The Queen's New Year Secret Read online

  That thought only aroused her further. She had no confusion about what she felt now. None at all.

  She was starving. Starving for a banquet that had been laid out before her for five long years while she wasted away in an abstinent state. And she was going to have her fill.

  She rested her hands on his thighs, could feel his muscle shaking beneath her palms. Could feel just how rigorously she tested his control. She was drunk on the power of it, drunk on him. On a desire that she had kept buried so deep, so well hidden, even she might have been convinced that it wasn’t there.

  But now that she had brought it out, opened the lid, set it free, she was consumed by it.

  She didn’t know this creature. This creature down on her knees, uncaring that the cement bit into her skin, unconcerned with the fact that she was naked, outside, with the sun shining on her bare skin. She was not, in this moment, the sophisticated woman she had fashioned herself into in order to walk freely in Kairos’s world. But she wasn’t the girl from the trailer park either. She was something new, something wholly and completely different. And in that was a freedom she had not anticipated.

  She had not moved from one cage into another, as she had imagined she might. Rather, she had slipped through the bars completely.

  Suddenly, she found herself being hauled to her feet. “Not like this,” he said, his tone dark and rough. “I need to have you properly.”

  She expected him to release his hold on her, to allow her to go back into the house and walk up the stairs, so that they might find a bed or some other civilized surface to complete their exceedingly uncivilized activities.

  But as much as she had surprised herself in the past few minutes, Kairos surprised her even further. He turned toward the table, sweeping his hand across the high-gloss surface and sweeping their plates onto the ground, the porcelain shattering, the silver clattering on the hard surface.

  Then she found herself being laid down on the pristine white tablecloth, his large body covering hers as he tested her readiness with the blunt head of his erection. He bent his head, kissing her neck, blazing a trail down to her breasts, sucking one nipple deep into his mouth as he sank into her body.

  He filled her so completely, so utterly. She shuddered with the pleasure of it. This act had become so painful in the past couple of years. So intimate, the act of two bodies becoming one, and yet a brick wall might as well have existed between them even while they lay as close as two people possibly could.

  But that wasn’t happening now. Now, she felt him go so deep she was certain he touched her heart. There was no darkness to shield her body from his gaze, none to protect her from the look in his eyes. So she met them, boldly, even though she knew she was taking a chance on finding no connection there. On seeing nothing but emptiness.

  They weren’t empty. They were full. Full of heat, fire and a ragged emotion she could think of no name for.

  It didn’t matter, because soon she couldn’t think at all. She was carried away on a tide of pleasure, molten waves wrapping themselves around her body until she was certain she would be consumed completely, dragged to the bottom never to resurface.

  Just when she thought she would burst, when she was certain she couldn’t endure another moment, pleasure exploded deep inside of her, rippling outward. She held on to him tightly, counting on him to anchor her to earth. Then he began to shake, his movements becoming erratic as he gave himself up to his own release.

  She turned her head to the side, looking down at the ground, puzzled by the spray of glass she saw. And then it all slowly came back to her, piece by piece. They were on the table. He had broken the plates. The glasses. Had left the food strewn all over the ground for the birds.

  He had been...he had been consumed by desire for her.

  It was only then she realized that the table surface was uncomfortable. And even with that realization she didn’t want to move. Because he was still inside of her, his chest pressed against hers. And she could feel his heart beating. Could feel just how affected he had been by what had passed between them. Could see the evidence all over the ground.

  “What happens if we get hungry later?” The question fell from her lips without her permission. But she hadn’t eaten very much of her dinner, and it seemed an important thing to know.

  “There is plenty in the pantry. There are biscuits.”

  “American or European?”

  “European,” he said.

  It seemed a little bit absurd to be discussing cookies in such a position.

  She was about to say as much when she found herself being swept up into his arms again. She expected to be set on the ground, but he kept her scooped up, held tightly against his chest. “You don’t have shoes,” he said. She looked down, and saw that he was still wearing his. He stepped confidently over the remains of their plates, shards of glass cracking beneath each of his steps. He brought them both into the house, continuing through the living room and up the stairs. “There will be no question of you sleeping alone.”

  “We never share a room,” she said.

  Never. Not from the first moment. The first heartbreaking night of their marriage when he had left her sitting alone, having just lost her virginity with nothing more than a warm bath for comfort.

  “We only have two weeks, agape,” he said, not heeding her request that he refrain from endearments, “and if two weeks is all there is, then I will take every moment.”

  * * *

  For the second time in the space of less than twenty-four hours, Kairos watched Tabitha sleep. He found it fascinating. Yet another facet to his wife he hadn’t seen over the course of the past few years. Surely she must’ve dozed off on flights, long car rides. She must have.

  But he couldn’t picture it. The only image he had in his head was that of Tabitha sitting with rigid posture, her hands folded in her lap. Did he truly take so little notice of her? Or was she simply so uncomfortable in his presence that she couldn’t do anything but sit as though her life depended on her balancing a book on her head.

  She was thoroughly exhausted now. From what had transpired downstairs during dinner.

  Erotic images flashed before his mind’s eye. Of her kneeling before him. Of him begging her not to.

  It was an act he simply wasn’t comfortable with. He didn’t want someone serving him in that way. Giving him pleasure while he reciprocated nothing. And yet, the moment her tongue had touched him he had been lost. He had not been holding her hair to move her away from him, but rather to anchor himself to the ground.

  He was lying next to her now, still naked, but not touching her. She was sleeping on her side, her elbow beneath her cheek, her knees drawn up slightly. She looked young. Vulnerable. Everything she was. Though she wore the facade of a stone wall, he knew she was soft beneath it. He just chose to ignore it when it suited him.

  She stirred, rolling onto her back, stretching her arms up over her head, her breasts rising with the motion.

  Kairos had never been one to gaze at art. He found it a pointless exercise. The world had enough to offer in terms of beauty without adding needless glitter to it. But she was art, there was no other word for it. She looked as though she was perfectly formed from marble, warm life breathed into her making her human, but still almost impossible in her loveliness. And he was turning into a fool, thinking in poetry, which was something he held in even lower esteem than art.

  Her blue eyes opened slowly, confusion drifting through her expression. “Kairos?”

  “Yes. Two weeks. The table.”

  She blinked. “Oh. Yes. That happened.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m hungry,” she said, pushing herself into a sitting position, causing her breasts to move in yet more interesting ways.

  “I think I can help with that.”

  CHAPTER NI
NE

  TABITHA WAS BAREFOOT, wearing nothing but Kairos’s white dress shirt, the crisp fabric skimming the tops of her thighs. She was certain that her makeup had come off sometime between dinner, being ravished on the table and sleeping for at least three hours afterward.

  She didn’t make it a habit of being so uncovered in front of him. He never saw her with messy hair, or mascara streaked down her cheeks. And she never saw him as he was now. Shirtless, wearing nothing but a pair of black dress pants. His feet were bare too, and she found something strangely erotic about it.

  This was the sort of thing she imagined most couples would take for granted after five years. Rummaging around for food late at night, barely dressed after an evening of sex on the dinner table.

  Well, she imagined that sex on the dinner table wasn’t all that typical regardless of the type of relationship you had.

  The memories made her face heat, made her body feel restless.

  She didn’t know who she was. Not anymore. The thought should scare her, because she’d left normalcy and control, the things she had prized for so many years, shattered on the floor of the balcony.

  But she was going to eat cookies with Kairos, after just getting a taste of the man she’d always suspected lurked somewhere beneath the starched shirts and perfectly straight ties.

  It was hard to care about anything else.

  “You promised cookies,” she said, backing against the kitchen counter, folding her hands in front of her reflexively. It was the position she often assumed around Kairos. It kept her posture straight, kept her from reaching out and touching him, or anything silly like that. It was more of a concern right now than it usually was.

  It seemed silly. She should be satisfied, at least marginally. That was hands down the best sex they’d ever had. And what had happened between them a month ago had been pretty amazing. Still, this had nearly obliterated the memory of that.

  Forget all the years that had come before it.

  “I did,” he said, turning toward one of the cabinets and opening it.

  She watched much closer than necessary as he reached up to grab a tin that was placed on the top shelf. The muscles in his back bunched and shifted as he moved. She felt a strange, reckless sensation wind its way through her body. Like a shot of adrenaline straight to the system.

  “The cookies,” he said, turning to face her, the Americanized term sounding strange on his lips. “As promised. Because I keep my promises.”

  “Do you intend to badger me constantly?” she asked, reaching out and taking the tin from his hands. “Make sure I keenly feel the depths of the wound left in you by my betrayal?”

  “If badgering is what it takes,” he said, “then certainly.”

  “I promised you two weeks. I don’t see the point in you haranguing me constantly.” She pried the lid off the tin and reached inside, pulling out a piece of shortbread and lifting it to her lips. She nibbled on it slowly, watching his expression to see if she might find any clues to what he was thinking. As usual, there were none.

  “I’m not haranguing you,” he said. “I’m simply a man who knows what he wants.”

  “Yes, you want me to keep on being your wife. For your continued convenience.”

  “Yes, for my continued convenience. For the welfare of our child as well, if you have forgotten.”

  Her stomach sank. The truth was, for a moment, she had forgotten. It was so easy to forget about the tiny life she carried inside her womb. After all, she had found out less than twenty-four hours ago. And in the time since then she had been extradited to a private island by her estranged husband, made love to enthusiastically on a table and had eaten cookies barefoot in a kitchen. All of it was a bit out of the ordinary.

  It was difficult for her brain to decide which particular extraordinary detail to hold on to. She had a feeling it was protecting her from reality a bit, too. Preserving her from the stark truth that she was going to bring a child into a very unsettled situation.

  “Of course I haven’t forgotten,” she said, because the alternative would most certainly break the spell that was momentarily cast over him. He would take a dim view to her forgetting that she was carrying his baby. The baby was the only reason he was attempting reconciliation with her, after all.

  “Honesty, Tabitha,” he said, his tone chastising, “we have an agreement that we will strive for honesty over this two weeks.”

  “Sex is easier,” she returned, ignoring the heat that assaulted her cheeks. “And more fun.”

  A strange expression passed over his face. “You have no argument from me on that score.”

  “Cars,” she said, looking at his handsome face, trying to do something to get a handle on the heat that was still thrumming through her veins.

  “What about them?” he asked.

  “Why do you like them? It’s strange. You’re a very practical man. Cars don’t seem especially practical.”

  “I don’t suppose they are,” he said, leaning back against the counter, curling his fingers over the edge and gripping it tight. “But I...I never had hobbies. While my peers were out going to parties and...whatever else they did, I was studying. Not just to get through school, and then university, but studying everything my father did so that I could emulate him. I didn’t deviate from his lesson plan for my life. One of the very few normal things I learned was how to drive. It was a practical skill, after all, so he allowed one of his men to teach me. I learned quickly and...for me, that was my only bit of freedom. I would take drives across the country. Alone. Otherwise I was never alone. There was always security detail, or my father or one of his advisors. So that’s why I like cars. Freedom and solitude.”

  She swallowed hard, an unexpected lump of emotion lodging itself in the center of her chest. She hadn’t expected anything so complete. So honest. “Your father didn’t teach you himself?”

  “No,” he said. “He was very busy.”

  She nodded. “Of course.”

  She hadn’t known the king well. By the time they’d married, the old man’s health was declining and he hadn’t had the energy to take many visitors, much less a commoner daughter-in-law put into place because of his disappointing younger son’s scandalous behavior.

  “I didn’t want him to teach me anyway,” he said.

  “Why not?” she asked.

  “Because I loved it. My father had a way of taking things I loved and turning them into something forbidden. Something I couldn’t have.” A muscle in his jaw ticked. “I didn’t want him to do that with the cars.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He was so very concerned about forming me into the kind of leader Petras needed. A man of principles. A man of control. Levelheaded. When I...when I showed too much enthusiasm, he was eager to snuff it out.”

  “Why?” she asked, her heart twisting for him.

  “Because. He knew that distractions could become weaknesses. Easily.”

  He pushed away from the counter, closing the space between them, close enough she could feel the heat from his body. Far enough that she couldn’t quite touch him. But oh, how she wanted to. How she craved this man.

  It wasn’t a new hunger, but it was reinvigorated. The tastes of him she’d had made her crave him all the more. Where before, she could control it...now it felt somewhere beyond her.

  “Was it there the whole time?” he asked, his voice rough.

  Her heart slammed into her chest and she looked down at her hands, frowning deeply when she noticed a large chip in her polish. Strange. She’d just painted them. “Was what there?”

  “This. This insanity. Was it in you? In me? Was it between us from the very start, needing only a bit of anger to act as an accelerant?”

  She lifted her shoulder. “I don’t know.”

  Except she had a feeling s
he did. It was in her. She knew it. Perhaps it was in both of them. Which made them a deadly combination if ever there was one.

  All it took was a little bit of anger. All it took was a little bit of anger to ignite a spark and start a blaze. But whether or not that blaze would be contained to last, or whether he would turn to violence, she didn’t know.

  She pressed the edge of her thumbnail against the polish on her ring finger and stripped a large flake of coral away.

  She blinked, quickly realizing she’d been responsible for the other chip as well. Something she’d always done to her manicures when she was younger. Something she’d trained away.

  She was regressing.

  “It has never been like this for me. Not with any other woman. I have never...” A crease appeared between his dark brows. “I have never allowed a woman to do for me what you did out on the terrace.”

  “Oral sex?” she asked, her brows raised. She was a little bit embarrassed by her own frankness, but she hadn’t been able to hold it back. Anyway, what was the point of being embarrassed to say something when you had already done it? It didn’t make much sense.

  “Yes,” he said through clenched teeth. “It is not something I ever saw much use in.”

  “The way I hear tell of it, most men find it extremely useful.”

  “Have you done that before? For other men?” There was an edge to his voice now. Jealousy. That Kairos could be jealous over who had received her favors made her feel reluctantly satisfied.

  She looked up at him, her heart thundering. “If I had?”

  “I would call him a lucky bastard. And I would probably not put a price on his head.”

  “That’s quite proprietary of you, Kairos,” she said. “Very out of character.”

  “Have I been in character for any moment in the past month, Tabitha? Answer me that.”

  “Not in your character as I know it,” she answered carefully.