Montes tosses my shirt aside. “I know—you’ve told me many times.” He doesn’t stop undressing me.

“But.”

The king’s hands still on the button of my pants. “But?” he repeats calmly. I know his cool demeanor is a ruse, especially when his eyes slowly travel up to mine.

I press the palm of my hand to the side of his face. “But it is not the only thing I feel for you.”

The king’s eyes smolder at my words. He understands what I’m saying even if I can’t really put words to it.

He threads a hand behind my neck and pulls me to him, and I catch sight of it: a flicker of something vulnerable and compassionate on the king’s face. His lips press hard against mine, kissing me like I’m his oxygen. This is magic, this is heaven, this is everything my life has denied me.

We begin tugging off our clothes. My hands grasp the collar of Montes’s shirt, and I yank it open, popping buttons as I go. He growls low in this throat. The sound makes me pause until I realize that this is an approving sound.

The king pushes me up against the wall, and my back hits hard.

“Fuck,” the king swears quietly, “did that hurt?”

There’s that shred of humanity again in his eyes. Too bad it’s misplaced. I am most comfortable with pain.

I tunnel my fingers into his hair and drag his head back harshly. “Don’t stop.”

The king’s eyes hood, and he recaptures my mouth, his tongue forcing its way in.

For all his rough ministrations, his hands and his gaze are gentle. While his chest pins me to the wall and his mouth pillages mine, his fingers trail down the skin of my arms and my torso. They come to a halt low on my belly, and there they linger.

It’s the area where a woman carries a child and just below the epicenter of my cancer.

The king falls to his knees and kisses it. I lean my head back and close my eyes at the tender gesture. We both know the king’s plans for an heir will be put on hold indefinitely—at least if he wants one that shares my blood. It’s one of the many things that go unsaid between the two of us because we can’t seem to acknowledge things that waken our cold, charred hearts. Like the fact that I’m still dying.

He unzips my pants, tugs them off, leaving me in only my lingerie. That’s what I wear now—scraps of lace. I only tolerate them because I’m obviously not wasting material.