His Drakon Runaway Bride
Tara Pammi
Found – his long-lost bride!Ariana Sakis walked out on her husband Crown Prince Andreas Drakos knowing her feelings were unrequited. For ten years she has hidden herself away, determined never to be made vulnerable by passion again and believing herself divorced. Until her new wedding day is interrupted by Andreas himself, declaring them still married!Furious at her betrayal, Andreas won’t let Ariana escape him again. He’ll take his revenge by claiming Ariana for his throne—and his bed! But their passionate reunion threatens to undo dark-hearted Andreas, and he soon realises that desire is even more binding than duty…Book 3 in The Drakon Royals trilogy
Found—his long-lost bride!
Ariana Sakis walked out on Crown Prince Andreas Drakos, knowing her feelings were unrequited. For ten years she has hidden herself away, determined to never be made vulnerable by passion again...and believing herself divorced. Until her new wedding day is interrupted by Andreas himself, declaring them still married!
Furious at her betrayal, Andreas won’t let Ariana escape him again. He’ll take his revenge by claiming Ariana for his throne—and his bed! But their passionate reunion threatens to undo dark-hearted Andreas, and he soon realizes that desire is even more binding than duty...
A smile curved Andreas’s mouth, rendering him starkly beautiful. “You and my father missed one small detail in your plan. If I had never discovered you were alive it wouldn’t have mattered so much. But I did.”
“What detail?” Ariana was shouting now, her voice lost in the gray bleakness around her.
Everything about those few days was still jumbled in her head. She’d been acting on pure animal instincts—fear the overriding one—and listening to King Theos had been the worst kind of mistake.
All she’d wanted was to escape Drakon before Andreas came back from his summit. Before she was caught in the web of her own love for him.
Her leaving him was a betrayal to a man who didn’t break the rules for anyone—an unforgivable mistake to a man whose word meant everything.
She clasped his jaw, forcing him to look at her. “What detail, Andreas?”
He still didn’t hold her. Didn’t touch her in any way. Those eyes trapped her again, until even breathing was a chore. Those eyes betrayed all his emotions—fury, shock, and the cold enjoyment of her fate now.
“You are still my wife.”
The Drakon Royals
Royalty never looked this scandalous!
To the outside world, the Drakon Royals have the world at their feet. Yet beneath the surface black-hearted Crown Prince Andreas, his daredevil younger brother Prince Nikandros and their illegitimate sister Princess Eleni hide the secrets of their family name...
Until one brush with desire, and then all the Drakons find themselves at the heart of their very own scandal!
Crowned for the Drakon Legacy
April 2017
The Drakon Baby Bargain
June 2017
His Drakon Runaway Bride
September 2017
You won’t want to miss this outrageously scandalous new trilogy from Tara Pammi!
His Drakon Runaway Bride
Tara Pammi
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
TARA PAMMI can’t remember a moment when she wasn’t lost in a book—especially a romance, which was much more exciting than a mathematics textbook at school. Years later, Tara’s wild imagination and love for the written word revealed what she really wanted to do. Now she pairs alpha males who think they know everything with strong women who knock that theory and them off their feet!
Books by Tara Pammi
Mills & Boon Modern Romance
The Sheikh’s Pregnant Prisoner
The Man to Be Reckoned With
A Deal with Demakis
The Drakon Royals
Crowned for the Drakon Legacy
The Drakon Baby Bargain
Brides for Billionaires
Married for the Sheikh’s Duty
The Legendary Conti Brothers
The Surprise Conti Child
The Unwanted Conti Bride
Greek Tycoons Tamed
Claimed for His Duty
Bought for Her Innocence
Society Weddings
The Sicilian’s Surprise Wife
Visit the Author Profile page at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk) for more titles.
Contents
Cover (#udc141891-1109-57c2-a9ca-f363c33dbb15)
Back Cover Text (#uc848c9fb-f0c3-57a2-b054-1dd6d69972e7)
Introduction (#u997badf9-3aa5-54c6-8fec-7fb837ae5c95)
The Drakon Royals (#uf9914105-2ba3-5ee6-8488-64619b4fa283)
Title Page (#u5fa1bfaa-c0aa-5e4d-87db-bfaad75ac570)
About the Author (#u5f2633c9-8343-5133-bdc8-2333e22c9b8b)
CHAPTER ONE (#uead5ec29-fdae-508c-a154-4bb07c6f34ca)
CHAPTER TWO (#u18bdce93-8b45-54d1-a394-aa5bd78a1d2b)
CHAPTER THREE (#u2d0b857f-28e4-5ce2-8a86-4dadeb6e50ed)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u80ad7a60-3bcf-588b-b9cb-5cecd8108b01)
“IS THIS A coup to overthrow me?” Crown Prince Andreas Drakos of Drakon joked as he walked into his study to find his family staring at him with a spectrum of emotions—concern in his sister Eleni’s eyes, stubborn resolve in Mia’s, something he couldn’t define in his brother Nikandros’s and pure frost in Gabriel’s.
“None of us want your job, your popularity rating or your life, Andreas,” replied Nikandros, the financial genius who had set Drakon on its path of recovery after the mess their father had made in the last decade.
Nik was right. The state of his life currently—utter chaos with the Crown Council breathing down his neck for the announcement of his choice for the next Queen of Drakon, the questions the media was raising about his mental health, his frequent disappearances from Drakon in the last year, sometimes even his sexuality—would have usually had the effect of fire ants crawling all over his skin.
But he didn’t have any mental energy left beyond the hunt he’d been on for two years now. He was getting close, he knew it in his blood.
He settled down next to Mia. The smell of baby powder drifting from her was strangely calming. “How are you, Mia?”
Mia took his hands in hers. He tried not to flinch. Physical contact made him twitchy and now Mia knew it. But somewhere in the last few months, his sister-in-law and he had become strangely close.
“You didn’t come to see the twins, Andreas. After all the hullabaloo you raised about heirs for Drakon, I’m feeling neglected.”
He smiled. “I have just this hour returned to Drakon.”
“Which nicely segues to why we are all here. Andreas, what is going on?”
“You let her leave Tia and Alexio’s side to ask me this question?” Nik glared at him in response. Dark shadows bruised Mia’s eyes. “You look awful.”
“Stop posturing, Nik. You know he’s just trying to get a rise out of you.” She smiled and her eyes lit up with that same incandescent joy he’d seen in Nik’s of late. “I have two very good reasons for my ghoulish look, Your Highness,” she said, her gaze tracing the angles of his face. “You however do not.
“You look like hell,” she said with that forthrightness he’d come to expect from her, “and whether Nik and Gabriel will agree to put it like that or not, we’re all...very worried about you.”
He frowned, looked up and, with a strange knot in his gut, realized it was true. “It’s not necessary.”
“There’s talk from the Crown Council about asking you to step down. Your popularity level is at its lowest,” Nik said in a deceptively calm voice. “Some political pundits have dared say Father’s madness has already begun to manifest in you. You leave Drakon for days, not one of your aides knows your schedule, you refuse to see even Ellie and me...”
“That’s why you’re all worried?” Andreas asked with a laugh. “That Theos gave me his madness in addition to everything else?”
Eleni spoke up. “Of course not. But we do think you’ve been acting strange. Andreas, the House of Tharius is waiting for your word to release news of your engagement. The coronation is in two months and you—”
His phone pinged and every nerve in him went on high alert. He knew even before he switched on his phone’s screen what the news was going to be. His fingers shook when he swiped the screen.
Found the target. Sending location specs now.
His breath balled up in his chest, and he had to force himself to exhale.
Anticipation bubbled in his blood, coupled with savage satisfaction. “Let the House of Tharius know it’s off.”
The shock that spread through the huge room made the hairs on his neck rise. Nik and Eleni looked at him with such concern in their eyes that for the first time in months Andreas felt a little guilt. “I apologize for leaving you both in the lurch these past few months. I needed—”
“Thee mou, Andreas!” Nik burst out. “We don’t care that for the first time in thirty-six years, you took a few months for yourself.”
“Not the first time,” he said automatically. “I took a free year just when your health improved. Almost ten years ago.”
Nikandros frowned. “When Theos tried to make me his leashed dog?”
“A few months before that happened, yes.” When Andreas had, in a fit of madness, threatened Theo that he would walk out on Drakon if he didn’t give him some time off.
“Andreas.” Eleni reached him, her voice wavering. “You can’t be crowned King without a wife. That’s one of the oldest Drakonite laws. No member of the Crown Council will let you defy it. Are you...are you giving up the crown?”
Nikandros cursed so filthily that he had to laugh.
Andreas patted his sister’s hand awkwardly. “I’m not doing any such thing, Eleni. I will be crowned as scheduled.”
“You need a wife for that.” Nik again. Only Gabriel stood silent, staring at him from those steel-grey eyes. Gabriel, his brother-in-law, who had figured out the truth.
“Whatever you’re considering—” Eleni was close to tears now “—please tell us. Nik and I would never judge you for what—”
“I can’t marry Maria Tharius because I already have a wife. For two years, I’ve been trying to locate her.”
You are like me, Andreas, in every way. The same taste for power and control runs in your blood. Why do you think your little wife ran?
Those words had haunted him for two years now. But he didn’t give a damn.
He would willingly be a monster if that meant she was back in his life.
“You’re married? To whom? When? Why didn’t you ever...” Eleni faintly shook with the force of her questions, until Gabriel put his hands on her shoulders and absorbed her petite form into his.
“She was Father’s ward. I married her during that sabbatical year in a secret civil ceremony.”
“Father had a ward?” Another curse from Nikandros, for he knew that meant another life his father would have played games with.
“Your pity is wasted on her, Nik,” Andreas said stonily. “Turns out Father and she understood each other perfectly well.”
“Ariana Sakis.” Eleni pronounced the name that had become so much a part of his own makeup that Andreas couldn’t remember a day before her life tangled with his. “She was shy of eighteen by a few months.”
Utter shock was etched on their faces now.
He’d been twenty-six and he’d married a barely legal eighteen-year-old in a secret ceremony... He could have grown two horns and a tail and it would have been less shocking.
“Her parents...died in a car accident. There were rumors that they’d been arguing, that her mother had driven it into the tree on purpose,” Eleni explained to Nik. “Her father...was a military general, a close friend of Father.
“There was a lot of talk about what an abusive husband he was and Father immediately severed the connection between the House of Drakos and him.
“Only a handful of people knew he had her custody and he sent her off to...no one knew where. I don’t think she even set foot in the palace.”
“To a fishing village off the coast,” Andreas finished. “Having met Father a couple of times, she’d been more than willing to go.”
“That’s where you met her?” asked Nikandros.
Andreas nodded. “I... I demanded Father give me a year to do as I wanted, to research a book I wanted to write. He agreed, after a lot of ranting.
“Little did he know that I would end up at the same little village that summer.”
Crisp mountain air, blue ponds surrounded by lush woods, a remote cabin, a single coffee shop...and a girl with copper-colored hair and a wide, impish smile.
Andreas swayed as the past reached into him with a clawed hand. Those months in that village with Ariana had been the most glorious of his life.
Too good to last, he realized now with a bitterness that choked him.
“If you married her, how come none of us met her? We didn’t even know.”
“Father and I decided to wait for a more opportune time to announce that I had wed. For the three months of our marriage, she stayed in an apartment ten miles from the palace.”
“You’ve been looking for her...since Father’s decline began.” Eleni jerked her chin up. All the pieces were beginning to fall into place. “Where was she all these years, Andreas?”
“Father told me she died in a boating accident after I returned from that oil summit in the Middle East that year.”
“Instead?” Nik asked the question, tension filling his shoulders.
“Instead, she took the ten million he offered, faked her death and disappeared under a new identity.”
“That’s...horrible.” Eleni, always loyal to her brothers, had formed her opinion. “How could she make you think she was dead?”
Mia frowned. “You’ve found this woman now, haven’t you?” Something almost like fear glittered in her tired gaze. “Andreas, what is it that you intend to do? Clearly, the woman has made her choice. All of Drakon’s eyes will be on her.”
It was an edict he’d heard since before he’d even hit puberty. All of the media’s eyes would be on him and the woman he chose, Theos had whispered continuously.
She must bring either incomparable wealth—Gabriel’s sister had met the first condition—or good breeding in her own blood—Maria Tharius had met both—or be a woman with powerful connections who would agree to become the perfectly ornamental Queen.
Ariana had been none of the above.
“You could divorce her.” Gabriel spoke for the first time.
“Drakonite law mandates the couple wait for eighteen months after they file for divorce,” Eleni supplied, frowning. “With the coronation in two months, he can’t file for a divorce now.”
Andreas smiled, uncaring what they all saw in his face. “Father, in his Machiavellian masterminding, assumed that her being officially dead was enough to terminate our marriage. But she’s alive. So, even if I wanted, I could not marry Maria Tharius now.
“Ariana will be the next Queen of Drakon.” The declaration fell from his mouth, resonated in the very air that filled the King’s Palace.
He found he liked the sound of it. An additional bonus was that his father would be rolling in his grave.
* * *
Ariana stared at the white stone building of the small, beautiful church in downtown Fort Collins and shivered from head to toe. The frigid October wind that stole through her flimsy wedding dress had nothing to do with it.
The past would not leave her alone today. Didn’t matter that it was over ten years since she had married Andreas Drakos, the Crown Prince of Drakon, in a little forgotten church in a backwater fishing village near the mountains.
Didn’t matter that in a few hours she was to marry Magnus.
A vein of utter misery ran through her day and night.
She was Anna to her friends, to her colleagues at the legal aid agency where she worked, and to the little community she belonged to amidst the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.
Anna was not an impulsive, reckless woman that self-destructed in the name of love. Anna was not a woman who gave in to the dangerous passion for a man who didn’t know how to love.
Instead Anna was supposed to be married this evening to a nice, understanding man. Her friends must be thinking she’d lost her mind. But she had needed to get away from the madness of it all. She’d barely eaten a morsel of food yesterday and nothing at the dinner their friends had arranged for her and Magnus.
Against every better instinct, she pulled her phone out of her coat jacket and compulsively opened a browser. The page was still open to the same article she’d been reading for the last month.
She perused it greedily, as if reading it for the hundredth time would somehow change the gist of it.
Crown Prince Andreas Drakos of Drakon was to announce his choice for his Queen, before his coronation as the King of Drakon, a tiny principality in the Mediterranean again making its mark in the financial world.
A woman who was regal and educated, a doyenne of charities, born to wealth and perfect bloodlines. A woman who would be soft and womanly, a perfect complement to his brooding, controlling masculinity.
She had known that Andreas would one day take another woman, a woman far more suitable than her, to be his wife, to be the Queen of Drakon. That he had waited this long at all, when she knew of his devotion to Drakon, was a shock in itself.
And yet, from the moment she’d seen the little article, her world had tilted on its axis.
Was Anna really any better than the impulsive hothead she had been then? Was there any other reason except that her heart had broken a little again when she’d seen news of Andreas’s coronation and it had prompted her to accept Magnus’s proposal?
Thee mou, was she willing to destroy Magnus’s life, too?
Whatever sun had been shining this morning had receded under dark clouds, the weather resonating her own dark thoughts. She had to break it off. Before she hurt Magnus, before...
The smooth swish of a finely tuned engine broke her focus.
She looked up and froze, wishing with every cell inside of her that she could truly freeze, become invisible, blend into the gray, leaf-bare trees around her. Could become one of the statues that littered the lovely town.
The pounding of her heart in her ears said she was far too alive.
For she recognized the little black-and-gold flag fluttering in the harsh wind on the hood of the European luxury car idling not two steps away. She knew the symbol of the golden dragon with fires spewing out of its wide jaws. She knew the man inside and his body and he knew hers, better than she did her own.
Legs quaking under her, she stumbled away from the curving stone wall that led to the steps of the church. Wrapped her arm around a tall tree for support.
Every primal instinct she possessed screamed at her to run, to flee. And yet not a single cell obeyed. Not a single muscle moved even as she heard the click of the car door, even as she saw polished black shoes step out of the car, even as the tall angular form straightened.
He’d found her.
Dear God, after ten years, he’d caught up to her. Just as she had always known he would, in the deep dark of the night when she couldn’t hold the memories at bay.
Crown Prince Andreas Drakos, soon to be King of Drakon, was here.
A long black coat fluttered around his ankles, wavy hair the color of a raven’s wing carelessly combed away from a high forehead. Power stamped across those high cheekbones, the patrician nose, the thin-lipped mouth. Arrogant entitlement and self-confidence dripped from him with every movement of his body.
Jet-black eyes, hard and flinty like glittering opals, eyes that reflected nothing back, eyes that had sometimes felt as if there was nothing behind them, swept over her shivering body and came to rest on her face. “Kalimera, Ariana.”
Their eyes collided and held, sending a tsunami of emotions racing through her body. God, those eyes...she had drowned in them once. She had reveled in making them glow with humor, in making them darken in passion, in trying to break through that opaque shield.
She pressed her bare hands against the rough bark of the tree, hoping to jerk some kind of self-preservation instinct into life, for some kind of rationality to master the sheer emotional assault she was under.
Hands tucked into the pockets of his trousers, clad in all black, he looked like a dark angel come to serve swift justice. “It does not seem like a good day to be getting married. Does it, pethi mou?”
So he knew.
Ariana licked her dry lips, swallowing away the knowledge that she’d been about to call it off. Her gut instinct had been right. “What...what are you doing here?”
“Here on this side of the pond, in Colorado, in this little wonderful town that you’ve been hiding in?” He didn’t move, nor did a muscle flicker in his face. In that deep, gravelly voice of his, he could have been inquiring after the bitter weather.
They could have been a couple of friends discussing trivialities. No anger or emotion fractured his cool expression. Only a faint thread of sarcasm bled through.
“Or here in front of this beautiful little church on this bleary afternoon where you’re waiting for the man you’re supposed to marry in a few hours? Should I answer the general or the specific?”
Ariana closed her eyes. Didn’t help one bit. His presence was a hum of power in the air, making something in her vibrate in tune. Dragging cold air deep into her lungs, she flicked her eyes open. Feeling was beginning to come back into her muscles. And along with it memories and an unholy amount of panic.
How had she forgotten that the smoother Andreas’s voice got, the hotter his rage? The deeper the fracture in his self-control, the colder and calmer his actions? It was his shut-down mode, where neither reason nor begging would filter through. Fresh wind made her eyes water. It had to be the wind. “I don’t have your magic with words, Andreas.”
He inclined his head in a regal nod. “I am to be King soon. I thought now would be a wise time to take care of the little business between us. After all, you ran out on me without a word, and who knows when you will decide you want to come back to me?”
Shivers raced down her spine. “Go back to your precious Drakon.” She couldn’t help the bitterness in her voice, even as she cautioned herself against it. “You have nothing to worry about with me. You and I—” her voice caught, and still, nothing changed in his expression “—were an episode from a different life. The media will never catch hold of our little story, neither will I claim even an acquaintance.
“Ariana Sakis, for all intents and purposes, is dead.”
She glanced up and her breath seized in her lungs.
Suddenly, he was there in front of her, blocking everything else from her vision. Blocking the entire world from her. Sandalwood, flared by his body’s heat, taunted her nostrils. Filled her with sensations and memories. Such an interestingly warm scent for a man whose blood was decidedly cold. But then his passion had been just as contrasting to the ruthless lack of his heart.
“Ariana Drakos,” he corrected with the faintest trace of warning. “Do not forget you belong to me.”
Nothing so tacky as a raised voice or a teetering temper from the House of Drakos.
“You might be King of your bloody palace, Andreas—” panic rushed reckless words to her mouth “—but not of me. Magnus will be here any minute and I won’t—”
“Your fiancé has been made aware of the situation and is not coming.”
So polite even as he stood there, playing havoc with her life. So infuriatingly calm. Her hands itched to muss up that perfectly placid expression of his. The devil in her burned to unsettle him as he did her. That urge was dangerous. Just being near Andreas was like throwing herself off a cliff—exhilarating and terrifying. And she had stopped doing that to herself a long time ago.
“What the hell did you tell Magnus?”
“That he should call it quits while his life is still under his control.”
“Is this what you have sunk to? Chasing away the man in my life? Have you become as low and manipulative as your father then, Andreas?”
His jaw tightened. “I didn’t have to chase him, Ariana. Like any sensible man, Magnus seemed uninclined toward being the other party in bigamy. In fact, he sounded angry at your deception.”
“Bigamy?” She covered the distance between them without caring. Her heart seemed to slow down in her chest, a dreadful cold filling her. “What do you mean, bigamy?”
His mouth relaxed, he stood waiting against the same tree as if he had all the time in the world. As if there was nothing that would give him more pleasure than to watch the ground being pulled away from under her. As if he’d planned and lived this moment a thousand times and he couldn’t let his enjoyment end.
She shook her grip on his coat but he didn’t budge. “What do you mean?”
A smile curved his mouth. Rendering him starkly beautiful. “My father and you missed one small detail in your plan. If I had never discovered you were alive, it wouldn’t have mattered so much.
“But I did.”
“What detail?” she was shouting now, her voice lost in the gray bleakness around her. Everything about those few days was still jumbled in her head. She’d been acting on pure animal instincts—fear the overriding one—and listening to King Theos had been the worst kind of mistake.
All she’d wanted was to escape Drakon before Andreas came back from his summit. Before she was caught in the web of her own love for him.
She’d been so naive that she had played right into Theos’s manipulative hands. But Andreas wouldn’t believe her now.
Her leaving him had been a betrayal to a man who didn’t break rules for anyone, an unforgivable mistake to a man whose word meant everything to him.
She clasped his jaw, forcing him to look at her. “What detail, Andreas?”
He still didn’t hold her. Didn’t touch her in any way. Those eyes trapped her again, until even breathing was a chore. Those eyes betrayed all his emotions—fury, shock and the cold enjoyment of her fate now. “The papers you signed for Theos, dissolving our marriage, he never presented them to me.
“Your supposed death bought him time and then... I don’t know what he and you planned. I never saw those papers until a few months ago. The motion didn’t even get filed in court.
“You are still my wife.”
CHAPTER TWO (#u80ad7a60-3bcf-588b-b9cb-5cecd8108b01)
SHEER TERROR FILLED her eyes as she stared at him. “Your wife?” she repeated, as if she couldn’t think past those two words.
Andreas studied her greedily, his skin prickling with that sensation only Ariana could arouse.
Her lips were dry, trembling. Her copper gold hair, her crowning glory, was tied into that messy knot she’d always put it in, complaining that it was too much. Her cheekbones were sharp and high, forever giving her that malnourished look. Her skin was still that golden shade though it looked alarmingly pale just then.
“You and I are still married, Ariana. Ten years and going strong. Except for the little problem of you wanting to marry another man.”
Her fingers became lax around his coat, her body trembling with tension. “Ariana is dead,” she kept repeating through pale lips.
Words that had haunted him for eight years.
He had imagined her death a hundred different ways, a million different times. He had hated himself for leaving her with his father. He had been through hell and back because he thought he hadn’t protected her.
He fisted his hands by his sides, fighting the urge to wrap his hands around her. Fighting the overwhelming impulse to push her against the tree and crush her mouth with his.
Because to see Ariana was to want Ariana. He didn’t remember a time he hadn’t wanted to possess her with that raw longing.
And yet lust was only a pale shadow behind the need to ensure that she was alive and not a figment of his imagination, a flimsy shadow from his feverish nightmares.
Outwardly, she hadn’t changed at all.
Thin, angular body built with lean muscle. Wide, brown-ringed eyes too big for her gamine face. Sharp, bladelike nose followed by a mouth so lushly pillowy, so poutingly full, that no man could see it and not think dirty, lustful thoughts.
It was as if all the austerity that had been executed in her face had to be made up for in that mouth.
She looked just as common and nondescript as Theos had called her back then.
Only her eyes had changed.
That twinkle that had made them glow, as if she held the glorious flicker of life itself inside her, it was gone. Wariness filled them now. He wanted to shove her away from him, stop her from touching him like she used to do.
But the damage to his system was already done.
His body roared to life at the soft imprint she left with hers. Long, toned legs tangled with his, her body trembling faintly against his. The scent of her—just her skin and the lavender soap she apparently still used—invaded his bloodstream. Like Pavlov’s dog, every cell inside him stood to attention. Memories and sensations of pleasure and something else, a sense of being utterly alive, poured into his skin, making him heated.
“This is your petty revenge on me,” she finally whispered, her mouth only inches apart from his. A loud thrum began under his skin. “Your way of playing with my life while you announce your own marriage to the world. You will let me dangle at your fingertips, holding this ridiculous threat over my head.
“Because I had the temerity to walk away from the controlling, arrogant, ruthless man you are, Andreas.”
He scowled. “You think it was my pride that was dented by your betrayal, by your lies?”
“Yes,” she said defiantly. “For you’re not capable of feeling anything else.”
Andreas flinched, her words landing like barbed fists on his flesh. Thee mou, it seemed even now, when she was utterly in the wrong, she dared to challenge him, dared to call him out for her mistakes.
“You could have done this through your lawyers. You could have sent me the divorce papers through one of your lackeys. But no...you had to do it personally because you couldn’t forego the pleasure of ruining my life before you go back to rule your bloody kingdom.”
“You’re mistaken again, Ariana. I did not come simply to ruin your engagement.”
“Then why are you here?”
“For two years, since Father let it slip that you were alive, I’ve been waiting for this moment.
“I will be crowned King of Drakon soon and I need my wife by my side. I have come to take you home to Drakon.”
Her gaze searched his, desperate. What little fight had been there seemed to deflate out of her. As if she was shrinking right in front of his eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
He touched her then, tracing the delicate line of her jaw with the tip of his forefinger. Her skin was silky smooth to his touch, a faint tremor running through it. “But you already know I have no sense of humor.”
“You...can’t...” her breath came in little gasps “...do...this.”
Her thin body going slack against him, his wife did what she’d always forced him to do. She fainted and forced him to catch her. Forced him to hold her fragile body in his, before he was ready for any such contact. Feeling fear, and panic and a hundred other emotions that he’d never had encountered otherwise.
Her gown’s bodice was so tight that Andreas drew his pocket knife out of his coat and cut the front off. The blue tinge around her mouth began to recede, his own panic fading with it.
He easily lifted her slender form and made his way to the waiting car, icy anger thawing and giving way to shock.
She might not have changed outwardly but there was something different about her. Something fragile and fractured. Almost as if there was a piece missing.
He’d expected a radiant, carefree bride, ready to ride into another adventure with another man she’d sucked in with her effervescent personality, with her vivacity and wit. He’d expected her to be living it up in some party town with the money she’d taken from his father.
He hadn’t expected this...this waif, with bruises under her eyes, working away all hours at a nonprofit legal agency. She made barely any money. She shared a one-bedroom apartment, the size of his closet, with another woman. He’d have never believed that silly, rebellious girl would have the interest to study law much less the grit to get a degree and practice.
Barely out of breath, he slowly lowered her into the seat and slid into place next to her.
Every savage promise he’d made himself that he’d make her suffer crumbled as he gathered her body into his.
Once again, all his plans turned to dust by the infuriating woman.
Just as she had been able to make him laugh, make him long for something he had never known back then. Make him lose his mind in the desperate need to possess her.
All through that summer, Ariana had wielded some kind of magic over him.
That laughing, reckless girl had shattered through to his core, given him a taste of an unparalleled joy he’d never known.
And so he’d done the unthinkable and married her when it had been time to leave. Possessing Ariana had equaled holding that joy in the palm of his hand. It had meant being something more than the Crown Prince, something he hadn’t even realized he’d needed to be until then.
He had forgotten who and what he was, he had clung desperately to that feeling, had thought it enough to have her in his life.
Except it hadn’t been enough for her.
With that same recklessness that had lured him to her, she had destroyed their lives. It was that same girl he had expected to find today.
But she was right.
This was not the Ariana he had met that summer, the Ariana he had married.
And yet, letting her go was not an option.
* * *
Ariana came awake slowly, her throat parched, her mind blank. Air filled her in quick, choppy bursts.
“Drink this.”
Ignoring the questions buzzing through her head, she took the bottle and drank the water. It was cold and crisp, what she desperately needed.
“Iedas Mountain Springs,” the label on the water bottle said, with a small sketch of the majestic mountain range in Drakon... Drakon!
She jerked upright. Cream leather walls greeted her, understated luxury permeating the ambience. Soft lights from the ceiling cast a golden glow around the cabin.
Cabin... She was in the rear cabin of a private jet—a jet that belonged to the blasted House of Drakos.
The events of the afternoon came back in a fast reel.
Andreas had said they were still married.
Andreas had said he was going to take her back to Drakon.
Andreas had caught her when she’d fainted.
The panic felt like ants crawling all over her skin. She pushed her legs out and stood up. The cabin tilted but she had to get out of here.
The slither of her dress, her wedding dress, alerted her. She looked down, found the corset cut neatly down in the middle. The beaded bodice hung open through the center, gaping open to reveal her slip and the shadow of her breasts.
Ariana held it up with both hands and forced her Jell-O legs to move.
Before she took another step, he was before her.
A man as hard as the rock on which his palace sat. Yet, as she looked at him now, there were white lines around his mouth, and he was not so solid.
“Why am I here? What is that sound?”
“They’re readying for takeoff.”
“No!”
“Sit down, Ariana.”
“Get out of my way.”
“You’re in no shape to go anywhere.”
“I swear, Andreas, if you don’t move out of my way—”
His fingers gripped her arms, exerting pressure backward. “Calm down before you faint again!”
“How dare you? You bastard!” Ariana let her hand fly.
The crack of her palm against his cheek was like a pop of thunder, leaving an utter silence behind. She clutched her wrist with her left hand, shock jarring it. Breathing hard, she looked up.
He hadn’t even touched his jaw. Except for the tight clench of it, the little jerk of his head, he showed no reaction to what she’d done. He still supported her.
“Does that conclude this episode to your satisfaction, Ari?”
Her shortened name made her breath catch. “I will not apologize.”
He shrugged.
That casual gesture was like fuel to her rage.
“You’re kidnapping me. Really?” She fisted her hands and went at him, lost to all reason. “After all the propriety and decorum and a hundred other rules you demand of everyone, you’re actually kidnapping me?”
Of course it was exactly what he had planned. And Ariana had so nicely played into his hands, by literally fainting at his feet.
Damn it, Ari.
“You will not like it if I subdue you on the bed, Ari. Or maybe you will, since we both know what will happen the moment I lie on top of you.” The cold matter-of-factness of his threat made everything still in her.
Ariana turned and met his inscrutable gaze, wrapping her mind around this.
“Should we put my theory to the test or shall you calm down?”
“Let me go.”
He did instantly. With an urgency that made her flush.
Her legs simply gave out and Ariana slid into a graceless heap on the bed.
This had been coming, Ari, a nauseating voice whispered. You just buried your head in the sand. You knew he was going to catch up with you one day.
She didn’t know how long they sat like that. She on the bed, trying to catch her breath, trying to quell the panic, and he sitting in the one armchair in the corner, watching her.
A lion crouching in silence, waiting for his prey to show weakness.
The long coat and jacket were gone. Replaced by a white designer dress shirt with a white undershirt—nothing so scandalous as going without one for the uptight Crown Prince of Drakon—and black custom-made trousers for his six-four height. Dark olive skin at his throat beckoned to her. She followed the trail of the chain around his neck with her eyes.
His dog tags from his time in the Drakonite Army, where he’d trained from fifteen to eighteen, would be under that undershirt. Platinum cufflinks. A platinum-plated watch glinted on his left wrist. Black Italian handmade shoes gleamed where he’d folded one foot on top of his thigh.
The soft lightning of the cabin wreathed his face in shadows, showing the sharp planes and hollows of his face to perfection.
He was leaner than she remembered and it made him look even more distant and withdrawn. There were lines on his face now, especially around that thinly sculpted mouth. At twenty-six he’d been gorgeous in an uptight, starchy kind of way.
Ten years later now, he seemed even more comfortable in his skin. Even more arrogant and ruthless about his place in the world.
Every small thing she noticed brought back a memory thudding into her conscious, as physical as a blow to her solar plexus. Her throat dried promptly again, her heart forever in that lurching rhythm when he was near.
Slowly the impact of this, of him, hit her in its completion. She wasn’t running away from this, not yet at least.
No, there was no running away at all from this, she corrected herself. Not unless she wanted him to give her chase for the rest of their lives.
Realizing she’d been gaping at him, she pulled her gaze up. Chin propped against his fist, he raised a brow. He didn’t tease her for gawking at him like a teenager.
He didn’t need the validation to his masculinity, to his ego.
Power was second skin to him, women flocked to him like buzzing bees. Actresses and models, CEOs and princesses, women had been falling at his feet since puberty. If he’d been merely one more vacant, lazy royal out to have a good time, maybe he wouldn’t have so much pull.
But no, Andreas Drakos was smart as a whip. A historian, an army veteran, a weaver of words. Christos, there wasn’t anything he didn’t excel at.
And yet he’d chosen her.
She frowned, the question had tormented her for years, struggled into a comfortable position and took stock of her body. A leaf fluttering in a harsh gale would have more strength than her at the moment.
Of all the stupid, moronic things to do in front of this man... She pressed a hand to her temple.
She felt the heat of his body instantly in the air around the bed. Whatever reprieve she’d gotten was over.
In silent scrutiny, he fluffed the pillows and propped them against the wall, and then pulled her into a sitting position. With economic movements, his fingers barely touching her, he arranged the duvet around her. Gave her another bottle of water that she emptied within seconds.
Hysteria began to bubble up through her throat and she laughed. Water spurted out of her nose and mouth inelegantly, and he promptly wiped her nose and mouth with a napkin. On and on went her near manic laughter until tears streamed out from her eyes. Until the ball of tension that had lodged in her chest since she’d seen him standing in front of the church slowly deflated.
He raised a brow again.
“How many women can claim Crown Prince Andreas Drakos waited on them like a lowly member of staff?” she quipped, perfectly understanding his question.
A sudden tightness gripped her chest. Wordless communication had been so their thing.
“So you still possess that ridiculous sense of humor.”
She tensed as he sat down at the edge of the bed. Not near enough to touch, yet tantalizingly close. Her body couldn’t take this much heightened awareness after what had been a drought of ten years. Not for long, not without combusting with need.
“What the hell was that?”
“Be glad I didn’t scratch that perfect face. Or maybe I should have. A little imperfection would have at least made you look human.”
A jagged sigh. An echo of all the times Ari had pushed his buttons. “I speak of your fainting.”
“You showed up after ten years and I fainted.” She sighed. Regression much, Ari?
“Continue like that and it will only confirm my belief that you’re still that reckless, juvenile, rebellious brat I knew back then.”
“What can I say? You bring out the worst in me, Your Highness.”
Their eyes sought each other instantly.
Are you my watchdog, Your Highness?
Crack a smile, Your Highness.
It’s called a vodka shot, Your Highness.
Had she been that naive, that foolish to have teased this man like that? Had he actually let her?
“Ariana, focus.” It wasn’t even a warning. Just a smidgen of his impatience leaking. “If I hadn’t been there, you would have been on the grass, in the cold, for God knows how long. Is this your new thing now, fainting?”
“New thing?”
“Yes. Pot brownies, vodka shots, fasting for days to lose weight... Christos, do I need to go on? You were always ridiculously reckless about your well-being.”
Ari massaged her temples with her fingers. He was right.
She had thrown herself into her sudden, boundless freedom, as naively as jumping off a cliff. Guilt over her parents’ deaths had stolen reason from her. The need to experience life to the fullest after seventeen years of being trapped in a golden cage...it had consumed her.
He’d thought her ditzy, willful, reckless and any number of even less complimentary things. She had been all those and more. But not in the past ten years, not anymore.
Her hands settled on her belly, corrosive grief scratching her throat.
The freedom she’d finally got, the need to make something of her life, it had come at such a high price. But it had helped her find herself, helped her achieve control over those impulses that would destroy her.
Until this past month when his impending announcement had undone her again. And that made fear whisper through her bones. It was the same circle of self-abuse her mother had been stuck in with her father.
“Ariana?”
“I...had a salad for lunch yesterday and nothing since then. It has been a stressful week—the caseload at the firm is crazy right now and then a doubly stressful morning. I’ve never fainted before.” Except that one time after she had left Drakon and him behind. Because in her recklessness, the same that he accused her of right now, it had taken a fainting spell to realize she’d been three months pregnant.
His instant control of the situation, his interrogation of her as if she were a child, grated like nothing else. But to be fair, that’s what she had been then. “Because of the elevation above sea level of this town, I sometimes find it hard to breathe.”
“Mountain air makes your asthma worse. I checked your little purse and you didn’t have your inhaler on you.”
She looked up then and swallowed. She’d thought he would delete anything related to their time together from his life, from his mind. At least after learning of the biggest lie she’d ever told.
Apparently, like her, Andreas had forgotten nothing of their time together. Of their short-lived marriage. Of how they made each other burn up in flames when they touched, and ruined each other when they didn’t.
“It does flare it up from time to time. But it makes up with everything else.”
A little frown appeared between his brows. “Makes up?”
“The fact that it flares my asthma is a little inconvenience to what I have found here. I...found a community here, Andreas. My life has meaning here. There are women who count on me.” She held his gaze, air ballooning up in her chest, smothering her lungs. Time to face the facts. “You can’t really mean what you said earlier.”
“Have you ever known me to say anything I didn’t mean?”
No. He’d never once said that he loved her, even in the throes of passion, even when he’d let his control slip. And it was something to watch the iron-control-clad, emotionless, uptight Crown Prince lose it in the sheets.
She swung her legs out of the bed and stood up slowly. When he neared her to offer assistance with clear reluctance—because of course every touch and look had to be calculated in that steel trap that was his mind—she held him off with her hand.
The cut corset of her wedding dress hung limply around her waist but Ariana didn’t care. She didn’t care one bit what her sheer slip showed.
She didn’t care that his gaze traveled all over her, noted her defiant pose, and yet didn’t betray anything.
He had unraveled her life all over again and she was not going to hide and feel shame about it. She had to face Andreas and whatever came now, if she ever wanted to move forward in her life.
“Think about what you’re proposing, Andreas. Your father was right in one thing—I hardly possess the bloodlines. I was never brought up to be the next Queen of Drakon.
“You...completely agreed with him.” It took no small amount of effort to put this forward rationally. “You... The moment we left the village...”
“What about it, Ariana?”
He had regretted what he’d done, she knew. But the past was done, useless. “Do you think I would be any more malleable this time around?” She lifted her chin. “The last ten years have only made me realize how right I was. We would have destroyed each other if I’d stayed.”
He reached her then. Breath serrated her throat as he lifted his hand and softly clasped her jaw. For one sheer, indefinable moment, a wealth of emotion danced in his jet-black gaze. Pure rage and something else. A bleakness?
“Silly Ari. Do you think I give a damn about what you want or need right now?
“Your death tormented me for eight years.
“The little slip from Theos’s mouth that you were not only alive, but that you took money from him to disappear—” tight lines emerged around his mouth, a small fracture in his control “—that news has tortured me for the last two years.”
Ariana stared, stunned. A dent to his ego, she’d expected. But for Andreas to admit that losing her had tormented him...it was akin to the sun revolving around the earth. The pithy declaration raged through her, kindling feelings she couldn’t handle.
Had he truly felt something for her then?
“This is exactly what your father wanted you to become.”
“Theos is dead, agapita,” he said softly, a wicked gleam in his eyes. “It has been years since his will, his word, has had the power to move me. The power to persuade me. The power to control me.
“I have become my own man, Ari. Isn’t that what you wanted long ago?”
She’d have given anything to hear that ten years ago. But not anymore. “The moment we land in Drakon, I’ll yell what you’ve done through the rooftops. Your image can’t survive a scandal.”
He bared his teeth in a feral smile. “So you have kept tabs on me.”
The sound that fell from her mouth was half growl, half screech. “I know my place even in the illustrious world that you’re the unrivaled lord of. One word from me will plunge the House of Drakos into a horrible scandal.”
“Do you really want to threaten me?”
Panic bloomed, making her voice rise. “My entire life is here. Even more importantly, my clients are here.”
“Your fiancé fell over himself in his haste to accept my conditions. He gets to keep the legal agency running and keeps quiet about your secret identity for the rest of his life.”
“I built that agency with my blood and tears.” The one good thing that had come out of the loss she’d suffered.
“You built it with the dirty payoff you took from my father. Even your education was paid for by the House of Drakos. And since we’re still married—”
“Half of everything I own is yours,” she finished. Her mind whirled. “And you need Magnus to keep quiet about where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing.”
His jaw clenched and Ariana exhaled roughly. Finally, there was one point she could negotiate with. But he didn’t give her even that chance.
“Your clients, what do you think will happen if the media gets hold of who you truly are? That you’ve been living a lie for ten years.”
“It’s not a lie. I busted my ass to earn my law degree. I opened that nonprofit legal aid agency because I wanted to help those women.”
“And when the world finds out that you’re not Anna Harris but Ariana Drakos, wife of the King of Drakon—”
“My clients will be dragged into the limelight along with me.” She exhaled roughly. “Those are women who have already been abused by men they trusted. Which will keep me quiet. Am I getting close, Andreas?”
He smiled then—a jagged mockery that made her chest ache. “You know what I find truly hard to believe in this new, peachy life you’ve made for yourself?”
“What?” She snarled the question at him.
“Am I to believe that you have found your true, deep purpose in your scattered life finally? That you truly devote yourself tirelessly to those women and their plight?”
If there was a moment that Ariana truly wanted to sink her nails into that perfect, arrogant, condescending face and scratch it, it was then. Ten years of striving to make something of herself, to give meaning to what she’d lost, to make a meaningful path for herself, and his careless disdain crushed it all.
And he knew it. He was all but challenging her to launch herself at him again, to go back to that lowest denominator of herself she’d once thrived on.
She would attack him and he would subdue her...and it would lead to only one conclusion. The knowledge suffused the very air around them with a dense heat.
Every time they had fought in those horrible three months of their marriage, they’d ended up in bed. Or against the wall. Or on the chaise longue with the Crown Prince on his knees, with his arrogant head between her thighs.
The memory shimmered like a bright glitter in his coal-black eyes.
With the sheer will that had helped her survive through the darkest night of her life, Ari looked away. Air rushed into her lungs, clearing the haze.
Her biggest defense against Andreas was to show leaving him hadn’t been a whim. That she wasn’t a car crash in the making anymore. That she had come into her own strength these last ten years. That she’d proactively made something of her life.
“I care about my clients, about their privacy, about not turning everything Magnus and I worked for into a lie. So, yes, you win my silence. But nothing else.”
“How refreshing that you’re capable of loyalty, even if it’s toward another man, pethi mou. I told him, soon enough you’d have found a reason to run out on him. That your precious freedom would have come calling.
“Is it not your pattern?”
Ariana flinched, the softly delivered statement even more painful for she’d been about to do exactly the same thing to Magnus. Not for some kind of femme fatale reason but because she’d realized Magnus deserved much better than her.
“I didn’t think you of all people would be crass enough to typecast me as some kind of vacant-headed, freewheeling slut. If for no other reason than that it would taint your own pristine image, your own association with me.”
“What does that mean?”
“I was eighteen, Andreas. I... I was bowled over by you. I threw myself at you. I was...messed up after my parents’ deaths, and you were a high unlike anything I’d ever known.
“You were—you are unlike any other man I’ve ever known.
“Jesus, did you know what your attention, your reluctant interest, meant to me? You...who didn’t show interest in princesses, and models and CEOs.
“You looked at me. Me—messed-up, frightened, guilty Ariana.
“You married me knowing who and what I was. So, if we have to call out someone for the...twisted mess that was our marriage, it’s you.”
“Was that the justification when you let me think you had died in a horrible drowning accident,” he bit out and she flinched. “Maybe I will let you go, Ariana. Maybe one of these days I will find that little bit of decency within myself again. Maybe you can go back to being Anna Harris and the savior of those women in your little town again.”
And in those statements of his, Ariana saw his shredded control for what it was. Saw his loathing that she was still an obsession with him. He despised himself, and her, because he couldn’t give her up.
Any hopes she had of convincing him perished in that moment. After all, she did know him better than anyone.
“So this is about revenge?”
“Call it whatever the hell you want to.” His gaze tracked her face and her torn clothes. He fisted his hand so tight by his side that the knuckles were white.
For the first time that day, Ariana realized how tremendous his self-control was.
“You need food and rest. Do not force me to manhandle you into that, too. We both know whether it will be pleasure or punishment.”
Ariana fell onto the bed with a soft thud, the recrimination in his eyes burning through her like acid. Her skin still prickling, for the first time since she’d known him, she was grateful for his iron-clad self-control.
Because, even after all these years, she had none when it came to resisting the Crown Prince of Drakon.
CHAPTER THREE (#u80ad7a60-3bcf-588b-b9cb-5cecd8108b01)
“MRS. DRAKOS? YOUR HIGHNESS?”
For the second time in a few hours, Ariana jerked upright so suddenly that her neck gave a painful twinge. She looked at the stewardess patiently waiting for her to wake up.
So the cat was out of the bag.
Instead of the panic she braced herself for, all she felt was a...quiet resignation. Not the give-up-and-become-his-wife kind. But the guilty-as-hell kind.
Whatever he had done to her, however much she had despised him at the end of their marriage, it was clear that she had miscalculated the effect of her supposed death on Andreas. On hearing of his swift engagement to a real estate mogul’s sister, her own guilt had been alleviated.
She didn’t belong in the Crown Prince’s world and that he’d replaced her so fast had been proof enough.
Of course, that miscalculation had been aided by his father.
If Andreas had grieved her loss, who knew how Theos had twisted that to his advantage?
King Theos, she had realized within a week of meeting her guardian as her father-in-law, had possessed an unhealthy hold on his heir. He’d seen her as nothing but a weakness to eliminate from his son’s life.
What had been painful was from the moment he had presented her to King Theos, even Andreas had begun to see her as that—a weakness to be hidden away.
The stewardess’s eyes traveled over Ari’s hair, which could rival the Amazon forest for its wildness right now, to the torn dress she had fallen asleep in.
Ari cringed. She stood up from the bed, and pushed the dress off her shoulders and hips.
Ill-concealed curiosity scampered across the woman’s face. “I will take care of the dress, Your Highness. Have it mended. I’m sure you’d want to—”
“No, that’s not necessary,” Ari replied, pulling the slip off her shoulders. Her strapless bra stuck to the underside of her breasts uncomfortably, thanks to her habit of smothering herself under the covers. She stepped out of the slip seconds before the woman took it, almost dislodging Ari off her feet.
“Have it burned,” a soft voice commanded from the entrance.
The need to cover herself was instinctive, self-preservation at its primal. Shaking, Ariana covered her midriff with her arms.
The stewardess had that look again, switching between her and Andreas, as if she could figure out the secret as to how this average-looking, falling-apart-at-the-seams waif had snared the most powerful, gorgeous man in Drakon.
It was a question the whole world was going to ask this time, not just King Theos, if Andreas had his way.
His gaze dipped past Ari’s face this time—as if he’d given himself permission to look, to linger—moved to the pulse beating wildly at her neck, betraying the sudden tension that suffused her every cell, to the curves of her breasts rising and falling. A languorous ache settled low in her belly, her nipples hard against the flimsy bra.
“Checking up on me already?” Fear of how just one look from him turned her on destroyed the need for discretion in front of a member of the staff. “There’s no way to escape, unless you’re willing to provide me with a parachute. You can see me plummet to death, at least.”
He closed his eyes, his chest barely lifted and fell with his exhale, and then leveled that black gaze at her again. Military precision to every single breath. “I came in to see if you were awake. Petra needs your prescription for your inhaler. I will not have you fainting everywhere.”
“Petra?”
“Yes, my secretary.” He looked down at his phone, frowned, typed a message and looked up again.
Tall, blonde, with a voluptuous body, armed with a master’s from a renowned university in Drakon, and hailing from a highly connected Drakonite family. Andreas’s oldest friend and shadow. Theos’s spy. If Ariana could give a form to all her self-doubts and insecurities back then, it would be Petra Cozakis. “I know Petra runs your life. And for the last time, it was the stress of the last week and that dress that did it today.
“Do not treat me as if I am still an imbecile, Andreas.”
He raised a brow. Confirmation enough that that was exactly how she was acting. “Petra is on this flight. Let her know if you need anything.”
“No,” she said loudly.
His gaze pinned her. “Precisely what are you saying no to?”
“If you’re dragging me to the King’s Palace, it will be different this time. I will not be hidden away like some stain on the great House of Drakos. I will not let your uptight, snobbish staff run circles around me. I will not communicate through your minions, will not let you pawn me off on them as if I was a thing to be managed.” Maybe what Andreas needed was a dose of reality. For his staff and his family and the world to realize who he had chosen and how unsuitable she was.
Lines formed between his brows. “Leave us,” he said to the stewardess without moving his gaze from Ariana.
The woman froze in the process of folding the damned dress. She thought Ariana and Andreas had gotten married in that dress, Ariana realized.
“Burn. That. Dress,” he repeated. The stewardess nodded and scurried out.
Arms still around her waist, Ariana turned, grabbed the duvet and pulled it around her like a shroud. However she tried, the choice was to either cover her chest or her midriff.
She covered her midriff. Her bra was enough for her meager breasts. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen the little she had to offer before.
The small scar she bore above her pubic bone might not be visible in the soft light, but she couldn’t take the chance. Closing her eyes, she willed the grief down. The situation with Andreas was explosive enough without adding her discovery after she had left him that she’d been pregnant.
That she had lost her precious little baby boy was an unbearable, ever-present weight on her soul. For Andreas, it would only mean more betrayal. Worse, the loss of a potential heir, a figurehead to represent the House of Drakos’s future.
Ariana couldn’t bear to hear his dismissal of that tiny life. The guilt of it, the grief of it was all her own.
At least, it served as a reminder that she couldn’t chance a pregnancy again.
Because there was no point in denying that she was going to end up in his bed. The attraction between them, it seemed, had survived despite everything.
She took a Post-it note and pen from the small bedstead and scribbled the name and number of her GP. Shards of glass seemed to be stuck in her throat when she turned. “I also need the prescription for my birth control pills filled.”
The memory of their last fight, the bitterest and dirtiest of them all, sculpted sharp grooves in his already gaunt cheeks. His hesitation was like handing her a live grenade. Bulky duvet and all, she reached him, her heart threatening to rip out of her chest. “Have something to say, Andreas?”
As if pulled from the past, he slowly looked down at her. “No. Even I’m not cruel enough to bring a child into this. At least not anymore.”
“Does that mean you intend to let me go at some point?”
This time, his answer was more thoughtful than driven by fury. “No.”
“But isn’t my only duty as your wife to produce as many healthy heirs as soon as humanly possible? My purpose, to be your broodmare?”
Deep grooves etched on the sides of his mouth as he responded without inflection. “Nikandros’s twins will be heirs.”
“Of course,” she said, swallowing away the ache. She had no idea why she was pushing him like this. Only that she wanted to hurt him as she was hurting. “How does the timeline look then? Do I have enough time to find a new GP in Drakon and get my pills without Petra and the entire palace knowing my business?”
His chin tilted down. “What?”
“The sex, Andreas? You and me and the humiliating sex that we’re going to have, you have a timeline for that, right?
“Sex is your weapon in this revenge scheme, ne? The thing I could never refuse you, the thing that you threatened to hold against—” Her voice broke, and he...his features paled. “So, yeah, if your schedule allows me to wait, then you don’t have to ask your secretary to fill your wife’s birth control prescription.”
When she’d have turned away from him, he gripped her arms so tightly that Ari knew she’d have bruises tomorrow. But the pain was worth the satisfaction that she had finally, finally ruffled him. “Humiliating sex? Punishment sex?” He turned her until she was facing him, her duvet forgotten, her stomach tying itself in knots. “Have you convinced yourself that with my power and prestige, I somehow forced you?
“Have you conveniently twisted the truth in that too, agapita? That you gave your innocence unwillingly?”
Laughter fell from her mouth, serrated and strange. “No, it was never that, whatever it was.” Her nose rubbed against his biceps, her mouth curving into a smile against the fabric of his shirt. Faint tension emanated from him, making Ari throw caution to the wind. “Even in this we disagree, ne, Andreas?”
He looked at her as though he was afraid she was going mad. She was a little afraid of that herself. “How?”
“To this day, I’m convinced that I seduced you and you’re convinced that you seduced me. Even in this, we have a power struggle.”
He didn’t outright laugh. The rigid, sculpted curve of his thin lips didn’t even move. But his grip on her arms eased. Something softened in his black eyes. A flash of that dry humor she had seen back then. Only she.
He lifted a finger and touched the tip of her nose. Her breath suspended in her throat, for Ari had a feeling he had been about to touch her mouth and changed his mind at the last second.
He’d been tempted. And it filled her with a heady power she didn’t want.
“It was not so much a power struggle as it was you defying me. Defying everything I stood for—Drakon, the Palace, the House of Drakos, my father and me.” His tone became far off, as if he too was reliving those first heady months when they had met.
Memories permeated the very air around them.
The first day he’d arrived at the café, he’d introduced himself as simply Andreas. As if he could ever be just that. But, of course, she’d known who he was. Ariana had only laughed at his imperious command to let him or his team know if she needed anything. Until she realized he’d been in earnest. That he meant to keep an eye on his father’s ward.
Keep an eye, he had.
He would come to the café where she had worked every night, two huge tomes, and newspaper cuttings and reams of paperwork spread out on his table. Not a word, not a greeting after that first one. No chatting with any other customers. Just that dark gaze tracking her all over the café, until the early hours of morning, as if he found her endlessly fascinating. After the first day, he’d walked her home to the apartment, again with nary a word exchanged between them.
Ariana had never found herself so thoroughly captivated.
He had done that for a whole month before Ari had lost her patience and approached him.
Are you my very own watchdog, Your Highness?
She cringed, remembering how outrageous she’d been.
His reply: You should not be drinking with strange men, Ms. Sakis.
And then he’d followed her to the party where she’d proceeded to get drunk. Taken her home to her little apartment she’d shared with three other girls.
No more exchanges except her increasingly reckless taunts to break his self-assurance over the next month.
Until the afternoon the verdict had come out about her parents’ deaths. There had been no doubt that her mother had deliberately caused the accident.
She’d taken her life and her husband’s, a day after he’d struck Ariana.
She’d been mindless with grief, desperate to run away from her own life. Andreas hadn’t asked her a single question that day, nor left her side. Like a shadow, he’d been at her back throughout the day and night as she’d flitted from the café to a party, from the party to a walk along the coast and then back to her apartment.
Finally, she had broken down into anguished sobs, finally, she had realized that she was now forever alone, a fate she’d wished for for so long. At her apartment, he had sat by her on the couch—not even their shadows touching, always so careful to not touch her even by accident—and he had started talking, uncaring of whether she was listening.
In that deep, gravelly voice of his that had been just a tether to hold on to at first.
He’d started with the reason for his stay in the little village, a question she’d asked of him countless times. Told her of how his trail had led him there.
It was the first time she’d heard of the story of the dragon and the warriors. For hours, he’d told her of his fascination with the history of Drakon and its centuries-old lore since he’d been a little boy. Of the painstaking years of research he’d put together in his free time, which was far too little and rare. Of his fierce determination to pin down the real truth behind the war the warriors had waged on the dragon.
And in the passion in his words that had been a revelation—when she’d relentlessly taunted him for being an uptight, dutiful, one-dimensional prince puffed up with his own privilege and power—Ariana had seen the man beneath the Crown Prince’s mantle. A historian, a weaver of words, a dreamer; a man that struggled to survive within the constraints of his birth and his position of power without even knowing it. A man who liked her, her company, her laughter, yet wouldn’t, or couldn’t put it in a simple sentence.
A man who could have the world at his feet and yet saw something worthwhile in her.
The realization that somehow the Crown Prince of Drakon, powerful and gorgeous, needed her just as much as she needed him, had reverberated through her.
As dawn had painted the sky a myriad of purples and pinks, his voice had slowly guided Ariana back to the world, to the life waiting for her.
Through her death, her mother had given her a gift. She had given Ariana her own life back.
With a fiercely alive feeling coursing through her veins, she had done what she’d been dying, but had been terrified, to do, until then. She had wiped her tears away roughly, kneeled between his long legs and pressed her mouth to his.
Her first kiss, she had decided so full of herself, would be the Crown Prince’s.
Of course, he hadn’t kissed her back as she’d mashed her lips against his. Tenderly, he’d clasped her jaw and pushed her back while she’d been burning with humiliation and thwarted desire, had guided her to her room, tucked her in, waited until she fell into a dreamless sleep.
The next morning, she’d woken up, brimming with a renewed verve for life and determined to have him, in whatever form she could.
Thee mou, she’d been playing with fire. Was it any wonder she’d been burned?
He’d made her feel so secure that night—a feeling she’d never known. Like she could survive the bitterest grief if only she had his words, him by her side.
Except she hadn’t foreseen that what had attracted him to her would be what he would despise in the end.
“Challenging everything I had ever believed in,” Andreas said, pulling her back into the now, a strange glitter in those dark eyes, “about myself, about the world, about my place in the world.
“You were this skinny, reckless seventeen-year-old and the first person I had ever met in my life who...”
“Who what?” she whispered, desperate for more. Even knowing that this self-indulgence would only lead to pain.
“Who didn’t care how powerful, educated, or accomplished I was. With you, I was...” she’d never seen him lost for words, yet right then, she was sure he was choosing them carefully “...just Andreas for the first time.”
They were words Ariana had never heard him say before. Almost regretful. A little wistful. They gouged open a longing she’d shut away.
Tears filled her throat. She wanted to pound at him for never saying those things to her then, for never telling her... No. Ruthlessly, she pulled herself to the present. They would have never survived, she needed to hold on to that.
He slowly disentangled himself from her, pushed away a lock of hair that had fallen onto her jaw. Small touches. Calculated touches. Her skin prickled. “I will make you a promise, Ari.”
She scowled, more angry with herself than with him. “It won’t be without some hidden motive.”
And this time, he really smiled. The flash of his even white teeth against his darkly olive skin was breathtaking.
Unlike him, patience had never been her strong suit. “What is it, your promise?”
“I will not touch you until you come to me. I will not take you, agape mou, until you beg me to take you. Until you crawl into my bed and ask me to be inside you.
“Taking you when you can’t breathe for wanting me...it is unlike any high I’ve known.”
Ariana jerked away from him, slumberous warmth pooling low in her belly. A throbbing between her legs. “Like I did the last time.”
A flare of heat darkened those impossible black eyes. It was all there in them—the log cabin at the foot of the mountains, the storm that had been raging outside for a week, the huge king bed with soft-as-sin sheets and Andreas and she stuck inside, with their supplies dwindling every day and the fire between them raging higher with every moment.
The knowledge that she had turned eighteen four weeks earlier was explosive in that silent cabin; that they had both been ignoring King Theos’s summons; the knowledge that her dare in trapping the Crown Prince, who seemed to be made of stone and rock like the mountains around them, far too dangerous when she’d seen the evidence of his attraction to her finally in those first few days in the cabin.
Until the day he had decided that he was going to give in.
Sparks filled her body at the memory of that decadent night. It was the night she had begun to understand the uptight, arrogant Crown Prince, to realize what she’d thrown herself into. But it had been too late.
She’d already fallen in love with him.
Her fingers shaking to hold the duvet, Ariana pushed out the breath lodged in her chest. Barely a few hours with him and she was on fire. She cleared her hoarse throat.
“Why?”
He shrugged. “To level the field a little.”
“This is exactly what you wanted when you kidnapped me—me at your mercy.”
“Yes, but having you at my mercy when you have no fight in you...” he made a bored sound “...that is not the Ariana I want. What fun is tormenting you when you have no say in it?
“This way, I will know that when I’m inside you this time, you have surrendered despite the little self-preservation it seems you have developed.”
Thee mou, it was impossible. The man she had married would have never been open to a challenge like that, much less taunt her with it. He would have never given the reins of anything to her hands. Much less his revenge scheme. Or the simple matter of when they’d have sex.
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