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He had never liked her to dress provocatively. Had never liked her easy attitude with other men, that almost flirty style of talking that was her nature. They had had more than one row on the subject of her dresses, her hair, her shoes, her style, her attitude and even her body.
One of the blondes she had genuinely liked earlier—Stella of the big boobs and even bigger hips—tapped his arm. A smile curving his thin lips, he sliced his gaze away in clear, decisive dismissal.
Tears scratched up Tina’s throat and she hurriedly looked away before someone could see her mortification.
Nine months ago, she’d have slapped the woman’s face—she cringed at the memory of doing that to her sister-in-law Sophia, having been induced into a jealous, insecure rage. She’d have screamed and made a spectacle of herself, she’d have let her temper get the better of her and proved to everyone and Kairos how crazy she was about him.
Nine months ago, she’d have let the hot emotions spiraling through her dictate her every word, every move.
Nine months ago, she’d been under the stupid delusion that Kairos had married her because he wanted her, because he felt something for her, even if he didn’t put it in words.
But no, he had married her as part of an alliance with her brother Leandro. Even after learning that bitter truth, she could have given her marriage a try.
But Kairos didn’t possess a heart. Didn’t know what to do with one given into his keeping.
She had humiliated herself, she had prostrated her every thought, every feeling at his feet. And it hadn’t been enough.
She hadn’t been enough.
* * *
“So you’re truly over with him...that glowering husband of yours.”
“Si,” Tina said automatically. And then wished she hadn’t.
When the party began winding down, she had slipped below deck with the excuse of visiting the ladies’ room and hidden herself away in the lovely gray-and-blue bedroom, her nerves frayed to the hilt at the constant awareness of Kairos.
It was tiring to play the stoic, unaffected party girl. To stuff away all the longing and hurt and anger into a corner of her heart.
But Nikolai had followed her downstairs.
Although over the last couple of months she’d realized that Nikolai was harmless, he was drunk now. Her brother Luca had taught her long ago never to trust a drunken man.
“A taxi for you,” she said to Nikolai, pulling her cell phone out of her clutch.
From the foot of the bed where he made an adorably pretty picture, Nikolai stretched his leg and rubbed his leather boot against her bare calf. “Or we could spend the night here, Tina, mi amore. Now that things are truly over between you and the Greek thug—”
Using the tip of her stiletto, Tina poked his calf until he retreated with a very unmasculine squeal.
Her head was pounding. She’d barely drunk any water. Her body and mind were engaged in a boxing match over Kairos. The last thing she needed was Nikolai hitting on her.
“Kairos and I are not divorced. Also, I’m not interested in a relationship,” she added for good measure.
“I noticed him tonight, cara mia. He spared you not a single glance.” A claw against her heart. “As if you were total strangers.” A bruise over her chest. “He seemed pretty interested in that whore Stella.” Bile in her throat.
Just like a man to use the woman and then call her crude names. Oh, why had she come tonight? “Per favore, Nik, don’t call her that.”
“You called Claudia Vanderbilt much worse for marrying a sixty-year-old man.”
Tina cringed, shame and regret washing over her like a cold wave.
She had.
She’d been privileged and pampered and had behaved so badly. She should keep Nikolai in her life. If nothing, he’d keep reminding her what a bitch she’d once been.
While Valentina held up her phone and walked around the bedroom looking for a signal—she’d spend the night here if it meant avoiding seeing Kairos leave with one of the women, not that he’d need to pay for the pleasure—Nikolai had moved closer.
Valentina froze when his hands landed on her hips. She arrested his questing hands. “Please, Nikolai. I would like to keep the single friend I have.”
“You have really changed, Tina. Transformed from a poisonous viper to a—” his alcoholic fumes invaded her nostrils while he tilted his head, seemingly in deep thought “—an innocent lamb? A lovely gazelle?”
Christo, the man was deeply drunk if he was calling her innocent.
Before Tina could shove Nikolai’s hands away—she really didn’t want to plant her knee in his groin like Luca had taught her—his hands were gone. Whether he skidded due to his drunken state or was pushed, Tina would never know. He landed with a soft thump against the bed, slid down it and let out a pathetic moan.
Tina whirled around, her breath hitching.
CHAPTER TWO (#ua5e8e522-8bb1-5298-b013-2c845cee8765)
KAIROS STOOD AGAINST the back door, not a single hair out of place.
There was that stillness around him again, a stillness that seemed to contain passion and violence and emotion.
And yet nothing.
Emotions surged through her, like a wave cresting. But just like a wave broken by the strongest dam, Kairos had come pretty close to breaking her.
Ignoring the fact that her dress climbed up her thighs and she was probably flashing her thong at the inebriated Nikolai, she went to her knees next to him, sliding her fingers through his gelled hair.
Nikolai’s hot, alcohol-laden breath fluttered over the expanse of her chest. But it was the silver gaze drilling holes into her back that pebbled goose bumps over her skin.
A sound like a swallowed curse emanated from behind her. She ignored it, just as she tried to ignore her pounding heart.
“What are you doing?”
It had been nine months since she’d seen him. Nine months since he’d spoken to her. The hope that he would come after her had died after the first month. She swallowed to keep her voice steady. “Checking for a bump.”
“Why?”
She snorted. “Because he’s my friend and I care what happens to him.”
Tina stared down at Nikolai’s picture-pretty face and sighed. He was her friend.
He had gotten her the entry-level job in a fashion agency when she had returned to Milan from Paris, her tail tucked between her legs and ready to admit defeat, and found her a place with four other girls in a tiny one-bedroom hovel.
Not out of the generosity of his heart, but because he’d wanted to see her humiliated, wanted to enjoy how she’d come down in the world. Maybe even to get into her pants.
Whatever his motivations, Nikolai was the only one who’d helped her out, the only one who hadn’t laughed at her pathetic attempts.
Unlike the man behind her, whose mocking laugh even now pinged over her nerves. “You have no friends. At least not true ones. Shallow women flock to you for approval of their clothes and shoes. Men flock to you because they...”
Truth—every word was truth. Humiliating, wretched truth.
But it hurt. Like something heavy was pressing down on her chest. “Don’t hold back now, Kairos,” she said, smarting at the stinging behind her eyes.
“Because they assume that you’ll be wild and fiery in bed. That you will bring all that passion and lack of self-control and that volatility to sex. Once your friend here gets what he wants, he will be through with you.”
If she’d had any doubt what he thought of her, he’d just decimated it.
She had fallen in love with a man who thought she was good for sex and nothing else.
A need to claw back pounded through her. “I’m shallow and vapid, si, but what you see is what you get. I don’t make false promises, Kairos.”
The silence reverberated with his shock. “I’ve never made a promise to you that I didn’t keep. I promised your brother to keep you in style when I agreed to marry you and I did. I promised you on the night of our engagement that I would show you pleasure unlike anything you’ve ever known and I believe I kept that promise.”
I never said I loved you.
His unsaid statement hung in the air.
No...he hadn’t said it. Not once.
It had all been her.
Stupid, naive Valentina building castles of love around this hard man.
She found no bump on Nikolai’s thick skull and sighed with relief. His head lolling onto her chest, he fell asleep with an undignified snore. She’d have gagged at the sweat from Nikolai’s flushed head trickling down her meager cleavage if all her reactions weren’t attuned to the man behind her.
The small hairs on her neck stood up before Kairos spoke. “Leave him alone.”
Ignoring him, she rose to her feet, and planted her hands under Nikolai’s arms.
“Move, Valentina.”
Before she could blink, Kairos hefted Nikolai up onto his shoulders and raised a brow at her.
He had carried her like that once, the hard muscles of his shoulders digging into her belly, his big hands wrapped around her upper thighs, after she had jumped into the pool at a business retreat in front of his colleagues and their wives because he’d ignored her all weekend.
He’d stripped her and thrown her into the cold shower, rage simmering in his eyes. And when he’d extracted her from the shower and rubbed her down, all that rage had converted into passion.
She’d been self-destructive just to get a rise out of him.
She looked away from the memory of that night in his eyes.
Masculine arrogance filled his eyes. “Now that the poor fool has served his purpose, shall I throw him overboard?”
“His purpose?”
“You used him to make me jealous—laughing at his jokes, dancing with him, touching him, to rile my temper. It is done, so you don’t need him anymore.”
“I told you, Nik is my friend.” She jerked her gaze to his face and flushed. “And I did nothing tonight with you on my mind. My world doesn’t revolve around you, Kairos. Not anymore.” She wouldn’t ask whether his temper was riled.
She wouldn’t.
With a shrug, he dumped Nikolai on the bed like a sack of potatoes.
Nik’s soft snores punctured the silence. If she weren’t so caught up in the confusing cascade of emotions Kairos evoked, the whole thing would have been hilarious.
But nothing could cut through her awareness of six feet four inches of pure muscle and utter masculinity. She pressed her fingers to her temple. “Please leave now.”
“Enough, Valentina. You’ve got my attention now. Tell me, did you really sign up with the escort service or was that just a dramatic touch to push me over the edge?”
“Are you asking me if I’ve been prostituting myself all these months?” She was proud of how steady she sounded while her heart thundered away in her chest.
“I thought perhaps no first. But knowing you and your vicious tendencies, who knows how far you went to shock me, to teach me a lesson, to bring me to heel?”
She walked to the door and held it for Kairos. “Get out.”
He leaned against the foot of the bed, dwarfing the room with his presence. “You’re not staying here with him.”
She folded her hands and tilted her head. The sheer breadth of his shoulders sucked the air from the room. “I’ve been doing what and who I want since the day I left you nine months ago, since I realized what a joke our marriage is. So it’s a little late to play the possessive husband.”
Hadn’t she promised herself that she’d never stoop to provoking him like that again?
She cringed, closed her eyes at the dirty, inflammatory insinuation in her own words.
But she saw the imperceptible lick of fire in his gaze, the tiny flinch of that cruel upper lip. At one time, the little fracture in his control would have been a minor victory to her.
Not anymore.
“It is a good thing then, is it not, Valentina—” the way he said her name sent a curl of longing through her “—that I did not believe all your passionate avowals of love, ne?”
Something vibrated in the smooth calmness of his tone. The presence of that anger was a physical slap. Her eyes wide, she stared as he continued, his mouth taking on a cruel tilt.
“No more pathetic displays of your jealousy. No grand declarations of love. No snarling at and slapping every woman I’m friends with. Now we both can work with each other on the same footing.”
Dios, she’d always been a melodramatic fool. But Kairos, his inability to feel anything, his unwillingness to share a thought, an emotion...it had turned her into much worse. “Non, Kairos. No more of that,” she agreed tiredly.
She didn’t even have cash for a taxi, but if she’d learnt anything in the last nine months of this flailing about she’d been doing in the name of independence, it was that she could survive.
She could survive without designer clothes and shoes, she could survive without the adulation she’d taken as her due as the fashionista that Milan looked up to, she could survive without the Conti villa and the cars and the expensive lifestyle.
She picked up her clutch from the bed, her phone from the floor. “If you won’t leave, I will.”
He blocked the door with his shoulders. “Not dressed like a cheap hooker, strutting for business at dawn, you’re not.”
“I don’t want—”
“I will throw you over my shoulder and lock you up in the stateroom.”
