“Of course I haven’t forgotten,” she said, because the alternative would most certainly break the spell that was momentarily cast over him. He would take a dim view to her forgetting that she was carrying his baby. The baby was the only reason he was attempting reconciliation with her, after all.
“Honesty, Tabitha,” he said, his tone chastising, “we have an agreement that we will strive for honesty over this two weeks.”
“Sex is easier,” she returned, ignoring the heat that assaulted her cheeks. “And more fun.”
A strange expression passed over his face. “You have no argument from me on that score.”
“Cars,” she said, looking at his handsome face, trying to do something to get a handle on the heat that was still thrumming through her veins.
“What about them?” he asked.
“Why do you like them? It’s strange. You’re a very practical man. Cars don’t seem especially practical.”
“I don’t suppose they are,” he said, leaning back against the counter, curling his fingers over the edge and gripping it tight. “But I...I never had hobbies. While my peers were out going to parties and...whatever else they did, I was studying. Not just to get through school, and then university, but studying everything my father did so that I could emulate him. I didn’t deviate from his lesson plan for my life. One of the very few normal things I learned was how to drive. It was a practical skill, after all, so he allowed one of his men to teach me. I learned quickly and...for me, that was my only bit of freedom. I would take drives across the country. Alone. Otherwise I was never alone. There was always security detail, or my father or one of his advisors. So that’s why I like cars. Freedom and solitude.”
She swallowed hard, an unexpected lump of emotion lodging itself in the center of her chest. She hadn’t expected anything so complete. So honest. “Your father didn’t teach you himself?”
“No,” he said. “He was very busy.”
She nodded. “Of course.”
She hadn’t known the king well. By the time they’d married, the old man’s health was declining and he hadn’t had the energy to take many visitors, much less a commoner daughter-in-law put into place because of his disappointing younger son’s scandalous behavior.
“I didn’t want him to teach me anyway,” he said.
“Why not?” she asked.
“Because I loved it. My father had a way of taking things I loved and turning them into something forbidden. Something I couldn’t have.” A muscle in his jaw ticked. “I didn’t want him to do that with the cars.”
“What did he do?”
“He was so very concerned about forming me into the kind of leader Petras needed. A man of principles. A man of control. Levelheaded. When I...when I showed too much enthusiasm, he was eager to snuff it out.”
“Why?” she asked, her heart twisting for him.
“Because. He knew that distractions could become weaknesses. Easily.”
He pushed away from the counter, closing the space between them, close enough she could feel the heat from his body. Far enough that she couldn’t quite touch him. But oh, how she wanted to. How she craved this man.
It wasn’t a new hunger, but it was reinvigorated. The tastes of him she’d had made her crave him all the more. Where before, she could control it...now it felt somewhere beyond her.
“Was it there the whole time?” he asked, his voice rough.
Her heart slammed into her chest and she looked down at her hands, frowning deeply when she noticed a large chip in her polish. Strange. She’d just painted them. “Was what there?”
“This. This insanity. Was it in you? In me? Was it between us from the very start, needing only a bit of anger to act as an accelerant?”
She lifted her shoulder. “I don’t know.”
Except she had a feeling she did. It was in her. She knew it. Perhaps it was in both of them. Which made them a deadly combination if ever there was one.
All it took was a little bit of anger. All it took was a little bit of anger to ignite a spark and start a blaze. But whether or not that blaze would be contained to last, or whether he would turn to violence, she didn’t know.
She pressed the edge of her thumbnail against the polish on her ring finger and stripped a large flake of coral away.
She blinked, quickly realizing she’d been responsible for the other chip as well. Something she’d always done to her manicures when she was younger. Something she’d trained away.
She was regressing.
“It has never been like this for me. Not with any other woman. I have never...” A crease appeared between his dark brows. “I have never allowed a woman to do for me what you did out on the terrace.”
“Oral sex?” she asked, her brows raised. She was a little bit embarrassed by her own frankness, but she hadn’t been able to hold it back. Anyway, what was the point of being embarrassed to say something when you had already done it? It didn’t make much sense.
“Yes,” he said through clenched teeth. “It is not something I ever saw much use in.”
“The way I hear tell of it, most men find it extremely useful.”
“Have you done that before? For other men?” There was an edge to his voice now. Jealousy. That Kairos could be jealous over who had received her favors made her feel reluctantly satisfied.
She looked up at him, her heart thundering. “If I had?”
“I would call him a lucky bastard. And I would probably not put a price on his head.”
“That’s quite proprietary of you, Kairos,” she said. “Very out of character.”
“Have I been in character for any moment in the past month, Tabitha? Answer me that.”
“Not in your character as I know it,” she answered carefully.
“Not as I know it either. Staying in control is usually so much easier.”
“I test your control?”
“Do you not see?”
“I haven’t—” she took another bite of her cookie “—not for five years.”
“I suppose I became much more desperate when I thought I might lose you. I could feel this,” he said, the admission raw, “this thing between us. I realize now that I could always sense it there.”
His words echoed with truth, reflecting everything she knew down deep inside.
“But I never wanted... It is not what I wanted for my marriage,” he continued. “My parents were never happy. My father was distant, a man who put his country before all else, because what is a king but a servant to his people? He was not a loving father. He was not warm. He could be very hard. Especially on Andres. But I considered what he gave to me to be guidance. Necessary. He knew that I would someday be as he. A king. But he was not married to you. He was married to a temperamental, flighty woman who let every bump in the road upset her. Who felt things too deeply. I vowed that I would find a woman who was different. You were perfect. Such perfect reserve. And then, the first time I ever touched you, the first time we made love, there was something else there. The very thing I didn’t want. That kind of uncontrollable desire that leads to poor decisions made in anger and desperation.”
“I didn’t want that either,” she said, her voice soft.
“I know you didn’t want it. Now you resent me for making sure that I did what we both claimed we needed in a marriage? For keeping you at a distance when you asked for that distance?”
“I