by Maisey Yates
Never again.
She held her suitcase tightly to her body and walked across the apartment, heading for the elevator.
“What are doing?”
She turned and saw Stavros, still naked, his pants in his hand.
“I’m … I’m going.”
“Why?”
She let out a breath. “Because it was now or in a few weeks, and I decided it should be now. We both knew this wasn’t permanent, and the four-week time frame no longer works for me.”
“Put your suitcase down.” He tugged his pants on quickly, leaving the belt undone.
She shook her head. “No. I’m leaving.”
“I love you.”
“You don’t want love. You told me that already. You don’t believe in it … you don’t.”
“I love you,” he repeated, the words breaking.
“Stop it,” she said, her voice shaking. “Just stop.”
“It’s true, I do. I love you, Jessica.” He sounded tormented, his voice raw and pained. And she had caused it.
“It doesn’t matter, don’t say it like it does. Like it ever could. So you love me? What does that mean?”
“What does it mean? You want to know what it means? It means that my world stops turning when you aren’t in it, and when I see you I feel like I can breathe again. That’s what it means. It means I’ve found my passion again. That I’m not hollow anymore.”
She dropped the suitcase then, pressing her hand to her chest. “No. What does it mean? Practically. In the real world. Because we both know that loving me doesn’t make me able to have your royal babies, which means I’m not good enough to wear the royal crown. We both know it, so what’s the point in any of this?”
“The point,” he said, taking a step toward her, his expression deadly, “was to make me forget you. To make me get over this … need that I feel for you. To make it so the thought of a future without you didn’t make me feel like my guts were being torn from my body. That was the point. We failed on all counts. I have … feelings, Jessica. I was so dead for so long and then you came into my life. And I couldn’t put you at a distance, and I couldn’t stop myself from being me when I was with you. I love you, and it’s not simple, but it is so damned important because it changed me.”
“You just think that, Stavros. Because of the sex. Because you love skirting the edge of convention as much as you possibly can and oh, how shocking would a divorced infertile queen be? But it’s not real. It’s temporary. Victoria is real. She can be your princess, your queen. And she can give you everything that you need. I can’t.”
“That is unfair, Jessica. Don’t tell me what I feel.”
“You would hate me in the end, Stavros. You would.”
He stood there, his dark eyes pinned on her. “Tell me you love me, too.”
She shook her head, the words tearing at her throat, struggling to escape. She wouldn’t let them. She wouldn’t make it worse.
He crossed the room in three strides, cupped her face, his hands so gentle, his expression so dark and fierce. “Tell me.”
“No,” she whispered, taking a step back and picking up her suitcase again. “I’m glad that you … found yourself with me, or whatever you want to call it. But you don’t need me to feel passion. You don’t need me to have emotions. I hope that things with Victoria go well. I hope you … I hope you love her some day.” She didn’t. She never wanted him to love her. She wanted his love forever, and if that made her small, she didn’t care. But she would lie now. She would preserve what pride she had left now. “Please don’t pay me. Not for any of it.”
He didn’t say anything, he only stood there, his body tense. He looked like he might try to physically stop her from leaving. But he didn’t. He only watched her as she turned away. And she didn’t look back. She couldn’t.
Stavros could only watch as Jessica walked into the elevator, as the doors closed behind her. He could only concentrate on taking breaths, each one causing raw, physical pain.
She was wrong. She was wrong about everything. At least as far as he was concerned. He did need her. He needed her more than he needed air. She had brought something back to him. Something he’d long thought dead. Something he’d been glad was gone.
He hadn’t allowed himself to feel the pain of his mother’s death. There had been too much to do. The people around him had fallen apart and his country had fallen into chaos. He had vowed he would never let that happen again.
But now … now he felt as though his insides had broken apart, that each breath dug a shard of the destroyed pieces into his flesh.
He looked at the wineglass sitting on the counter. Something Jessica must have had earlier. He walked to the kitchen area and released a growl as he picked up the glass and hurled it at the wall. It exploded into a million unfix-able pieces.
And it didn’t heal anything inside of him.
He feared nothing ever would.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
STAVROS stood in front of his father’s desk and looked down at the ring, nestled in a velvet box, glittering at him. The old-world vintage style of the piece mocked him. Made his heart feel as if it was shattering. Which should be impossible since it had shattered days ago.
“You have chosen then?” his father asked, looking at him from his seated position, his grey brows raised.
“Victoria is a wonderful choice for Kyonos. She will be a good queen.” He reached out and curled his fingers around the box, lifting it from the desk. He raised it to his eyes, studied it.
“Your mother’s ring,” his father said. “She loved the unusual antique setting.”
He laughed, a bitter sound. “I know a woman like that.”
“I get the feeling she is not the woman you will be offering the ring to?”
Stavros shook his head. “Jessica Carter is not fit to be queen of Kyonos. Not by the standards set out for me. If I were to marry her, it would cause great scandal.” Something in his chest burned, spread through his blood like fire. The thought of life without her, day after day, faded and brittle, devoid of color, of beauty.
“And if you weren’t going to be king, Stavros?”
Stavros looked at his father. “But I am going to be king. And that means I have to think of more than just myself.”
King Stephanos paused for a moment, his expression grave. “If you care for nothing, you’ll never be able to care for your people. Not as you should.”
“Love makes you weak,” Stavros said. “I’ve seen it.” He’d never condemned his father to his face. For some reason, now it poured from him. His renewed passion came with a renewal of every emotion. Happiness, and anger. Deep and hopeless sadness.
“What made me weak was the absence of love,” his father said slowly. “I cared for nothing after your mother died. Not the country. Not even my children. And so I left it all abandoned. Which is easy to do when you no longer care.”
Stavros had never seen it that way before. And yet, it rang true in his soul. Jessica made him feel real again. In touch as he hadn’t been for years. She brought passion out in him, to be better, do better.
He looked at the ring again and an image flashed into his mind. One of him sliding the ring onto Jessica’s finger. He tried to make the image turn into Victoria. He couldn’t. There was only one vision for his future. Only one woman he could have at his side.
“If I marry Jessica there will be scandal,” he said, his voice rough. “We will not have an heir. Her past will be fodder for the papers.” He raised his focus to his father, who was regarding him silently. “And I don’t give a damn. I love her. That’s all that matters.”
He turned away, his heart pounding hard.
“And that is why you will be twice the king that I have been, Stavros. You are a man who should follow his heart. Because your heart is strong.”
He curled his fingers more tightly around the ring box. “It is now. Because of her.”
* * *
“Jessica.” She heard Stav
ros’s voice through her hotel room door and she froze.
Why was he here? Why was he tormenting her? She’d been miserable for the past forty-eight hours. And she was planning on being miserable on the plane ride home. And then she was planning on being a sopping, miserable mess in North Dakota, so really, she didn’t need his help.
Her entire body was heavy. The effort of dragging herself out of bed that morning had been nearly not worth it. Putting on pajamas last night hadn’t been worth it, and she was still in yesterday’s clothes because dressing hadn’t seemed like it was worth it, either.
And now he was here. And she wanted to run to him and ignore reality so much it was nearly impossible to stop herself from flinging to door open and huddling against him.
“What do you want?” she said, knowing she sounded whiny and not caring. She felt whiny. She felt crushed.
“You. Open the door.”
Her heart slammed against her breastbone. “Why?”
“Because I can tell you what it means now.”
She swallowed and walked to the door, turning the dead bolt and unlinking the chain before pulling it open. “What?”
He gripped the edge of the door and the door frame. “I’m not marrying Victoria.”
“What?” she asked again, taking a step back.
“I can’t. I can’t because you are the only woman that I want. I see you in my dreams, I see you when I’m awake and I close my eyes. I can’t forget you. I don’t want to forget you. I want you.”
“But you … Victoria is perfect for you. She … she …” Jessica reached for her tablet computer, sitting on the arm of the couch, and swiped through a few screens until she found Victoria’s file. “She is graceful, and wonderful and she can have your babies. She’s beautiful and she does charities for homeless children. She’s perfect.”
“Yes, she is. There—” he pointed at her computer “—in writing, yes, she’s perfect for my country. But you, Jessica Carter, you are perfect for me. And I don’t care what you can’t do, I only care what you do for me, what you give me. I care that when I’m with you I’m a better man. I have been closed off for years. What does it matter if I can give my people charm, an empty smile if I can give them nothing deeper than that? It doesn’t matter. But you … you make me feel. You have forced me to find something in myself that’s … real. To be more than a shell. I can’t go back. I won’t.”
“Stavros, I … You can’t do this. You can’t. You have to have these things,” she said, pointing to her computer again. “You have to. And if you don’t …”
“If I don’t, I’ll be a better man for it. For pursuing what I want. For finding real passion. For ruling with everything I have in me. You, you helped me find it. Yes, I am expected to have a wife who can have heirs … but I won’t. And that will have to be fine, it will be perfect, because my wife will be you. Unless you don’t want me. Then … well, I’m not sure what I’ll do then.”
“Stavros—” her voice broke “—I want you. But I’m not going to be the cause of your unfulfilled vision. You want this so much. To be this perfect figurehead for your people. And I can’t be the one to stop you from doing it. I’ve been that. I have been a man’s broken dreams and I won’t do it again. I can’t. I can’t watch love turn into resentment, and anger. I can’t be more than I am. I am in this body, and I can only give so much.”
A tear slid down her cheek, then another. Tears she realized had been stored up for the past few years of her life.
Anger and pain, and the anguish of being limited. Of not being enough.
Stavros moved to her, brushed her tears away with his thumb. “You are everything,” he said, his voice rough. “You have given me everything. I didn’t want love. Because I was so afraid of it, so afraid of the pain it could cause. Losing my mother devastated me. I just … shut down rather than dealing with it. I shut it all down. But you brought me back, you brought a part of me back and you restored it. I talked to my father. He told me the reason he let things fall apart was that he didn’t care anymore. Not about anything. I wanted so badly not to be like him, not to lose myself to love, and I didn’t realize I was him. Caring for nothing, going through the motions. But not now. Not since I met you.”
He kissed her cheek. “Maybe on paper this doesn’t work. But I don’t think marriage is as simple as I believed it was. I can’t just hire a wife the way I’d hire an assistant. I need a woman who will challenge me, who will push me, to be better, to do better. I know you are that woman. Most of all, I need the woman I love by my side.”
“I love you,” she said, letting the words come out. Finally. They felt like balm on her soul, healing old wounds that had never truly gone away. Until now. Until Stavros.
“I told you that once that you were enough of a dream for any man, and I stand by that statement now. I want nothing else. I want you.”
She bit her lip. “I’m afraid you’ll regret it. That you’ll look at me every day and see … holes in me. All of the things I’m missing.”
“Jessica, there are holes in me,” he said, pressing his hand flat to his chest. “I am not perfect. But I believe you’re the one who can fill the holes. The one who can make me stronger. Certainly the one who brings me joy.”
She let out a sob. “I … I’m afraid you’ll regret not having children.”
“We can adopt children.”
Shock bloomed in her stomach, making it hard to breathe. “But … adopted children couldn’t take the throne, it doesn’t solve the problem of heirs, it doesn’t …”
“I’m not trying to solve a problem with adoption. If we want children, if we want to expand our family, we can adopt. We won’t be the ones to produce the heirs. That’s all right. I don’t want another woman’s children, I want yours. And by that I mean you’re the one I want by my side raising my children. That’s what matters anyway.” He rested his forehead against hers. “That and if you love me. Because if you really love me, then nothing else matters.”
“I do. I really do love you. But when we met you told me all the things you wanted and …”
“Because I was scared. A coward. I was trying to make things easier on myself. Going through life without caring is vain, but it’s simple. I was going to marry a woman who would have been a placeholder, and you’ll never be that. You make me want to be the king, the man, I didn’t know I could be. You make me strong. Be my wife, Jessica. Please.”
Every word, every line in his face, spoke of his sincerity. And if she thought back to their time, to the moment they’d first met, she knew it had started then. That every look, every touch, every kiss, had brought them to this point.
That every bit of pain before they met, had made them strong enough to stand here. Made them strong enough to make marriage work. To have love that lasted.
“I … Yes.” Her heart lifted, happiness, true happiness, filling her, flooding her. Every place inside of her that had felt empty, incomplete, seemed filled now, with love.
“Don’t ever feel like you aren’t enough for me. You fill me. All the empty places in me.”
She nodded. “I believe you.”
“Jessica, this life won’t always be easy. There will be press to deal with, and there are big responsibilities, long work hours and a lot of traveling. But I want you by my side for all of it. My queen, my lover, my partner.”
“Yes,” she said again, her voice stronger this time. “Stavros, I’ve loved before. But this is different. Because I feel like you’re a part of me. I feel like you want me, and not me wrapped up as part of a dream, a fantasy. I truly believe that you love me, and not who you wish I was.”
“I do. You aren’t a dream. Far from it.”
“Hey!” she said, laughing through her tears.
“What I mean is, you are too special, too unique for me to ever have dreamed up. I wrote down all the things I thought I needed in a wife, and I was delivered something completely different. I didn’t truly know myself at all, or what I needed. No
t until I met you.”
“I must be the worst matchmaker in the world. I matched a woman to a prince and then … and then I got engaged to him. We are engaged, right?”
“Yes, we are. In fact—” he reached into his pocket and pulled out a white satin box “—this was my mother’s.” He opened the box and revealed a platinum, pear-cut diamond with intricate detail etched into the band. “It’s been in our family for hundreds of years. When I saw it … when I saw it I knew there was only one woman I could give it to. It’s perfect for you.”
“You’re right,” she said. “You’re so very right.”
He took her hand in his and slid the ring onto her third finger. “It’s like it was made for you.”
She shook her head. “No, I think you were made for me.”
Jessica leaned in and kissed him, pouring all of her love into the kiss. Now that she had Stavros, she didn’t feel like she was missing anything.
“You fill all those places inside me that used to feel empty,” she whispered.
He stoked her hair, his touch so warm and perfect. Even more perfect now that she knew she would have him forever. “As you do for me. I think you must have been my missing piece.”
She closed her eyes and leaned into him. “For so long I felt like I was made wrong.”
“No, agápe mou, you weren’t made wrong. You were made for me.”
* * * * *
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.
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