by Kendrick, Sharon; Lawrence, Kim; Crews, Caitlin; Milburne, Melanie
“I am kissing you back,” she said, and there was a certain haughtiness in her voice that delighted him. It made him grin, imagining all the many ways he could make her pay for that high-born, inbred superiority that he wanted to lap up like cream.
“Not well enough,” he told her.
Her cheeks looked crisp and red, but she didn’t shrink away from him. She didn’t so much as blink.
“Maybe we don’t have any chemistry,” she theorized in that same voice, making it sound as if that was a foregone conclusion. “Not every woman in the world finds you attractive, Mr. Casilieris. Did you ever think of that?”
Achilles pulled her even more off balance, holding her over his lap and in his arms, right where he wanted her.
“No,” he said starkly, and he didn’t care if his greed and longing was all over his face, revealing more to her than he had ever shared with anyone. Ever. “I don’t think either of those things is a problem.”
Then he set his mouth to hers, and proved it.
* * *
Valentina thought she’d died and gone to a heaven she’d never dreamed of before. Wicked and wild and better. So very much better than anything she could have come up with in her most brilliant and dark-edged fantasies.
She had never been truly kissed before—if that was even the word to describe something so dominant and so powerful and so deeply, erotically thrilling—but she had no intention of sharing her level of inexperience with Achilles. Not when he seemed so close to some kind of edge and so hell-bent on taking her with him, toppling over the side into all of this sensation and need.
So she simply mimicked him. When he tilted his head, she did the same. She balled up her hands in his exquisitely soft shirt, up there against the hard planes of his chest tucked beneath his dark suit coat. She was aware of his hard hands on her face. She exulted in his arms like steel, holding her and caging her against him. She lost herself in that desperately cruel mouth as it moved over hers, the touch of his rough jaw, the impossible heat.
God help her, the heat.
And she was aware of that hard ridge beneath her, suddenly. She couldn’t seem to keep from wriggling against it. Once, daringly. Then again when she heard that deep, wild and somehow savagely beautiful male noise he made in response.
And Valentina forgot about her vows, old and forthcoming. She forgot about faraway kingdoms and palaces and the life she’d lived there. She forgot about the promises she’d made and the ones that had been made in her name, because all of that seemed insubstantial next to the sheer, overwhelming wonder of Achilles Casilieris kissing her like a man possessed in the back of his town car.
This was her holiday. Her little escape. This was nothing but a dream, and he was, too. A fantasy of the life she might have lived had she been anyone else. Had she ever been anything like normal.
She forgot where they were. She forgot the role she was supposed to be playing. There was nothing in all the world but Achilles and the wildness he summoned up with every drag of his mouth against hers.
The car moved beneath them, but all Valentina could focus on was him. That hot possession of his mouth. The fire inside her.
And the lightning that she knew was his, the thunder storming through her, teaching her that she knew less about her body than he did. Much, much less. When he shifted so he could rub his chest against hers, she understood that he knew her nipples had pebbled into hard little points. When he laughed slightly as he rearranged her arms around his shoulders, she understood that he knew all her limbs were weighted down with the force of that greedy longing coursing through her veins.
The more he kissed her, over and over again as if time had no meaning and he could do this forever, she understood that he knew everything.
When he pulled his mouth from hers again, Valentina heard a soft, whimpering sound of protest. It took her one shuddering beat of her heart, then another, to realize she’d made it.
She couldn’t process that. It was so abandoned, so thoughtless and wild—how could that be her?
“If we do not get out of this car right now,” Achilles told her, his gaze a dark and breathtaking gold that slammed into her and lit her insides on fire, “we will not get out of it for some time. Not until I’ve had my fill of you. Is that how you want our first time to go, glikia mou? In the backseat of a car?”
For a moment Valentina didn’t know what he meant.
One hastily sucked-in breath later, she realized the car had come to a stop outside Achilles’s building. Her cheeks flushed with a bright heat, but worse, she knew that he could see it. He saw everything—hadn’t she just realized the truth of that? He watched her as she flushed, and he liked it. That deeply male curve in the corner of his mouth made that plain.
Valentina struggled to free herself from his hold then, to climb off his lap and sit back on the seat herself, and she was all too aware that he let her.
She didn’t focus on that. She couldn’t. That offhanded show of his innate strength made her feel…slippery, inside and outside and high between her legs. She tossed herself off his lap, her gaze tangling with his in a way that made the whole world seem to spin a little, and then she threw herself out the door. She summoned a smile from somewhere and aimed it at the doormen.
Breathe, she ordered herself. Just breathe.
Because she couldn’t do this. This wasn’t who she was. She hadn’t held on to her virginity all this time to toss it aside at the very first temptation…had she?
This couldn’t be who she was. It couldn’t.
She’d spent her whole life practicing how to appear unruffled and serene under any and all circumstances, though she couldn’t recall ever putting it to this kind of test before. She made herself breathe. She made herself smile. She sank into the familiarity of her public persona, wielding it like that armor she’d wanted, because it occurred to her it was the toughest and most resilient armor she had.
Achilles followed her into that bright and shiny elevator in the back of the gleaming lobby, using his key to close the doors behind them. He did not appear to notice or care that she was newly armored, especially while he seemed perfectly content to look so…disreputable.
His suit jacket hung open, and she was sure it had to be obvious to even the most casual observer that she’d had her hands all over his chest and his shirt. And she found it was difficult to think of that hard mouth of his as cruel now that she knew how it tasted. More, how it felt on hers, demanding and intense and—
Stop, she ordered herself. Now.
He leaned back against the wall as the elevator started to move, his dark gold eyes hooded and intent when they met hers. He didn’t say a word. Maybe he didn’t have to. Her heart was pounding so loud that Valentina was certain it would have drowned him out if he’d shouted.
But Achilles did not shout.
On the contrary, when the elevator doors shut behind them, securing them in his penthouse, he only continued to watch her in that same intense way. She moved into the great living room, aware that he followed her, silent and faintly lazy.
It made her nervous. That was what she told herself that fluttery feeling was, lodged there beneath her ribs. And lower, if she was honest. Much lower.
“I’m going to bed,” she said. And then instantly wished she’d phrased that differently when she heard it echo there between them, seeming to fill up the cavernous space, beating as madly within her as her own frenzied heart. “Alone.”
Achilles gave the impression of smiling without actually doing so. He thrust his hands into the pockets of his dark suit and regarded her solemnly, save for that glittering thing in his dark gaze.
“If that is what you wish, glikia mou.”
And that was the thing. It wasn’t what she wished. It wasn’t what she wanted, and especially not when he called her that Greek name that she th
ought meant my sweet. It made her want to taste that word on that mouth of his. It made her want to find out exactly how sweet he thought she was.
It made her want to really, truly be someone else so she could do all the things that trampled through her head, making her chest feel tight while the rest of her…yearned.
Her whole life had been an exercise in virtue and duty, and she’d thought that meant something. She’d thought that said something about who she was. Valentina had been convinced that she’d held on to her chastity all this time, long after everyone she’d known had rid themselves of theirs, as a gift to her future.
But the night all around her told her something different. It had stripped away all the lies she’d told herself—or Achilles had. All the places she’d run and hid across all these years. Because the truth was that she’d never been tested. Was it truly virtue if she’d never been the least bit tempted to give it away? Or was it only coincidence that she’d never encountered anything that had felt the least bit compelling in that regard? Was it really holding on to something if she’d never felt the least bit like getting rid of it?
Because everything tonight was different. Valentina was different—or, worse, she thought as she stared at Achilles across the little bit of space that separated them, she had never been who she’d imagined she was. She had never understood that it was possible that a body could drown out what the mind knew to be prudent.
Until now.
She had judged passion all her life and told herself it was a story that weak people told themselves and others to make their sins seem more interesting. More complicated and unavoidable. But the truth was, Valentina had never experienced passion in her life.
Not until Achilles.
“I am your assistant,” she told him. Or perhaps she was telling herself. “This must never happen again. If it does, I can’t work for you.”
“I have already told you that I am more than happy to accommodate—”
“There will be no lateral moves,” she threw at him, appalled to hear her voice shaking. “You might lie awake at night imagining what that means and what it would look like, but I don’t. I won’t.”
“Liar.”
If he had hauled off and hit her, Valentina didn’t think she could have been any more surprised. Shocked. No one had ever called her a liar before, not in all her life.
Then again, chimed in a small voice deep inside, you never used to lie, did you? Not to others and not to yourself.
“I have no doubt that you enjoy doing as you please,” she spat at him, horrified that any of this was happening and, worse, that she’d let it—when Valentina knew who she was and what she’d be going back to in a few short weeks. “No matter the consequences. But not everyone is as reckless as you.”
Achilles didn’t quite smirk. “And that is why one of us is a billionaire and the other is his assistant.”
“And if we were having a discussion about how to make money,” Valentina said from between her teeth, no sign of her trademark serenity, “I would take your advice—but this is my life.”
Guilt swamped her as she said that. Because, of course, it wasn’t her life. It was Natalie’s. And she had the sick feeling that she had already complicated it beyond the point of return. It didn’t matter that Natalie had texted her to say that she’d kissed Prince Rodolfo, far away in Murin and neck-deep in Valentina’s real life, however little Valentina had thought about it since she’d left it behind. Valentina was going to marry Rodolfo. That her double had kissed him, the way Valentina probably should have, wasn’t completely out of line.
But this… This thing she was doing… It was unacceptable on every level. She knew that.
Maybe Natalie has this same kind of chemistry with Rodolfo, something in her suggested. Maybe he was engaged to the wrong twin.
Which meant, she knew—because she was that self-serving—that maybe the wrong twin had been working for Achilles all this time and all of this was inevitable.
She wasn’t sure she believed that. But she couldn’t seem to stop herself. Or worse, convince herself that she should.
Achilles was still watching her too closely. Once again, she had the strangest notion that he knew too much. That he could see too far inside her.
Don’t be silly, she snapped at herself then. Of course he can’t. You’re just looking for more ways to feel guilty.
Because whatever else happened, there was no way Achilles Casilieris would allow the sort of deception Valentina was neck-deep in to take place under his nose if he knew about it. She was certain of that, if nothing else.
“This is what I know about life,” Achilles said, his voice a silken thread in the quiet of the penthouse, and Valentina had to repress a little shiver that threatened to shake her spine apart. “You must live it. If all you do is wall yourself off, hide yourself away, what do you have at the end but wasted time?”
Her throat was dry and much too tight. “I would take your advice more seriously if I didn’t know you had an ulterior motive.”
“I don’t believe in wasting time or in ulterior motives,” he growled back at her. “And not because I want a taste of you, though I do. And I intend to have it, glikia mou, make no mistake. But because you have put yourself on hold. Do you think I can’t see it?”
She thought she had to be reeling then. Nothing was solid. She couldn’t help but put her hand out, steadying herself on the back of the nearest chair—though it didn’t seem to help.
And Achilles was watching her much too closely, with far too much of that disconcerting awareness making his dark gaze shine. “Or is it that you don’t know yourself?”
When she was Princess Valentina of Murin, known to the world before her birth. Her life plotted out in its every detail. Her name literally etched in stone into the foundations of the castle where her family had ruled for generations. She had never had the opportunity to lose herself. Not in a dramatic adolescence. Not in her early twenties. She had never been beside herself at some crossroads, desperate to figure out the right path—because there had only ever been one path and she had always known exactly how to walk it, every step of the way.
“You don’t know me at all,” she told him, trying to sound less thrown and more outraged at the very suggestion that she was any kind of mystery to herself. She’d never had that option. “You’re my employer, not my confidant. You know what I choose to show you and nothing more.”
“But what you choose to show, and how you choose to show it, tells me exactly who you are.” Achilles shook his head, and it seemed to Valentina that he moved closer to her when she could see he didn’t. That he was exactly where he’d always been—it was just that he seemed to take over the whole world. She wasn’t sure he even tried; he just did. “Or did you imagine I achieved all that I’ve achieved without managing to read people? Surely you cannot be so foolish.”
“I was about to do something deeply foolish,” she said tightly. And not exactly smartly. “But I’ve since come to my senses.”
“No one is keeping you here.” His hands were thrust deep into his pockets, and he stood where he’d stopped, a few steps into the living room from those elevator doors. His gaze was all over her, but nothing else was touching her. He wasn’t even blocking her escape route back to the guest room on this floor.
And she understood then. He was giving her choice. He was putting it on her. He wasn’t simply sweeping her off into all that wild sensation—when he must have known he could have. He easily could have. If he hadn’t stopped in the car, what would they be doing now?
But Valentina already knew the answer to that. She could feel her surrender inside her like heat.
And she thought she hated him for it.
Or should.
“I’m going to sleep,” she said. She wanted her voice to be fierce. Some kind of condemnation. But she
thought she sounded more determined than resolved. “I will see you in the morning. Sir.”
Achilles smiled. “I think we both know you will see me long before that. And in your dreams, glikia mou, I doubt I will be so chivalrous.”
Valentina pressed her lips tight together and did not allow herself to respond to him. Especially because she wanted to so very, very badly—and she knew, somehow, that it would lead nowhere good. It couldn’t.
Instead, she turned and headed for her room. It was an unremarkable guest room appropriate for staff, but the best thing about it was the lock on the door. Not that she thought he would try to get in.
She was far more concerned that she was the one who would try to get out.
“One of these days,” he said from behind her, his voice low and intense, “you will stop running. It is a foregone conclusion, I am afraid. And then what?”
Valentina didn’t say a word. But she didn’t have to.
When she finally made it to her room and threw the dead bolt behind her, the sound of it echoed through the whole of the penthouse like a gong, answering Achilles eloquently without her having to open her mouth.
Telling him exactly how much of a coward she was, in case he hadn’t already guessed.
CHAPTER SIX
IN THE DAYS that followed that strange night and Achilles’s world-altering kiss that had left her raw and aching and wondering if she’d ever feel like herself again, Valentina found she couldn’t bear the notion that she was twenty-seven years old and somehow a stranger to herself.
Her future was set in stone. She’d always known that. And she’d never fought against all that inevitability because what was the point? She could fight as much as she wanted and she’d still be Princess Valentina of Murin, only with a stain next to her name. That had always seemed to her like the very definition of futility.
But in the days that followed that kiss, it occurred to her that perhaps it wasn’t the future she needed to worry about, but her past. She hadn’t really allowed herself to think too closely about what it meant that Natalie had been raised by the woman who was very likely Valentina’s own mother. Because, of course, there was no other explanation for the fact she and Natalie looked so much alike. Identical twins couldn’t just randomly occur, and certainly not when one of them was a royal. There were too many people watching royal births too closely. Valentina had accepted the story that her mother had abandoned her, because it had always been couched in terms of Frederica’s mental illness. Valentina had imagined her mother living out her days in some or other institution somewhere, protected from harm.