“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