Marrying Her Royal Enemy (7 page)

Kostas picked up the bottle of wine. “Let’s finish it in the conservatory.”

She followed him there. He sprawled out on the small sofa, long legs splayed in front of him. She headed for one of the wing-backed chairs beside it.

“Sit here.” His command pulled her to a halt. She turned to look at him. “You may have decided our intimate relationship will be conducted on an as-needed basis,” he drawled softly, “but that doesn’t mean you have to sit a mile away.”

The glimmer of challenge in his dark perusal was too much to resist. Curling up on the other end of the sofa, she discovered she had little room, as his big frame hogged the space and a hard thigh pressed against hers. She pulled in a breath only to find
him
in her lungs. Spicy aftershave with a rich, dark undertone that was all Kostas, pure carnal male.

She handed him her glass to refill. The brush of his fingers against hers transferred his masculine heat, amplifying her awareness of him.

Seriously, Stella.
She searched for an innocuous subject. “I had the interior designer come by this morning. I can’t live in this mausoleum one minute longer. He’s going to have some plans to us next week.”

“Good.” He handed the glass back to her. “Can he start in the master suite? Perhaps he could have it finished by the wedding?”

When she would move in there with him,
share his bed
, sometimes in an intimate fashion. Her stomach curled in on itself. “Might be possible.” She chewed on her lip. “He was wondering about a nursery. Do we want it connected to our suite?”

“Yes. I want our children to be close in case they have a nightmare or they need us.”

Children—
plural
. She swallowed. “How many children are you planning for us to have?”

“More than one. Maybe three? Four?”

“Four?”
That would require much
baby-making
, particularly if it didn’t happen right away.

His mouth kicked up at one corner. “I want lots of kids, Stella. And not because I want to turn you into a
broodmare
. Because I never had siblings...because I never want our children to feel the isolation I once did.”

A vise closed around her chest. She couldn’t get his pain out of her head—the childhood he’d led, how destructive it must have been to his soul... It had haunted her as she’d stared at the damn creepy shadows at night trying to sleep.

“How did you cope?” she asked huskily. “I keep thinking about you by yourself. You were only twelve when your grandmother died. How did the world even make sense?”

He cradled his glass against his chest. “I retreated into myself. I lived in my own little world. My grandmother kept pulling me out, engaging me, forcing me to find a sense of self. She knew I would need that strength when she was gone.”

She wrapped her arms around herself and hugged tight. “She was a popular queen from what I remember.”

“Both her and my grandfather, King Pelias, were very popular, benevolent monarchs of the people—not the ambitious, controlling rulers of the past. Unfortunately, my grandfather’s ill health took him very young and my father became king perhaps sooner than he should have. It was up to my grandmother to guide my father then, but after my mother died, he became unreachable. She began coaching me instead. Every night when I went to visit her, she taught me the principles of what she believed in, what being a good ruler meant—that they were
of
the people, not
over
the people.”

“And what you learned at school, during your time in the West, the philosophies you developed, were grounded in what she had taught you.”

“Yes.”

She pressed her palms to her cheeks, remembering the loneliness she’d felt. Imagining it ten times worse because there would also be
fear
. Her gaze rested on him; so stoic, resolute, like he
always
was. “It was so much for a child to absorb. To
understand
.”

A hint of emotion flickered in his dark eyes. “She told me whenever I lost my way, when I harbored doubts about which direction to go, to always remember to be a force of good. That I would be afforded great power, but with that came the responsibility to use it wisely. That if I was strong and followed my heart, I would not fail.”

A wave of emotion swept over her, tightening her throat, spurring a wet heat at the back of her eyes. To be so brave, to carry his grandmother’s wisdom with him throughout his life and somehow manage not to be consumed by the force his father had been, struck her as remarkable.
Extraordinary.
But it also illuminated her own shortcomings. Whereas Kostas had been defined by his duty, she had spurned hers, acting out in her need to have someone acknowledge the pain and isolation she had felt. But that acknowledgment had never come—not from the place she’d needed it most.

His dark lashes lowered. “Your childhood was also difficult. You never said much, but I could see how painful it was for you. Athamos and Nik were better at hiding it.”

She lifted a shoulder. “You know what my father is like. He doesn’t have it in him to love anyone. My mother was too broken by his affairs to want to be anywhere near us. I was raised instead by three very conscientious nannies who tried to hide the fact that they felt very, very sorry for me. And even they didn’t last long because of the toxic atmosphere.”

“It could not have been easy for you to watch your mother go through that. To see your family torn apart.”

All the while in the glare of the media spotlight. Never a moment of escape... “My life was supposed to be perfect,” she said, a brittle edge to her voice. “To everyone else it was perfect—to me it was hell. My mother was a tragic figure stripped of her self-worth and pride, forced to carry on a facade. I, in turn, was supposed to act the fairy-tale princess, living my fairy-tale life, when in reality it was anything but.”

He took a sip of his wine, his intense scrutiny remaining on her. “Instead, you rebelled. You skipped out on boarding school, you partied, you dated all the wrong men...”

She narrowed her gaze. “Is that a statement or a question?”

“I’m simply trying to understand you, Stella. The woman you’ve become. Just like you just were with me.”

“I’m not that rebel anymore.”

“But it goes to what shaped you. I’m curious, though, about where all the cynicism is coming from...about what you said in Barbados—that relationships
just aren’t worth it
.”

“Life,” she said flatly. “That’s where it’s coming from. Life.”

He lifted a brow.

“And what were all the men about? Choosing the most unavailable ones who’d never commit so you’d never know the hurt your mother did?”

She blinked. “Which men are you referring to?”

“The captain of the English national football squad—the most notorious womanizer in Europe—the South African mining magnate with his third divorce behind him, the American rancher with two women on the go...”

She could tell by his face he thought she’d slept with them all. That he believed the tabloids when, in fact, most of them had been lies. It made her blood heat.
He
, of all people, should know better.

She lifted her chin. “What’s wrong with having some fun? You have surely had your share. You’re the poster child of no-strings-attached, meaningless relationships.”

“I am not you. You wanted more. You told me you wanted more. What happened to the Stella I knew?”

Her blood fizzled hotter. “What do you want to know about them, Kostas? Why I was with them? Why I slept with them?” She put her fingers to her mouth. “Well, let’s see, I gave my virginity to Tony Morris after you turned me down. It was after his big game in Prague and can I tell you what a long, hot ride that was? Maybe I should be thanking you for that one. Then I dated Angelo Adamidis, whose ego was even bigger than Tony’s, which didn’t really appeal to me, followed by—”

“Stamata.”
He put his wineglass down, liquid sloshing up the sides. “That’s enough.”

“What’s the matter?” She directed a defiant look at him, heart pounding at his flared nostrils, the sizzling heat in those whiskey-colored eyes. “You
asked
for the details... Does it
antagonize
you to hear that about your future wife? Or perhaps you’re miffed because you missed out? That you misjudged me... That all I wanted was a hot roll between the sheets and some other male enjoyed the privilege?”

A silence passed, so long, so extended, she had to fight the urge not to fidget, to look away from the intensity of his laser-like expression as it branded her skin. “If I’d known all along that was what you were after,” he finally said quietly, “I would have taken you up on your offer. But I don’t think that’s what it was, was it?”

Her gaze fell away from his. Her initiation into sex with Tony had been awful, his ego rendering him utterly insensitive to a woman’s pleasure. She had stumbled away from that horrific experience vowing never to do it again and almost hadn’t. There had always been something missing for her in the sexual act—an emotional bond, something beyond the physical.

She lifted a shoulder, deflecting the need to go more than surface-deep because that was where she liked to stay these days. “What does it matter?”

“It matters. Look at me, Stella.”

She did, then wished she hadn’t because he saw right through her. Always had.

“That kiss,” he stated, “was the truth of us. You know it and I know it. You vibrate every time we’re within ten feet of each other, yet you refuse to admit it. You fight me at every turn because you don’t know how to handle this thing we have. But at some point it’s going to have to stop. You are going to need to learn that I am not your father. I will not hurt you like he hurt your mother. I am the man who has always respected you enough to treat you the way you deserve.”

She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, fighting for impassivity. “So now that I’ve agreed to become your wife, now that you’re about to bestow upon me the lauded title of Mrs. Kostas Laskos, I should fall into your bed and count my lucky stars I’m the
chosen
one? I don’t think so, Kostas. I’ve given you the agreed-upon parameters of this relationship. That’s how it’s going to work.”

“I’m not disputing that. What needs to end is this standoff, this mistrust you have of me, the tension between us. We need to have a
relationship
if this partnership is going to work.”

She considered him over her glass. “What exactly is it you’re suggesting? Sex as intimacy? A mutual understanding based on our pheromones so we can produce that heir you need? Because the last time I checked, you were still the most emotionally unavailable man I know, Kostas. That little boy you talked about? He grew up into a big, life-size version of himself. You let people in so far, then you shut them down.”

His olive skin stretched taut across his aristocratic face. “We will have to find a way to work through our failings. There is no other option.”

Because his children were a task he had to tick off his list, as was
she
. He would fix his personal life as he was fixing the legacy that had been left on his doorstep. All he knew was to eye the end goal and attack the obstacles in between.

She set her jaw. “We’ll make this work. We both have too much at stake for any other outcome. As for the rest, the
trust
, it’s earned. You can’t snap your fingers and order it to be so.”

The glitter in his eyes said he thought he could. “We have a mutual respect for each other, we
appreciate
one other. We can have something good, we can be different than the relationships we’ve experienced in the past, if you will stop throwing every advance I make in my face.”

She put down her wineglass. The wine was making her head too hazy, too
unclear
. She needed to put some distance between herself and this man who stirred far too much emotion in her, who liked to push every wish of his through like a steamroller, running over everything in between.

She knew they couldn’t sustain this tension between them. Knew they had to make this work. But investing herself in something with Kostas that was halfway between hate and love—the gray area he was asking for? Was that even possible while keeping her emotions under wraps?

“I need some sleep.”

“I have more work to do. I’ll walk you up.”

She thought that was a bad idea, but she couldn’t refuse given his study was down the hall from her room. Silently she climbed the massive staircase beside him to the third floor, where the royal wing was located. Defenses not as solid as they should be, she crossed her arms over her chest and stared up at him as they stopped outside her bedroom door.

“Thank you for dinner.”

His mouth twisted. “We almost remained civilized.”

Almost
being the operative word. She wasn’t sure she and Kostas were ever going to get to civilized.

He bent toward her, his delicious, dark scent invading her senses. Heart hammering in her chest, she froze, debating whether to accept or reject his kiss. His mouth landed on her cheek instead. Firm and undeniably male, his lips made a slow, sensual journey up to her ear, her skin firing beneath his touch.

“
Kalinihxta
, Stella.” His low voice raked across her insides. “Sweet dreams.”

Straightening away from her, he walked toward his study. She let herself into her suite and leaned back against the door, her insides a mass of confusion.

Only Kostas could ever make her shake over a
non
-kiss.

* * *

Kostas worked for another couple of hours, then gave up, his head too cloudy to accomplish anything. In the master suite, dominated by the dark colors and fabrics Stella hated, but which had great bones with its exposed stone walls, he stripped off his clothes and immersed himself in the steam shower, one of the few modern amenities his father had added in deference to his bad lower back.

Sitting down on the bench, he let the water pour over him and eat away at the tension bunching his muscles. Negotiating foreign investment with a dozen different countries, spearheading the country’s first elections and dealing with a recalcitrant executive council seemed like child’s play compared to understanding the woman Stella had become. She wasn’t the innocent, vulnerable girl he’d once known, wasn’t the rebel she’d spent years as, but was something else entirely.