by Tara Pammi
“Uh-huh, uh-huh... A patch of land is what I believe I said, Nik. Not this...acreage.” She burst out laughing.
He glared at her. “You could have asked for diamonds or jewelry or for shares in the newest couture house in Drakon, but no... You had to ask for land and manure and soil. How in blazes would I know how much is too much?”
“Unless you want me to provide produce for palace consumption, this is too much.”
Hands slipped into his pockets, he’d held her gaze with his, and then looked away.
“No one has ever asked me for a gift, Mia. I wanted to give you what you asked for. I want you and our child to have everything under the sun. I want this to work.”
If there had been a moment Mia thought her heart would burst out of her chest, that had been it. Her heart had fluttered like a butterfly.
The afternoon sun kissing the strong angles of his face, his white shirt undone to reveal a tanned throat, wavy hair falling over one brow, Nikandros had never looked more like a fantastic dream come true.
What did he see in her, she kept asking herself, except that she wasn’t falling to her knees at the prospect of being his wife and that she carried his child. How could she even hope to continue to hold his attention, to compete against the reckless, hair-raising lifestyle he’d lived all these years?
Dragging him with her while the staff watched with a range of expressions, she had picked up plant markers and showed him.
He’d frowned at the rectangle. “That’s it?”
His confusion goaded some imp within. “Bigger, Nikandros, is not always better.”
Piercing blue eyes full of the very devil, he had caged her against the barn door, and whispered, “I think you need to be reminded you have it the other way, pethi mou. Bigger can lead to better,” before he bit her lower lip in front of the whole damn staff.
It was something she’d never get used to—staff waiting on her hand and foot, intruding on every hour of her life, she decided. Until the blue-eyed devil stroked her upper lip with a wicked brush of his tongue.
Mia immediately gasped and he nuzzled into her mouth with a deep groan that sent shivers down her spine. Strong hands clasped her cheeks for his deeper pressure. The very land beneath her feet seemed to move as a flood of pleasure filled Mia.
There was no hard destination with this kiss, no urgent heat building them up.
It was a lazy layering of sensation upon sensation over her senses, filling her up with the potent masculinity of the man that made her femininity sing.
Afternoon sun warmed their bodies, the fragrance of herbs teasing her nostrils, and Nikandros’s long, lazy kiss, her veins infused with molten honey.
By the time he’d let her up for air, Mia groaned in protest, leaning against his hard body for support. His wicked mouth buried in the crook of her neck. “There’s cushiony hay in the barn, Mia. I took the full tour before deciding if this was right for you.” Her pulse jumped at the lazy flick of his tongue. “And I will make sure it doesn’t scratch you.”
She felt his slow smile against her skin and almost caved. When Mia had pointed out that they’d both agreed to not muddy their tenuous truce with sex, he’d cursed soundly and bit out that he should be given a bloody award for his patience.
Not that he didn’t twist the rules they’d set in place.
The rogue touched her, fondled her, literally rubbed against her every chance he got. Told her just as often, in wicked, wanton words, what he was going to do to her and with her, and inside her, as soon as she caved.
It was infuriatingly frustrating, for Mia was beginning to agree with him that it was a stupid idea. But sex would only muddle things between them. Sharing that raw intimacy with Nikandros again, where he left nothing for Mia to hide behind, she wasn’t ready for it at all.
Long fingers sank into her hair and tugged her chin up. The laughter was gone from his eyes, replaced by something else. His mouth became that hard curve that she didn’t like. “I’ll be gone for two weeks,” he said into the stretched silence finally.
Faint alarm tripped through her. “Where are you going?”
“I have to meet investors. I’m going to turn Drakon into the world’s luxury destination.” A fire blazed in his blue eyes. “I’m going to make everyone’s head turn.” He faintly shook with the challenge of it all.
“You already turn heads, Nikandros,” she admitted grudgingly. “Too many, if you ask me.”
Just the number of “family friends” who had come to visit him, with their daughters in tow, was enough to make Mia’s gut knot.
Women would always swarm to him, she’d realized one evening, when she’d walked into his office and found him surrounded by two young women, who Eleni had told her with obvious relish were the daughters of a cabinet minister and of a powerful Drakonite family.
Mia had quietly backed away from the door, but not before Nikandros had seen her leave. She wanted their relationship kept secret for a while, but it had taken every ounce of willpower she’d had to not barge in there and pronounce that the daredevil was taken.
By her.
She saw the memory of it darken his eyes now. “You’re the one who wants to hide this.”
Wrapping her fingers around his wrists, she held her ground, even as the intensity of his gaze probed her as if he wanted to see into the heart of her. His hesitation when he was used to saying whatever came to him, made her frown.
His thumb traced the line of her jaw. It wasn’t a soft stroke, a lover’s touch. It felt like he wanted to leave his brand on her. “I do not like leaving you here.”
The significance of that softly uttered statement fell like a minefield in the pleasant silence. Was it her he didn’t trust? Or someone else?
“I gave you my word, Nikandros,” she said, finally understanding the shadows in his eyes. Had she thought him a relatively simple man? The joke was on her.
He nodded but still didn’t let go. “Andreas will—”
“The Crown Prince is the least of my worries, Nikandros. If I can take on Eleni and stay standing, believe me, Andreas is nothing.”
Laughter burst out of him, traveling through her like a pure bolt of energy. “You’re not scared of her, are you?”
“She has signed me up for etiquette lessons, history of Drakon and for fittings for a new wardrobe. If I didn’t know she means well, I’d hate her.
“Apparently, I don’t possess a single quality a future princess should.”
“You know what you should do if you want her to like you.”
She sighed. The appearance of those women in Nik’s office had made Mia dwell on more than one thing. “I’m nothing like the women your family would have expected you to marry. I don’t possess the sophistication or the connections to recommend myself, Nikandros.
“If you resent my lack of—”
“My family, if not the world, never even expected me to marry, Mia. You know I don’t give a damn about the traditions that shackle me. And if you want to get Eleni off your back, I have a secret.”
“What?” she asked eagerly, desperate for anything.
“Make me happy.”
“And what can I do that will make the Daredevil Prince of Drakon happy?” she taunted him, every inch of her fizzing with delight.
He brushed another furious kiss on her mouth and walked away without answering her question.
But she knew what he wanted and she was beginning to hate herself for not falling into this relationship headlong. For not being impulsive enough or daring enough for the Daredevil Prince.
Touching her fingers to her trembling lips, Mia stared at his retreating form.
With each passing day, she felt more and more like that teenage Mia who had adored him from afar.
He was committed to her, showed every indication of wanting their relationship to work. It was as if a crazy daydream had suddenly burst into furious life and Mia was terrified of taking part in it.
* * *
When Mia
returned to their suite after her morning run—it had been thirteen days since Nikandros had left and she’d barely exchanged two words with him on the phone—it was as if she’d stepped into a hot zone. Papers were strewn about on every surface of the sitting lounge as if someone had thrown them around in a fit of anger.
Two aides stood mute outside the bedroom door, pretending to death as if they couldn’t hear the two voices—one raising hell and the other implacably, immovably soft—arguing inside.
Wiping the sweat pouring down her neck, she signaled for them to leave. Where was Eleni when her interference was desperately needed? Mia hated confrontations, but there was nothing to do but barge into that room. It almost felt like she’d been waiting for this to occur since she’d arrived.
She’d taken barely two steps when Andreas walked out into the lounge, stared at her and quietly walked out.
Mia walked into the bedroom and found Nikandros standing at the French doors looking out into the courtyard behind. Dressed in a white shirt and black trousers, he was a study in masculine perfection. The tension that seemed to radiate from him stilled Mia.
He turned as if sensing her presence.
The inherent masculinity of him took her breath away.
His tie was loosened and the first few buttons on his shirt undone. Sleeves pushed back revealed dark hair on skin she knew would somehow be taut and yet satiny.
Soft tingles started in so many points in her body, making her aware of his thorough perusal of her. Heat spreading up her neck, she lifted her eyes.
Mia caught the shadow of some dark emotions before he chased it away with one of his trademark smiles. “You have been well?” he asked politely.
The distance between them suddenly felt like it could span the ocean. Mia wanted to go to him desperately, wanted to pull his head down and touch her mouth to his, dissipate the dark cloud of emotion surrounding him, but there was such a forbidding air about him that she held the impulse back.
“I’m doing fine,” she replied. The man who’d kissed her so lazily, the man who’d teased and taunted her for weeks was nowhere in sight.
“When did you return?”
“Around four in the morning.” Deep grooves settled on either side of his mouth.
“Why didn’t you come to bed?”
A gleam of desire made his eyes glitter, rendering them sharp in the dark planes of his face. Only then did she realize how possessive she sounded.
Another shrug. “I was very...eager to discuss some things with the Crown Prince.”
Every time he said Crown Prince in that derisive tone, Mia knew something was wrong between them. “You have been talking all these hours?”
“We talked for a while. Andreas freaked out. I yelled and walked out. Just as I was about to leave—” his mouth became a hard line “—I remembered that I have a woman in here pregnant with my child.” The exaggerated title stung Mia like a scrape of skin. “By the time I came back, you’d left for your run. Then Andreas found me here again. Anything else you want me to account for?”
“No,” she threw back, lifting her chin. But for all her outward stand, anxiety twisted in her gut.
It was only now, when he was so completely shuttered away from her that she realized how much she missed his raw honesty. He was like an opaque glass standing in front of her, redirecting everything back at her.
An empty echo. She’d been in that same place too many times, found it impossible to break through to Brian and before that, her dad. And she was damned if she let Nikandros put distance between them now.
The blue of his eyes flared when she came to a stop, their bodies not quite touching. “Your trip, did it not go well?”
He wrapped his hand around his nape and leaned back against the wall. With the sleeves pushed back, the dial of his watch caught flickering rays of sun. The sight of those sinewed forearms made her tummy dip and roll. “It went better than expected.”
“Nikandros, what—”
He pushed off from the wall, an edginess to his movements. “I need to get out of here, at least for a while,” he said, cutting her off. Dismissing her.
“Here, where?”
“The palace. Andreas. Everything remotely connected to this...place.”
Her heart sank. She didn’t want him to leave again. But more than that, she didn’t want him to shut her out just when they were taking tentative steps toward each other. And if something was happening between him and Andreas, if something was upsetting him, she wanted to understand and help. The depth of her need to comfort him shook her. “When will you return?”
“I don’t know.”
She reached for the ends of his undone tie and stalled him when he’d have walked by her.
Blue-black hair glinting, his body grazing her side, he stilled. That arrogant head bent toward her shoulder. The scent of him, male skin and sweat, stroked her in tantalizing waves and her heart began to beat faster. The strength and breadth of his powerful body—Mia wanted to nuzzle into him and stay there forever.
And in his current mood, he’d oblige her. He held her hips in a grip that screamed possession and sexual need, but there was no seduction or laughter in it. None of that raw honesty that colored every word and movement of his.
When she tried to nudge out of his hold, he tightened his grip, a raspy growl emanating from his throat. An answering thrum vibrated within Mia. He was faintly shaking with anger or whatever held him in thrall. And she wasn’t going to let him walk away if her life depended on it.
“Nikandros, where are you going and when will you return?” she said loudly in the sizzling silence, enunciating each word as if he were a child.
His teeth bared against the bare skin of her upper arm, scraped at her skin. Mia jerked, a bolt of sensation arrowing down to the place between her thighs. Awareness thickened around them.
“I don’t know where I’m going and I don’t know when I will return,” he replied in that same tone.
“That’s not good enough,” she said, holding the silk tight.
He lifted his brow in a sardonic tilt. “For a woman who doesn’t want to be tied to me in any way, you do a very good pretense of a clingy girlfriend or even a wife, pethi mou.” The blue rings of his eyes glittered close, a hardness tightening his mouth. “I hate people who go in half measures. How you ever won a game of soccer when all you do is stand on the sidelines is a wonder to me.”
Mia blinked, his words piercing deep and sharp. No retort came because he was right. It was only on the soccer field that she’d never held back, where she’d felt fearless and alive.
Only to soccer that she’d ever completely given herself.
He looked just like Brian had done when she’d asked for a divorce that night. Even as fear flew in her veins, Mia swallowed that memory back. The last thing she wanted was to throw Brian’s name into the mix right now.
“I don’t care what you think I’m acting like, but you can’t leave this room until you calm down. I won’t let you go off half-cocked on some crazy mountainous drive or jump from the sky, just because you want to get control over the situation.”
“No?”
“No.”
“You think that’s what I usually do? Throw myself at the mercy of nature because I’m mad at something?” A small smile flitted across his mouth. “I’d have definitely ended up with broken limbs in some crevice.”
“It’s not funny,” she said, jerking the tie in her hands. “I still won’t let you go.”
He tucked one damp lock of hair away from her forehead, his whisper a caress against the rim of her ear. “There’s a sure way of calming me down.” Air depleted from the vicinity, his hard body grazing her hip like a sinuous caress. His hand slipped under her thin T-shirt and found the ridge of her spine. Up and down, he traced a finger, sneaking in under her sports bra and teasing the rim of her low-slung shorts. “I want hard, furious sex, Mia. I want to be inside you.”
Mia thought she’d melt from within. His
erection nudged at the curve of her hip. Need filled her so fast and so thickly that she stood like that.
“Sex is not communication,” she finally said.
Devilish blue eyes glimmered. “Who said anything about communication?”
“If you want to get out of here—” neither mind-blowing sex nor letting Nikandros walk away from her was an option “—fine. Give me ten minutes and I’ll be ready.”
Something glittered in his eyes but he didn’t push her. “And where shall we go while we wait for Andreas to decide?”
“I’ve been here close to four weeks and you’ve shown me nothing of Drakon. I want to go on a date,” she said, saying the first thing that came to her mind.
“A date?” he asked, disbelief pinching his brows.
“Why do you look so shocked?”
“It’s the first time you’ve willingly mentioned, much less suggested a course of action about us.”
“Maybe I’m getting used to this...thing between us. That you and I, can, against all odds, work.”
He laughed. The flash of his even white teeth, the way it banished the shadows from his eyes, her breath left her in a gush of relief. “You’re so good for my ego, pethi mou.”
Rolling her eyes at his sarcasm, Mia tried to sift through her own emotions. He was right. Again, the blasted man. But this felt good. Asserting this control over her and Nik and the course of their life felt exhilarating.
Wanting to know and comfort him came more naturally than anything had in a long time. “Our relationship is all jumbled up with twisted history, like you said. And to complicate it, we somehow ended up starting with sex and—” a lascivious grin curved his mouth at that and Mia batted his finger away from her neck “—and now we’re going to have a child. And I say, let’s do one thing conventionally.
“Take me out today. Spend the rest of it with me.”
He gave her an assessing look. “You’re serious?”
“I’ve never been more serious about anything in my life.”