His mouth closed over hers as he kissed her through every mind-numbing second of it, murmuring his husky approval of her response against her lips. She shuddered and grasped his powerful biceps to ground herself as the aftershocks tore through her.
He lifted himself off her, ready to retrieve a condom. The magnificence of his virility in full arousal was heart-stopping. Indescribable. “No,” she said, curling her fingers around his arm, wanting, needing the intimacy of them together, just them, this last night. “I’m protected. You know that. Can’t it just be us?”
He hesitated, his hand midway to the bedside table drawer, then he came back to her, settling his hard body between her thighs. “Nai,” he murmured, bringing his mouth down to hers. “I want that, too.”
In bed, out of it, in the elevator to his penthouse, their lovemaking had not lacked in creativity. But tonight, he palmed her thigh and brought it around his waist in the most traditional of positions.
“So I can watch your face,” he murmured, reading her expression. “I want to see you as I take you apart, Sofía.”
The dark emotion in his eyes marked him angry. Angry that she was ending it, not he. He would ensure she thought of nothing but this in the future and she was sure, in turn, he would be right.
He notched himself into her slick opening and slid into her welcoming body. She gasped as he buried himself to the hilt, pressing an openmouthed kiss against her throat as he stayed motionless deep inside her. She felt him everywhere, stimulating every nerve ending, making her entire body feel alive.
He withdrew and took her again and again, the silky sensation of his body sliding against hers incredible, imprinting itself on her mind in a possession that claimed every last piece of her. She blinked, holding back the emotion storming through her. Nik brought his mouth to her ear telling her how sexy she was, how good she felt, refusing to take his own release until she came again with him.
When she cried out against his mouth and he stiffened and allowed himself to join her in a powerful orgasm that shook them both, she had never experienced anything so exquisitely intimate as the sensation of Nik joining his body with hers without reservation.
She collapsed on his chest, catching her breath as Nik smoothed a hand over her hair. Long moments passed, moments that felt suspended in time. She should go, she told herself when their breath evened out in the shadows of the silent room. Tonight was not the night to linger. Not when it felt as if Nik had taken all the control she’d walked in here with and decimated it.
She slid out of bed, found the beautiful champagne-colored dress, slipped it and her underwear on, then found her shoes in the salon. Nik followed her, watching her silently as he leaned against the wall in the entranceway, clad only in boxers. She slipped her shoes on, pulled the last of the pins from her hair, long since having lost its updo, and smoothed a hand over it.
“Regrets?” Nik asked as she came to stand in front of him.
“No.” She stood on tiptoe to brush a kiss against his cheek. “No regrets.”
She left before the conversation could drag on into something painful and awkward. Carlos was waiting for her downstairs, that same pleasant smile fixed on his face as had been there earlier. She slid into the back of the car, unable to summon a smile in return, and rested her head against the back of the seat as Carlos climbed in and set the car into motion.
A raw, achy feeling invaded her. She wrapped her arms around her chest to ward it off. She’d lied to Nik upstairs, perhaps to save face. Because if this was what taking risks felt like, she didn’t need them in her life. She’d rather feel empty than feel any more pain.
* * *
Fully awake and unable to sleep after Sofía left, Nik pulled on shorts and a faded Harvard T-shirt and took a glass of Prosecco into the salon.
Ending things with Sofía had been the right thing to do. She had been starting to get attached. He could see the signs; they were unmistakable for a man who’d spent his life avoiding commitment. And perhaps he’d already let it go on for too long, because hadn’t he always known Sofía was different from the rest of the sycophants he’d dated? Tough with a vulnerable underside... Content to keep their affair between the two of them because she didn’t care about the rest.
Content to keep it uncomplicated. And yet tonight it had gotten complicated. He had hurt her.
His insides twisted. His rule never to allow a woman too close, to trust anyone in his position, was based on experience. He was a target for fame seekers, for those who sought to use him to further their own agendas. Charlotte, his ex-girlfriend, who’d sold her story to the tabloids and almost destroyed his family’s reputation was a prime example.
Not that he put Sofía in that category. She was different. He had trusted her. He thought, perhaps, he was more angry than anything. Angry she’d broken things off first. Angry because he’d thought their relationship still had legs—the sexual part of it that is. It was the first time a woman had initiated an end to a mutually beneficial relationship. He couldn’t deny it stung.
A wry smile curved his lips. Perhaps he’d had that one coming for a long time.
He pulled out his laptop, deciding to work through a few emails he’d left earlier to attend the event. His personal aide, Abram, who must have seen the light, knocked and entered from the adjoining staff quarters.
Equal parts friend, butler and highly trained fixer, Abram was sometimes dour, frequently circumspect, but never flustered. And yet, right now, in the heart of the Manhattan night, he looked distinctly agitated.
“What is it now?” Nik asked. “Don’t tell me—King Idas has somehow managed to put my brother’s nose out of joint with yet another expulsion of hot air.”
Abram fixed his faded green gaze on him. The tumultuous light he saw there made his heart skip a beat. “Crown Prince Athamos has been in an accident, Your Highness. He is dead.”
The room dissolved around him. He rested a palm against the sofa, his head spinning. “An accident,” he repeated. “It’s not possible. I just spoke with Athamos last night.”
Abram dipped his head. “I’m so sorry, sir. It happened last evening in Carnelia. It’s taken time to verify the reports.”
His blood turned to ice. His mind raced as he attempted to process what his aide had just told him. His brother had been raging about Akathinia’s overly amorous suitor last night, its sister island Carnelia and its king, Idas, who wanted to annex Akathinia back into the Catharian Islands to which it had once belonged over a century ago. Insanity in this age of democracy, but there were enough examples around the world to put everyone on edge.
Nik had talked his brother off the ledge. What the hell had happened after that?
“What was he doing in Carnelia?”
“The facts are thin at the moment. There was an argument of some sort over a woman. Prince Athamos and Crown Prince Kostas of Carnelia decided to settle it with a car race through the mountains, the same route the ancient horse race used to take.” His aide paused. “An onlooker said Prince Athamos took a curve too steeply. His car plunged off the cliff and into the ocean.”
An argument? Over a woman? His brother was as levelheaded as Nik was passionate and reckless. And yet he had gotten into his car and raced his arch nemesis through the suicidal cliffs of Carnelia? His enemy’s domain? A man known to have as much fire in his veins as his hotheaded, tyrannical father...
He worked to free his throat from the paralysis that claimed it. “Are they sure...?”
“That he is dead?” Abram nodded. “I’m sorry, sir. Witnesses say there is no possibility a man could have emerged alive from that drop. They are working to recover his body now.”
“And Kostas,” Nik grated. “He survived?”
Abram nodded. “He was a car length behind. He saw the whole thing happen.”
A red rage blurred
his vision, mixing with the agony that gripped his insides to form a deadly, potent storm. He got up and walked blindly to the windows, the spectacular skyline of Manhattan unfolding in front of him.
All he could see was red.
The clink of crystal sounded behind him. Abram came to stand beside him and pressed a glass of whiskey into his hand. Nik raised it to his mouth and took a long swig. When he had emptied half the glass, his aide cleared his throat. “There is more.”
More? How could there be more?
“Your father took the news of the accident badly. He has suffered a severe heart attack. The doctors are holding out hope he will survive, but it’s touch and go.”
A complete sense of unreality enveloped him. His fingers gripped the glass tighter. “What is his condition?”
“He is in surgery now. We’ll know more in a few hours.”
He lifted the tumbler to his lips with a jerky movement and downed another long swallow. The fire the potent liquor lit in his insides wasn’t enough to make the reality of losing both his father and his brother in one day in any way conceivable. His father was too strong, too vigorous to let such a thing fell him. It could not happen. Not when their estrangement ate at his insides like a slow-moving disease.
He flicked a look at his aide. “The jet is ready?”
Abram nodded. “Carlos is waiting downstairs to drive you to the airfield. I thought you might want to gather some things. I will stay behind and take care of the outstanding details, cancel your commitments, then join you in Akathinia.”
Nik nodded. Abram melted into the shadows.
Alone at the window, Nik looked out at Manhattan sprawled in front of him, his brother’s voice, crystal clear on the phone the night before, filling his head. Athamos had sounded vital, belligerent. Alive. Despite the different philosophical viewpoints he and his brother had held, despite the wedges that had been driven between them in the past few years as Athamos had prepared to take over from his father as king, they had loved each other deeply.
It was inconceivable he was dead.
The sense of unreality blanketing him thickened into a dark fog with only one thought breaking through. He was now heir to the throne. He would be king.
It was a role he had never expected to have, never wanted. He had been happy to allow Athamos to take the spotlight while he did his part in New York to make Akathinia the thriving, successful nation that it was. Happy to keep his distance from the wounds of the past.
But fate had other plans for him and his brother...
Sorrow and rage gripped his heart, engulfing him like the inescapable gale force winds of the meltemia that ravaged the Akathinian shores without warning or mercy. His hand tightened around the glass as the storm swept over him, immersing him in its turbulent fury until all he could see was red.
Abram’s horrified gasp split the air. He followed his aide’s gaze down to his bleeding hand, the shattered remains of the glass strewn across the carpet. The dark splatter that seeped into the plush cream carpet seemed like the stain on his heart that would never be removed.
* * *
Nik reached his father’s bedside at noon the following day. Exhausted from an overnight trip during which he hadn’t slept, worry for his father consuming him, he pulled a chair up to the king’s bedside in the sterilized white hospital room and closed the fingers of his unbandaged hand around his father’s gnarled, wrinkled one.
The king’s shock of white hair contrasted vividly with his olive skin, but his complexion was far too pale for Nik’s liking.
“Pateras.”
Light blue eyes, identical to his own, opened to focus on him.
“Nikandros.”
He squeezed his father’s hand as the king opened his mouth and then closed it. A tear escaped his father’s eyes and slid down his weathered cheek. The weight of a thousand disagreements, a thousand regrets crowded Nik’s heart.
He bent and pressed his lips to his father’s leathery cheek. “I know.”
King Gregorios shut his eyes. When he opened them again, a fierce determination burned in their depths. “Idas will never get what he wants.”
An answering fury stirred to life inside of him. “He will never take Akathinia. But if he is behind Athamos’s death, he will pay for it.”
“It was no accident,” his father bit out. “Idas and his son want to provoke us into a conflict so they can use it as an excuse to swallow us up to cover their own inadequacies.”
He was well aware of the reason Carnelia wanted Akathinia back in the fold, but he sought to keep a rational head. “The grudge between Athamos and Kostas has been going on for years. We need the facts.”
The king’s mouth curled. “Kostas is his father’s errand boy.”
Nik raked a hand through his hair. “The Carnelian military is twice the size of ours. Akathinia is prospering, but we cannot match what they have built up, even to defend ourselves.”
His father nodded. “We have made an economic alliance with the Agiero family to acquire the resources we need. Athamos was to marry the Countess of Agiero to tie the two families together. The announcement was imminent.”
His head reeled. A marriage had been in the works while Athamos had been carrying on an affair with another woman? Why had his brother not mentioned it to him?
His father fixed his steely blue gaze on him. “I will never rule again. You will marry the countess once you are coronated king. Cement the alliance.”
He swallowed hard, all of it too much to process. His father’s gaze sharpened on his face. “You must be a leader now, Nikandros. As strong as your brother was. The time has come to step up to your responsibilities.”
His responsibilities? Hadn’t he been bankrolling this nation with his work in New York? Hadn’t he made Akathinia the talk of the Mediterranean—the place to visit—where almost every one of his people had a job? Antagonism heated his skin. What had it taken, five, six sentences for his father to start drawing comparisons between him and his brother? Unfavorable comparisons.
His father and Athamos had always been in lockstep, their philosophies on life and ruling at polar opposites of his own. He was progressive, rooted in his experiences abroad; they remained stuck in the past, preferring to cling to outdated tradition.
He had always been the afterthought. The prince embedded in New York, quietly building the fortunes of his country while his father and brother took the credit.
His desire to make peace with his father faded on a surge of antagonism. Always it was like this.
The machine at the side of the bed started beeping. Nik lifted a wary eye to it. “You must rest,” he told his father. “You are weak. You need to recuperate.”
His father sank back against the pillows and closed his eyes. Nik released his hand and stood up. To battle the enemy was one thing. Locking horns with his father another campaign entirely. The latter could prove to be a far more stubborn, drawn-out war of wills.
CHAPTER THREE
SOFÍA WAS CONSCIOUS of the fact that chocolate was emotional gratification of the highest level, emotional gratification that would dissipate as rapidly as it left her bloodstream. But since nothing else was working, she was giving it her best shot.
In the weeks following her final assignation with Nik she’d promised herself she would move on. She’d been fairly successful at it, throwing herself into her work at the boutique and interviewing for a new staff member—what she considered the silver lining of her and Nik’s split—the knowledge that she did, indeed, need to pursue her dream, now not later. But somehow, after all their weeks of keeping their relationship out of the public eye, a photographer had documented her and Nik’s departure from Natalia’s benefit. Had immortalized their final adieu.
Putting the whole thing behind her had become an exercise in futility. W
hich would all have been bad enough, if the rumors of Nik’s pending engagement to the Countess of Agiero hadn’t added fuel to the fire. The press were having a field day comparing her to the stately countess. If she heard herself described as the fiery temptress of Latin descent versus the icy, cool aristocrat Nik was about to marry one more time, she was going to start living up to her nickname.
Tearing the paper off the bar of dark European chocolate she’d purchased at the corner store, she shoved a piece in her mouth and began the walk back to the boutique.
She was also hurt, she acknowledged. That Nik was to be engaged to a woman weeks after their own affair had ended stung. That she was just that forgettable. Her rational brain told her there were political factors behind it given the countess’s powerful family, but Vittoria Agiero’s stunning beauty was a kick in the ribs. As was the fact she was a blue-blooded aristocrat whom Sofía would be more likely to dress than ever rub elbows with.
She tore off another piece of chocolate and popped it in her mouth. Emotional gratification had never tasted so good. Not when her mixed cauldron of emotions also included her sorrow for Nik. Her heart went out to him for what he was going through. She wanted to be there to comfort him in the storm he was facing. And how crazy was that, because he’d made it clear he didn’t want her.
Still, it made her heart ache to look at the photos from his brother’s funeral, from his coronation day, which had taken place a month after Athamos’s death. He had looked stone-faced through all of it, devoid of emotion. But she knew it was all a cover for a man who carried his feelings bottled up inside of him.
Katharine gave the chocolate bar in her hand a wry look as Sofía made her way through the chime-enabled doors of the boutique.
“That’s one a day this week. You going to let him ruin your figure along with everything else?”
Sofía scowled at the woman who’d been her best friend since design school. “This has nothing to do with him. I was too hungry to wait for lunch.”
Carrying the King's Pride Page 3