Marrying Her Royal Enemy (12 page)

Long, golden-tipped lashes hid her gaze from him, but not before he saw a flash of something in all that blue fire. The remnant of the wound from that night? A part of him knew it was better if he left it alone.
Safer.
But he couldn’t stand to watch her hurt.

Cupping her bottom, he brought her closer, until the length of his erection pressed against her belly, imprinting her with his need. “I’ve never wanted a woman more than I wanted you that night,
yineka mou
, not since and not now.”

Her gaze darkened to a deep, indigo blue. “Never?”

He knew exactly who she was thinking about—the jealousy staining her eyes was crystal clear. Cassandra, however, as stunning as she was, had never touched him like this woman did.

“Never,” he said, sliding his hands up the backs of her thighs and over her bottom, lifting the wispy, sexy piece of silk as he went, up and over her head. Tossing it to the floor, he rested his hands on her hips and drank her in. Her breasts were beautiful, high and taut, with rose-colored peaks, her hips delicately curved atop long, sexy legs he had pictured wrapped around him so many times he was aching with the thought of it.
She
was the work of art.

Lowering his mouth to hers, he brushed a single, hot caress across her lips, the palm he held at her bottom bringing her closer, getting her used to the press and slide of his body against hers. Skin-to-skin contact, the most intimate foreplay there was. When her lips clung to his, his name slipping softly from her lips, he picked her up and deposited her on the bed. Coming down over her, he ran a finger from breast to hip, her stomach muscles contracting beneath his touch. She was tense, edgy, despite the release he’d given her.

Closing his palm around her thigh, he spread her wide. Her eyes were liquid blue fire as she stared up at him. Dropping his gaze, he took her in. Beautifully open to him, she made his mouth go dry.

“Kostas.”
Her gaze willed his back up to hers.

“I like looking at you.
All
of you, Stella.” He circled her wet, pliable flesh with his thumb, coming to rest on her core. Pressing down, he played her in sensual circles that made her hips arch up to meet his touch. “You’re like a perfect, pink shell waiting to be discovered,” he murmured, a raspy edge to his voice. “I’d use my mouth on you if I didn’t need to be inside you so badly.”

The sharp hiss of air she took in pleased him. Cupping the back of her thigh, he wrapped one of her beautiful, elegant legs around his waist. Exposed to him,
ready
for him in a way that made his blood heat, he palmed himself and brought the flared head of his erection to her most intimate flesh. With more control than he thought he had left in him, he slid inside, giving her body time to adjust to the size and breadth of him. She exhaled, fingers clutching the velvet coverlet.

“Easy,” he murmured. “We take it slow.”

She took a deep breath, then another. Her body softened, melted around him. He eased forward another inch, then another. Arching her hips, she struggled to accommodate him, her tight channel clutching and rejecting him all at the same time. Hanging on by a thread, his pulsing body begging for release, he leaned forward and brushed his lips over hers. “You’re so tight,
yineka mou
. So good. So sweet.”

She nipped at his lip. Allowing her the distraction, he slid his hand between their bodies and rubbed his thumb over the swollen center of her. Caressed her as he whispered earthy, sexy words in her ear. Burying her fingers in his hair, she gave beneath him, her body relaxing. Finally, he was buried deep inside her.

Unsheathed by a condom for the first time with a woman, he absorbed the hot, wet velvet encasing him. She was like a tight, silken glove, the lush clenching of her muscles around him as her body expanded to take him the most erotic sensation he’d ever experienced.

Her eyes fluttered open. “Kostas,” she gasped, “you’re so big. I can feel you everywhere.”

“I can feel
you
everywhere,
moro mou
.” His gaze tangled with hers. “So strong, so passionate, you make me so hot for you, Stella.”

She bit her lip. The overload of emotion he read in her reverberated through him, touched him in a deep place he’d thought unreachable, because he felt it, too.

“Slowly,” she whispered. “I want to feel every inch of you.”

The huskily issued command was nearly the end of him, but somehow he managed to move in brutally restrained strokes; teasing, caressing movements that made her writhe against him. “You like that?” he rasped, rotating his hips. “You like that I fill you up?”

“So good,” she moaned. “Don’t stop.”

He brought his mouth to hers, nipping at the plush curves as he pushed deeper, harder, inside her, giving her all he had. Her body rippled around him; tempted his self-control. Still he held back, his palm sliding beneath her buttock to lift her higher so he could find the spot that would give her the deepest, most intense orgasm.

“Right there,” he breathed in her ear. “I can feel you tightening around me, Stella
mou
. Come for me.”

A low moan ripped from her throat. “Kostas...”

He gripped her hips tighter, penetrating her body with deliberate, forceful thrusts that had her contracting around him. Digging her nails into his buttocks, she threw her head back, a sharp cry leaving her throat as her body clenched his in a long, hot pull that shattered him. Bracing his hands on either side of her, he let go, spilling himself inside of her.

The intimacy of it blew every emotion he’d ever had to smithereens—the giving of his life force to this woman, who in turn gave hers to him.

* * *

Long minutes later as his wife lay sleeping in his arms, the same state of being remained elusive for Kostas. Sleep had once come easily to him, a gift as his
yaya
had called it, an escape from the complexities of his life, but as the years had passed and his father’s manic phases had escalated, plunging the country into disarray, a solid night’s rest had eluded him. How could he rest when he was torn in a dozen different directions? When his father was a madman terrorizing his neighboring countries? When his people were suffering?

When no decision had ever seemed like the right one.

He would have woken Stella and lost himself in her addictive warmth again, but a part of him needed distance, the distance he had always craved when people got too close. When his life seemed too complex to manage any other way.

Sliding out of bed, he dressed and went down the hall to his office, where he read the latest security report that had come in on General Houlis’s activity. The man who had just wished he and Stella the best of luck for their future happiness in an award-worthy performance was growing increasingly desperate as the elections loomed and his window of opportunity diminished.

If he was going to make a play for control of Carnelia, he would need to do it soon. When that might be was unclear according to Kostas’s eyes and ears on the ground.

Grimacing, he tossed the report aside. He was hoping it would never come to pass; that Houlis would realize the time for change had come to this country. But his security team was preparing contingency plans in case the general did elect to go for the jugular.

He leaned back in his chair, rubbing a palm over the coarse stubble on his chin. He should be focusing on the threat to his country, to his own personal safety. Instead, his head remained on the woman who lay sleeping in his bed—his wife, whose armor had come off tonight, proving she was every bit the vulnerable, passionate woman he’d known existed underneath all those protective layers.

Watching her walk down that aisle today, deliver that emotional toast, had touched a piece of him he hadn’t even known existed. Taking her to bed, unleashing the passion that blazed between them, had only intensified those feelings; deep, uncharted ones he knew he should smother, the very ones he could never have for his wife. He had been so intent on scaling Stella’s defenses, revealing the woman he knew, obliterating this chemistry between them, that he had ignored the potential consequences.

He felt for her, he always had. Perhaps too much. Her speech tonight had touched him but had also left him deeply conflicted, more aware than ever that he was not the man she thought him to be.

His chest tightened, the guilt in his stomach a heavy weight he’d been carrying so long he was shocked it even registered. He could not afford to play emotional roulette with his wife, not now when he was so close to replacing his father’s legacy with a brighter future for Carnelia.

A throb pulsed at his temples. He massaged it with his fingers, attempting to ease the pressure. Allowing this thing between him and his wife to run any deeper couldn’t happen. Better to cut off these feelings at the source, stick to the rules they had agreed on.

Stella was already digging holes in his armor, making him question what he was, what he wanted to be. And although she’d been an unquestionably integral presence by his side and would continue to be so, he needed to keep her at an emotional distance. His father was too stark an example of what happened when emotion clouded rational thinking.

Sitting forward, he reached for yet another report he hadn’t had time to read. He and his wife were on the same page when it came to this marriage. Deep emotion, love, didn’t belong in it.

* * *

Stella awoke alone in the big, luxurious bed, the bright dial on the clock telling her it was far too early to be awake. Three in the morning, in fact. But her husband was.

She sat up and reached for a drink of water. Setting down the glass, she hugged her arms around her knees, a hollow feeling invading her. It didn’t surprise her Kostas wasn’t there. He never slept well. But the fact that he had taken her apart tonight, then left their wedding bed to work, turned the key on a long-seated feeling of rejection she couldn’t quite shake.

I’ve never wanted a woman more than I wanted you that night,
yineka mou
, not since and not now.

Her stomach clenched, curling into a tight ball. It had been just as beguiling as she’d imagined it would be to discover Kostas wanted her as much as she wanted him. To wipe away his rejection of the past. But on the heels of his expert seduction had also been the knowledge she was exposing herself to new vulnerabilities,
scarier
ones, because now she would have to guard against the adult version of falling in love with him, which could be oh, so much more painful than its predecessor.

Which she would never do. Firming her mouth, she got out of bed, slipped on a robe and went to find her husband rather than ruminate. Ensconced behind the handsome cedar desk in his study, he looked as if what he needed was sleep—days of it.

Fatigue-darkened eyes regarded her as he put down his pen. “You should be sleeping. The send-off breakfast is in a few hours.”

“I was thirsty. You were gone.” She walked around the desk and perched on the edge closest to him. “Have you always been this way? Not able to sleep?”

“Most of my life, yes.”

Because he’d never had any grounding influence to make him feel secure after his grandmother had died. Because the fear and intimidation his father had practiced had likely chased him everywhere, even in his sleep. Her chest grew tight, the soul-deep wound she felt for him growing with every day they spent together. She couldn’t change the past, but she could help him now.

She absorbed the lines creasing his brow and mouth, deeper it seemed, in the hours since he’d left her. “What’s keeping you up tonight?”

He waved a hand toward the desk. “Half a dozen things.”

“But something is making you extra stressed.”

He reached out and scooped her off the desk and into his lap. “The election is less than a month away. I have a million things on my mind. I am preoccupied. But now that you are awake,” he murmured, gaze dropping to the curves of her breasts the gaping neckline of her robe revealed, “I’d prefer to enjoy you.”

Heat invaded her bones, warming her insides, her body recalling the pleasure he could give her. Fighting the hedonistic pull, she curled her fingers around the thick muscle of his biceps. “You promised to share things with me. Let me help.”

“I will. Just not tonight.” His fingers traced the line of her jaw.

“Did you miss him today? Your father?” So many people had spoken of the late king, some with a reverence that had blown her away.

“No,” he said evenly, “I did not.”

She could only imagine the complex feelings Kostas held for his father that must have been unearthed by today. “Your mother’s sister was lovely. She seemed to find it bittersweet.”

His fingers dropped away from her face. “She didn’t want her sister to marry my father. She considered him far too power hungry, too ruthless, but my mother was in love with him.”

“It sounded as if she softened him—made him less so.”

He nodded. “She was the balancing effect on his personality, the thing that held him in check. When she died, it set off something in his brain, turned loose the controlling side of his psyche, his near psychopathic need for power.”

“Too much pain,” she said softly.

His eyes turned bleak. “Shortly afterward, his aide found my father in his study with a gun pressed to his head. I think he might have killed himself if the aide hadn’t stopped him, made sure my father saw a doctor and received medication for his manic depression. It wasn’t a commonly recognized thing then—being a manic depressive—but he clearly was one.”

Her heart dipped. “Love can be destructive in so many ways.”

“Yes, it can.” Amber eyes speared hers. “It’s why this arrangement of ours will work—because we based it on our mutual respect for each other, not some illusionary emotion.”

She nodded. She was going to keep her feelings out of this. She
was
.

He traced the line of her throat with his fingers. “And very hot sexual chemistry. That we have, too,
moro mou
.”

A wave of heat suffused her skin. Nudging the lapel of her robe aside, he closed his fingers over her breast in a possessive movement that stole her breath. She inhaled as his thumb nudged her soft, sensitive areola, sliding over its peak.