His chest rumbled with his quiet laughter while his fingers dipped into her hair. Prickling warmth spread down from that touch.
“I hate to diminish the impression you have of my power and influence,” he added, and she snorted, which in turn made him grin, “but Drakonite law prevents me from divorcing you for at least eighteen months.”
She didn’t even panic anymore. “So I have eighteen months to bring you to heel then?” She traced the flat of his brow with the tip of her finger. “I’d better start taking inventory of the weapons I can use against you.”
“You’ve become bolder, pethi mou.” His fingers dug into her flesh, feral hunger blazing in his eyes. “I didn’t think it possible.”
Her skin prickled with answering need. How could she forget that the harsher his control, the deeper his need for her?
“You and I will celebrate a jubilee even as the only King and Queen of Drakon together in two hundred years because I intend to prove that Theos was wrong.”
“You said he didn’t control you anymore. And what do you mean jubilee?”
“For two hundred years, there hasn’t been a jubilee celebration. And no, Theos does not control me,” he said cryptically. She hated the harshness that came into his eyes every time they talked of his father. The patrician features tightened, the easy humor fell. “Giving you up, giving up on this marriage will mean he wins, agapita. And I could not let Theos win. I could not let him be right...”
“Revenge against your dead father is no more a better foundation for marriage than an inexplicable obsession is. It will never work.”
“It will work because I refuse to give in.
“If you truly are dedicated to making a difference in the world, if you really care so much about the work you did at that legal aid agency, you could do it from here.
“You could have the prestige and power of the King’s Palace behind you. Or lead the pampered life of a queen.
“Find your place in my world, Ariana. I do not care what it is. But stop running away from me and from yourself.”
Ariana stared, tremors running through her.
Every time she thought she finally understood him, he went and did something like this. And yet, she was beginning to understand him, beginning to see how his mind worked.
Andreas didn’t know how to handle guilt any more than he knew how to handle the little something he had felt for her back then. So this opening to her. Not because he thought it was important to her or because her happiness mattered to him.
Yet, here was the perfect way to know whether they could ever work, the chance to pit the Ariana she was now against the future King’s personality. The chance to see if that connection that had brought them together years ago could mean anything.
The chance, as he said, to prove the great King Theos wrong when he had called her a curse upon his heir’s life.
“You’re on, Your Highness,” she whispered.
Hands crawling up his chest, rising to her toes, she touched her mouth to his.
For a few seconds, he was stiff, shock tensing his entire body against her. But Ari didn’t care. She needed a taste of him, she needed courage to see this thing between them through.
His mouth was hard and unyielding but this time, she knew. She knew what simmered beneath that stoic, unaffected exterior. She knew the raw passion that dwelled under the academic’s soul.
Hands perched on his shoulders, she licked the seam of those sculpted lips. When he growled, when he roused out of that momentary freeze, she swiped her tongue inside his mouth. Nibbled at his lower lip.
Heat poured through her in liquid rivulets, pooling in her lower belly.
And just when his hands descended to her hips, just as he slammed her chest against his, Ari somehow managed to slip away from his hold.
Breaths harsh, dark pupils wide, he scowled at her. “Come back here, Ari.” The tension that poured out of his lean frame was a balm to her soul.
Holding his gaze, she made a show of wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. As if it was that simple to erase the taste and feel of him from her being. “No.”
“No?”
She smiled, feeling a freedom, a joy she hadn’t known in years. “That was just a small test for myself, Your Highness.”
A vein fluttered at his temple. “A test?”
She nodded, loving his frustration in that moment. “A test to see if I still had it in me to bring you to your knees.”
“And?”
Andreas Drakos reduced to blank questions...was there a sweeter victory? “Are you ready to fall to your knees, Your Highness?”
He said nothing. And yet the gleam in his eyes told her all she needed to know.
She still had it in her and this time, she was going to use it to design the life she wanted.
CHAPTER SEVEN
ARIANA SPENT THE first two weeks as Andreas’s wife being swept up in the storm that was the King’s Palace and the Crown Prince’s life.
True to Andreas’s warning, there had been no time to center herself before the news had been leaked that the Crown Prince had married in secret.
Had, against every popular opinion and to the shock of the populace of Drakon, fallen irrevocably in love.
A strategic leak by his own PR team, she’d learned later. A way to massage the truth.
All of Andreas’s overseas trips now had a perfect explanation. Having accidentally met Ariana, a young beautiful lawyer, General Theseus Sakis’s daughter, in the States, he had fallen violently in love with her and, due to some obscure legal obligations, had to marry immediately.
It was as if Drakon and its people had been hungry for some explanation like this about their Prince. The tale of their stoic Prince falling in love and marrying in secret seemed to fill a much-needed hole in the country’s perception of him. Overnight, Andreas turned into a romantic figure, vulnerable as any of them.
The moment the formal press statement from him had hit the news cycle, Ariana was lost.
Invitations to balls, charity galas and state dinners began pouring in. Dress fittings, appearances by Andreas’s side, private dinners with powerful members of the cabinet and Crown Council, Ariana held her own through it all.
Even as she realized that she was mostly ornamental on Andreas’s arm, even as most of the times, the men—powerful traditionalists—talked as if she couldn’t understand a word of import, even as she realized that the Queen’s role was mostly titular, Ariana behaved with the perfect decorum.
And the shift in the perception about him, the picture his PR team painted of the Crown Prince’s marriage enabled Andreas to make his own headway in the political zone.
Tax reforms that had been introduced temporarily passed through the cabinet. A host of new members were appointed to the Crown Council—most of them direct appointees handpicked by Andreas and Nikandros—small business owners, professors from universities, had been met with resistance but finally passed.
That he was serious about the changes he had spouted gave Ariana much to think about. She saw the power that rested in Andreas’s hands, the duty of serving his country that he thought was inviolable. Saw the magic of it in Nikandros’s round-the-clock efforts to make Drakon’s economy sustainable, the pride and tears in Eleni’s eyes as Andreas, against Gabriel’s threats to kidnap her away from Drakon if she accepted, appointed her the executive chairwoman for the House of Drakos charities that involved millions of dollars.
More than once, she’d caught surprise, humor, even curiosity in Andreas’s eyes as she acted the perfect hostess, the adoring spouse to the serious Prince. Almost as if he didn’t believe the meek image she’d presented to the world.
Thanks to Eleni, she’d chosen a stylist that understood her personal style. Petra ran her life as smoothly as she did Andreas’s and for now, Ariana relented control. Her first few public appearances with Andreas would define her future as the Queen and she toed the line. She might be a lawyer but she didn’t know the intricacies of a political system like Drakon’s so she listened and learned.
No one could find fault with her, not even the staunchest royal critics. Thanks to Eleni’s constant advice and unrelenting support—once she’d learned that Ariana meant to stay—she’d sailed through those first two weeks. Even King Theos would have been surprised.
Everything went great except one thing.
All the time she’d spent with Andreas could be counted down to minutes. Their exchanges limited to discussing the weather, which had turned dismally cold.
Nothing personal touched their words. At the end of the day, they retired to separate chambers, even as tension seeped through the very air between them.
Ariana saw his desperate need for her in his restrained touches, in the hot, hungry look he leveled her way even in the midst of a crowd. Felt the answering shudder of her own body.
He wanted her, and yet he’d barely said two words to her since that evening. Barely shared the pressures of his life, the constant stress that he must be under. What he wanted, again, was relief and she was damned if she was going to be it. Damned if she was going to let him slot her again.
It suited her just fine, she told herself. She didn’t need him to hold her hand through her new life. She definitely didn’t feel deserted when he left on a trip to Asia without so much as a goodbye.