“Did I not tell you the good news?” he asked his father mildly. Almost kindly. “Pia has made me the happiest man alive. She has agreed to be my wife. I know you—and the kingdom—will extend us your deepest congratulations.”
And the first wedding gift he received was the splintering sound of his father’s decanter against the castle wall. It was such a touch of nostalgia he very nearly came over all emotional as he took his leave.
And it was not until he was on his plane, heading back toward the Southern Palace, that it dawned on Ares that he would have to figure out how best to share these glad tidings with the woman he had yet to ask to be the wife he’d never wanted.
CHAPTER NINE
ONE THING PIA’S childhood had taught her, like it or not, was that a person could get used to anything.
No matter how outrageous or absurd things seemed, and no matter how certain she was that they might, in fact, kill her—they never did.
She had gotten used to her parents’ excesses. The further removed she got from the operatic marriage of Eddie Combe and Alexandrina San Giacomo, the more she started to think of them as eccentrics, somehow unable to behave in any way other than the way they had. In a decade or so, she was sure, she would find herself nostalgic for her parents, their tempestuous relationship, and all those endless, theatrical fights she’d found so difficult to live through while growing up with them.
So, too, was Pia becoming used to her life in her very own prison of a palace.
She felt like Rapunzel, locked away in her little tower, visited by nothing and no one—save the man who came to her, mostly at night, and made her head spin around and around without laying so much as a finger on her.
Pia spent her days writing columns about fussy manners as stand-ins for deeper emotions, reading revolting things about herself in the tabloids—then vowing to stop reading revolting things about herself in the tabloids—and repeating the same thing over and over.
Her nights were punctuated by unpredictable glimpses of Ares.
Would he appear in the doorway as the shadows grew long, not there one moment and then a great, brooding presence in her peripheral vision the next? Would he ask her to join him for a drink with a guarded look in his green eyes and the suggestion of a banked fire in the way he held his big body? Would she agree, then sip at fizzy water as he swirled stronger spirits in a tumbler, the silence thick and layered between them? Or would they go a few rounds of conversation that always seemed so...fraught?
Pia never knew. She only knew that she looked forward to Ares’s appearances with an unseemly amount of anticipation. And missed him when his duties kept him away.
She could admit to herself, when she wasn’t making arch remarks about her prison tower, that she had always been a person better suited to life outside the glare of media attention and tabloid speculation. That night in New York had been the one and only time she’d tried to...be someone else.
Maybe, she told herself dourly in a voice that sounded a bit too much like one of Alexandrina’s mild rebukes, the reason Ares cannot bear to spend more than a few moments in your company, and no matter that you are carrying his children, is because he sees only that terrible lie when he looks at you.
She didn’t like to think about that. But how could she not? Pia was not beautiful. She was nothing like her mother. A man like Ares could have anyone, and had. Why would he want to be tethered for the rest of his life to her?
Pia had thought she’d come to terms with her looks—or lack thereof—a long time ago. It was a natural consequence of being Alexandrina San Giacomo’s only daughter. She had been destined to be a disappointment from the day she was born.
But she hadn’t marinated on that sad fact in a long time. Apparently, being hugely pregnant and mostly alone, locked up in a castle like an embarrassment that needed to be hidden away from the light, got into a girl’s head. And stayed there, hunkering down and breathing fire, whether she liked it or not.
“I will make sure that our branch of the family is better,” she promised her babies every day, shifting around on her favorite chaise as the boys kicked at her. With more and more vigor as the days rolled by and they grew inside her. “I promise.”
Pia was well into her seventh month of pregnancy when she discovered that her family had more branches than she knew.
Because it turned out that she and Matteo had another brother.
A half brother, Dominik, that their mother had given away when she was a teenager, long before she’d become an icon.
A scandalous little fact about her mother—her family—that Pia discovered by reading a tabloid.
“Did you know about this?” Pia asked Matteo in disbelief, reaching him on some business trip somewhere. When she knew he did, as the papers seemed to suggest that the new brother was dating Matteo’s personal assistant—who had always returned Pia’s calls before, yet was failing to do so at present. “How long have you known we have another relative and not told me?”
“It’s not as if you’ve been available, Pia,” Matteo said, and she would have said it was impossible for him to sound any colder than he already did. But he proved her wrong.
“I think by ‘available’ you mean, ‘sitting in a room you might accidentally enter,’” Pia said, with a little more asperity than she normally showed her brother. Or anyone. “When the common definition also includes this device I’m calling you on right now. It’s very handy for the sharing of important news, like brand-new family members appearing full grown. Or even to say hello.”
“If you wish to be kept up-to-date on everyday concerns, you would have to actually make that known,” Matteo retorted. “Instead of running away from your own father’s funeral and hiding out somewhere.”
Pia had never thought of herself as a particular heir to the famous Combe temper. But she was so angry then, and possibly something else that she didn’t know how to name, that the rest of the conversation stayed something of a blur to her.
And when she hung up, all she could think about was her mother.
Vain, beautiful, magnetic, impossible, deliriously compelling Alexandrina, who Pia had always wanted so desperately to please. And who Pia had always failed to please.
And who Pia had always thought had locked her away in that convent out of shame. Spite, perhaps. Or simple disinterest in a daughter who was so much less.
It had never occurred to her that when her mother told her that wrapping her up in cotton wool was a gift, Alexandrina had meant it. Just as it had never crossed Pia’s mind that her mother’s life could ever have been anything less than perfect. Or if not perfect, exactly as she’d wanted it.
Pia hardly knew how to think about a different Alexandrina. A woman who was...a person. A woman who had carried a child, just as Pia was doing now, and had given it away. An act of grace or shame, sorrow or hope, that Pia literally could not imagine living through herself.
Thinking of Alexandrina so young, and faced with such a tough decision...knocked Pia’s world off balance. The Alexandrina she’d known was so smooth and polished. Even when she fought with Eddie. And had certainly not been harboring any deep hurts.
And maybe that was the hardest part of grief. It was always changing. Growing, expanding, shifting to fit whatever little pockets it found.
She had to assume it would always be that way.
And she was still sorting through what it meant to have a brother she didn’t know—who, for all she knew, might want nothing to do with the family that had abandoned him long ago—when she looked up to find her very own Prince Not Quite Charming standing there in the doorway. The way he liked to do.
“How long have you been standing there?” she asked, her hands on her belly, still caught up in those confronting thoughts about her mother.
“What does it matter?” he asked, brooding and dark.
Pia forced a smile she di
dn’t feel. “I’ve resigned myself to the cyber spying. It’s your laptop and I have nothing to hide. Look through it at will if you feel you must. But I don’t understand why it’s necessary for you to lurk about your own palace like this.”
“I do not lurk.” His voice was even darker then, and there was a considering sort of gleam in his green gaze. “It is not my fault you are unobservant when it comes to your surroundings.”
“Well, Ares—” she began, hotly.
But he held up a hand before she could continue down one of their familiar little paths that always led to the same place. Parry, retreat, regroup—and parry again. Back and forth they would go, until it was difficult to tell who struck whom. And who left the most marks.
“Come dine with me,” he said, to her shock.
That did not usually happen. Ares was usually out for dinner, at this or that ball that Pia could follow on social media or in the papers the next day—not that she did such a thing. As that might be interpreted as too much interest in the man.
And maybe it was the novelty that had her biting her own tongue. She shifted, standing up—which took leveraging herself off the arm of the chaise these days—and then crossing to him.
He held out his hand as she approached. And Pia took it.
And it was as if the balance shifted. Or her world, still off its axis, tilted even more sharply. It felt as if the floors beneath her feet suddenly slanted terrifically, leaving her head spinning.
It wasn’t just his touch. Or it wasn’t only that. It was that solemn look, grave and intent, in those green eyes of his. Pia was sure she hadn’t seen him look at her like that since...
But she didn’t dare say it. She didn’t dare think it.
And as Ares took her hand, then led her down the halls of the palace, she was buffeted by the memories of what happened between them that night in New York. When he had taken her hand like this and led her out of that party, and then all these restless things inside her had shifted into heat. Fire.
All that longing and need, greed and revelation.
It all kept washing over her, memory after memory.
He led her to the wing of the palace she knew was set aside for his exclusive use, and into a private dining room. It could have comfortably fit a crowd, but the table was set up to feel intimate, with a view over the ocean as the last of the sunset spread pink and orange over the horizon. Pia couldn’t help thinking about the fact that they had skipped this part in New York. The sit down, have a meal, and learn about each other part.
This felt...remedial and precious, at once.
She found she was afraid to break the silence.
“I’m surprised you’re here,” she made herself say because it was best to rip the bandage off and dive straight in—another one of her father’s favorite sayings. “Your social calendar is always so full.”
“I canceled it.”
“You mean, tonight’s engagement?”
“All of it,” Ares said.
And then did not expand on that statement at all.
The staff swept in, laying out the first course, but Pia hardly noticed it. And the babies must have sensed her agitation—or maybe it was anticipation, or something far more insidious, like longing—and as she rubbed her hand over her belly, she received a volley of kicks.
She must have sighed a little, because when she looked up, Ares was frowning at her. Not from down the length of a banquet table, but from much, much closer. Within reach.
“Is something happening?” he asked.
Aside from the hand he’d offered her tonight, Ares hadn’t touched her since her first night here. And even then, it seemed to her that he had gone out of his way to avoid touching her belly. Yet when she looked at him now, he had the oddest expression on his face.
There was no doubt that he was focusing all his attention on her. On her belly, to be more precise, where her hand rubbed at the tiny little foot inside.
“One of them is kicking,” she told him. “Which means the other one will likely join in any second now and make it a football match.”
Ares looked as astonished as he did uncertain then. “Now? As you sit there?”
“Do you...? Do you want to feel it yourself?” Pia offered, surprised by the vulnerability she heard in her own voice.
And worse, the hope.
Ares rose from his chair, rounding the corner of the table that separated them. Then, without skipping a beat, he slid down before her. And there was a look on his face that she had never seen before. His green eyes were dark.
Pia smiled. “Give me your hands.”
She didn’t wait for him to offer them. She reached over, took his hands in hers, and brought them firmly against her belly.
And, sure enough, the moment his hands slid into place over her bump, two different sets of feet reacted.
Pia watched Ares’s face. The jolt of surprise. The understanding of what he was feeling beneath his palms.
And then, like a dose of pure sunshine, the wonder.
“Does it hurt?” he asked, his voice hushed.
“Sometimes it’s uncomfortable,” she said softly. “Or surprising. Or if one of them stretches out and presses their feet up against my ribs, that aches.”
He shifted, coming down on his knees before her chair, and his hands were suddenly everywhere. Moving all over her bump, as if testing it. Learning its shape.
And the more he ran his hands over her, the more Pia liked it. And in a way that had nothing at all to do with their babies or any kicking. She felt the shift in her like a flame leaping into life, from coals she’d imagined were cold.
It turned out they were only smoldering.
When Ares looked up at her again, there was a gleaming heat in his gaze that she recognized. Oh, how she recognized it. How she felt it.
“Pia,” he said, his voice low. Hot.
And an unmistakable invitation.
Pia couldn’t take this. Not for another moment. Ares was so close, his hands on her, that look of marvel and need on his beautiful face.
How could she do anything but melt? And as she melted and ran hot, that liquid greed bloomed inside her, low in her belly and deep between her legs.
Where only Ares had ever touched her.
His gaze searched hers.
Did she whisper his name? Or did it live in her already? Always?
Whichever it was, it made Pia lose her head completely. She leaned forward, slid her hands to hold his face, and then settled her mouth to his as if she might die then and there if she couldn’t taste him again.
She felt him groan, low and deep, as if it came from the depths of him. She felt his big, athletic body shake slightly, as if from the force of the same wild sensation that swept through her, too.
And then his mouth opened beneath hers and he took control.
And when he kissed her, Pia forgot that she wasn’t beautiful.
When Ares kissed her, Pia felt as if she was made entirely of glory. Light and lovely, sweet and right, strung out on the heaven in his every touch. All that hot perfection.
Ares moved closer, one hand curling around her neck as if to guide her where he wanted her. The other stayed put on her belly.
She felt untethered by her own need, and anchored at the same time.
He made her feel like she could fly. Like this was flying.
Ares kissed her and he kissed her, and Pia didn’t know which one of them was trying harder to move closer. To take the kiss deeper. She was frustrated that he wasn’t closer. She wanted his skin on hers, his hands on her bare flesh.
She wanted.
Ares groaned again, then shifted back. His mouth curved at the sound of protest she made, and he pulled her up from her chair. He set her briefly on her feet, but only briefly, because he moved then to lift her into his arms.
“Ares, you can’t—”
“So help me God, Pia,” Ares growled down at her. “If you’re about to tell me that I cannot lift you when I have very clearly already done so, I will be tempted to drop you over the side of the balcony.”
And she didn’t think he was likely to do that.
But she didn’t finish her sentence, either.
He bore her outside, onto the balcony he had just mentioned, wide and open. He lay her down on a wide, low chaise, and followed her. Then stretched out beside her so they were finally—finally—touching, head to toe.
And that was almost too much.
But Ares took her mouth again, and they both groaned at the heat. The mad, glorious kick of hunger.
He kissed her and he kissed her, and she kissed him back with all the longing and need she’d kept inside her all this time. All that delirious fire that he stoked in her.
Only him.
Ares was dressed for one of his royal engagements, but he pulled back to shrug out of his jacket and his shirt, giving Pia access to those wide shoulders of his and better yet, his mouthwatering chest.
She took instant advantage, moving her hands over him and letting herself exult in his strength. His heat.
Each and every perfect ridge and tempting hollow.
And everything was too hot. Too good.
He found her breasts, so plump and big now. And he made such a deep, male sound of approval as he filled his hands with them that Pia forgot to be self-conscious. He pushed up the loose blouse she wore and freed her breasts from the front clasp of her bra.
Then he bent his head to take a nipple into his mouth.
And the sensation was so intense, so wild and overwhelming. It shot through her, a molten hot line from her nipple to her hungry sex, that Pia felt herself pull too tight—
Then she simply shattered, there and then.
Ares let out a laugh of dark delight that shivered its way through Pia like a new, bright flame. Then he moved to her other nipple, taking it into his mouth in the same greedy, demanding way. She tried to breathe. She tried to fight it off, but he only sucked a little harder—
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