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“Please,” she whispered.  But then she stopped.

He was growing weary of squatting.  He sat down next to her.  He longed to pull her into his arms.  But he still didn’t touch her.  Now he stared quizzically at her.  Please…what?

“What?” he asked in a rough whisper.

Why was she having this effect on him?  It wasn’t like he hadn’t been surrounded by women recently with the efforts his advisors were making to marry him off.

“Please forget you ever met me.”  Her voice was just a breath that slipped into his ears, but her words were a knife she’d just plunged into his heart.

“I cannot,” he murmured as he bent nearer her.  “You haunt my dreams.”

She glanced up at him then.  Once again, they were so close.  Did she realize it?

In the next moment she did, for his smooth lips found her soft cheek and saluted it gently.  She shivered under their tender touch.  His kiss sent an ache of such pure desire rocketing through her core that she gasped.  And a tear slid down her cheek.

“I cannot, Your Royal Highness.”

“Don’t,” he forced out through gritted teeth.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t call me that.  Call me Yoongi.”

Her stomach shifted violently.  Her heart was racing.  The king was asking her to call him by his given name.  The one his parents had chosen for him.  Or more likely, the one his grandfather had picked out.

What did it mean?  Did this uncommon permission – coupled with his kiss – imply that he intended to invite her into his bed?  She shook her head even as her body trembled at his touch.  For he had just lifted one slender finger to run it down her cheek.  And it was sending volts of electricity into her skin.  She wanted to throw herself into his arms.  And kiss those sweet lips.

“You cannot what, Moonflower?” he queried distractedly as his finger traced a pattern along that cheek.

She was frozen.  She couldn’t answer his question.  For if she mistook his intent, he would laugh at her.  But if she’d guessed his motives correctly…

He watched, mesmerized, as she closed those unusual eyes.  She sat perfectly still as his finger drew circles on her skin.  She was facing him now.  Her head was tilted slightly upward, and the light of the moon was bouncing off her face.  As was the burning flame of the torch he had planted into the ground a few feet away.  

His eyes slid along the fascinating planes of her lovely face.  He found himself wanting to kiss every square inch of it.  She seemed to be inviting him with her posture…

So he leaned closer, and his lips replaced his finger on her skin.  He brushed those soft lips across her cheek repeatedly and in a multitude of locations.  She sighed.  Then she began to shake.  He saw it.  He was alarmed by it.  It wasn’t a tiny tremor.  She was shaking like a leaf.  

He couldn’t take it.  He reached out and drew her towards him.  Until he’d pulled her into his lap again.  Then he wrapped himself around her.

“It’s all right,” he declared softly.  “I swear I won’t hurt you.”

“I can’t,” she whispered.  

“You can’t what?”

“Give you what you want.”  

But she was very afraid now that she could, actually.  For his touch was doing things to her that she hadn’t anticipated.  When, exactly, had someone touched her last?  With the exception of this man in this place last night, she could not remember a year she’d been touched, held, since her parents had died.  Could it really have been that long?  

Is that why she was so starved for affection?  For attention?  It scared her.  Stole her breath from her lungs.  And made her weak.  Too weak.

“And what is it that you think I want?”

“Me.”

She wasn’t wrong.  He did want her.  But…not in the way she was implying.  

He had no time for silly women.  He had no heart to marry a woman simply to produce an heir.  He’d watched his brother do that.  He would not follow in his miserable footsteps.

“I swear I won’t hurt you,” he mumbled again, his voice a rough purr in her ear.

It swamped her.  She loved that voice.  She wanted to cling to it for the rest of her life.

“Won’t you?” she murmured as she lifted her face towards his.

The tear sliding down her cheek gave him pause.

“It’s too easy for a man to use a woman.  And then tire of her.  And discard her.  Like so much rubbish onto the heap meant for burning.”

“You cannot seriously think I would treat you so callously.”

“Not in the beginning, perhaps.  But…why do you want me at all?  I am deeply flawed.”

“Are you speaking of your eyes?”

“What else?” 

“You must think me terribly shallow.”

She shook her head.  “Not just you.  I’ve been reminded for years of my worthlessness.  Men want to claim a beauty.  But they have no use for a blind wife.”

Now a tear was sliding down his cheek.

This girl was so precious.  So brave.  She strode out to his gardens each night alone.  Under the cover of only darkness.  Expecting it to protect her from a man’s wandering eyes.  And his roaming hands.  Were she attacked here, nothing would protect her.  Yet she came out here alone each night to care for her tiny plants.  She had made his garden a paradise.  

He had visited it after lunch this very day.  To see what her handiwork had produced.  It was stunning.  Far more beautiful than the garden of his childhood.  She had a special touch with green things.  It was obvious.  As was the love which she sowed into his garden.

He had never known such tenderness.  Not even the nurse who had raised him had bent the kind eye upon him that Moonflower bent upon his garden.  She had a gentle heart.  And a tender touch.

And he just knew she’d have the same special touch with his heart.  That he, the true Yoongi, the man he hid from everyone else, would be safe within the four walls of her heart.  She saw him.  She heard him.  She’d loved his voice.  No one else had even noticed it.  Unless they’d believed they could manipulate it for their own purposes.

“You like me,” he whispered into her ear as he bent his head over her neck.

God help her, it was true.  She did like him.

“That just makes me more vulnerable to you,” she responded quietly.  

“I won’t hurt you.  I won’t,” he responded fiercely.

Something in his voice made her raise her eyes to his.  He stared into those depths.  He gazed past the veils that covered her obsidian orbs.  He wanted to know this girl’s heart.  Not just her body.

“You have beautiful eyes,” he whispered.

A spasm of pain traveled across her face.  “Now I know you’re teasing me!” she cried out in pain as she attempted to tear herself from his embrace.

He simply tightened his hold on her, illustrating how defenseless she really was.  His lips brushed her ear.  

“I most certainly am not.  I’m serious.  They may be veiled, but those clouds can’t hide the truth from me.”

Why were his words invading her belly?  Her heart?  He’d planted them deep down inside of her.  Already they were taking root in the fertile soil of her soul.  She was so thirsty for such refreshing waters.

No one had ever called her eyes beautiful.  Not since she was a child.  Running free under the blue skies.  Her orbs open and wide to that cerulean dome.  It was one of her last memories of sight.

She began to weep.  She buried her face against that strong shoulder and longed for things she could never have.  Five healthy senses.  This man’s arms around her for the rest of her life.  The gentle rumble of his voice in her ear for all those days.  His child at her breast.  The ability to see the face of that beautiful child.  And this beautiful man.

She sobbed, bawling out all the pain of fifteen long and lonely years.  She clung to him as she watered that strong shoulder with the pain of her youth.

“How did you lose your sight?” he questioned a moment later as her tears subsided and she leaned, spent, against his shoulder.

“I had a fever when I was seven.  It stole my eyesight.”

That wasn’t the only thing that horrid fever had stolen from her.  She thought of her laughing appa and her gentle eomma.  And the tears began to fall again.

“You live within my walls, don’t you?” he murmured in her ear again.

She nodded.

“When did you come to live here?  Recently?”

“Fifteen years ago.”

He gasped.  “What?  No.  I have never seen you before yesterday, and I grew up in this palace.”

“I was hidden.”

“Why?”

“My eyes are an affront to the king.”

“What?” he asked, horrified.

“That’s what I was told.”

“Who would say such an awful thing?”

“Everyone.”  Except Haji.

He shook his head.  “Your eyes are not an affront to me.  They’re stunning.”

A sob escaped her a moment later after she realized what she was suddenly feeling.  He’d pulled her close, and his lips had found one of her eyelids.  He’d covered it in kisses.  Then his sweet mouth traveled to the other one and gave it the same treatment.  She was melting under his touch.  Under his tenderness.  No one – not even her beloved appa – had ever been this gentle with her.

“Please.  Please don’t be so kind to me.  I am not used to it.  You’ll make me fall in love with you.  And then I’ll get my heart broken.  I’ll be alone again.  And it will be so much worse.”  

Because I’ll no longer have you.  Or your gentle voice.  Or your kind lips.  Or your strong arms.

“You will never be alone again,” he promised her fiercely.  “But why were you brought to the palace?  You couldn’t have been more than five years old then.”

“I was seven.  My parents died.  Of the fever that robbed me of my sight.”

His heart felt a crushing blow.  She had suffered so much as a tiny child.  His arms tightened around her.  He wished to lend her his own strength.  What remained of it, anyway.