Chapter Two #3
Her hair was not simply black. It was a cascade of glossy dark ink that claimed the eye.
He had seen it curled around her shoulders, straightened into sophisticated ponytails or, like today, swept up and bejeweled.
Her gaze was that pearlescent gray that could look like rain or feel like empathy, and it was no wonder that the people considered her something of a saint. Or local goddess.
Kyriakos had never been one to put too much stock into the old gods who had once ruled these islands and had roamed freely all over this part of the world, according to the myths and legends. But the Princess Aikaterini made a good case for their reemergence.
She had married him, this goddess among women with that ripe, distracting mouth. The mouth he had kissed and could not seem to get past. More importantly, she disliked him.
Intensely.
Kyriakos found this endlessly amusing.
He had first become aware of it some time ago.
He was used to attention from women. That was simply a fact.
It would have been true no matter what, thanks to his family lineage and the breathlessly blue-blooded circles he had been a part of since birth.
It was also true because he was nothing like the men one normally encountered in those circles.
Like his elegant cousin, who had always seemed more concerned about the cut of his suit than the lifting of a tawdry weight, no matter how many times Kyriakos had encouraged him to get a little bit more fit.
Venediktos had eschewed fitness. He liked a contemplative amble through the gardens, to be fair. But he’d been clear on the fact that, generally speaking, the public did not wish their Prince to look like an action hero.
A Prince is meant to be a kind of wallpaper, Venediktos had told Kyriakos long ago. He is to be everywhere and every man, and the bedrock upon which the nation rests. This would be rather difficult to do if he looks like an action hero, I warrant.
You’ve got it well in hand then, Kyriakos had said with a laugh.
And now the nation had to suffer through the nightmare that was Kyriakos at its head. He would never say that he looked like an action hero, but no one was confusing him for wallpaper, either.
When he’d first caught the way that Princess Aikaterini looked at him, not long after her wedding to Venediktos, he’d assumed that she was simply like all the rest. All those aristocratic women who were drawn to him despite themselves.
Drawn to him even though his reputation with women preceded him and he was rightly known to be the black sheep in the Zaccaria royal family—mostly because he had achieved his independence.
He had assumed that the Princess had found herself attracted and intrigued like all the rest.
It had been amusing in the extreme to realize that she actually disliked him. That, for some reason, he was the one person for whom she could not muster up one of her pleasant, temperate, saintly smiles.
Once he had realized this, he had found it entertaining to see how many times in any given appearance at the palace he could make the Princess very nearly frown. Sometimes he thought no one else even saw the way that space between her brows almost wrinkled. But he did.
It had only gotten more obvious since Venediktos’s death.
The revelry from outside still floated in through the windows, rattling the glass. It would go on all night, Kyriakos knew. He remembered Venediktos’s wedding clearly and how he’d enjoyed himself with all the lonely, aristocratic women he’d grown up with.
Happy memories, he thought now.
“I do wish you would sit down,” he said offhandedly as she looped past him for the tenth or hundredth time. “You are wearing grooves into the floor, and for what? Neither you nor I can change the realities of our situation.”
“I’m not going to have sex with you,” she told him, point blank, wheeling around to fix him with that gray stare.
He felt his cock take notice.
“And here I thought that an invitation to glut myself upon you was forthcoming,” he replied, easily enough. He waved a hand. “The body language has been leaning in that direction all day.”
She really frowned then, and he had been fascinated by that change for the entirety of the last year. The difference between the Princess’s public face and who she allowed herself to be in private.
He found he preferred her ferocious.
“I do not appreciate the sarcasm,” she told him. “But I can’t say I like the way you’re looking at me, either.”
Kyriakos accepted that he was enjoying himself, however surprising that was under the circumstances. “How am I looking at you?”
“As if you’re thinking of feasting upon me when I least expect it,” she shot back at him, and her chin rose.
She was being very brave, he thought. And he wondered how she could seem so innocent when she had been married for years. When a simple taste of her had left this fire in him.
“This could hardly qualify as the time you least expect it, surely.” He shrugged when she glared at him.
“This is our wedding night. We were escorted in true medieval fashion directly to the door of our bedchamber. The country is even now celebrating what they assume is a very extended night of passion between the two of us. For only in this way can the principality be preserved. Were you not paying any attention in the Cathedral?”
Her hands were on her hips now, and he found himself wishing that his were there instead.
But even from here, he could enjoy the whole thunderstorm gathering in her gaze.
He found he liked this version of her better than the sad widow he’d seen at Venediktos’s funeral.
The aloof woman who had seemed beleaguered at their monthly meetings, determined to do her duty but also as if she was busy hoping for deliverance.
“I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me until today that all of this is predicated on sex,” Aikaterini said then. “That my body is what hangs in the balance and could either save the principality or damn it forever.”
“Some jewels are beyond price,” he said, yet could not entirely control his tone.
Her frown deepened. “And you keep talking about heirs. I think we should put that on the back burner while we concentrate on finding some way to survive this marriage.”
Kyriakos sighed, and wished he’d gotten that second drink.
“I’m not concerned about the survival of our marriage,” he told her.
“You have always done your duty, and I have surrendered to mine. There is a reason that most marital arrangements like ours are not necessarily always monogamous in the long term, yet produce appropriate heirs quickly.”
When she stared back at him without comprehension, he laughed. “Aikaterini. Please. They get it over with, don’t they? So if the sex is terrible, they need not revisit it.”
“The principality should not be about sex,” she threw back at him. “This is a sacred calling. Venediktos and I were united in our desire to take the island to the next level.”
“That’s very worthy, I’m sure,” he replied, his gaze trained on hers.
“But if it doesn’t involve fucking, Aikaterini, it’s a whole lot of high-minded twaddle with very little point.
As you have now discovered. Because if you and my cousin had sorted out the line of succession, you and I would not be here now. ”
“Venediktos was the finest man I have ever or will ever know,” she threw back at him.
Kyriakos ran a hand over his hair and checked a sigh. “I was always fond of him myself. But that doesn’t change the facts, does it?”
Aikaterini looked as if she was going to scream, which would not endear Kyriakos to the country even now celebrating them outside. So he rose from the couch and found himself walking toward her.
And maybe she didn’t mean to back away. Maybe she didn’t know what she was doing.
But the trouble was, she was so beautiful and her eyes were so wide. He could see her pulse beating rapidly in the side of her neck, and he wanted to put his mouth there more than he wanted to breathe his next breath.
Because for all her protestations, he knew the truth. He could see it all over her.
She wanted him.
It was there in the flush over her cheeks. It was there in the way her gaze tracked his. He wondered if this was why she’d convinced herself she disliked him. How else could she justify the intensity of the way she’d watched him all these years?
So he stalked closer and he heard her breath catch as her back came up against the wall, narrowly missing a portrait from the brush one of the most famous artists in the world—just tucked away in this palace where no one would ever see it but the Prince and his staff.
And if Kyriakos was a lovely saint of a man like his cousin had been, he likely would have stopped at that reminder of his position.
Alas, he was no saint, nor ever would be.
He kept walking and didn’t stop until he could place a hand on either side of her head.
“What…what are you doing?” Aikaterini whispered, her gray eyes wide.
“I find this back-and-forth tedious,” he told her. Quietly. Closely. “Despite what you might think, I’m not exactly looking forward to living out the rest of my life in an icy, frigid winter of a marriage. There’s only one real way to find out if we’re going to enjoy ourselves, isn’t there?”
“Enjoy ourselves?” She looked outraged and taken aback at once. “We are the Prince and Princess of Zaccaria. Enjoyment has nothing to do with the solemn duties we are called upon to perform.”
“Yes, yes,” Kyriakos murmured. “Believe me, we will have ample time to bore ourselves silly with protocol, Aikaterini. What I’d like to know is if there’s chemistry, or if we will be producing heirs by way of a laboratory.”
“Chemistry?” she repeated. “A laboratory?”
But he didn’t want to wait any longer. The hint—the flame—of what might lurk here between them in the Cathedral earlier had been too intriguing.
So he bent down, angled his head, and captured her mouth with his.