Just as she was about to tell him she was fine, that he could leave, she heard his mother’s voice; she saw Octavio disappearing from her and she sat up straighter, reaching for the sheet and folding it under her arms.

‘Just for a bit. I need to speak with you.’

But why had the dream devastated her so much?

Why had the thought of losing Octavio flooded her with so much pain it had been like a visceral, gaping wound?

What could she say to him now? Was she really going to tell him that a version of his mother’s ghost had come to her in a dream?

It sounded ridiculous. She shook her head.

This wasn’t about the dream; it was about what he’d told her.

‘Octavio.’ She put her hand on his thigh.

His strong, powerful thigh. All of him was strong, his power was absolute.

And yet he’d been emotionally stripped raw as a boy by an adult who’d been trusted to care for him.

Her outrage overtook anything else. ‘What happened to you, after your parents died…it wasn’t okay. ’

A muscle jerked in his jaw. ‘I’ve made my peace with it.’

‘But have you? Have you really?’

‘It was a long time ago, as I said.’

‘But isn’t it still affecting you?’

His nostrils flared. ‘My uncle has no ability to affect me any more.’

‘I can see why that’s important to you to feel, but he was the one person who could have loved you and shielded you and really cared for you, and instead—’

‘Instead he did everything he could to make me miserable. For as long as I was his ward. Yes, I am aware of this. But I came of age more than ten years ago. I dealt with my feelings then. Now all I care about is retaining the power that is my birthright and erasing his damage from my parents’ legacy. ’

Her heart panged and it was impossible to miss the feeling, nor to misunderstand it.

She didn’t want that to be all he cared about.

She wanted him to care about her, too. Not just as the mother of his children, but as a woman.

As the woman he’d married, the woman he wanted.

She wanted him to more than care for her; she wanted him to love her.

If Octavio loved her, would she trust herself to love him back?

Would she be willing to risk getting hurt all over again, but so much worse than it had been with Christopher?

Was it even an option?