I'm No Cinderella

Chapter 34

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Be Worried

Luca grabbed my wrist to tug me inside the foyer, "Where do you think you're going?"

I shot him my cheekiest smile, "To my own room."

He didn't loosen his hold on my arm. "Stay with me a little bit longer," he pleaded, "I'm not ready to say goodnight to you yet."

I conceded without any more fight.

It had been that way since the ball the night before, my sweet prince never letting me out of his sight. I didn't mind it, not one bit.

It was better than I ever could have imagined.

When I awoke, there was an invitation to have breakfast with him in his foyer. He had already been up for hours, his hair wet from a recent shower. There was a happy glint in his eye, still riding on the endorphins from his morning training with Matteo. It had been an intense one, he had informed me, smile never slipping from his lips from the second I had entered the room.

I hadn't realized until that moment just how much I had needed something so normal as that. Having breakfast together and speaking about the mundane activities of our days.

I had avoided the training grounds from the time he had first pointed them out during my tour. But hearing him talk about training, about the drills and competition with his beta, I found myself wanting to wake up early one morning to watch it for myself. To see all of that lethal grace in action, the fabled DiLuna might. At one time, the thought of such a thing would have been the stuff of nightmares, not daydreams. But that Rose had been foolish.

He would never hurt me, and he would never allow any harm to come to me in his presence. By his side was the safest place in the world that I could be.

There had only been a short time that day where we had been apart, while I attended my usual lessons with Signora Flori and he met with the heirs of the other three kingdoms. The rest of the evening had been spent with me. Talking, laughing, kissing.

It was like a dream.

"How did the meeting go?" I found myself asking as we settled on his settee, his arm draped across the seat behind me, thumb rubbing soft circles into the skin at my shoulders.

His hand halted its movement for only a moment, before the circles continued, "It went well."

I turned my entire body in his direction to study his face, "You're lying."

He smiled, despite my accusation. "You're a sharp one, little mate, but you have nothing to worry your pretty little mind about." The arm that had been on the back of the chair, slipped down to my waist to pull me to his side, "It wasn't necessarily a pleasant exchange, but the end result was good. I held my ground, and they have agreed to leave our treaty untouched. It's all going to work out."

I sighed, relaxing into his embrace. When he said such things, it was impossible not to believe them. "You're incredible, I don't know how you pull it off."

He laughed, tightening his hold around me, "I wouldn't be able to do it without you by my side."

I snorted in a rather unladylike manner, "Now that is definitely a lie."

"No, I'm serious," he insisted, pulling me away from him until he could look into my eyes, "your strength and your courage inspire me every day to keep pushing despite the resistance. Whenever I think of you standing there that day in Bresce, defending your brother despite the odds stacked against you, willing to give your own life for another, all I can think is that The Goddess truly blessed me the day she chose you for my mate."