Chapter Four #3
She also couldn’t look away.
Because Aikaterini knew full well that she was the woman in these videos. She could also remember all of these engagements all on her own, though she had apparently missed half of what was happening.
All together the footage from these events told a story.
And much as she tried to tell herself no one would see that story but her, she knew that wasn’t true. She knew that this had been Kyriakos’s goal from the start.
Because the story that all of these clips told was of a dutiful Princess who was slowly, over the course of these weeks, opening up and even melting into her new marriage. It was all right there, one clip after the next.
She understood, now, why he’d insisted on all of this togetherness. Because she could see the point of it, right there on the screen of her computer.
Aikaterini could see the way they grew more in sync, day by day. She could see how they became easier with each other, better able to work together, in concert. It was a physical thing. It was proximity.
It was clear that they were learning how to be with each other.
She smiled more. She laughed—and more often—at things he said. She started to look to him more often and let it linger much longer when he touched her.
Meanwhile, though she did not want to accept this, Kyriakos looked as if he’d been smitten with her from the start.
He looked as if, to begin with, he’d had to work to maintain a respectful distance—but it was all there in the way he gazed at her. And the way he treated her as if she truly was the sainted goddess that people seemed to think she’d become.
It was all there in that dark gaze of his, tracking her wherever she went.
Whether they were giving speeches, cutting ribbons, attending charity events, or conveying honors upon the worthy, it was all the same.
He had promised her a love story, and it looked like he’d delivered. Aikaterini didn’t know how on earth she ought to feel about that. She didn’t know what it made her that some part of her felt…almost pleased.
She wanted nothing more than to avoid him, because she felt suddenly exposed, but that was impossible. That evening, they were set to go to a grand ball on the other side of the island. And the Prince and Princess did not decline invitations they had already accepted.
Especially not at the last minute and for no reason.
She felt outside of her own skin as she got ready. As her attendants dressed her in a beautiful gown and twisted her hair up into something complicated and elegant.
When she walked down the stairs to find Kyriakos waiting for her at the bottom as he always did, she truly hated the fact that her heart picked up speed.
That all of that spiraling warmth arrowed through her once more.
That she could feel that strange heat low in her belly, making her feel soft all over.
Kyriakos looked at her the way that he always did.
It was that dark, encompassing gaze of his that seemed to sweep her from head to toe, taking in everything.
She had no doubt that he didn’t miss a single detail, and more, was no doubt collating them all so that he could use them in his next work of fiction.
She wanted, desperately, to demand that he stop doing…this thing that he was doing. But that would make it clear that she knew what was happening, and somehow, Aikaterini understood that admitting that would be a defeat all its own.
He escorted her out into the waiting vehicle and helped her climb inside. They sat there together on the long drive out of the Royal Quarter, winding through the gardens that rolled this way and that, still lustrous though the fall had taken hold.
They had been married now for two months, she thought as they drove. It seemed impossible. What seemed even more impossible, she could admit—but only to herself—was that it was not in any way the sheer torture she had expected it to be.
That, too, made her feel ashamed. As if she was betraying Venediktos’s memory.
“You seem unduly somber tonight,” he pointed out as they drove into the island’s one main city.
This was where the heart of the island’s various industries clustered and the principality conducted its business.
There were hotels and resorts on the beach, governmental buildings more inland, and they were headed to one of the finer hotels tonight.
She couldn’t remember for which charity.
“Don’t worry,” she told him quietly. “I’ll be certain to put on the appropriate mask once we arrive.”
“I have no doubt,” he said with a laugh. Though she thought it wasn’t much of a laugh, really. It was too dark. Too tinged with something like bitterness. “I only wonder if someday, there’ll be no need for you to put it on and off. It will simply become you.”
She gazed at him for a moment, but she didn’t care for that glittering thing in all of that dark hazel, so she looked away again.
And Aikaterini was grateful when they arrived at the charity event. She was grateful for all of the hubbub. The flashbulbs, the crowds. She was grateful to slip the mask back into place and even found herself hoping that he was right. That she would one day, soon, become it.
Surely that would mean she wouldn’t be buffeted by all these confusing feelings swirling around inside of her. The mask would make everything quiet. Calm.
The event was a charity banquet and ball, and that meant that the dancing began after dinner. Everyone waited for Kyriakos to rise, extend his hand, and lead her out into the middle of the dance floor.
“We have never danced before,” she said without meaning to as he pulled her into his arms and then held her in the formal waltz position. “It wasn’t that kind of wedding.”
“Don’t worry, Your Highness,” he said in that sardonic way of his that she had always hated, though now it seemed to shiver through her and leave aftershocks.
“For all that you may think of me as the tragically disreputable member of the royal family, I must assure you that I attended the same classes as everyone else of my station. Comportment. Ballroom dancing. Languages. Table manners. Everything a proper spare for the heir requires.”
“I had no doubt,” she retorted, with more edge in her voice than she’d intended. She wasn’t sure why everything felt so sharp, so jagged.
But he swept her off into the dance before she could ask another question, or try to figure out what was going on with him simply by looking at him. It was a whirl.
Round and round they went, and it did her absolutely no good to discover that, despite his size and all of those muscles—and all the various parts of him that she would have said were far too heavy, too much like carved marble—he danced like a dream.
Not only that, he did it while gazing down at her as if she had somehow betrayed him.
It made no sense. But then, neither did the way that gaze of his made her tremble, deep inside.
She found herself grateful once again when it was time to leave and time to run the gauntlet of the crowds outside, because surely that was better than waltzing around a ballroom, trying to make sense of this man.
Or maybe, what she was trying to make sense of was what on earth was happening inside of her because of him.
But then, of course, there they were in the back of the armored SUV once more. The driver slid up the privacy screen as a matter of course.
Aikaterini had half a mind to demand that he open it.
“I’m not certain that I’m the one who’s in a mood tonight,” she said into the thick silence as they began to drive, and she was shocked at herself.
What was she doing? Was she deliberately trying to poke at him?
But she knew instantly what the answer was when he turned to look at her again.
It was as if a switch flipped inside of her. And she understood something else about him. About the two of them, maybe.
That when Kyriakos gave her his full attention, everything inside of her shivered to life. That she had never been alive, like this, before now.
That she didn’t really understand what it was to live fully, and that terrified her—
But not enough to look away.
“I know you saw those clips,” he said, in that low voice of his that seemed to touch her, everywhere. “Don’t you think that it’s time we do something about all of this chemistry?”
“You must be joking.” But she leaned closer to him, a moth to a flame she barely understood.
“Are you—a grown man who has been at pains to make it clear to me that he has spent the whole of his life knee-deep in romantic conquests—sulking because the fake relationship you paraded in front of the cameras is, in fact, fake?”
It was like she had been possessed. She didn’t take it back. She didn’t sit back, either.
For a moment, Kyriakos stared at her as if he had never seen her before.
And then he laughed, loud and long, and it made something in her ignite.
“My darling wife,” he said. “If you wanted to play with fire, you should have just said.”
Then he shot out a hand, gripped the back of her neck, and hauled her across the soft leather of the back seat to slam his mouth to hers.
And this time, Aikaterini had the heady, dizzying, wild thought that he had no intention of stopping.