She nodded, hiding her surprise. A good idea given Aristos had built hotels and casinos all around the world.
“What did he say?”
“He took me through the key interest groups. Told me which ones are key to get onside, which ones we need to court to neutralize the negative factions. He said to make them a part of the decision-making process.”
Exactly as she’d counseled. “Good advice. But that will take time. You need something you can execute immediately, something that will turn the tide of public opinion before the elections.”
His expression was bleak. “I’m not sure that exists.”
“What about a town council?” She voiced the idea that had been percolating ever since that editorial had run. “Get everyone out and let them have their say. Once they’ve had a chance to offer their opinions, you choose some of those key influencers Aristos was talking about to join your advisory council. Nothing will happen before the elections in terms of results, but at least the people will see the promise you are making to listen.”
He gave her a skeptical look. “That could end up being a zoo. They will ask for the moon.”
“You don’t make any promises you can’t keep. You agree to compromise.”
Kostas was quiet for a long moment, swirling the wine in his glass. “It could,” he said finally, “be positioned as me being an empathetic, inclusive leader rather than my backtracking on my plans.”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “There are worse things than being seen as an empathetic leader.”
His gaze sharpened at the gibe. “The people are right to be frustrated. It should never have been allowed to get to this point. I should have done something sooner.”
Finally, an insight into what was going on in his head. “It took decades of your father’s misrule to get the country to this point. You yourself told me how complicated the political situation was before you left. You can’t second-guess your decisions.”
“It’s impossible not to wonder how much damage I could have prevented.”
Her heart squeezed. “But it won’t solve your problem. You need to leave the past in the past.”
He was silent for a long time. When he looked up at her, there was a myriad of emotions blazing in his dark eyes. “Do you really believe that’s possible?”
“Yes,” she said. “I do. I have these past few weeks and you need to do it, too, Kostas. You’re spending so much time trying to prove yourself right, to prove you aren’t your father, you’ve lost the vision that’s always guided you, the one your people are looking to you for.”
His mouth thinned. “Sometimes I swing too far to the wrong end of the pendulum, I know that. I have a lot of my father in me. In this case I know I have.”
“So do the town hall. Open yourself up, show everyone who you are, prove to them you are on their side.” She shook her head, her voice softening. “I signed up for the man who gave that speech at our engagement party about the self-determination of his people. For that man, not this one. For the Kostas who sat in that tree and told me he was going to be a more empathetic king.”
His gaze fell away from hers. He picked up his wine and took a sip, staring into the flickering candlelight.
“What are you afraid they’re going to see?” Her quiet voice brought his head up. “What are you afraid I’m going to see, Kostas? Why did you shut down on me the other night?”
He lifted a shoulder. “It would take a psychologist years to get to the bottom of it.”
She bit her lip. “And that’s it, is it?” she murmured. “Your job is done. Wife secured, wife deconstructed, wife in her appropriate box, the work toward an heir under way? No need to put in any additional effort toward this so-called relationship you wanted?”
The skin across his cheekbones went blade-sharp. “You know it isn’t like that.”
“Tell me how it is, Kostas, because I have no clue.”
“We are good together.” His amber eyes blazed. “We are making a great team. I have made an effort with you. I have told you things I’ve never told another human being. But you need to know when to pick your battles, when to push and when to stop.”
“So you can walk away when it gets hot in a room? ‘Be careful what you wish for, Stella, you might not like what you see.’ What does that even mean?”
“You’re reading too much into it.”
“I think I’m not.” She fixed her gaze on his. “You asked me to trust you at the beginning of all of this and I have. I’ve let you in. Now you need to play by the same rules. You are capable of opening up, you’ve shown that. This marriage hinges on you doing it, because we left the old rules behind us a long time ago. And if you think I can’t take it, this is me, Kostas, saving a country with you while a madman waits in the wings.”
He gave her a long look. “I know you can take it, Stella, but tonight is not the night.” He pushed his chair back, the screech of wood across stone making her wince.
She watched him walk away again, her heart dropping. She could only hope she’d given him a potential solution to think through.
Getting to her feet, she went to bed because clearly he needed to process. Pacing their beautiful exposed-stone bedroom, she couldn’t settle. The distance between her and Kostas seemed like a million miles apart tonight. Her tumultuous relationship, the tenuous situation they were in coated her mouth with fear.
She should have kept to their original agreement, should never have allowed Kostas to convince her to turn this into a real relationship because exactly what she’d feared would happen was happening. She had allowed her emotions to get involved and Kostas was shutting down, as emotionally unavailable a man as her father ever was.
Her insides twisted into a tight, protective ball. The silence, the palpable strain of dinners in the formal dining room of the palace as her parents had forced her and her siblings to suffer through mandated family dinners, had been toxic, thick with her mother’s hurt and anger, her father’s ambivalence. Nik used to come up with every excuse in the book to miss them, the atmosphere had been so tense, inventing a stomachache one day, a sprained ankle the next.
When she couldn’t stand the empty room one minute longer, she picked up the phone and called Alex. They talked about the latest news, the gossip at home, about the jazz concert Alex was putting on in the spring with the Akathinian legend Nina Karvelas for the youth charity she chaired.
Her sister was over the moon about it, clearly in her element. Stella grew quieter and quieter as the conversation went on.
Alex paused. “You okay?”
She brushed away the tears sliding silently down her cheeks. “Alex,” she whispered, “I feel like I’m walking on quicksand.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE BENTLEY SLID through the night, following the king’s town council, the driver taking a complicated series of roads back to the castle as part of the heightened security measures in place given the ongoing threat from the military junta.
Stella rested her head against the seat, heart full to bursting. Her husband had been amazing. With the weight of the world on his shoulders, he had opened himself up to the packed crowd that had filled the auditorium, showing himself as the Kostas she knew, the man who had nurtured infinite dreams, who had enough strength to hold a country together, to build a future for it. The man she had always known he was.
It had not been an easy ride. Frustration, fear and mistrust reigned among Carnelians. They wanted to know they had been heard. Kostas listened to every one of their questions, answered with an insight and compassion that floored her, then took her suggestion and promised to put a handful of representatives on his advisory council so their voices would be heard going forward.
A swell of hope, of rightness, filled her. The café owner had been there. These were her people, too, now. No longer did this country feel foreign and cold to her, devoid of the gilded brightness of her homeland. Instead, she found herself surrounded by a resilience of spirit, a warmth that came from
deep within the people’s hearts, a courage and fortitude that Carnelians would not see themselves bowed again.
“You were incredible,” she told Kostas, breaking the silence. “I think you turned the tide tonight. I think you earned their trust.”
He looked over at her, tawny eyes glimmering in the dim light. “It was your idea. Perhaps General Houlis was right. Perhaps you will become the power behind the man.”
She searched his face for sarcasm, for some clue to his mood, but there was only the same intensity he’d been wearing all night, dark, unreadable.
“It’s you they believe in,” she said quietly. “You they needed to see and tonight they did.”
Another silence. Kostas looked out the window, the hard lines of his perfect bone structure set in shadow. “I need to thank you,” he said finally, looking back at her, “for tonight, for standing by my side. I know it hasn’t been easy. I know I haven’t been easy.”
Her heart was a rock in her throat. “You’re welcome,” she said huskily, past the giant lump. “You aren’t the only one who keeps your promises, Kostas. I do. I always do.”
He rubbed a palm against the stubble on his jaw, eyes contemplative. “You were right,” he said, “about everything that night in my office. I had lost my idealism, my passion, myself.” His gaze held hers. “You wondered how I dealt with being who I am. How I made sense of it all. I made myself into that impenetrable force my father conditioned me to be. That need to succeed, to win, as you pointed out, translated to every part of my life. It was my defense mechanism when my life became too complicated, when who I was became too much. It worked for me, it made sense to me, until,” he said quietly, “the night Athamos died. Then nothing made sense anymore.”
She bit hard into her lip. “No one can be impenetrable. It’s a coping strategy bound to self-destruct.”
He nodded. “I did. I walked away. I shattered. But that only made the guilt worse because I had deserted my country. I had left them to my father’s aggression. My spiritual adviser in Tibet helped me to recover. He taught me my endless drive was destroying me, and it was, clearly. I was determined to learn that lesson, but when I came back, when my father died, the pressure was immense. I shut down. I went on autopilot. The only thing I could see was saving this country, making amends for what I’d done. I didn’t see the drive to help my people was becoming as blind an obsession as all the others had been.”
“The good intention was there.”
“Badly misguided.” His gaze darkened. “I have been treating this country as my penance, my punishment. Because I haven’t truly forgiven myself.”
Her throat felt raw. “And have you now?”
“I’m not sure I ever will.” A blunt, honest answer. “What I have realized is I’ve been given a second chance, a chance I plan to make myself worthy of.”
Her chest tightened, so tight, it was hard to draw a breath. The chance Athamos hadn’t been given. It should have ravaged her to hear the consequences of the night put that way, yet instead her emotion for this man and the journey he had been on superseded it.
Reaching out, she laced her fingers through the hand he had resting on the seat. “I think that’s a very good plan.”
He tightened his fingers around hers. His eyes blazed hot as they met hers. “You are a warrior, Stella, but you are also infinitely wise. You have pushed me when I needed to be pushed and supported me when I refused to listen. I owe you a great deal for that.”
“We’re a team,” she said, eyes stinging with a wet heat. “And don’t forget, we made a promise in the tree that day. We said we were going to make this a better world.”
“Yes,” he said. “So we did.”
* * *
Kostas returned a couple of calls when they arrived back at the Marcariokastro, then sat back in his seat at his desk in his office, his adrenaline levels slowly easing. He thought maybe Stella was right, that he had turned the tide tonight. But it was his wife’s unflinching belief in him that filled his head.
For the first time, he wondered if it was possible to truly forgive himself—for all of it. To leave the past behind. Could he be the flesh-and-blood man he’d never thought himself capable of, love when he’d never known the meaning of the word other than his yaya’s affection for a fleeting few years of his life? Be the man Stella needed him to be?
He had married her, he realized, because he’d wanted her, not just because she had been a valuable political tool. Because he’d always wanted her—had walked away from her because he’d feared he wasn’t good enough, that he would never live up to her ideals of him.
His wife was right—the point of no return had passed, they had committed themselves to this relationship. He had to make it work. Could she be a part of the second chance he’d been given?
He rubbed his hands over his eyes. Even if he was able to forgive himself for his mistakes, could he ever give Stella what she was asking for? Could he open himself up, or did his conditioning go too deep?
He stared at the pile of work on his desk. Urgent things—things he should attend to. Instead, he turned off the light and stood. Headed toward the irresistible force of nature he no longer had the will to resist.
Stella was brushing her hair in front of the antique mirror when he walked in. She was dressed in a slip of ivory silk, arms raised above her head, her slim body, with its just-enough feminine curves, making his blood heat.
He stood there for a moment, watching her, his body vibrating with need. The blood pounding through his veins flowed into his sex, hardening him with painful precision. Only Stella had ever had this instantaneous, undeniable effect on him. As if by having her, he found his humanity lodged somewhere deep inside him.
She watched him as he walked up behind her and slid his arms around her.
“Kostas...”
He raised one arm up and put a finger to her lips as he pulled her into his pulsing body. “No more talking. Not tonight.”
Removing his finger, he set his mouth to the curve of her neck and took a long, deep taste. Her breath hitched, the hand holding the brush dropping to her side. Brushing the tips of his fingers over her nipples, he stroked her into hard peaks. The light imprint he made with his teeth at the pleasure point between her neck and shoulder sent the hairbrush clattering to the dresser.
Watching the pleasure rise over her face in the mirror sent heat to every inch of his skin. He ached to taste, to devour the delicate, rosy red peaks that pushed through the translucent silk, so perfectly made, but that wasn’t the only part of her he wanted to sample.
Dropping his palm to the shadowed intersection of her thighs, he pressed the heel of it against her, rotating with sensual, deliberate movements that made her eyes darken.
“I haven’t tasted you yet,” he murmured in her ear. “I’ll bet you’re sweet, like honey, Stella.”
A red stain moved across her high-boned cheeks. Sliding an arm beneath her knees, he picked her up and carried her to the bed. Depositing her on the rich, dark fabric, he followed her down, pushing up the sexy, transparent fabric she wore to reveal her creamy, golden skin.
Drawing a berry-red nipple into his mouth, he sucked hard, then transferred his attention to the other, until deep, sensual, feminine sounds of pleasure escaped her throat. Sliding down her body, he inhaled her lush, decadent scent, her musky arousal consuming his head.
She watched him as he shackled one of her ankles and bent it back. It left her beautifully, delectably, open to him. The flush in her cheeks deepening, she stayed where she was, motionless, her throat convulsing. Nudging her other thigh outward, he lowered his head and pressed a kiss to the inside of one knee. Continuing the openmouthed kisses, he worked his way up the silky soft skin of her thigh, feeling the tremors that snaked through her.
When he reached the heart of her, she was rigid, hands buried in his hair, urging him on. But instead of giving her what she wanted, he set his mouth to the back of her other knee and worked his way back up again.
Drunk on the scent of her, he lingered over the aroused heart of her. She arched her hips up in a silent beg. Lowering his head, he swept his tongue over her slick crease. A sharp pant escaped her, her fingers tightening in his hair. “More.”
“More what?”
“Stop teasing me. Please.”
He dipped his head and repeated the tantalizing caress until she begged in a soft, broken whisper that turned his insides out. Pressing a palm to her stomach, he consumed her in long laps. Her feminine taste was intoxicating, exotic, sinfully good. It made his erection lengthen, thicken.
When she was too close, too soon, he changed strategy, applying a whisper-soft nudge against the tight bundle of nerves at the heart of her. She dug her nails into the sheets, her body so taut she was the perfect, delectable instrument for him to play.
He lifted his head, eyes on hers. “You taste sweet, Stella, as good as I knew you would. Like sweet, hot honey.”
She closed her eyes. Clutching the back of his head, she returned him to her. His low growl of approval of her greed sent a shudder through her as it reverberated against her flesh. He picked up speed then, licking her with short, hard strokes designed to take her to the edge. When she begged for him to make her come, he slid one of his fingers inside of her and caressed her deeply. Two. Then he closed his mouth around her and sucked hard. She came with a sharp cry that destroyed the remainder of his self-control.
Rolling off the bed, he stripped his clothes from his body. Coming back to her, he pressed a kiss against her lips, letting her taste the musky, sweet smell of herself on him while he settled himself between her thighs. She wrapped her legs around him, her greed inflaming him with the need to possess her.
She was wet and ready, but she was also tight and delicately feminine. Taking his time, he stroked inside of her, her body easing around him as he went.
A sigh left her lips when he filled her to the hilt. “Kostas.”
He cupped her jaw in his fingers, pinning his gaze on hers. “I feel for you, yineka mou. More than I should. I always have.”
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