by Tara Pammi
“So please...if you have ever cared for me, even a little bit, don’t touch me. Don’t kiss me.” A ghost of a smile flitted over her face as her brown gaze moved over his. “Don’t follow through on your nefarious plans.”
“This...what happened between us tonight—” he moved his hand between them, a fine tension in his body “—is nothing shameful. This is not something that I would ever use against you.”
“And yet this—my sexual desire for you—is what made you think I wouldn’t hesitate before falling into another man’s bed. That I would betray our vows.”
He clasped her jaw, forcing her to look at him. “I was lashing out. I knew you wouldn’t betray me. I just...on the best of days, you’re like a hurricane. All I wanted was to contain you, contain the damage you did to—”
“Your reputation? Your business alliances?”
“Damn it, Valentina! Damage to me! To the way I wanted to live my life. I’ve never in my life cared about anyone. The only way I learned to survive was by being in control of myself. Even after I came to live with Theseus and Maria... I don’t know how to let someone close. I don’t know how to handle emotion and all that it entails. I can’t bear the pain that comes from loving someone. I just...can’t. And you...every day you made me insane. You mocked my rules, you teased my attention even when you weren’t trying and when you got up to one of your spectacles, you threatened every ounce of my control.”
“But you never lost it,” she whispered, his confession searing through her.
Every time Kairos thought he had a grip on her, Valentina showed him a new side. Unraveled him anew. What they had done tonight at the nightclub had not just been physical release.
Christos, it only showed again how open she was. How much he could hurt her, if he wasn’t careful.
And suddenly the idea of hurting Valentina was unconscionable.
“The more you pushed me for a reaction, I see now, the more I retreated. It became a matter of my will against yours. I couldn’t...let you...have so much control over me. Being married to you—it was like asking a man who doesn’t know how to walk to swim an ocean. You are right, though. It shouldn’t be this hard. But I can’t... I don’t know if it will ever be different, either. I can’t change what I am.”
I won’t love you.
Kairos knew she understood what he’d said because she paled and nodded. If there were tears in her eyes, she hid them by looking down at her clasped hands.
He should have felt an ease of the weight that had been cinching tight around his neck. Instead of relief that he had set the score right, that he had told her what the future could be, all he felt was an ache in his chest. An unnamed longing.
“The fault is not all yours, Kairos, I know that.”
The vulnerability in her eyes, the lovely picture she made in the moonlight melted something near his heart. That she thought herself a failure because of his cruel words was unacceptable.
He knelt in front of her, took her hands in his, looked her in the eye. “I’m...sorry for making you feel like you’re less than what you are. Even if Chiara fired you, you’re not a failure. You’re the most courageous woman I know. It took guts to walk away from your brothers, from me, from the lap of luxury. Guts to face all the people who mocked you, who treated you so horribly and to go to work at that place all these months. It took guts to try again and again to put together that blasted portfolio, guts to stand up to your blackmailing husband and make a deal of your own.
“You live your life with all your passion poured into it. You take risk after risk with yourself. And maybe there’s no way forward for us, but Christos, I still want you. Desperately. Like I have never wanted anything else in life. But I won’t touch you. Not unless your heart and mind both want me to.”
* * *
Tina took a long, hot shower, took even longer to dress and finally walked back into the bedroom. She wasn’t going to fall asleep anytime soon. She was too wired, too many thoughts whirling through her head. And she definitely didn’t want to have the confrontation that was coming.
It was ironic since she’d always been the one that had pushed for it.
Since the nightclub a week ago, she’d been avoiding Kairos, faking sleep when he came to bed, running around the estate like the very devil was chasing her in the evening when he was home.
As always, he’d given it to her straight. Told her he would never change, never open himself up to her. Which should have sent her running for the hills.
Instead, his words seemed to have burrowed deep into her soul. She had seen the respect she’d wanted in his eyes. She’d seen the glitter of regret and pride when he had told her it had taken guts to stand up for herself.
That should have been enough. But all she wanted was more of him, more of the Kairos who saw the true her, the Kairos who kissed her as if he couldn’t breathe, the Kairos who—
Dios, had she no self-preservation instinct?
“Couldn’t hide any longer in the bathroom?”
Kairos’s low voice halted her hand toweling her hair. She shrugged. Taking a deep breath, she finished brushing her hair, trying her hardest not to let her gaze settle on him in the mirror.
Turning to the dresser, she pulled out her running shorts, a T-shirt and a sports bra. She pulled her hair back into a high ponytail.
She barely took two steps before he was in front of her. Blocking her. Breath halted in her throat.
“Where are you going?”
She kept her gaze on his chest. The olive skin shadowed through his white dress shirt, which wasn’t tucked quite neatly into his trousers. Every time she looked at him, she remembered him undone now. Heat swarmed her face again. Dios, what had she been thinking to be so...bold with him? That was a memory she wouldn’t forget to her dying days. Nor did the image of him climaxing fail to arouse her. “I... I’m going for a run. I’m too restless to sleep.”
“It’s eleven thirty at night. And if you run anymore, you will disappear into thin air.”
Before she could even blink, he took the clothes from her and threw them on the bed. A finger under her chin tilted her face up. “Is it working, Valentina?”
“What?”
“Avoiding me. Is it making the ache to be with me any less? Because if it is, you have to share the secret with me.”
“I don’t know... No. It is not helping. You’re like that slice of chocolate cake that you can’t resist even knowing that it will go to your hips and buttocks.”
He laughed, lovely crease lines fanning out near his eyes. “I talked to Chiara today.”
Hurt punched through her. “I can’t go back to a job where not only am I not wanted, but can’t even do anything properly, Kairos. How can I face my colleagues when they all see that I returned because of my powerful husband’s recommendation? I will have no more value than a mannequin.”
“Fine,” he said, releasing her. Something like humor shone in his eyes. “Maybe I’m wrong in assuming you would want to hear what Chiara told me involved Helena.”
Having dropped the bomb, the devilish man casually strolled to the balcony attached to the bedroom.
“What do you mean Helena was involved?”
“Sit down and maybe I will tell you.”
She glared at him. And sat down.
He pulled her closer to him and she went unwillingly.
His thighs pressed against hers and instantly that awareness slammed into her. But beneath that ever-present hum was something else, something new between them.
Tenderness. Rapport. The connection she had craved for so long with him. As if all the cacophony and noise in their relationship had been cleared away and they could see each other clearly for the first time.
And the more she saw of Kairos, the more Valentina liked him. Genuine like, not the I-want-to-rip-his-clothes-off kind. Although that was there, too.
“I have been thinking on what you said to me.”
Instantly, he tensed. “Which part?”
>
Tina could literally feel his stillness. The way it contained his rumbling emotions. He thought she had made a decision about them, their future. And he was hanging on an edge just as she was any time she thought about it. “About picking myself up, planning my next move. I will find another way to achieve my goals. Working with Chiara gave me the confidence that I’m in the right field, that I can work as hard as it takes. That I have a natural talent for fashion. It’s just a matter of finding the right outlet, the right opportunity.”
The smile he shot her was full of joy and admiration. “I’m glad to hear that.”
“So...anyway, efharisto, Kairos.”
“You needn’t thank me, I did nothing.”
“Thank you for seeing me through that first hurdle. For...just being there.” And since she had to fight the glittering desire she saw in his eyes, she quipped, “For showing me that when I hit the next hurdle, all I have to do is get drunk, go to a nightclub and maybe find a guy to—”
“You finish that sentence at serious threat of harm to yourself, Valentina.”
His growl made laughter explode from her mouth. She leaned back into her seat, and took a deep breath of the scented air.
When Kairos had handed her a glass of red wine, she took a sip and sighed.
“No more than one glass,” she added.
He smiled, slanted a teasing, hot glance her way. “I was hoping you wouldn’t count. I was hoping to get you drunk and have my wicked way with you. I like you drunk.”
“Ha ha...not funny. You like what I do when I’m drunk.” Dios mio, he was even more irresistible when he teased her like that.
“Too horny for it to be a joke?” There was a flash of his white teeth and that rakish smile. Tina wondered if her panties could melt by how hot and wet she was.
“Something like that, si,” she replied haughtily and had the pleasure of being enveloped by his deep laughter again.
“I have always loved your honesty, agapita.” Her heart thudded against her ribcage. “Fine, no more than one glass.”
As far as the eye could see, darkness blanketed the grounds. Crickets chirped. The scents of pine and ocean created a pungent yet pleasant perfume on the air. For a long while, neither of them spoke.
His arm came around her shoulders, his fingers drawing lazy circles on her bare skin. There was nothing sexual about his touch and still her breath hung on a serrated edge. The intimacy of the moment was even more raw than what they had shared at the nightclub.
“Do you realize we’ve never once...spent time like this? Without fighting, without ripping each other’s clothes off?” The words escaped her—wistful, poignant—before she could lock them away.
Moonlight threw shadows on her hand clasped in his. His thumb passed back and forth over the veins on the back of her hand. She sensed he was as loath to disturb the moment as she was. “Hmmm. Although I always liked the ripping-clothes-off part, too.”
She snorted and he snorted back.
“Today is my mother’s birthday,” he said suddenly into the silence.
“I...do you miss her?”
“Yes. She would have liked you. She was like you—fierce, bold.”
She laced her fingers through his and brought his hand to her mouth, pressing a soft kiss to the veins on the back of his hand. Strength and willpower and vulnerability—she was only beginning to realize what a complex man he was.
“I would like to know more about her, please.”
He remained quiet for so long that Tina sighed. She couldn’t force him to share pieces of himself with her. She couldn’t forever be the one who took that first step. Not because of pride but because she couldn’t bear the hurt of it when he left her standing again.
Until he started speaking. “She was a prostitute. I know how they’re forced into those choices firsthand, the wretchedness of that life. She fed me from the money she made through her...job. Until she fell sick and drifted into nothing.”
Even in the slivers of moonlight, Kairos saw how pale Valentina became. She blinked until the sheen of tears dimmed. Only then did he realize he’d revealed something he’d told only one other person. Theseus.
“I’m sorry that you...”
“That I came from such a dirty past?”
“That you lost a mother you loved.” Pure steel filled her voice, daring him to mock her sympathy. “No matter her choices. I know what it feels like to lose a loved one.”
Why did he forget that beneath the sophistication and good humor, Valentina’s childhood hadn’t been smooth, either? That she, more than anyone, understood the ache that came with loving someone?
It was as if he still, willingly, refused to look beneath the impulsive, reckless woman he had initially assumed she was.
“Are you ashamed of who she was?” The question was soft, tentative.
He scowled. “No. Never. Why the hell would you think that?”
“Because,” she said with a sigh, “you play your cards pretty close to your chest, Kairos. Even when they did that exposé on you for that business magazine, there was nothing about your background. Top businessman under thirty and it was as if you had sprouted from nowhere as a full-grown businessman at the age of twenty-three.”
He grimaced, recognizing the truth in Valentina’s summation.
The journalist who’d done that interview had been so frustrated. More than once, she’d tried to steer the conversation to his childhood and he’d bluntly steered her away, keeping his answers to his successes and the companies he had fixed.
He wasn’t ashamed, but for years, he had hidden his roots. He’d pushed away men who could have been friends because he’d felt separate, isolated. Felt as if he hadn’t belonged because of where he had come from.
His mind whirled as thoughts poured through him.
“How did you come to live with Theseus and Maria?”
He braced himself, knowing what it was building to. Knowing that Valentina wouldn’t stop until all of him was stripped before her. His illusions and his control. “He and Maria came to one of the most impoverished areas of Athens and he caught me as I cut the strings to Maria’s purse and started running.”
He heard her soft gasp and clenched his heart—or what remained of it—against the pity. Memories came at him like swarming bees. The poverty. The filth. The fight to survive another day. As if she was losing him to the past, Valentina tightened her fingers around his, brushed a soft kiss against the underside of his jaw.
“Do not pity me, Valentina. This is why I wouldn’t reveal my background before. Because it skews people’s perception of me. Instead of a powerful businessman, they see a man who’s crippled by his roots.”
She snuggled into him as if he hadn’t just snarled at her. “Or they see a man who made something of himself even when the odds were stacked against him. You keep treating me as if I’m unfamiliar with anything in life but designer couture and privilege, Kairos. If Leandro hadn’t persuaded Antonio that I belonged with them, if he hadn’t found me and brought me to live with him and Luca, where do you think I would be today? You think I’ve forgotten the fear that no one will care about me. Just because I pretend as if that doesn’t matter it doesn’t mean it’s not there every day within me.”
He looked at her and this time only saw understanding. Again, the realization, that this understanding had always been there for him to reach for, filled him.
The realization that Valentina was more than he’d ever wanted in a wife. It was as if his subconscious had been aware of it all along.
Was that why he’d always kept her at a distance? Why he’d retreated in the face of her passionate declarations, treated her with cold indifference?
She cupped his palm tenderly, her thumb tracing his jawline back and forth. It was comfort, it was affection. And still the jolt of that contact rang through him. Neither was he unaware of the different kind of intimacy the night and their discussion had wrought on them.
She was stealing away pieces o
f him. He tried to fight it, a sense of dread blanketing him, but her tender touch anchored him to the here, to the now. To her.
“How old were you?”
“Eleven? Twelve?” He rubbed his free hand over his face. “I was this...feral animal that would have done anything to survive another day. I was terrified he’d turn me in to the police. Theseus was really built in those days. He restrained me for fifteen minutes while I tried to break his hold and run. I stopped fighting when he said he would not turn me in. I was shocked when he brought me to his home. That first year I was terrified he would change his mind and throw me out. By the time, I was thirteen, Theseus and Maria adopted me officially.”
“Then why did you leave them?”
The question came at Kairos like a fist, smashing through the walls he hadn’t even known he’d need against her. “You know the answer to that.”
“No, I don’t.” Something almost akin to desperation rang in her voice. “All I have is conjecture based on the little tidbits Helena hints at. Based on what you show me and the world at large.”
Jaw tight, he stared at Valentina. Felt a visceral tug at the genuine concern in her eyes. Not pity. Not disgust. But a real emotion that had always been there. That he chose not to embrace, not to want.
He still couldn’t make himself want it. If he went that last step... “It was time to see the world, time to stretch my wings. To reach for bigger and greater things.”
“You mean find a richer and maybe slightly less crazy heiress compared to Helena?”
He laughed. And she laughed. But they both knew he was skating over the issue. A part of him wanted her to push, like she did, relentlessly. One part of him wanted never to see her again.
It was the same torment he faced night after night.
Every cell in him wanted to tie Valentina to his side. To seduce her, to chain her to him with his touch, to promise her whatever she wanted. To build a family with her, to fill his life with laughter and drama and everything she brought into it. He wanted to be selfish and take what he wanted, despite the aching vulnerability in her eyes.