her veins.
Nodding her head to Page to admit the king, she felt her stomach fill with a thousand butterflies. Clad in a bespoke, light gray suit and white shirt that emphasized his good looks, with his dark hair scraped back from his face, the sleek, powerful impact of him knocked her sideways.
She’d told herself she’d have her response to him firmly under control by now, but the spacious suite suddenly felt as if it had shrunk to the size of a shoe box when he strolled over to stand by her side at the dressing table, his gaze meeting hers in the mirror.
Moistening her lips, she searched for a smart remark but, for the life of her, couldn’t think of one. His gaze slid to her mouth, as he appeared to absorb the evidence of her nerves, then dropped to the plunging neckline of her silk robe that had seemed respectable until he’d walked in, but now made her desperately want to pull the edges together.
She resisted the urge to do so. Somehow. The color riding his high cheekbones, the dark heat that claimed his whiskey-hued eyes as they lifted to hers, ignited a slow burn beneath her skin. Sparked a chemical reaction that climbed up into her throat and held her in its thrall.
He bent his head and brushed a kiss against her cheek. Unprepared, or perhaps overprepared for the press of his firm mouth against her sensitized skin, she flinched.
Kostas straightened, a dark glitter filling his eyes. Her gaze moved to Page, who was watching them with unabashed curiosity.
“Leave us,” the king bit out quietly. Page scurried from the room as if he’d been Zeus himself raising one of his thunderbolts.
Stella lifted her chin defiantly as the door closed and the room went silent. “You will need,” he instructed tersely, “to learn to hide your very...distinct response to me when we’re around others, when the cameras start flashing tonight, or this isn’t going to be a very productive exercise.”
Her chin lifted higher. “I don’t plan it, Kostas. It just happens.”
The glint in his eyes deepened. “Maybe we should do it again, then, maybe a real kiss this time, practice, so it doesn’t happen tonight.”
“I don’t think that’s necessary.”
“Why not? Are you afraid of how you might respond?”
“Hardly.” The pressure on her brain pushed her temper to its very edge. “But why stop there?” she challenged. “Why don’t we do it right now? Up against the wall while Page is waiting... Would that satisfy you? Would that be enough of a reaction for you? To have the whole palace abuzz with how you keep me in line?”
He leaned his impressive bulk against the dresser, folding his arms across his chest. Dark amusement melted the ire in his eyes. “Is that the plan, Stella? To make me pay for entrapping you? To bait me until I fall over the edge? You forget how well I know you, how you deflect when you are stressed, when you feel cornered, how you use sarcasm as a weapon because that sharp mouth of yours is so very good at it.”
She lifted a shoulder. “You have to work with the tools you’re given.”
His mouth curved. “Why don’t you just tell me what’s eating you?”
“Oh, what would be the fun of that? I’m enjoying your amateur psychology course so much, I think you should tell me.”
He pursed his lips. Eyed her. “It’s been a trying two weeks. We’ve both been analyzed beyond endurance. Most of the Carnelians seem ready to welcome you, but some are reluctant to embrace a foreigner. Tonight is the night you must prove to them you belong. You wouldn’t be human if you weren’t feeling the pressure.”
Remarkably spot-on. “I’ve been brought up in the media glare. I can handle it.”
He inclined his head. “Regardless, I appreciate how you’ve risen to the occasion.”
She had no smart comeback for that, so she left it alone. He flicked his gaze around the elaborately furnished, if exceedingly dark, suite. “How are you settling in?”
“Fine. Except honestly, Kostas, you were right. It’s like you’re caught in the Dark Ages here. Everything is cold, unforgiving stone. There’s no warmth to the rooms, no life. How in the world do you live like this?”
“It’s remained untouched since my mother died. My father refused to make changes. I agree, though, it needs massive renovations. It’s hardly the kind of place I want to bring our children up.”
There it was again. Children. An heir. She wished they could just forget about it for a while.
“What was it like?” she asked to distract herself. “Growing up here?”
“Lonely,” he said matter-of-factly. “Cold. I’ve been told the life went out of the castle when my mother died. Some say that’s when it left my father, too, and he became the dictator that he was.”
“He loved her a great deal?”
“Too much, by all accounts.”
Beauty and the Beast. She tipped her head to the side. “Was he really the man he was portrayed as?”
“A tyrant, you mean?” His mouth twisted. “It depended on which iteration of him you encountered. He was charming, charismatic and warm when he wanted to be, self-centered, compassionless and sadistic during his dark moods. A chameleon. A compulsive liar—to himself and others.”
Sadistic. Thee mou. A chill went through her. “And to you, his son, what was he like?”
“I was his protégé from age five on. It was about learning the role, following in his footsteps. It was never a father-and-son relationship.”
And what about the childhood, the innocence, he should have been allowed? She recalled a photo she’d seen in one of the hallways of the castle of Kostas and his father inspecting a military guard when the prince must have been just five or six, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people. He had looked so lost...so bewildered.
The only man who could stand alone in the middle of a crowd. Kostas had been built that way, conditioned to stand alone, created by a man notorious for his lack of humanity. Her chest tightened. “Did he discipline you?”
“Beat me, you mean? Yes. It was part of his modus operandi. Fear and intimidation—the devices he used to control everyone around him. Sometimes it was physical, sometimes mental. He was a master at both.”
“Please tell me you had someone, a grandmother, a godmother, someone you could go to?”
“My yaya. My grandmother on my father’s side, Queen Cliantha. She died when I was twelve. But by then I was in school. It was an escape for me, a break from the brainwashing, the conditioning. I was lucky my father felt it necessary to present a civilized front to the world.”
It may have been a break from the conditioning, but Kostas hadn’t made many friends in school. By Athamos’s account, he had always been the loner in the British boarding school they’d attended, the aloof presence that had been hard to get close to even though the Constantinides boys had tried to befriend him, having their own painful knowledge of a larger-than-life father.
Where had he drawn his strength? His belief
