The word good-bye sat like a boulder on her chest. She wasn’t prepared to say it. Not yet. “Where are you going?” she finally asked, carefully keeping her eyes away from the languid line of his mouth.
A self-deprecating smile carved a dimple in one cheek but left his eyes still far too intent on her. “To Drakon.”
That Nikandros had turned his back on his royal family years ago—it was a little gold nugget the media recycled every few months. With his daredevil stunts and extreme sport enthusiast career, Nikandros regularly courted the media, and like faithful little dogs, they went digging every single time. No one, however, knew the cause of the falling-out.
“You’re returning to your country?”
“For a visit, at least. My father’s dementia has become public knowledge. The Crown Prince has summoned me. My sister and my mother, even though she divorced my father a while ago, think my brother needs me. Desperately, according to them. Although I can’t imagine Andreas would know desperation if it smacked him in the face.”
“How long have you been away?”
“A decade, maybe.” The casual indifference couldn’t belie the torment in his eyes. “This is the first time my brother has sought me out.”
Clearly, he hadn’t been expecting that. “I’m sorry, Nikandros,” she finally said, sensing the ache in him.
He bent so suddenly that her breath whooshed out. One hard muscled thigh grazed the side of her legs, leaving her quaking. “Pity is not something I could tolerate.”
“Did Brian’s death make you feel sorry for me?” she countered. “Make you change your judgment of me?”
“No,” he said without missing a beat.
“Honesty, honesty, my hide for honesty,” she quipped in a singsong voice, giving in to the abrupt, insane urge to laugh.
Arms locking on either side of her head, he smiled. It touched his eyes then, which were like the sky on a summer afternoon. Time seemed to fly away, seconds turning to minutes and she felt the most insane urge to stop it. To grab it with both hands and hold on to this moment. “When do you leave?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
That sinking feeling in her stomach returned. “I hope whatever it is that caused distance between your father and you...you’re able to sort it out.”
He plucked her hand from her side where she had fisted it tight. Tingles spread up her arm as he traced the half-moons left in her palm by her nails. “You and I both know that that’s not possible. That nothing can make the distances carved over years lesser.
“I wish I could tell Andreas that I don’t give a damn about our father or him or Drakon—” tension emanated from every inch of him “—but I find I can’t.”
Just when she thought she knew him, he said something like that. There was grief in his eyes, even pain. She didn’t want to learn the cause of that grief; she couldn’t ask why he’d walked away from his destiny when it was clear his family meant something to him.
“Apparently, I’m a pushover.” An edgy grin, then laced with self-mockery.
“Or you have a serious case of hero complex,” she said, wanting to make him truly smile. Even with his contempt for her, he’d stayed at the press conference, hadn’t he? Thrill chaser or not, apparently Nikandros had a sense of responsibility.
“Families are never without complications,” she offered. “But if there’s a chance to say goodbye to him, you should take it.”
“Are you estranged from your family too?”
She shrugged, not quite meeting his eyes. There was no point in dwelling on each other’s past when, come tomorrow, they would never see each other again.
The inescapable fact was that tonight he seemed to need her just as much she did him—that bolstered her courage.
Soft strokes on her palms, to her wrists and above, all the way to the sensitive skin of her elbow. And back down. Every nerve tautened like the strings of an instrument.
Mesmerized, Mia couldn’t lift her gaze from the sight of his long fingers on her skin. Those long fingers everywhere on her bare skin, stroking and caressing—she wanted to burrow into his warmth. “I don’t want to say good-night yet.”
He tensed. “If it’s a shoulder you want to cry on, keep looking.” A thread of anger touched his tone. “There’s a line between challenging oneself and tormenting oneself and I’ve already crossed it.”
Words came and fell away from her lips, desperate and hard. For the life of her, she couldn’t put her want into words. How had he so cavalierly told her that she’d been an obsession he’d carried around for so many years? How hadn’t he felt vulnerable?
Or was it strength to go after what one wanted?
Bracing herself on his shoulders, she pulled herself up and pressed her mouth to the corner of his. Stubble scraped her lips, sending sparks of rough sensation all over. His breath fell loudly in the silence. Under her questing hands, the muscles of his shoulders were like steel spikes.
Heart threatening to explode in her chest, Mia kissed the defined line of his jaw.
Another featherlight kiss over his cheek. One more at the corner of his mouth.
Icy blue eyes darkened to the color of a stormy sky as he looked into hers. Long fingers tightened against her scalp. He’d push her away, and she couldn’t allow that.
Trembling from head to toe, she pressed her mouth flush against his. Jerked at the jolt of heat that coiled and uncoiled in corners of her body she’d forgotten existed.
Whiskey and heat—he tasted of sin, of deep desires she’d never indulged in.
She hadn’t kissed a man in a long time, but this, it felt natural, almost inevitable since the moment she’d seen him stand amidst that teeming crowd.
Keeping her gaze open with a boldness she hadn’t known she had, she traced his lower lip with her tongue. Grasped the cushiony softness of it with her teeth and tugged at it. The moment she ventured inside his mouth, the tenor of the kiss changed.
It was as if an earthquake had rocked the world beneath her feet.
Wide shoulders and hard muscles, he slammed her into him, and she was drowning. He kicked her feet apart, his hard thigh shoving between her own. His tongue tangled with hers, in and out, sending such stabs of relentless heat through her that she retreated, breathless and scared.
A hand curled around her nape while another gripped her hip tight and pulled her hard against his rock-hard body. “Don’t be scared of this, Mia mou.”
Any little breath of air she had in her lungs punched out. The hard column of his thigh pressed against her core, rubbing sensitive nerves. Mia cried out, her knees jelly. His mouth devoured her as if she were much-needed air, as if he would drown without her.
It was a salve over the wounds that had dug deep during her marriage. She sank into his touch, energized by the possessiveness of it.
“Damn it, I hoped I’d be proved wrong.” He almost sounded angry, his gaze a blue fire. “I thought I’d built you up, this attraction up into something more than it was.”
Whatever little niggles Mia’s painfully developed cautious nature threw at her dissolved at the potent need swirling in his strong face. He was right. This fire between them burned hotter and brighter the more they touched each other. It didn’t matter why she was attracted to him, or why she wanted to feel the power of his honed body over hers.
She just did.
She sank her fingers into his hair, caressing the thick black locks, carving the strong lines of his face