He should have known better. He had.
Now it was time to enforce it.
“You wanted to understand and I have told you,” he said, scowling at her even as he drew himself up. She might think there was clarity in the way they’d come together, that howling, greedy madness, but he knew better. Clarity was clean. It was a kept promise, not a messy vow. “And it doesn’t matter if you agree with my reasoning or not, Melody. This is how it will be.”
He heard the ring of finality in his own voice and, for the first time since he’d seen a wild and cringing creature in his soon-to-be sister-in-law’s company, thought he might actually be himself again. It was a gift.
He told himself it was a gift he wanted.
“Because you are the Prince?” Melody asked, a strange note in her voice. “You think you can order me around?”
“That and because I’m bigger than you. Either way, this ends here.”
Griffin picked her up and set her back another few feet, so there could be no argument. And no possible impediment to him walking out of this room and into a quieter, more reasonable future.
“I hope that in time you’ll see the beauty of this arrangement and understand the need for—” he began as he made for the door.
But the world was upended.
Something hit him, hard.
Then he could do nothing but lie there, blinking, as it slowly dawned on him that he was...on the floor.
He was on the floor of the main reception room, in fact. And his angel of a wife was standing over him, her hands in a position even he could see was decidedly martial.
More critical, to his mind, was the foot at his neck.
Not quite applying pressure.
Melody’s hair had fallen down around her, and he was reminded once again of the first glimpse he’d had of her. His Eponine, and why was it he had forgotten that Eponine was more feral than sweet?
It was only as his heart thundered in his chest and the breath came back to him that he understood what must have happened.
“Did you...throw me?” he demanded, feeling tautly stretched between temper and astonishment, there on his back on the floor at her feet. And a host of other things he dared not name.
“You might be bigger than me, Your Royal Highness,” Melody said, cool and calm as if she tossed men of his size this way and that all day long. “But might is only right if it actually works. Otherwise it’s little more than ballast and can only make a hard fall hurt more. As perhaps you’ve discovered.”
His head was spinning, and he wanted to blame the fall he’d taken, but he suspected it was her. Just her. “Melody—”
This time, astonishment warred with sheer outrage as she applied pressure, lowering her foot as if to cut off his airway.
And the look on her face told him she just might do it.
“Enough talking, Griffin,” she said, like a queen commanding the peasants. “It’s my turn.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“IF I WERE YOU,” Griffin seethed at her, simmering there beneath her foot in all of his male glory, “I would think very carefully about your next move.”
Melody could feel a different kind of electricity in him. A kind of shock, climbing up her leg and fanning out to take over the whole of her body. It had been something like instinct to reach for him, to throw him.
To show him that unlike everyone else in his life, she would not be so easily dismissed by the kingdom’s favorite Prince.
They were his press, his adoring public, even his brother. She was his wife.
Maybe it was time to show him what that meant. What she wanted it to mean, anyway.
“What makes you think I haven’t already thought through my next move?” she asked, taking pleasure in the mildness of her voice. In the fact she wasn’t breathing heavily after that throw, while his chest was still rising and falling rapidly. “If I were you, I might issue fewer threats after finding myself on my back, clearly no match for a woman one third my size.”
“Is this the romantic poetry that you hope will change my mind and lure me back to your bed?” Griffin asked acidly. “It leaves something to be desired.”
“Not all of us had access to your educational opportunities,” Melody said, and even laughed. A real laugh, for a change, because they were alone and she’d thrown him and what point was there in wearing masks at this point? “While you were comparing and contrasting sonnets in fine universities, I was learning the poetry of movement. And of stillness. Better still, how to make myself unseen—especially when standing in full view.”
He vibrated beneath her, temper and steel, and it moved through her like a caress. “You are not the only person who had to learn such things. And if you do not remove your foot from my throat, I cannot be held accountable for my actions.”
Melody did not remove her foot. If anything, she applied more pressure.
“I am not the one dead set on pretending we are so different that we must exist in a monastic marriage for the rest of our days,” she threw at him, fiercely. “Do you really think I don’t understand grief? Do you imagine I didn’t spend my youth tearing myself apart, wondering why it was I had been born with an affliction I couldn’t hide? How hard do you suppose it was to choose to love my sister when it would have been so much easier to hate her, simply for being all that I am not?”
His hard fingers laced around her ankle, but she still didn’t move her foot. “I hope you’re not suggesting I’m jealous of my brother. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Melody was so used to hiding. To pretending to be
