Chapter Five
SHE WAS INTOXICATING.
Kyriakos had never understood the lure of addiction, until now. He had never understood how a man could long for the thing he knew would destroy him, but now he comprehended that slide into dissolution all too well.
Because the last two months had undone him.
And the compilation of media clips that the staff had delivered to him earlier today had landed like a sucker punch.
He wasn’t certain that he had completely caught his breath since, and this night had not exactly aided him in achieving a decent inhale.
Dressing for the charity ball had been more or less by rote, as his aides briefed him on matters of state that could not wait for morning.
He had gone to wait for his Princess in the great entry hall of the palace, where he could gaze upon all the portraits of Princes who had preceded him and imagine they might convey some wisdom.
He wasn’t sure they ever did. Or perhaps that was the lesson his cousin’s thoughtful rendering intended to impart from its gilded frame. It was hard to say.
Then he had looked up to see Aikaterini, descending the stairs like some kind of actual goddess floating down to earth from the heavens above.
The gown whispered all over her figure, somehow calling attention to her sheer perfection while making her seem as if she might also, possibly, be approachable.
He had never seen another woman in her position walk that line so adroitly.
But her gray eyes had been grave as she came to meet him and that, he thought, had put him over the edge.
Because he knew perfectly well that she’d seen all the same clips he had. And there she was, looking at him as if this thing between them was nothing more than an experiment gone wrong. An experiment she looked as if she would very much like to call off.
While Kyriakos stood about like a teenage boy, cock too hard, emotions too bold, and nothing short of baffled as to how he had ended up in this position.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time, was the thing.
They would traipse about the country. They would appear at all manner of events together instead of tending to their own side of the street.
And they would get the country used to the two of them being in each other’s company, and in so doing, gradually indicating that they were at ease with each other.
He’d thought that would be a natural consequence of having to perform their roles so often.
More to the point, he’d thought that doing this would go a long way toward creating the narrative they needed.
That neither one of them had chosen this marriage, nor would have chosen it if given the choice, and yet were finding their way to each other anyway.
For the love of Zaccaria, he’d thought the subtext would have been. Because that was what it should have been.
Instead, the clips had shown him that he was a besotted fool. He, who had never fallen hard for any woman, ever, looked as if he had been spun around hard and left hanging for his Princess.
It was good for the country.
Kyriakos was fairly sure it was nothing short of catastrophic for him.
He’d spent the night out at the ball assuring himself that it was only because he’d had the slightest taste of her and no more.
The very slightest taste in the pressure cooker that had been their wedding night lock in.
It was hardly surprising that he had spent the weeks since then building it up into something it wasn’t.
And now he intended to remedy that.
He hauled her onto his lap as their vehicle inched its way into the crowded streets.
He knew the windows were tinted and no one could see inside.
He could hear the sounds of the royal guard directing traffic and the police ordering the crowds to move back behind the barricades to allow the motorcade safe passage.
But the truth was, he didn’t care if they could all see exactly what he was doing.
He ravaged her mouth. He liked the weight of her body on his and the way she seemed to gasp into his mouth. Then kissed him back with the kind of artless abandon that made him think for a moment that he might embarrass himself completely and lose control simply from kissing her.
She was entirely too potent.
He speared his fingers into her hair, not caring at all if he was ruining her elegant upswept hairstyle. Not caring about anything but holding her head where he wanted it and showing this maddening woman, who haunted him at every turn, exactly how bossy her new husband could be.
He was demanding. He was carnal and a little bit wild.
Maybe more than a little.
When she started squirming in his lap, he couldn’t seem to keep himself from moving a hand to find the hem of her gown, pulling it up and then tracing his way slowly back up beneath it.
Her leg was a marvel of perfect shape and sweet heat beneath the stockings he was starting to think she always wore. Always.
And his cock got harder still, because he knew that if she was wearing stockings, that meant she was wearing another one of those corsets with garters that had altered his brain chemistry.
Permanently, he was very much afraid.
Kyriakos was certain that he could forget every single thing that had ever happened in this life, but he would take the quick glimpse he’d had of the rounded, plush glory of Princess Aikaterini’s ass all the way to his grave.
It was seared into him. Permanently.
Sure enough, he found the garters that clipped to the top of her stockings, and then he had the actual flesh of her upper thighs beneath his palm at last.
He kept kissing her. When she moaned into his mouth he tilted her back and as he leaned over her in the seat, he moved his hand higher and higher up the inside of her thigh.
Kyriakos could feel her quivering. And as he moved higher, then stroked his way beneath the soft, lace panties she wore, he could feel the slick, molten hot truth.
At last.
He hadn’t been imagining a single thing about the chemistry between him and this woman, no matter how he might have tried to tell himself otherwise over the past couple of months.
She had wanted him from the start. She wanted him still.
If she was anything like him, that wanting was becoming a voracious constant, taking over their days and keeping him up at night.
And there was absolutely no reason that he could think of that they were maintaining this distance between them. Not when she was so wet and so needy that a single stroke of his fingers through the center of her need had her bucking up her hips, wordless and greedy.
He found that proud center of her desire, and when he touched it, she made a noise that seemed to shake straight through his bones.
Wanton. Abandoned.
Beautiful.
He traced patterns in all of that heat and while he did it, she was kissing him wildly. Deeply.
Kyriakos stroked his way lower, then worked his finger inside of her. He found her tight and hot, so tight that he thought that if she hadn’t been quite so slippery and engaged, his finger might have hurt her.
He tested her depth, then moved that finger in and out, still kissing her again and again and tasting her response on her lips every time he did.
Aikaterini was making small, broken noises. She didn’t seem to know how to move her hips, but as he kept up that rhythm, she found it. She met it.
Then, as he kissed her deep and worked his finger in and out of her clutching heat, he pressed down hard above her entrance with his thumb.
And he felt her come apart beneath him.
He felt her shatter and clench, and when she threw her head back with her mouth wide-open, Kyriakos understood that there was no more beautiful sight in all the world. There could not be. It was impossible.
After a few, shuddering moments, he pulled his finger out from the depths of her body. He sat her upright once again. Her eyes were half lidded now, and she was breathing in short, high-pitched pants.
He tugged her gown back down, so it was covering her once more. And he studied her as he licked all of her sweetness from his finger. Then he reached over and smoothed her hair back into something resembling its original shape.
“It’s a pity about the hair,” he said after a moment. “I’m afraid that between that and the flush all over your face, there will be no pretending this wasn’t exactly what we were doing.”
He sounded pleased. He was pleased.
She looked as if she couldn’t comprehend what he’d said, and he liked that, too. He wasn’t sure he liked the notion that he alone was thrown off by…all this.
Either way, Aikaterini didn’t reply. And moments later, they pulled up to the entrance of the palace.
Kyriakos exited first and then helped her out, and he kept his hand on her as he led her inside.
He nodded to the waiting staff and dismissed them for the night, then led the Princess upstairs.
Instead of parting at the top of the grand stair, as was their custom, he walked her down that very same hall that had been more like a promenade after their wedding.
This time, there were no guards and courtiers lining the way. The hall was hushed. Private.
Exactly as he’d hoped.
Kyriakos led her into his bedroom and closed the door. And when he moved closer to her, Aikaterini turned around and frowned at him.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
“I would have thought that was self-explanatory,” he replied.
She looked as disheveled as he’d ever seen her. Her eyes seemed glassy. Her cheeks were still flushed. He could see arousal all over her.
This was good, as his was like a roar inside of him.
But still, she frowned. “I don’t… I mean…” She lifted her hand, as if warding him off when he’d stopped moving at the sight of that first frown. “I don’t understand anything that just happened.”
He felt something dark kick at him, then—but there was a certain cast to the expression on her face that made him ratchet it back before it could break free.
Kyriakos made himself take a breath. He made himself slow down and pay attention when what he wanted to do was speak with his painfully hard cock.