by Olivia Gates
He’d been suddenly loath to face her, yet unable to do anything but clasp the girls and wait for her to initiate the confrontation. His heart now thundered in his chest like it had then. In tandem, his hip joint started to throb with a red-hot warning that he’d pay the price of these miles in shoes unfit for walking for days to come.
He would welcome the physical discomfort. If only it were potent enough to counter his emotional turmoil. But no amount of pain could do so.
He’d expected being near Kassandra again would be hard. Horrible, even. It wasn’t. It was unbearable. With every passing moment in her company, the corrosive longing he’d suffered since he’d pushed her out of his life had been escalating to all-consuming need.
After her initial rejection, she’d been evidently shocked at the twins’ reaction to him, and at his handling of them. She’d surrendered to the necessity of putting up with him, for her—their—daughters’ sake. But it was clear this was the extent of her concession. She wanted nothing more to do with him.
As she shouldn’t. Even if she weren’t so averse, he’d be the one to keep away. As he’d been exhausting himself trying to. Then he’d asked her to marry him.
He’d thought he’d braced himself for any response. But her horror had been so deep, so total, he’d scrambled to pledge every guarantee, offer every incentive to make the union worth her while. But it had only made things worse. Her desperation as she’d offered to lie to the whole world for as long as it took had made clear the depth of her abhorrence of him. Of anything that bound her to him, even a marriage in name only. Even if it made her a queen.
But how could he have expected any less? After the way he’d rejected and abandoned her? In the cruelest way, at the worst time?
And he’d only come back to add more injuries. He’d forced his way back into the life she’d struggled long and hard to make into an oasis of peace and stability for their daughters.
That moment she’d stepped back and told him to come into her home, into her life, he’d felt as if he’d been taken in after being out in the freezing cold forever. But that had only been an illusion. As it should be.
He didn’t want her to take him back.
But though her extreme reaction to his proposal had proved she never would accept him, even for show, she hadn’t moved on. She hadn’t found another man to bless. She hadn’t even let any near. During his painstaking surveillance, many, many men had approached her. Three had offered her everything a man could offer a woman, starting with their hearts. It pained him to admit it, but she wouldn’t have gone wrong accepting any of them.
So why hadn’t she?
Had she been so busy with work and the twins she’d had nothing left to offer, or want? Or was he responsible for her being unable to move on, for becoming defensive and distant, even with the people closest to her, when she’d been the most emotionally generous and approachable person he’d had the undeserved privilege to know?
Pushing her away after the accident, he’d known he’d hurt her. But he’d thought her pain would soon become anger, helping her get over it. Over him. He hadn’t suspected she’d linger in perpetual purgatory. Like he had.
But if she couldn’t move on, then he hadn’t just hurt her. He’d crippled her. And this had only one explanation: her feelings for him had been much deeper than he’d suspected.
Now she’d distilled her entire existence to being the twins’ mother. Even her business seemed to have become a means to financial independence for their sake. Success and achievement were by-products, not the goals they’d once been.
He couldn’t bear to think he’d damaged her irrevocably. That just by being near her again, he’d cause her even more harm.
But...maybe he didn’t have to. Maybe instead of being a disruption to her peace and a threat to her psyche, he could instead be her support, her ally. Maybe in time, he could heal her. Enough so she could move on, find love and build a life for herself, as a woman, with another man.
Even if it would finish him off.
* * *
When Leonid arrived at Kassandra’s office the next day, her PA didn’t intercept him, only fumblingly gave her boss the heads-up she’d failed to give her at his first incursion.
This time Kassandra opened her office door herself, and stepped silently aside to let him in, making no eye contact.
As she turned to him, he began at once. “I know how inconvenient and unfair to you the whole situation is, and if it was up to me, I’d accept your alternative proposition without qualifications. I will, as soon as I make certain it would satisfy the twins’ legal legitimacy requirements in my kingdom.”
Pushing a swathe of hair that seemed to encompass a thousand golden hues behind her ear, her emerald gaze regarded him steadily. “Then, it’s as good as accepted. I’m sure you can achieve anything.”
He tried not to wince at the cold resentment in her eyes, and the hot pain in his hip. “If only that was true. But I’ll need your help to authenticate our fictitious marriage.”
Everything about her stilled. “What am I supposed to do?”
“You have to come to my homeland.”
A dozen conflicting emotions raced across her face before she shrugged. “Once you ‘legitimize’ the girls and become king, if I have to sign or swear anything in front of kingdom officials, I’ll come.”
He shook his head in frustration at his inability to make this easier on her. “I need you there before the coronation.”
That wary watchfulness gripped her again. “When is that?”
“If all goes well, in a month’s time now.”
Her lips fell open. “You mean you want me to go to Zorya in less than a month?”
“No, I don’t mean that.” Before she could relax her clenched muscles, he exhaled. “We have to leave tomorrow.”
Six
By the time the limo stopped at the private airfield, Eva and Zoya were sound asleep. Kyria Despina had also nodded off. Kassandra’s alertness and agitation had only intensified with every passing second.
They reached a screaming pitch when Leonid got out and came around to hand her out. His smile, more than the coldness of the night after the warmth of the limo, sprouted goose bumps all over her. Oblivious to his effect on her, he got busy releasing the girls’ car seat harnesses, insisting on carrying both.
After gesturing for those awaiting them on the tarmac to take her and the groggy Despina’s hand luggage and the cats’ carriers, he led them up into the giant silver jet.
With many of her family and friends being billionaires, she’d been on private jets before. But she’d never been on one of Leonid’s. That fact underlined the superficiality of their liaison. She’d been the one who’d made the fatal mistake of becoming deeply involved, breaking the rules they’d agreed on, as he’d accused her of.
But all the other jets were nothing compared to this one. It felt...royal. So was it Zorya’s equivalent of Air Force One? That made sense. From the news, Zorya no longer considered Leonid a candidate, but the future king, the man who’d resurrect their kingdom and restore its grandeur. It was a fitting ride for a man of his stature and importance.
With his staff and the jet’s crew hovering in the background, Leonid led them through many compartments to a spiral staircase to the upper deck. Once there, he walked them across an ultrachic foyer, then through an automatic door that he opened using a fingerprint recognition module. So no one was allowed past this point except him, and those he let in.
The door whirred shut behind them as he guided them to a bedroom with two double beds, two special cribs and a huge pet enclosure for the cats. He’d prepared the jet for them!
After she helped him secure the girls and cats, he showed Despina the suite’s amenities and assured her she should settle down for a full night’s sleep.
As he led K
assandra back outside, it dawned on her that, with the transcontinental flight, they’d be traveling all through the night. Alone together.
Even if she convinced him to sleep himself, so she’d be spared the turmoil of his company, she wouldn’t be able to even close her eyes knowing he was so close by. But she doubted he’d sleep and leave her. Apart from that one time he’d been beyond observing decorum and had told her what he’d really felt, he’d always been terminally gallant. And since she’d agreed to go to Zorya, he’d been more courteous than ever. It was enough to make her want to scream.
Resigned to a night in the hell of his nearness, she sagged down on a cream leather couch. Forcing her attention off him, she looked around the grand lounge.
Dominated by Slavic designs, the room was drenched in golden lights and earth tones, embodying the serenity of sumptuousness and seclusion. At the far end of the space that occupied the breadth of the massive jet, a screen of complementing colors and designs obscured another area behind it.
“This—” he gestured to a door “—is the lavatory.” Another gesture. “And those buttons access all functions and services in this compartment. Please order refreshments or whatever you wish for until I come back.”
She almost blurted out that he didn’t need to come back, that he should go tend to matters of state or something. But she remained silent as he paused at the lounge’s door, his fathomless voice caressing every starved cell in her.
“I’ll only be a few minutes.”
Once he disappeared, she headed to the lavatory, just for something to do, and stayed inside for as long as she could bear.
Once she came out, she did a double take, and faltered, gulping air. He’d come back, and he’d taken off his...jacket!
Had he been naked, he probably wouldn’t have affected her more. Okay, he would have, but it was bad enough now. And his clothes weren’t even that fitted, just a loose and simple white shirt and black pants. If anything about him or what he provoked in her could be called simple.
He smiled that slow, searing smile he’d been bestowing on her again since yesterday. Unable to smile back, she approached him, her stamina tank running lower by the second.
He’d been supremely fit before, but the added bulk of his new lifestyle suited him endlessly. The breadth of his chest and shoulders that had never owed their perfection to tailoring felt magnified now that only a layer of finest silk covered them. They, and his arms, bulged with strength and symmetry. Yet his abdomen was as hard as ever, his waist and hips as narrow, making his upper body look even more formidable. She didn’t dare pause on the area at the juncture of his powerful thighs.
And that was only his body. The body that had enslaved her every sense, owned her every response, had possessed and pleasured her for a whole year. The body whose essence had mingled with hers and created their twin miracles. Then came the rest. The regal shape of his head, the deep, dark gloss of his hair, the hewn sculpture of his face, the seductiveness of his lips, the hypnosis of his eyes.
If he’d been Hermes before, he was now Ares. If ever a man was born to lead, to be king, it was him.
He extended one of those perfect, powerful hands that had once treated her to unimaginable intimacies and ecstasies.
“Come sit down, Kassandra. We’re about to take off.”
She sat down where the tranquil sweep of his hand indicated. Before she collapsed. No longer the stiff stranger he’d been with her, the way he moved, sounded, smelled, breathed, the way he just was...
It was all too much.
Unaware that just being near, just being him, was causing her unbearable pain, he sat down on the seat opposite her couch. His descent was smoother than her flop, yet a frown shadowed his leonine brow. She could feel frustration radiating from him at his inability to move as effortlessly as before. After his previous preternatural litheness, it must be indescribably disconcerting to him to no longer have total control over his every move, to orchestrate them in that symphony of grace that he used to.
Getting his irritation under control with obvious difficulty, he secured his seat belt and pressed a button in his armrest. The engines revved higher and the jet started moving.
To escape the gaze he pinned on her again, she fastened her seat belt and examined the panel in her own armrest. She didn’t get most of the functions. But then, in her condition, she wouldn’t have recognized a neon exit sign.
If only this situation came with one. It didn’t, not for the foreseeable future. If one ever became available, it wouldn’t be called an exit, but an escape, with whatever could be saved. If anything remained salvageable this time.
For now, she couldn’t even figure out what had happened since Leonid had said they had to go to Zorya in a day’s time.
That statement had been met with her finest snort. But he’d been as serious as a tidal wave, inundating her objections. And as she continued to discover, resistance with him was indeed futile.
After he’d left, she’d done what he’d made her agree to, called every person, agency and organization she’d made prior plans, signed contracts or had delivery dates with, to request extensions. Not expecting to get any, she’d felt secure that these commitments would be her excuse not to comply with his timetable.
But they’d all come back to her within hours, offering her all the time she wanted. Sans penalty. Some with an increase in compensation for her “extra time and effort.”
Not only was she burning to know how he’d done that, but she was getting more anxious about what he’d done to achieve these unbelievable results.
But now that she was sentenced to a night of sleepless torture in his company, she was bent on getting some answers. She wouldn’t let him escape her questioning again as he had so far, on account of being too busy preparing their departure.
She raised her gaze to him, found him studying her with yet another inscrutable expression in his incredible eyes.
Suppressing tremors of longing, she cocked her head at him. “Now that you have nowhere to go for the next fourteen hours, you will tell me.”
His eyes maintained that enigmatic cast. “Who says I have nowhere to go? This jet has a depressurizing compartment in the rear so I can make a dash for it in extreme emergencies.”
“And you consider this one? You’d skydive from forty thousand feet, at six hundred miles an hour, into the big unknown below, to escape telling me how you got all those multibillion-dollar enterprises to postpone my multimillion-dollar deals with a smile and a bonus on top?”
His eyes crinkled, filling with what she thought she’d never see there again. Bedevilment. “If you saw the look in your eyes, you’d categorize this as a jump-worthy situation.”
Pursing her lips to suppress the moronic urge to grin at him, when for the past two years plus he’d certainly caused her nothing to grin about, she plastered her best attempt at severity on her face. “What did you do, Leonid?”
His lips mimicked hers in earnestness, but the smile kept attempting to escape. “What do you think I did?”
“I have theories, and fears. Not in your best interests to keep me in suspense with that combustible mix.”
A revving chuckle erupted deep in his endless chest. “I did mean it when I said I’d tell you when I had the time and presence of mind. But now that I realize you have all those theories and fears, I must hear them first. So you tell me what you think I did, and if it’s close, I’ll tell you the exact details.”
Was he...teasing her? What had gotten into him? Where was the automaton who’d stood on her doorstep playing back what had sounded like a recorded script and programmed responses?
Was he practicing the ease they’d display as newly reconciled husband and wife? He had said polite formality would be fine in public, but what if he’d decided it was more effective to give his adoring subjects a doting couple
to moon over?
In other modern kingdoms, the alleged love stories between royal couples counted as a major asset for the monarchy, contributing to its political and social stability. It was also a huge source of economic prosperity via revenues for the media and tourism machines.
So now that she’d accommodated all his demands and he was no longer anxious about his plans, was he relaxing and rehearsing in preparation for giving the public a convincing performance?
Or was it even worse? Had he decided to enslave the world by reverting to his previous self, the one she’d fallen fathoms deep for, and hadn’t been able to kick her way to the surface since?
Unable to even think of the ramifications to herself if this was the case, she focused on his current challenge, knowing he wouldn’t reveal anything if she didn’t meet it.
“It’s not what I think as much as what I hope you did. For the future of my business, I hope there was no coercion or intimidation on your part, but that as a former world champion, current mogul and future king, you have endless strings to pull, gently, and that you binged on using all the favors you could.”
Those perfectly arched eyebrows shot up. “And leave myself in a favor deficit as I embark on ruling a historically contested land with a nascent independence amidst a turbulent sea of cranky killer-whale and bloodthirsty-shark nations?”
When he put it that way, her worries didn’t even seem relevant.
Shoulders drooping, she flopped back on the couch. “So my business was too small a fry for you to spend favors on, huh?”
He unbuckled himself, rose and came down beside her, much closer than his usual very long arm’s length. “Actually, your business is a huge enough fish I didn’t need to.”
Her wits scattering at his action, his nearness, she tried to focus on the meaning of his words. And failed.
Giving up, she croaked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means the only good my calls did was explain the time-sensitive nature of your request, since you didn’t.”