* * *
“Tabitha, are you well?”
Tabitha started at the sound of Kairos’s voice. It was rare for her to be woken up by him. In fact, she couldn’t recall if she ever had been. He didn’t spend the night with her. He never had.
She opened her eyes, bright afternoon light filtering into her vision. She suddenly remembered where she was. Remembered that it was not that day when he first proposed, or any of the days in between that she’d spent as his wife. No, it was now. She was carrying his baby. They were divorcing.
The hopeful little ember that burned in her stomach, thanks to that dream, that memory, cooled.
“Not especially,” she said, pushing into a sitting position and scrubbing her hands over her eyes.
Suddenly, she felt self-conscious, childish because of the gesture. She was not in the habit of waking up in front of him. For all that they had a physical relationship, they had very little intimacy.
She dropped her hands to her sides, balling them into fists.
“I brought your clothing up. And everything else.”
“Did you...” She looked around the room. “Did you put it all away?”
“Yes. I was hardly going to ask you to do it. And as I said before, there are no servants in residence here.”
“You don’t have any service at all?”
“I occasionally employ the services of a chef. But for the purposes of this trip, some preprepared meals were brought along with your things.”
“It’s just you and me, then?”
He nodded, his dark gaze unreadable. “Yes.”
“On the whole island?”
“On the whole island,” he confirmed.
“Oh.”
“What?”
“I don’t think we’ve ever...really been alone before.”
“We are very often alone,” he said, frowning.
“In a palace filled with hundreds, in a building other people live in.”
“I have never kidnapped you before either. You’ve also never been pregnant with my baby. Oh, yes, and we have never been on the brink of divorce. So, a season of firsts. How nice to add this to the list.”
She stood up, stretching out her stiff muscles. “Where exactly do you get off being angry at me? We are here because of you.”
“I’m angry with you because this divorce is happening at your demand.”
“Had I not demanded we divorce, I wouldn’t be pregnant.”
“Had you not frozen me out of your bed perhaps you would have been pregnant a couple of months sooner.”
She gritted her teeth, reckless heat pouring through her veins. “How dare you?” She advanced on him, and he wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her close. “Don’t.”
Her protest was cut off by the press of his mouth against hers, hot and uncompromising, his tongue staking a claim as he took her deep, hard. She had no idea where these kinds of kisses had come from. Who this man was. This man who would spirit her away to a private island. Who kissed her like he was dying and her lips held his salvation.
It stood out in such sharp contrast to that kiss on their wedding night. The first time they had been alone in a bedroom like this. His kiss had been gentle then. Cool. She had waited for this moment. For heat to explode between them. Because she felt it. She had always felt it. It had been there from the moment she first walked into his office, no matter how hard she might try to deny it.
But everything he’d done had been so maddeningly measured, so unreasonably controlled. She had been shaking, from the inside out. With nerves, with desire. He had been gentle. Circumspect.
* * *
He left the lights off. That surprised her, because she had imagined that he would prefer to see her. At least, she had imagined that men preferred such things. She had no experience with them, and suddenly she regretted it. She hadn’t. Never. Until now. Now, she was married to Kairos. She was his princess. She was his wife. And she had no idea how to please him.
They had two weeks to adjust to the idea of marrying each other, and during that two weeks he hadn’t touched her. He had waited, because he’d said there was no point in doing anything differently. Not when it was so close. Not when he had the chance to do right by her.
She had told him, of course, that she was a virgin. In case he found the idea appalling in some way. In case he disliked the idea of being with a woman who had no practical experience. He had not been appalled. But it was then he’d insisted they wait.
So here she was, a bride dressed in white, and all that it symbolized, married to a man she didn’t love. A man who did not love her, about to find out what all the fuss was about.
She might not love Kairos, but she was attracted to him. In her mind, this was ideal in many ways. She didn’t love him. But she respected him. She cared for him. She was attracted to him. They had everything pleasant going for them, and nothing outrageous or unpleasant. Nothing that would turn them into the kinds of screaming monsters her parents had become under the influence of love and passion.
And so she waited. Waited for him to close the distance between them. But he was in no hurry. Finally, he crossed the room, a dark silhouette. She could see him working his tie, removing his jacket, his shirt. She could see nothing of his body, but she could tell that he was naked by the time he reached her. It was then that he kissed her. Cool, slow. Different to how she had imagined.
His skin was hot, but his movements were chilled and deliberate. He divested her of her gown quickly, making no ceremony of it. His touch was skilled, easily calling out a response in her as he teased her between her thighs, stroked his thumb over her nipples. But it was happening quickly, and she didn’t know what she was supposed to do. Didn’t understand her part in it. And he gave her no hints. He had her on her back quickly, testing her readiness with his fingers. Sliding one inside her first, then another, stretching her. He did this for a while, as though he were counting the time. As though he had read a textbook on how to make a woman’s first time hurt as little as possible.
Then he settled between her thighs and pushed into her quickly. She gritted her teeth against the pain, biting her lip to keep from digging her fingernails into his skin. She didn’t have an orgasm.
He did. Of course he did.
He withdrew quickly after that, moving into the bathroom and starting a bath for her. Then he returned, ushering her in, waiting until she was submerged in the water before meeting her gaze. “I imagine you want some time alone.”
No. She absolutely did not want time alone. She wanted him to hold her because she was pretty sure she was going to break apart. He had changed something deep inside of her. And he hadn’t finished. She was shattered, but she wasn’t remade.
“Yes,” she heard herself saying, not sure where the response had come from.
“I’ll see you in the morning.”
* * *
She snapped back to the present, to this moment. To this kiss that bore no resemblance to anything that had occurred on that night. He had accused her of changing, but he wasn’t the same either.
He kissed her neck, down to her collarbone, retracing that same path with the tip of his tongue. She found herself tearing at his shirt, her heart thundering hard, every fiber of her being desperate to have him. Desperate to have him inside her again. Like that night in his office. That night when the promise that had been broken on their wedding night was finally fulfilled.
I feel nothing.
His