Chapter Nine #3
He turned back to her and she expected him to look intense, brooding, and filled with that heat that always felt as if it was filling up the room between them.
But instead, he’d gone cold.
Frigid, she might even have said.
When she would have sworn that was impossible. There was not a single bit of coldness in any part of this man.
“As much as you might like a dessert, Princess, it is not emotional,” he told her. “Sex is. It has a way of muddying the waters.”
She shook her head again, aware that there was now a thing between them but not following it at all. “I said I love you. It was a simple statement, not deserving of any particular reaction, but I’m surprised at this one.”
He shook his head in a short, sharp shake. “This is my fault. I knew better, and I let this fester. And now it will harm us both.”
“You’ll have to catch me up,” she said, looking at him curiously. “Who will harm us?”
“Aikaterini. Be serious. Love has no place here.”
He looked at her as if that was some kind of bomb that he dropped, but she only gazed back at him.
“Why not?” was all she asked. “I don’t recall reading that in all the old laws. And I regret to say I have read all the old laws.”
He looked at her as if she was being deliberately obtuse. “It can only be duty. That is what we must focus on. Because neither one of us matters. There will be a new Princess. A new Prince. The cycle will continue.”
“That is the nature of hereditary monarchy, yes,” she said softly.
Kyriakos glared at her. “And we cannot do our parts if we are mired in emotions that do nothing but cause us complications and keep us from living up to these roles we inhabit.”
This was not the first time she had felt outside her skin in his presence. But this was different. She had the distinct urge to interrogate him. Why was he saying these things? Where was it coming from?
And more importantly, did he really believe it—or did he simply not love her back?
But she didn’t ask him any of that. Because she remembered how patient he had been with her. And it was as if something inside her identified this as the same sort of situation.
Maybe, she thought to herself, he doesn’t know.
Just as she hadn’t known.
Maybe, having come so late to emotions like this—and perhaps more important, to the physical expression of them—she could see them for what they were.
But she doubted he would react well if she said that.
“You may be the Prince of Zaccaria,” she said, keeping her voice calm and her gaze on him. “And I did pledge to follow you in all things, as I vow again that I will always do in matters of state. But Kyriakos, you cannot order me not to love you.”
“I can,” he shot back at once, and there was something so stark on his face that it made her heart seem to squeeze tight in her chest. “And I will, Aikaterini. If you cannot separate your emotions from the pleasure we share, I will have to think twice about sharing it with you at all.”
She would not say that her emotions were under control, exactly. But she did manage to sit where she was and make use of that mask of hers that she’d spent all of these years perfecting.
Finally, a reason to use it that was something more than hiding in plain sight.
“That would be failing to perform your duties, I believe,” she reminded him gently. Very, very gently. “The duties that you vowed to uphold when you accepted your position. I am talking about—”
“The line of succession,” he bit off, his eyes dark.
“Indeed.” When he scowled at her, she merely lifted one shoulder.
“If all we are interested in is this duty of ours, I am devastated to inform you that you must give over your body to the cause, Kyriakos. After all, as you pointed out to me, if we are not having sex, we will not be making babies, and that is our only purpose upon this earth, is it not?”
“Aikaterini,” he began, his voice little more than a growl.
“Perhaps,” she suggested, and this was not very patient of her, she could admit, “I am not the one getting needlessly emotional about sex.”
He stared at her for a moment as if it had only just occurred to him that he’d created this monster himself. It was patently obvious that he had not expected this response. That he did not care for it.
But all he did was turn on his heel, then walk out.
At first, she wanted to laugh but that didn’t last. She found that she wanted to cry, too, but that seemed self-defeating.
Aikaterini blew out a long, shuddering sort of breath. She felt ravaged everywhere, inside and out. And she was still so soft between her legs. Still ripe with longing and need.
The way she always was around Kyriakos.
She looked over at the picture of her and Venediktos, now lying on the couch beside her, and she sighed.
“I think,” she said out loud, “that I’m going to have to come up with a different tack to take.”
Aikaterini reached over and touched her oldest friend, right there on his face.
She would miss him forever. She also wasn’t the person he’d left. That was okay. “And you, Venediktos, are going to help me.”