And just like that, she’s running again.

For a woman in heels, she can fucking move. I have to give her credit for that. But you’d think that she would know by now that running is pointless. I’m not about to just let her take off to some corner of the Earth.

Though there’s nowhere she can go that I can’t—or won’t—follow.

I’ve climbed Mount Everest. I’ve braved the most remote reaches of the Amazon. I’ve skydived from low-orbit, for fuck’s sake. There’s nowhere that Percy can go that will make me second guess chasing her down.

She’s my wife. For better or for worse, and this definitely feels like one of those ‘worse’ moments. Still, I take that vow seriously.

I run after her.

“Go away Anton,” she says over her shoulder.

As if I’m about to fucking listen to that shit now. I saw the look in her eyes when I told her how I felt. Percy may have said one thing with her lips, but her hazel colored eyes said something completely different.

Eyes are the gateway to the soul for a reason.

And Percy’s eyes bared her soul to me.

She loves me.

She’s fighting against it—I can see the inner struggle she’s at war with—but if there’s one thing I learned long ago, it’s that you can’t fight love.

You can kick and punch and push it away as much as you want, but it’s futile and pointless. When I realized that I had loved Percy, I was vehemently against it myself. My reaction wasn’t all that much different to hers.

I’m not the falling-in-love type, I told myself.

I always figured that I’d end up marrying out of duty rather than for love.

But the more I was around Percy, the more she infected me with her zeal and passion for life’s little—and big—pleasures.

She was the kind of woman who grabbed life by the balls while sucking on its cock. I saw her as my female counterpart. In hindsight, that was probably part of why I ended up falling for her.

But I can see now that it was also the reason why she fell in love with me. At the end of the day, we’re the two sides of the same coin.

My arms wrap around her slim waist, and I hoist her off her feet with little effort.

Throwing Percy around like a ragdoll has always been easy, but now it’s a fucking joke.

“Let go of me, you giant fuck tit!” she cries out.

She struggles pointlessly against my grip.

A handful of pedestrians look on with curiosity at the scene we’re causing.

I smile and nod at them as I duck into a nearby side alley. I set Percy down and pin her hands above her head against the brick wall.

She struggles for a moment, which still gets her nowhere, before relenting.

She looks down to the ground between us.

“Look at me, Percy.”

“You think I’m going to give you the satisfaction?”

“Look at me,” I order.

She looks at me.

The look in her eyes speaks volumes that I’m sure could fill libraries.

First and foremost is the defiance. She loves to hate how I take control.

Percy fancies herself a woman in charge. A leader of the pack if you will.

An Alpha female. But that doesn’t work with me. She tries, but it always fails.

I’m not just some Joe Blow that she toys with who thinks he’s an Alpha male.

No, I am the Alpha male.

And she loves that about me—even though she tells me she doesn’t.

But beyond the defiance, I see more. There is fear in her eyes that dances like a wildfire.

It’s not fear that I’ll hurt her—she knows that’s not who I am—but it’s fear at acknowledging that we belong together.

“Tell me you love me.”

She swallows hard and shakes her head.

“No. I won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t love you, Anton. This, all of this, is just one big cluster fuck because I had way too much absinthe and Heineken. That’s it.”

It’s a bold-faced lie. One made all the more obvious when she looks away from me as she says it. Everyone has a tell.

Everyone.

You spend enough time at the poker table with someone, and you learn when they’re bluffing and when they’ve got a damn good hand.

I know all of Percy’s tells.

There’s no lie that she can tell me that I’ll believe.

But even without knowing all those little intimate pieces of information, it’s obvious that she doesn’t mean it when she tells me that she doesn’t love me.

“Bullshit, Percy.”

She turns to look at me again. She tries her best to look angry and righteous.

“I. Don’t. Love. You. End of fucking story. Why can’t you believe that?” she says with false conviction.

Her words may be directed at me, but it’s really herself that she’s trying to convince.

“You can lie to yourself all you want Percy, but don’t lie to me,” I growl.

“Why won’t you fucking believe me? Why can’t you just let me go, and go the fuck back to your fancy castle?”

“Because you’re my wife! I—we—made vows. ‘Till death do us part!’ I made a fucking promise to you. To us. And I refuse to walk away and break that promise,” I say with frustration and reverence. “I fucking love you, Persephone Owens. For better or for worse.”

I speak with more conviction and certainty than I have ever spoken in my entire life.

My love for Percy is as real as it fucking gets.

“Tell me that you fucking love me, Percy.”

She shakes her head.

“I don’t.”

I lean toward her.

She bites her bottom lip as I draw near.

“Yes, you do.”

My voice is barely above whisper.

Her eyes turn away from mine. She looks at my lips.

“You love me, and you want me.” my lips gently brush against hers, “Say you want it all, Percy.”

She swallows hard again, and I can hear it this time.

Her lips graze against mine. That temptation to give in clings to her lips.

She wants to succumb, but her stubbornness keeps her from giving in.

A flash of light from the street breaks the moment.

We both turn to see a couple of photographers snapping pictures feverishly at us.

“Your Highness. Over here!”

“Are you and Miss Owens back together?”

“And what about the woman with the black hair? Is the Prince of Menage entering a ménage of his own?”

Christ, I fucking hate the paparazzi.