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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
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?