should scare her, because she’d left normalcy and control, the things she had prized for so many years, shattered on the floor of the balcony.
But she was going to eat cookies with Kairos, after just getting a taste of the man she’d always suspected lurked somewhere beneath the starched shirts and perfectly straight ties.
It was hard to care about anything else.
“You promised cookies,” she said, backing against the kitchen counter, folding her hands in front of her reflexively. It was the position she often assumed around Kairos. It kept her posture straight, kept her from reaching out and touching him, or anything silly like that. It was more of a concern right now than it usually was.
It seemed silly. She should be satisfied, at least marginally. That was hands down the best sex they’d ever had. And what had happened between them a month ago had been pretty amazing. Still, this had nearly obliterated the memory of that.
Forget all the years that had come before it.
“I did,” he said, turning toward one of the cabinets and opening it.
She watched much closer than necessary as he reached up to grab a tin that was placed on the top shelf. The muscles in his back bunched and shifted as he moved. She felt a strange, reckless sensation wind its way through her body. Like a shot of adrenaline straight to the system.
“The cookies,” he said, turning to face her, the Americanized term sounding strange on his lips. “As promised. Because I keep my promises.”
“Do you intend to badger me constantly?” she asked, reaching out and taking the tin from his hands. “Make sure I keenly feel the depths of the wound left in you by my betrayal?”
“If badgering is what it takes,” he said, “then certainly.”
“I promised you two weeks. I don’t see the point in you haranguing me constantly.” She pried the lid off the tin and reached inside, pulling out a piece of shortbread and lifting it to her lips. She nibbled on it slowly, watching his expression to see if she might find any clues to what he was thinking. As usual, there were none.
“I’m not haranguing you,” he said. “I’m simply a man who knows what he wants.”
“Yes, you want me to keep on being your wife. For your continued convenience.”
“Yes, for my continued convenience. For the welfare of our child as well, if you have forgotten.”
Her stomach sank. The truth was, for a moment, she had forgotten. It was so easy to forget about the tiny life she carried inside her womb. After all, she had found out less than twenty-four hours ago. And in the time since then she had been extradited to a private island by her estranged husband, made love to enthusiastically on a table and had eaten cookies barefoot in a kitchen. All of it was a bit out of the ordinary.
It was difficult for her brain to decide which particular extraordinary detail to hold on to. She had a feeling it was protecting her from reality a bit, too. Preserving her from the stark truth that she was going to bring a child into a very unsettled situation.
“Of course I haven’t forgotten,” she said, because the alternative would most certainly break the spell that was momentarily cast over him. He would take a dim view to her forgetting that she was carrying his baby. The baby was the only reason he was attempting reconciliation with her, after all.
“Honesty, Tabitha,” he said, his tone chastising, “we have an agreement that we will strive for honesty over this two weeks.”
“Sex is easier,” she returned, ignoring the heat that assaulted her cheeks. “And more fun.”
A strange expression passed over his face. “You have no argument from me on that score.”
“Cars,” she said, looking at his handsome face, trying to do something to get a handle on the heat that was still thrumming through her veins.
“What about them?” he asked.
“Why do you like them? It’s strange. You’re a very practical man. Cars don’t seem especially practical.”
“I don’t suppose they are,” he said, leaning back against the counter, curling his fingers over the edge and gripping it tight. “But I...I never had hobbies. While my peers were out going to parties and...whatever else they did, I was studying. Not just to get through school, and then university, but studying everything my father did so that I could emulate him. I didn’t deviate from his lesson plan for my life. One of the very few normal things I learned was how to drive. It was a practical skill, after all, so he allowed one of his men to teach me. I learned quickly and...for me, that was my only bit of freedom. I would take drives across the country. Alone. Otherwise I was never alone. There was always security detail, or my father or one of his advisors. So that’s why I like cars. Freedom and solitude.”
She swallowed hard, an unexpected lump of emotion lodging itself in the center of her chest. She hadn’t expected anything so complete. So honest. “Your father didn’t teach you himself?”
“No,” he said. “He was very busy.”
She nodded. “Of course.”
She hadn’t known the king well. By the time they’d married, the old man’s health was declining and he hadn’t had the energy to take many visitors, much less a commoner daughter-in-law put into place because of his disappointing younger son’s scandalous behavior.
“I didn’t want him to teach me anyway,” he said.
“Why not?” she asked.
“Because I loved it. My father had a way of taking things I loved and turning them into something forbidden. Something I couldn’t have.” A muscle in his jaw ticked. “I didn’t want him to do that with the cars.”
“What did he do?”
“He was so very concerned about forming me into the kind of leader Petras needed. A man of principles. A man of control. Levelheaded. When I...when I showed too much enthusiasm, he was eager to snuff it out.”
“Why?” she asked, her heart twisting for him.
“Because. He knew that distractions could become weaknesses. Easily.”
He pushed away from the counter, closing the space between them, close enough she could feel the heat from his body. Far enough that she couldn’t quite touch him. But oh, how she wanted to. How she craved this man.
It wasn’t a new hunger, but it was reinvigorated. The tastes of him she’d had made her crave him all the more. Where before, she could control it...now it felt somewhere beyond her.
“Was it there the whole time?” he asked, his voice rough.
Her heart slammed into her chest and she looked down at her hands, frowning deeply when she noticed a large chip in her polish. Strange. She’d just painted them. “Was what there?”
“This. This insanity. Was it in you? In me? Was it between us from the very start, needing only a bit of anger to act as an accelerant?”
She lifted her shoulder. “I don’t know.”
Except
