Page 98 of Royally Matched
“What is it?” he asks, his voice breathy and deep.
“This. Us.” I gesture between us. “We should never have let this happen.”
“Why not?Principessa, I have come to feel so deeply for you.”
I hold my hand up, scrunching my eyes shut. “No, Marco. Don’t.” There’s a pleading tone in my voice and he takes note, dropping his hands at his sides, his features falling.
“Can you at least tell me why? Is it because you have feelings for,”—he swallows—“for my brother?”
If there’s anything I know it’s that I feel nothing for Enzo, and absolutely everything for the man in front of me, looking dejected and forlorn.
Because of me.
“It’s not about him,” I say softly, my head bowed.
He reaches for my hand. “Then we can work this out. I know we can. The way I feel about you? Well, you need to know that in the short time I’ve known you, you have grown to mean so, so much to me.”
My throat hot, I hold back the tears that threaten to spill over. “Don’t, Marco. Please.”
“But I need you to know. I’m falling for you, Sofia, and I don’t know how to stop. You’re in my head, my heart, and my soul. Forget your spreadsheet. Forget the boxes you need to check. Those lists don’t leave space for feelings, for love.”
With the strength of someone deep in self-protective mode, I pull my hand from his. “We got wrapped up in the moment in this breathtakingly beautiful place. That’s all it was.”
“No, it was so much more than that.”
I shake my head. “We got carried away. I’m attracted to you, that’s all, and attraction doesn’t last.”
He reels back from me. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying this is foolish. What we’ve been doing is foolish. You and me and this whole quest.”
‘No.”
“Marco, I must choose with my head over my heart. It’s the only way.”
His shoulders slump. “And your head doesn’t choose me.”
I shake my head, my throat burning with unshed tears.
“So that’s it? You’re ending this?”
“There’s nothing to end. It was a heat of the moment thing that should never have happened. I’m sorry, Marco. I’m sorry to have led you on this silly quest to solve the puzzle. We got so wrapped up in it, we forgot ourselves.”
He stares at me and I hate what I’m doing to him. “I didn’t forget myself.”
I lift my chin. “I did. I’m a princess. That is who I am, and it’s what must come first.”
“You’re more than that. You’re not just a princess,you’re a woman with a beating heart and I know you feel it too.”
I bite down on my lips, feeling them tremble. How did I let this happen? How did I let Marco in, let him touch my heart the way he has, let him pull down my walls, the walls that were so carefully constructed after Reynold left.
I was stupid. Reckless.
As I take in the sadness in his eyes, my heart cries out for me to comfort him, to tell him that yes, I feel it too. That yes, I want to be with him. That yes, I’m falling for him as well.
But I can’t say any of that, even if it’s the truth, because doing so exposes me to the one thing I’ve worked so hard to avoid. The one thing that scares me more than anything else. Only now that I look at him, I know beyond a whisper of a doubt, I’ve already fallen. The damage has already been done.
But this is a fantasy.