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“Jesus, did you know what your attention, your reluctant interest, meant to me? You...who didn’t show interest in princesses, and models and CEOs.
“You looked at me. Me—messed-up, frightened, guilty Ariana.
“You married me knowing who and what I was. So, if we have to call out someone for the...twisted mess that was our marriage, it’s you.”
“Was that the justification when you let me think you had died in a horrible drowning accident,” he bit out and she flinched. “Maybe I will let you go, Ariana. Maybe one of these days I will find that little bit of decency within myself again. Maybe you can go back to being Anna Harris and the savior of those women in your little town again.”
And in those statements of his, Ariana saw his shredded control for what it was. Saw his loathing that she was still an obsession with him. He despised himself, and her, because he couldn’t give her up.
Any hopes she had of convincing him perished in that moment. After all, she did know him better than anyone.
“So this is about revenge?”
“Call it whatever the hell you want to.” His gaze tracked her face and her torn clothes. He fisted his hand so tight by his side that the knuckles were white.
For the first time that day, Ariana realized how tremendous his self-control was.
“You need food and rest. Do not force me to manhandle you into that, too. We both know whether it will be pleasure or punishment.”
Ariana fell onto the bed with a soft thud, the recrimination in his eyes burning through her like acid. Her skin still prickling, for the first time since she’d known him, she was grateful for his iron-clad self-control.
Because, even after all these years, she had none when it came to resisting the Crown Prince of Drakon.
CHAPTER THREE (#u80ad7a60-3bcf-588b-b9cb-5cecd8108b01)
“MRS. DRAKOS? YOUR HIGHNESS?”
For the second time in a few hours, Ariana jerked upright so suddenly that her neck gave a painful twinge. She looked at the stewardess patiently waiting for her to wake up.
So the cat was out of the bag.
Instead of the panic she braced herself for, all she felt was a...quiet resignation. Not the give-up-and-become-his-wife kind. But the guilty-as-hell kind.
Whatever he had done to her, however much she had despised him at the end of their marriage, it was clear that she had miscalculated the effect of her supposed death on Andreas. On hearing of his swift engagement to a real estate mogul’s sister, her own guilt had been alleviated.
She didn’t belong in the Crown Prince’s world and that he’d replaced her so fast had been proof enough.
Of course, that miscalculation had been aided by his father.
If Andreas had grieved her loss, who knew how Theos had twisted that to his advantage?
King Theos, she had realized within a week of meeting her guardian as her father-in-law, had possessed an unhealthy hold on his heir. He’d seen her as nothing but a weakness to eliminate from his son’s life.
What had been painful was from the moment he had presented her to King Theos, even Andreas had begun to see her as that—a weakness to be hidden away.
The stewardess’s eyes traveled over Ari’s hair, which could rival the Amazon forest for its wildness right now, to the torn dress she had fallen asleep in.
Ari cringed. She stood up from the bed, and pushed the dress off her shoulders and hips.
Ill-concealed curiosity scampered across the woman’s face. “I will take care of the dress, Your Highness. Have it mended. I’m sure you’d want to—”
“No, that’s not necessary,” Ari replied, pulling the slip off her shoulders. Her strapless bra stuck to the underside of her breasts uncomfortably, thanks to her habit of smothering herself under the covers. She stepped out of the slip seconds before the woman took it, almost dislodging Ari off her feet.
“Have it burned,” a soft voice commanded from the entrance.
The need to cover herself was instinctive, self-preservation at its primal. Shaking, Ariana covered her midriff with her arms.
The stewardess had that look again, switching between her and Andreas, as if she could figure out the secret as to how this average-looking, falling-apart-at-the-seams waif had snared the most powerful, gorgeous man in Drakon.
It was a question the whole world was going to ask this time, not just King Theos, if Andreas had his way.
His gaze dipped past Ari’s face this time—as if he’d given himself permission to look, to linger—moved to the pulse beating wildly at her neck, betraying the sudden tension that suffused her every cell, to the curves of her breasts rising and falling. A languorous ache settled low in her belly, her nipples hard against the flimsy bra.
“Checking up on me already?” Fear of how just one look from him turned her on destroyed the need for discretion in front of a member of the staff. “There’s no way to escape, unless you’re willing to provide me with a parachute. You can see me plummet to death, at least.”
He closed his eyes, his chest barely lifted and fell with his exhale, and then leveled that black gaze at her again. Military precision to every single breath. “I came in to see if you were awake. Petra needs your prescription for your inhaler. I will not have you fainting everywhere.”
“Petra?”
“Yes, my secretary.” He looked down at his phone, frowned, typed a message and looked up again.
Tall, blonde, with a voluptuous body, armed with a master’s from a renowned university in Drakon, and hailing from a highly connected Drakonite family. Andreas’s oldest friend and shadow. Theos’s spy. If Ariana could give a form to all her self-doubts and insecurities back then, it would be Petra Cozakis. “I know Petra runs your life. And for the last time, it was the stress of the last week and that dress that did it today.
“Do not treat me as if I am still an imbecile, Andreas.”
He raised a brow. Confirmation enough that that was exactly how she was acting. “Petra is on this flight. Let her know if you need anything.”
“No,” she said loudly.
His gaze pinned her. “Precisely what are you saying no to?”
“If you’re dragging me to the King’s Palace, it will be different this time. I will not be hidden away like some stain on the great House of Drakos. I will not let your uptight, snobbish staff run circles around me. I will not communicate through your minions, will not let you pawn me off on them as if I was a thing to be managed.” Maybe what Andreas needed was a dose of reality. For his staff and his family and the world to realize who he had chosen and how unsuitable she was.
Lines formed between his brows. “Leave us,” he said to the stewardess without moving his gaze from Ariana.
The woman froze in the process of folding the damned dress. She thought Ariana and Andreas had gotten married in that dress, Ariana realized.
“Burn. That. Dress,” he repeated. The stewardess nodded and scurried out.
Arms still around her waist, Ariana turned, grabbed the duvet and pulled it around her like a shroud. However she tried, the choice was to either cover her chest or her midriff.
She covered her midriff. Her bra was enough for her meager breasts. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen the little she had to offer before.
The small scar she bore above her pubic bone might not be visible in the soft light, but she couldn’t take the chance. Closing her eyes, she willed the grief down. The situation with Andreas was explosive enough without adding her discovery after she had left him that she’d been pregnant.
That she had lost her precious little baby boy was an unbearable, ever-present weight on her soul. For Andreas, it would only mean more betrayal. Worse, the loss of a potential heir, a figurehead to represent the House of Drakos’s future.
Ariana couldn’t bear to hear his dismissal of that tiny life. The guilt of it, the grief of it was all her own.
At least, it served as a reminder that she couldn’t chance a pregnancy again.
Because there was no point in denying that she was going to end up in his bed. The attraction between them, it seemed, had survived despite everything.
She took a Post-it note and pen from the small bedstead and scribbled the name and number of her GP. Shards of glass seemed to be stuck in her throat when she turned. “I also need the prescription for my birth control pills filled.”
The memory of their last fight, the bitterest and dirtiest of them all, sculpted sharp grooves in his already gaunt cheeks. His hesitation was like handing her a live grenade. Bulky duvet and all, she reached him, her heart threatening to rip out of her chest. “Have something to say, Andreas?”
As if pulled from the past, he slowly looked down at her. “No. Even I’m not cruel enough to bring a child into this. At least not anymore.”
“Does that mean you intend to let me go at some point?”
This time, his answer was more thoughtful than driven by fury. “No.”
“But isn’t my only duty as your wife to produce as many healthy heirs as soon as humanly possible? My purpose, to be your broodmare?”
Deep grooves etched on the sides of his mouth as he responded without inflection. “Nikandros’s twins will be heirs.”
“Of course,” she said, swallowing away the ache. She had no idea why she was pushing him like this. Only that she wanted to hurt him as she was hurting. “How does the timeline look then? Do I have enough time to find a new GP in Drakon and get my pills without Petra and the entire palace knowing my business?”
His chin tilted down. “What?”
“The sex, Andreas? You and me and the humiliating sex that we’re going to have, you have a timeline for that, right?
“Sex is your weapon in this revenge scheme, ne? The thing I could never refuse you, the thing that you threatened to hold against—” Her voice broke, and he...his features paled. “So, yeah, if your schedule allows me to wait, then you don’t have to ask your secretary to fill your wife’s birth control prescription.”
When she’d have turned away from him, he gripped her arms so tightly that Ari knew she’d have bruises tomorrow. But the pain was worth the satisfaction that she had finally, finally ruffled him. “Humiliating sex? Punishment sex?” He turned her until she was facing him, her duvet forgotten, her stomach tying itself in knots. “Have you convinced yourself that with my power and prestige, I somehow forced you?
“Have you conveniently twisted the truth in that too, agapita? That you gave your innocence unwillingly?”
Laughter fell from her mouth, serrated and strange. “No, it was never that, whatever it was.” Her nose rubbed against his biceps, her mouth curving into a smile against the fabric of his shirt. Faint tension emanated from him, making Ari throw caution to the wind. “Even in this we disagree, ne, Andreas?”
He looked at her as though he was afraid she was going mad. She was a little afraid of that herself. “How?”
“To this day, I’m convinced that I seduced you and you’re convinced that you seduced me. Even in this, we have a power struggle.”
He didn’t outright laugh. The rigid, sculpted curve of his thin lips didn’t even move. But his grip on her arms eased. Something softened in his black eyes. A flash of that dry humor she had seen back then. Only she.
He lifted a finger and touched the tip of her nose. Her breath suspended in her throat, for Ari had a feeling he had been about to touch her mouth and changed his mind at the last second.
He’d been tempted. And it filled her with a heady power she didn’t want.
“It was not so much a power struggle as it was you defying me. Defying everything I stood for—Drakon, the Palace, the House of Drakos, my father and me.” His tone became far off, as if he too was reliving those first heady months when they had met.
Memories permeated the very air around them.
The first day he’d arrived at the café, he’d introduced himself as simply Andreas. As if he could ever be just that. But, of course, she’d known who he was. Ariana had only laughed at his imperious command to let him or his team know if she needed anything. Until she realized he’d been in earnest. That he meant to keep an eye on his father’s ward.
Keep an eye, he had.
He would come to the café where she had worked every night, two huge tomes, and newspaper cuttings and reams of paperwork spread out on his table. Not a word, not a greeting after that first one. No chatting with any other customers. Just that dark gaze tracking her all over the café, until the early hours of morning, as if he found her endlessly fascinating. After the first day, he’d walked her home to the apartment, again with nary a word exchanged between them.
Ariana had never found herself so thoroughly captivated.
He had done that for a whole month before Ari had lost her patience and approached him.
Are you my very own watchdog, Your Highness?
She cringed, remembering how outrageous she’d been.
His reply: You should not be drinking with strange men, Ms. Sakis.
And then he’d followed her to the party where she’d proceeded to get drunk. Taken her home to her little apartment she’d shared with three other girls.
No more exchanges except her increasingly reckless taunts to break his self-assurance over the next month.
Until the afternoon the verdict had come out about her parents’ deaths. There had been no doubt that her mother had deliberately caused the accident.
She’d taken her life and her husband’s, a day after he’d struck Ariana.
She’d been mindless with grief, desperate to run away from her own life. Andreas hadn’t asked her a single question that day, nor left her side. Like a shadow, he’d been at her back throughout the day and night as she’d flitted from the café to a party, from the party to a walk along the coast and then back to her apartment.
Finally, she had broken down into anguished sobs, finally, she had realized that she was now forever alone, a fate she’d wished for for so long. At her apartment, he had sat by her on the couch—not even their shadows touching, always so careful to not touch her even by accident—and he had started talking, uncaring of whether she was listening.
In that deep, gravelly voice of his that had been just a tether to hold on to at first.
He’d started with the reason for his stay in the little village, a question she’d asked of him countless times. Told her of how his trail had led him there.
It was the first time she’d heard of the story of the dragon and the warriors. For hours, he’d told her of his fascination with the history of Drakon and its centuries-old lore since he’d been a little boy. Of the painstaking years of research he’d put together in his free time, which was far too little and rare. Of his fierce determination to pin down the real truth behind the war the warriors had waged on the dragon.
And in the passion in his words that had been a revelation—when she’d relentlessly taunted him for being an uptight, dutiful, one-dimensional prince puffed up with his own privilege and power—Ariana had seen the man beneath the Crown Prince’s mantle. A historian, a weaver of words, a dreamer; a man that struggled to survive within the constraints of his birth and his position of power without even knowing it. A man who liked her, her company, her laughter, yet wouldn’t, or couldn’t put it in a simple sentence.
A man who could have the world at his feet and yet saw something worthwhile in her.
The realization that somehow the Crown Prince of Drakon, powerful and gorgeous, needed her just as much as she needed him, had reverberated through her.
As dawn had painted the sky a myriad of purples and pinks, his voice had slowly guided Ariana back to the world, to the life waiting for her.
Through her death, her mother had given her a gift. She had given Ariana her own life back.
With a fiercely alive feeling coursing through her veins, she had done what she’d been dying, but had been terrified, to do, until then. She had wiped her tears away roughly, kneeled between his long legs and pressed her mouth to his.
Her first kiss, she had decided so full of herself, would be the Crown Prince’s.
Of course, he hadn’t kissed her back as she’d mashed her lips against his. Tenderly, he’d clasped her jaw and pushed her back while she’d been burning with humiliation and thwarted desire, had guided her to her room, tucked her in, waited until she fell into a dreamless sleep.
The next morning, she’d woken up, brimming with a renewed verve for life and determined to have him, in whatever form she could.
Thee mou, she’d been playing with fire. Was it any wonder she’d been burned?
