He ran faster, as if—with enough intensity and speed—he could outrun it.
Her.
It was one of the island’s rare stormy days, keeping him cooped up inside when he would have much preferred to run up and down the hill from the palace to the beach. He liked the palace’s private access road that ensured he could test himself as he pleased without causing a public commotion. He liked to tell himself bracing stories about his desire to pit himself against the elements, and that wasn’t entirely untrue.
But a deeper truth was that his house had never felt so small, when he knew full well it could happily sleep eighteen.
Because Melody was everywhere. Even here, in the gym he doubted she’d set foot in, he was sure that he could catch her scent in the air. Or hear a hint of her laughter.
She was a ghost, haunting him wherever he went. And the worst part of that was that she was not dead like the others who called his name on dark nights. She was fully alive, flesh and blood, and living under the same roof.
“I was given to understand that this would be a sophisticated arrangement,” he’d said coldly one night.
His nightly ritual of sitting in his study, brooding out the windows, and not drinking himself into oblivion because he was past that now he was married, had been interrupted. Again.
By the unsolicited appearance of his wife.
Griffin had not been pleased to discover that she did not need to be guided around the house, carefully ushered from room to room—and, more importantly, more easily left in said rooms. It turned out she could find her way on her own, which meant she...did.
“I think it would be difficult to get more sophisticated than the Idyllian Royal Palace,” Melody had replied airily, standing there in the doorway as if she intended to become a fixture. “Isn’t that, more or less, the definition of royalty? Sophistication by default and decree?”
“I was referring to our marriage.” And the sound of his own, tight voice hadn’t helped Griffin any. His bride was an onslaught all her own. “You have an entire wing of the house. Why aren’t you in it?”
“You know why not.”
She’d smiled at him, sweet and guileless the way she always did, though he knew better, now.
Melody might look like an angel, but she wasn’t one.
Or more precisely, she had no desire to remain one.
“I have already told you that there will be no repeat of that unfortunate night in the courtyard,” he’d told her with all the suppressed outrage he had in him. Because that had been a close call. Too close. He should never have allowed himself to succumb to temptation. He was furious with himself. And she didn’t help matters. “There is no requirement that I produce an heir, Melody. Therefore there’s absolutely no need for this marriage to be consummated.”
“But—”
“You have already tried every possible method to convince me otherwise,” he’d gritted out.
He’d stood up from his chair because it was entirely likely that she would try one of her other tricks, as she liked to do. The night she’d come and settled herself in his lap. The night she’d come wearing what she’d tried to claim was merely her usual nightgown, sheer and see-through and—but he refused to go there.
His bride might not fear his appetites, but he did. “If you will not protect your own virtue, I must.”
“I’m more concerned about yours,” she’d replied, there in the doorway with one hand against the doorjamb and the light playing over her lithe, lean figure—
Stop. Now.
“No need,” he’d growled at her. “I possess none whatsoever.”
“I only mean that this sudden valiant attempt at abstinence might actually do you harm.” She’d tilted her head in that way he knew, now—though he still couldn’t quite believe it—meant mischief. “Aren’t you afraid that it will all go...blue?”
“I doubt very much you know what blue is,” he’d all but barked at her.
Only to see, in return, a wicked smile take over her lush mouth. “I feel confident, however, that in this case I know what it does.”
On his treadmill now, staring out at the sullen rain that pounded against the windows before him and stole his usual view of the ocean, Griffin picked up his speed.
But it didn’t help. Nothing did. He might not have gone blue, as Melody had so inelegantly put it, but he wasn’t right. He wasn’t secure at last in his own goodness and virtuousness, which was the entire point of this exercise.
He could taste her, still. He woke in the night with the sheets twisted around him and his sex hard and heavy. While images that ought to have shamed him shined too bright and too real in his head.
God help him, it had barely been a week.
After he finished punishing his body, he tried a cold shower. But it turned out even frigid temperatures didn’t help. His whole body turned blue beneath the icy spray—except one, specific part.
As usual.
While he dressed, then had his breakfast and spoke with his staff about the usual concerns he intended to ignore, Griffin accepted the fact that there was a part of him that liked the fact this wasn’t easy. That the wife he hadn’t chosen was more to him, already, than a piece of furniture or an inherited heirloom he was expected to care for, like all the rest littered about this house. That she had turned out to be far more of a temptation than he’d anticipated when he’d acquiesced to the marriage Orion had been threatening since his coronation.
He’d expended a lot of effort convincing the world that he’d allowed that particular part to lead him around for years. When, in truth, he’d simply indulged himself without limits, because he could. Now fiction had become fact and indulgence was out of the question.
Griffin supposed that was poetic. And no one had ever claimed poetry was meant to be comfortable.
If being a good man was easy, he
