“Three months as my wife!”

Will she pay his price?

Valentina always believed in the longing that consumed her and husband, Kairos—until her devastating discovery that her marriage was a coldhearted business deal. Despite their undeniable chemistry, she refuses to remain bound to the ruthless Greek. But before granting a divorce, Kairos demands she play his adoring wife again. And when their intense fire reignites, Valentina is at the mercy of her own desire...

TARA PAMMI can’t remember a moment when she wasn’t lost in a book—especially a romance, which was much more exciting than a mathematics textbook at school. Years later, Tara’s wild imagination and love for the written word revealed what she really wanted to do. Now she pairs alpha males who think they know everything with strong women who knock that theory and them off their feet!

Also by Tara Pammi

Married for the Sheikh’s Duty

Bought with the Italian’s Ring

The Legendary Conti Brothers miniseries

The Surprise Conti Child

The Unwanted Conti Bride

The Drakon Royals miniseries

Crowned for the Drakon Legacy

The Drakon Baby Bargain

His Drakon Runaway Bride

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.

Blackmailed by the Greek’s Vows

Tara Pammi

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07219-9

BLACKMAILED BY THE GREEK’S VOWS

© 2018 Tara Pammi

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For all the readers who asked for Valentina’s story.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Extract

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

SHE WAS DRESSED like a...a hooker.

No...not exactly a hooker.

No hooker he knew possessed the class, the style and the innate grace that imbued every one of his wife’s movements.

More of a high-class escort.

It took Kairos Constantinou a few seconds to clear the red haze that descended in front of his eyes.

Dios...of all the stunts he had expected his impulsive, fiery wife to pull, it hadn’t been this.

When his PI had informed him that he’d located Valentina and that she’d be aboard Kairos’s own yacht for the party tonight, he hadn’t been surprised.

Valentina had always been the life of the party scene in Milan.

Lively. Sensual. Like a beautiful butterfly that flits from flower to flower. The minute her brother Leandro had pointed her out to Kairos, standing amidst a gaggle of men, Kairos had decided he wanted her.

Three minutes into Leandro introducing them, he’d known she was going to be his wife.

She had been the best possible incentive Leandro could have offered to reel Kairos into the alliance. Kairos would gain entry into the rarefied old-world alliances that her family the Conti dynasty, swam in, and she would get a rich husband.

Not once had he questioned why Leandro had thought he needed to set up his beautiful sister like that.

All Kairos had wanted was the prize that was Valentina Conti.

Except, a week into his marriage, he had realized his wife was anything but a trophy.

She was emotionally fiery, intensely vulnerable and impulsive as hell.

The best example of which was her deserting him nine months ago without so much as a word.

And to find her here among this crowd now.

With instincts he’d honed among the street gangs of Athens, he noted three Russian investors who operated businesses barely this side of legal—the men his friend Max intended to wine and dine—another man who was a model and a friend of Valentina’s, and five women to entertain them, not counting Valentina.

Women of the oldest profession known to man. Not streetwalkers, like some of his earliest friends, but undoubtedly from an escort service.

And the most provocatively dressed among them was Valentina in a flimsy gold dress.

The slinky material pooled at her chest to create a low neckline that left her shoulders and her toned arms bare. It pushed up those small breasts that he had touched and kissed and sucked while she writhed under him, like a lover’s hands.

So much golden, soft, silky skin... His jaw tightened like a vise as three other men salivated over her.

But it was the smiles she bestowed on the men as she charmed them, those arms flying about in that way of hers while she narrated some escapade in her accented English, full of fire, the way she put a hand on Max’s arm and thanked him when he refilled her drink...that was what caused the ice to stiffen his spine.

The wall of detachment that had always been his armor against anything was his only defense.

No, this was only want. Physical want...nothing more.

He still wanted her, desperately, because she was Valentina and even with her explosive tempers and childish tantrums, she had still snuck under his skin.

He needed her as his wife for a few months. And in those few months, he’d work her out of his blood. Out of his life.

If Valentina Conti Constantinou had indulged in some fantasy delusion that her husband Kairos had arrived on the yacht to achieve some sort of romantic reunion between them, he burned the notion to ashes within the first few minutes.

It had been disturbing enough to find that not only had her photographer friend Nikolai, at whose persuasion she had come to the party, manipulated her into wearing the tackiest outfit, but that she was surrounded by women from an escort service and men expected to be entertained by them.

She’d squared her shoulders, made Nikolai claim her for the evening, and had begun to charm the Russians. The one thing she knew how to do. She might have been living on nothing for months but she had class. Years of practice at playing the perfect socialite—well-versed in fashion and politics.

Until Kairos had walked in.

Barely sipping her G&T, she nodded at something Nikolai whispered in her ear, keeping her effusive smile firmly in place. Her throat was raw with the falsely pitched laughs, and her chest hurt at having to play the unruffled socialite the way she had all her life.

Every inch of her rebelled against the calm she had assumed from the moment Kairos had stepped onto the deck. Every cell in her roared to swat away the woman who was even now cozying up to him, far too pleased with herself.

She wanted to announce to the rest of them that he was hers.

But he had never belonged to her.

Her grip shook, clinking the ice in her tumbler.

Tina put her glass down, fighting for control.

Men scrambled around Max for an introduction to Kairos, and the women—hair fluffed, breasts pushed up to spill out of already plunging necklines—it was as if the rough, rugged masculinity of him was an inviting caress to every woman.

Dios mio, the strength of his sheer masculine appeal hit her like a punch now, shaking her up, turning her inside out.

His white shirt stretched tight across his broad shoulders, enhancing his raw, rugged appeal. His expansive chest tapered down to a narrow waist, over leaner hips and then he was all legs. Hard, muscular thighs followed by those runner’s calves that had once driven her crazy.

His hair was cut into that short style he preferred. Her fingers twitched, remembering the rough sensation of it, and she fisted them at her side. His gaze flicked down to her hands and then back up her body, slowly, possessively.

Those silvery eyes lingered on the long stretch of her legs, her thighs, noted the short hem of the dress, up to her waist, lingered again over her breasts, moved up her neck and then settled again on her face.

If he had run those hands over her body with that rough urgency that he’d always mastered before he lost control, she couldn’t have felt more owned. With one look, he plunged her into that state of mindless longing, that state of anticipation he had become used to expecting from her.

Shivering inside her skin, forgetting all the misery he had inflicted on her, Tina lifted her chin in defiance.

He had never liked her to dress provocatively. Had never liked her easy attitude with other men, that almost flirty style of talking that was her nature. They had had more than one row on the subject of her dresses, her hair, her shoes, her style, her attitude and even her body.

One of the blondes she had genuinely liked earlier—Stella of the big boobs and even bigger hips—tapped his arm. A smile curving his thin lips, he sliced his gaze away in clear, decisive dismissal.

Tears scratched up Tina’s throat and she hurriedly looked away before someone could see her mortification.

Nine months ago, she’d have slapped the woman’s face—she cringed at the memory of doing that to her sister-in-law Sophia, having been induced into a jealous, insecure rage. She’d have screamed and made a spectacle of herself, she’d have let her temper get the better of her and proved to everyone and Kairos how crazy she was about him.

Nine months ago, she’d have let the hot emotions spiraling through her dictate her every word, every move.

Nine months ago, she’d been under the stupid delusion that Kairos had married her because he wanted her, because he felt something for her, even if he didn’t put it in words.

But no, he had married her as part of an alliance with her brother Leandro. Even after learning that bitter truth, she could have given her marriage a try.

But Kairos didn’t possess a heart. Didn’t know what to do with one given into his keeping.

She had humiliated herself, she had prostrated her every thought, every feeling at his feet. And it hadn’t been enough.

She hadn’t been enough.

* * *

“So you’re truly over with him...that glowering husband of yours.”

“Si,” Tina said automatically. And then wished she hadn’t.

When the party began winding down, she had slipped below deck with the excuse of visiting the ladies’ room and hidden herself away in the lovely gray-and-blue bedroom, her nerves frayed to the hilt at the constant awareness of Kairos.

It was tiring to play the stoic, unaffected party girl. To stuff away all the longing and hurt and anger into a corner of her heart.

But Nikolai had followed her downstairs.

Although over the last couple of months she’d realized that Nikolai was harmless, he was drunk now. Her brother Luca had taught her long ago never to trust a drunken man.

“A taxi for you,” she said to Nikolai, pulling her cell phone out of her clutch.

From the foot of the bed where he made an adorably pretty picture, Nikolai stretched his leg and rubbed his leather boot against her bare calf. “Or we could spend the night here, Tina, mi amore. Now that things are truly over between you and the Greek thug—”

Using the tip of her stiletto, Tina poked his calf until he retreated with a very unmasculine squeal.

Her head was pounding. She’d barely drunk any water. Her body and mind were engaged in a boxing match over Kairos. The last thing she needed was Nikolai hitting on her.

“Kairos and I are not divorced. Also, I’m not interested in a relationship,” she added for good measure.

“I noticed him tonight, cara mia. He spared you not a single glance.” A claw against her heart. “As if you were total strangers.” A bruise over her chest. “He seemed pretty interested in that whore Stella.” Bile in her throat.

Just like a man to use the woman and then call her crude names. Oh, why had she come tonight? “Per favore, Nik, don’t call her that.”

“You called Claudia Vanderbilt much worse for marrying a sixty-year-old man.”

Tina cringed, shame and regret washing over her like a cold wave.

She had.

She’d been privileged and pampered and had behaved so badly. She should keep Nikolai in her life. If nothing, he’d keep reminding her what a bitch she’d once been.

While Valentina held up her phone and walked around the bedroom looking for a signal—she’d spend the night here if it meant avoiding seeing Kairos leave with one of the women, not that he’d need to pay for the pleasure—Nikolai had moved closer.

Valentina froze when his hands landed on her hips. She arrested his questing hands. “Please, Nikolai. I would like to keep the single friend I have.”

“You have really changed, Tina. Transformed from a poisonous viper to a—” his alcoholic fumes invaded her nostrils while he tilted his head, seemingly in deep thought “—an innocent lamb? A lovely gazelle?”

Christo, the man was deeply drunk if he was calling her innocent.

Before Tina could shove Nikolai’s hands away—she really didn’t want to plant her knee in his groin like Luca had taught her—his hands were gone. Whether he skidded due to his drunken state or was pushed, Tina would never know. He landed with a soft thump against the bed, slid down it and let out a pathetic moan.

Tina whirled around, her breath hitching.

CHAPTER TWO

KAIROS STOOD AGAINST the back door, not a single hair out of place.

There was that stillness around him again, a stillness that seemed to contain passion and violence and emotion.

And yet nothing.

Emotions surged through her, like a wave cresting. But just like a wave broken by the strongest dam, Kairos had come pretty close to breaking her.

Ignoring the fact that her dress climbed up her thighs and she was probably flashing her thong at the inebriated Nikolai, she went to her knees next to him, sliding her fingers through his gelled hair.

Nikolai’s hot, alcohol-laden breath fluttered over the expanse of her chest. But it was the silver gaze drilling holes into her back that pebbled goose bumps over her skin.

A sound like a swallowed curse emanated from behind her. She ignored it, just as she tried to ignore her pounding heart.

“What are you doing?”

It had been nine months since she’d seen him. Nine months since he’d spoken to her. The hope that he would come after her had died after the first month. She swallowed to keep her voice steady. “Checking for a bump.”

“Why?”

She snorted. “Because he’s my friend and I care what happens to him.”

Tina stared down at Nikolai’s picture-pretty face and sighed. He was her friend.

He had gotten her the entry-level job in a fashion agency when she had returned to Milan from Paris, her tail tucked between her legs and ready to admit defeat, and found her a place with four other girls in a tiny one-bedroom hovel.

Not out of the generosity of his heart, but because he’d wanted to see her humiliated, wanted to enjoy how she’d come down in the world. Maybe even to get into her pants.

Whatever his motivations, Nikolai was the only one who’d helped her out, the only one who hadn’t laughed at her pathetic attempts.

Unlike the man behind her, whose mocking laugh even now pinged over her nerves. “You have no friends. At least not true ones. Shallow women flock to you for approval of their clothes and shoes. Men flock to you because they...”

Truth—every word was truth. Humiliating, wretched truth.

But it hurt. Like something heavy was pressing down on her chest. “Don’t hold back now, Kairos,” she said, smarting at the stinging behind her eyes.

“Because they assume that you’ll be wild and fiery in bed. That you will bring all that passion and lack of self-control and that volatility to sex. Once your friend here gets what he wants, he will be through with you.”

If she’d had any doubt what he thought of her, he’d just decimated it.

She had fallen in love with a man who thought she was good for sex and nothing else.

A need to claw back pounded through her. “I’m shallow and vapid, si, but what you see is what you get. I don’t make false promises, Kairos.”

The silence reverberated with his shock. “I’ve never made a promise to you that I didn’t keep. I promised your brother to keep you in style when I agreed to marry you and I did. I promised you on the night of our engagement that I would show you pleasure unlike anything you’ve ever known and I believe I kept that promise.”

I never said I loved you.

His unsaid statement hung in the air.

No...he hadn’t said it. Not once.

It had all been her.

Stupid, naive Valentina building castles of love around this hard man.

She found no bump on Nikolai’s thick skull and sighed with relief. His head lolling onto her chest, he fell asleep with an undignified snore. She’d have gagged at the sweat from Nikolai’s flushed head trickling down her meager cleavage if all her reactions weren’t attuned to the man behind her.

The small hairs on her neck stood up before Kairos spoke. “Leave him alone.”

Ignoring him, she rose to her feet, and planted her hands under Nikolai’s arms.

“Move, Valentina.”

Before she could blink, Kairos hefted Nikolai up onto his shoulders and raised a brow at her.

He had carried her like that once, the hard muscles of his shoulders digging into her belly, his big hands wrapped around her upper thighs, after she had jumped into the pool at a business retreat in front of his colleagues and their wives because he’d ignored her all weekend.

He’d stripped her and thrown her into the cold shower, rage simmering in his eyes. And when he’d extracted her from the shower and rubbed her down, all that rage had converted into passion.

She’d been self-destructive just to get a rise out of him.

She looked away from the memory of that night in his eyes.

Masculine arrogance filled his eyes. “Now that the poor fool has served his purpose, shall I throw him overboard?”

“His purpose?”

“You used him to make me jealous—laughing at his jokes, dancing with him, touching him, to rile my temper. It is done, so you don’t need him anymore.”

“I told you, Nik is my friend.” She jerked her gaze to his face and flushed. “And I did nothing tonight with you on my mind. My world doesn’t revolve around you, Kairos. Not anymore.” She wouldn’t ask whether his temper was riled.

She wouldn’t.

With a shrug, he dumped Nikolai on the bed like a sack of potatoes.

Nik’s soft snores punctured the silence. If she weren’t so caught up in the confusing cascade of emotions Kairos evoked, the whole thing would have been hilarious.

But nothing could cut through her awareness of six feet four inches of pure muscle and utter masculinity. She pressed her fingers to her temple. “Please leave now.”

“Enough, Valentina. You’ve got my attention now. Tell me, did you really sign up with the escort service or was that just a dramatic touch to push me over the edge?”

“Are you asking me if I’ve been prostituting myself all these months?” She was proud of how steady she sounded while her heart thundered away in her chest.

“I thought perhaps no first. But knowing you and your vicious tendencies, who knows how far you went to shock me, to teach me a lesson, to bring me to heel?”

She walked to the door and held it for Kairos. “Get out.”

He leaned against the foot of the bed, dwarfing the room with his presence. “You’re not staying here with him.”

She folded her hands and tilted her head. The sheer breadth of his shoulders sucked the air from the room. “I’ve been doing what and who I want since the day I left you nine months ago, since I realized what a joke our marriage is. So it’s a little late to play the possessive husband.”

Hadn’t she promised herself that she’d never stoop to provoking him like that again?

She cringed, closed her eyes at the dirty, inflammatory insinuation in her own words.

But she saw the imperceptible lick of fire in his gaze, the tiny flinch of that cruel upper lip. At one time, the little fracture in his control would have been a minor victory to her.

Not anymore.

“It is a good thing then, is it not, Valentina—” the way he said her name sent a curl of longing through her “—that I did not believe all your passionate avowals of love, ne?”

Something vibrated in the smooth calmness of his tone. The presence of that anger was a physical slap. Her eyes wide, she stared as he continued, his mouth taking on a cruel tilt.

“No more pathetic displays of your jealousy. No grand declarations of love. No snarling at and slapping every woman I’m friends with. Now we both can work with each other on the same footing.”

Dios, she’d always been a melodramatic fool. But Kairos, his inability to feel anything, his unwillingness to share a thought, an emotion...it had turned her into much worse. “Non, Kairos. No more of that,” she agreed tiredly.

She didn’t even have cash for a taxi, but if she’d learnt anything in the last nine months of this flailing about she’d been doing in the name of independence, it was that she could survive.

She could survive without designer clothes and shoes, she could survive without the adulation she’d taken as her due as the fashionista that Milan looked up to, she could survive without the Conti villa and the cars and the expensive lifestyle.

She picked up her clutch from the bed, her phone from the floor. “If you won’t leave, I will.”

He blocked the door with his shoulders. “Not dressed like a cheap hooker, strutting for business at dawn, you’re not.”

“I don’t want—”

“I will throw you over my shoulder and lock you up in the stateroom.”

It should have sounded dramatic, emotional. But Kairos didn’t do drama. Didn’t utter a word he didn’t mean. And if he so much as touched her...

“Fine. Let’s talk.” She threw her clutch back on the bed and faced him. “Even better, why don’t you call your lawyer and have him bring divorce papers? I’ll sign them right now and we won’t see each other ever again.”

He didn’t exactly startle. But again, Tina had the feeling that something in him became alert. She had...surprised him? Shocked him?

What did he think her leaving him had meant?

He stretched out his wrists, undid the cufflinks on his right hand—platinum cufflinks she’d bought him for their three-month anniversary with her brother’s credit card—and pushed back the sleeve.

A shiver of anticipation curled around her spine.

He stretched his left hand toward her. Being left-handed, he’d always undone the right cuff link first. But the right hand...his fingers didn’t do fine motor skills well. She’d noted it on their wedding night, how they had felt clumsy when he tried to do anything.

For a physically perfect specimen of masculinity, it had been a shock to note that the fingers of his right hand didn’t work quite right. When she’d asked if he’d hurt his hand, he’d kissed her instead. The second time she’d asked, he’d just shrugged.

His usual response when he didn’t want to talk.

She’d taken his left hand in hers and deftly undone the cufflink on their wedding night. And a thousand times after that.

It was one of a hundred rituals they’d had as man and wife. Such intimacy in a simple action. So much history in an everyday thing.

Tina stared at the blunt, square nails now, her breath ballooning up in her chest; the long fingers sprinkled with hair to the plain platinum band on his ring finger; the rough calluses on his palm because he didn’t wear gloves when he lifted weights. It was a strong, powerful hand and yet when he touched her in the most sensitive places, it was capable of such feathery, tender movements.

A sheen of sweat coated every inch of her skin.

Dios, she couldn’t bear to touch him.

Without meeting his gaze, she took a few steps away from him. “What do I have to do to make you believe that I’m done with this marriage? That my behavior is not dictated anymore by trying to get you to acknowledge my existence?”

He smirked, noting the distance she’d put between them. “Is that what you did during our marriage?”

She leaned against the opposite wall and shrugged. “I want to talk about the divorce.”

“You really want one?”

“Si. Whatever we had was not healthy and I don’t want to live like that anymore.”

“So Leandro enlightened you about the fat settlement you will receive then.”

“What?”

“Your brother made sure you would receive a huge chunk of everything I own should we separate. Bloody insistent, if I remember correctly.” His shrug highlighted those muscle-packed shoulders. “Maybe Leandro knew how hard you would make it for any man to stay married to you.”

“You think that will hurt me? Leandro...” Her voice caught, the gulf she had put between her brothers and her a physical ache. “He practically raised me, he loved me when he could have hated me for our mother deserting him and Luca. And I still cut him out of my life because he thought so little of me that he had to bribe you to marry me. In the grand scheme of things that I’ve lost and learned, this marriage and anything I get by dissolving it...they mean nothing to me, Kairos.”

He was upon her in the blink of an eye. The scent of him—a hint of male sweat and the mild thread of his cologne—hit her first. Awareness pooled low in her belly. He didn’t touch her, and yet the heat of his body was a languid caress.

“How will you afford your haute couture and your designer stilettos then?”

“I haven’t touched your credit cards in months. I haven’t taken a single Euro from Leandro or Luca. Even the clothes I wear belong to Nikolai.”

“Ah...” His gaze raked down the length of her body. The edge of cruelty in it stole her breath even as her skin tingled at his perusal. He nodded toward the happily snoring figure behind him on the bed. “Of course, your pimp dresses you now.”

“Nikolai is not a pimp and he tricked me into believing tonight was just a party.”

“I have to admit, only Valentina Constantinou could make a tacky, slinky dress look stylish and sophisticated. But that skill is not really helping, is it? Paris chewed you out and threw you back to Milan after a mere two months. Since then, you’ve been licking the boots of everyone at that fashion magazine. Fetching coffee for those bitchy socialites, when you had once been their queen bee, running errands in the rain for photographers and models that salivated over you for years...” His gaze swept over her in that dismissive way of his. “Have you had enough of reality? Are you ready to return to your life of luxury?”

She wasn’t surprised he knew what she’d been up to in the last few months. “I don’t care how long it takes, I mean to—”

“Is that why you decided to try your hand at the oldest profession in the world?”

“You’re the one who bought me from Leandro, remember? If anyone made me a whore, Kairos, it was you.” Every hurt she felt poured out into her words, all her promises to herself to keep it civil forgotten.

“I did not pursue you under false pretenses. I did not take you to bed, hoping that a good performance would bring me closer to the CEO position of the Conti board.”

A blaze lit up in his silvery eyes, tight lines fanning around his mouth.

He tugged her and Tina fell onto him with a soft gasp. Hard muscles pushed against her breasts, sending shock waves through her. “Believe me, pethi mou, if there is one aspect of our marriage that both of us agree on, it is in bed.”

His fingers wrapped around her nape in a possessive hold, a flicker of arousal and something else etched onto his features.

“You’re the one who broke our marriage vows, Valentina. You’re the one who avowed her love in passionate statements and sensational gestures, ne? Again and again. All I wanted was a civil marriage. Then, the fickle, spoilt brat that you are, you ran away because your little fantasy world where you rule as a queen and I fall at your feet crumbled. You leave no note. No message. You tell my security guard you’re visiting your damned brothers. I imagined you kidnapped and waited for a ransom note. I imagined your body lying in some morgue because you met with an accident. I imagined one of the women or men you insulted with your cruel words may have been pushed to the limit and wrung your pretty neck.”

Heart thundering, Valentina stared.

His fingers dug into her tender flesh with a grip she was sure would leave bruises. She’d never seen him like this, smoldering with a barely banked fire. “Until Leandro took pity on me and informed me that you had simply walked out on me. On our marriage.”

Tina sagged against the wall, a strange twisting in her belly. He had been worried about her safety. Terrified for her. “I’m... I’m sorry. I didn’t think...”

“Too little, too late.”

He was right. If nothing else, he deserved an explanation. “I was furious with you and with Leandro. I had just learned that I was not a Conti but a bastard child my mother had with her chauffeur. That you married me as part of a bloody deal. You’ve had nine months to come after me.” The words slipped past her tongue, desperate, pathetic.

And just like that, any emotion she had spied in his eyes was wiped away. He stared at his fingers pressing into her flesh, his other hand kneading her hip.

His eyes widened fractionally before he stepped back. Stopped touching her. “The moment Leandro informed me what you’d done, I stopped thinking of you. I had other matters—urgent, important matters—to deal with rather than chase my impulsive brat of a wife through Europe.”

A fist to her heart would have been less painful.

But this was good, Tina reassured herself. She’d needed this talk with him. She’d needed to hear these words from Kairos’s mouth. Now, she could stop wondering—in the middle of the night, alone in her bed—if she’d made a mistake.

If their marriage deserved another chance.

After tonight, she wouldn’t have to see him again. Never hear those hateful words again. “Bene. You had important matters and I had enough time to think my decision through. I had nine months to realize what I did on impulse was right. I do not care whether you pay me alimony or not because I would not touch it. I intend to make something out of myself.”

“By whoring yourself out to Russian investors? By dressing like a cheap tramp? Admit it, Valentina. You’ve gotten nowhere in nine months except ending up with that buffoon who wants to get in your pants. You have no talent. No skills. Your connections were the only things of value about you.”

“I know that. Believe me, I have learned a lifetime’s worth of lessons in these nine months. The only good thing about this is that whatever connections you thought I would bring you as the Conti heiress are now lost.”

“Your brothers haven’t disowned you.”

“I have cut all my connections with them. With that life. I’m of no more use to you.”

“Ah...so that is your petty revenge? To deny what I planned to get by cutting yourself off from your brothers temporarily?”

“You give both me and your role in my life too much credit, Kairos. I love my brothers. Every day I spend away from them tears my heart. But it is the price I have to pay to face myself in the mirror.”

Finally, it seemed that she was getting through to him. And still, ruthlessness was etched onto his every feature. “This marriage is not done until I say it is done.”

“All I want is a teeny signature on a piece of paper. Ask me to sign away that alimony Leandro set up and I will. I will do anything you ask of me to be released from this marriage. You already wrote me out of your life when you decided not to come after me nine months ago, Kairos. I was nothing but a disappointment to you. So why drag this on? Is it just because your masculine pride is dented? Is it because, once again, I made you lose your rigid self-control?”

“Whether you want it or not, whether you touch it or not, half of what is mine will be yours for years to come. If I’m going to pay through the nose for the mistake of indulging you in your foolish fantasies of everlasting love, for putting up with your temper tantrums, for the pleasure of having you in my bed, I would like three more months of marriage, agapita. And maybe, a little more of you for that price tag.”

“A little more of me for that price...” Tina whispered, his words gouging through her already battered heart.

Her hand flew at him, outrage filling her every pore.

His lightning-fast reflexes didn’t let her slap land. With a gentleness that belied the hard, wiry strength of his body, he held her wrist between them, crowding her body against the wall until it kissed the line of her spine.

Hardness and heat, he was so male. Her five-inch stilettos made up for the height difference between them until she was perfectly molded against him. Muscular thighs straddled hers. His granite chest grazed the tips of her breasts, making her nipples tighten and ache. And against her belly... Maledizione, his arousal was lengthening and hardening.

Damp heat uncurled between Tina’s thighs. A whimper flew from her mouth—a needy and desperate plea for more. She clenched her thighs on instinct. “I do not even use my hands or my mouth. Yet you’re damp and ready for me, ne?”

Breath shallow, she fought for control over her body, over the hunger he lit so easily. “As you said, it’s why other men follow me around. I’m hot and uninhibited in bed, si? I could always match your sexual appetite and we both know it’s insatiable. That I’m like a bitch in heat right now is not a point in your favor. You give good sex, Kairos. It was the one place where I was happy as your wife.”

A lick of temper awakened in his silver eyes. “Tell me, Valentina. Do you get hot like this for any other man? For the fool lying in the bed behind us?” He twisted his hips in that way of his.

His erection rubbed against the lips of her sex and she jerked.

Pleasure was a fork in her spine, setting fire along her nerves. She could feel that thick rigidness inside her, could see the tight control etched onto his features as he moved inside her. She craved the softening of his gaze, the few moments of the real Kairos, tender and caring, that she used to glimpse after he found his release.

And she still wanted that man. Like a puppy that had been kicked but still came back for more.

His mouth was at her cheekbone and his stubble chafed her lips. A wet, open kiss at her pulse. “I have other uses for you, wife...along with a few more months in my bed.” His hands moved to cup her buttocks and pulled her against his hardness.

His mouth trailed lazily along her jawline, heading for her lips—the depth of her want, the fire along her skin—and she could taste the release in her fevered muscles.

“Admit defeat, Valentina. You can pretend all you want but your best bet is to be a rich man’s trophy wife. It is not a bad role for you. Accept your limitations. Adjust your expectations. Just as I did when your brother Luca stood in the way of the Conti board CEO position. I want nothing more from a wife, and who knows? You can maybe even persuade me to give this marriage another try.”

He was angry she had walked out.

No, not angry, she realized, running shaking hands through her hair.

He was furious with an icy, cold edge to it. Every word and caress of his was meant to provoke her with its cruelty. She’d never seen him like that.

It was more temper than she’d seen of him in all of their relationship so far—and, by God, she’d done every awful thing she could think of to provoke it.

But he wasn’t asking her back. He didn’t want to give their marriage another chance. He didn’t want to give her a chance.

No, all he wanted was a sop to his male ego. All he wanted was to punish her for daring to leave him, for calling him out on his ruthless ambition.

That pain gave her a rope with which to climb out of the sensual haze. To deny herself what she’d never been able to before—his touch.

“Please, Kairos, release me.”

The moment the words were out of her mouth, he let her go. Pupils drenched with lust, he stared at her as if he couldn’t believe she could put a stop to it.

Shaking but determined to hold herself up, she met his gaze. “What do I have to do to get you to agree to a divorce? To get you to leave me alone?”

He looked taken aback but recovered fast. “Three months as my wife.”

“Why? Why do you need me now? Other than because you want to punish me for walking out on you?”

“I have a debt to pay to Theseus.”

“The man who brought you home from the streets, the one who adopted you?”

“Ne.”

“And for this, you need to have a wife?”

“Yes. His daughter Helena—”

“Is causing trouble between you and him? You want me to take her on? I don’t understand how your wife’s presence will help...” The words trailed away from her lips as she saw his closed off expression. A mocking laugh rose. “Non, I’ve got it, I think. The daughter wants you and you want to say no without hurting anyone’s feelings. How noble of you, Kairos.”

His brow cleared, relief dawning in his eyes. “Theseus deserves nothing less from me.”

The depth of his sincerity shook Tina. She had never seen Kairos feel that strongly about anyone or anything. Except wealth and power and the amassing of it.

“This is the only way you get your divorce, Valentina.”

“You cannot drag me back into that life against my will.”

“But I can fight the divorce proceedings. Make your life into the media circus that you suddenly appear to abhor. And even worse, one wrong word or move from me toward you will bring forth your brothers’ fury upon me and their interference in your life...if you truly intend to make it on your own, that would be hell.”

Tina stared at him, amazed despite the anger pouring through her. He was calling her bluff about all this—the new direction she wanted to take in life.

She was damned if she answered it, damned if she didn’t. She didn’t want to spend another moment with him and yet he had left her no choice.

She sighed. “You will release me when things are clarified?”

“When things are clarified to my satisfaction, yes. No sooner. I’m warning you, Valentina, I want a perfect wife. No tantrums. No reckless escapades. You could even leave with the fat settlement the divorce will award you with the satisfaction that you’ve truly earned it. A novel feeling, I assure you.”

“And if I sleep with you to earn it, you will have truly made me a whore, si, Kairos? Will your dented ego be repaired then? Because, hear me out, Kairos. My body might be willing but my heart is not.”

The growl he swallowed down filled her with vicious satisfaction.

Valentina smiled for the first time in nine months.

Now all she’d have to do was convince herself of what she had told him.

CHAPTER THREE

WHAT DO I have to do to get you to leave me alone?

She truly wanted out of their marriage.

The realization moved through Kairos like an earthquake as he stared down at her sleeping form in the rear cabin of his private jet.

He’d only thought of how he would punish her when he found her. How good she would feel under him once again. How he would provoke her temper until she came at him all explosive fury and uncontained passion.

But she’d done nothing of the sort.

Oh, she’d lost control a couple of times and given him back as much as he’d deserved, but that was nothing to the Valentina he had known.

It was as if he was looking at a stranger.

If I sleep with you to earn it, you will have truly made me a whore.

Christos, only she could find such an appalling twist to what he had suggested.

But then since he was blackmailing her into his bed, was it any wonder that she had fought dirty?

He should have been impervious to her passionate, fiery declarations after ten months of living with her and her infamous tempers. Should have been unaffected by the sounds of her moans, the slide of her lithe body against his when he touched her.

That he wasn’t, disconcerted him on a level he didn’t understand.

His physical need for her and only her, and the fact that neither the sweet Stella nor any of the women who had readily offered him a place in their bed in the nine months since Valentina had walked out on him had remotely even tempted him, he could still somehow explain.

Like she had so crudely pointed out, Valentina was explosive in bed. He had been more than surprised when he’d discovered her virginity on their wedding night.

Valentina, as he’d quickly learned to his tremendous satisfaction, was an utterly sensual creature. Whatever he had taught her in bed, she’d not only taken to it enthusiastically but her innate curiosity for his body, her relentless eagerness to return every pleasure he had shown her. That she had remained untouched had been a shock.

She possessed a quick temper and an even quicker sexual trigger, and Christos, he’d reveled in making her explode to his slightest caresses. Tender and drawn-out, or explosive and fast, her passion had matched his own.

No man could be blamed for becoming obsessed like he had.

He needed Valentina with a fervor he didn’t care or need to understand, and he would have her.

But the hurt in her eyes as he had dealt one cruel statement after the other, hoping to get her temper to rise, festered like an unhealed wound in the hours since he’d arranged for them to travel to Greece.

He should be grateful that the blinders were torn from her eyes. That she would not look at him anymore as if he were her knight in shining armor. Or the man who’d fulfilled all her romantic fantasies.

Whether they divorced or not, it was a good thing she had finally learned the truth.

He had no familiarity or place in his life for tender feelings or love. They demanded a price he couldn’t afford, however wealthy he had become.

But the sight of her huge brown eyes as he’d torn her into shreds with his words wouldn’t leave him alone. He hadn’t pulled any of his punches and she had taken them as if they were her due.

He didn’t believe for a second that Valentina would stick to her chosen path or that she had what it took to succeed in her career.

She was just too undisciplined, too impulsive, too spoilt for the hard work it entailed. But still, for the first time in his life, Kairos felt as if he had stood up to the title that had haunted him all his childhood.

Bastard.

He was a bastard.

For even knowing that she would end up in his bed, even acknowledging that something intrinsic had changed in Valentina and he was the one who had caused it, knowing that he would hurt her, he still couldn’t walk away from her.

Neither would he keep her.

For all that she’d professed her love for him, she had proved that she was like the rest—using love as manipulation, and then breaking her word.

No one was important enough for him to risk that, to forget the lesson he had already learned.

Love was nothing but a game.

* * *

For all your avowals, you left. You proved how little your words mean.

The words and the sentiment behind them stung Tina as she lathered up in the small shower cubicle.

Had there been an infinitesimal thread of complaint in Kairos’s tone? Was she just reading too much when there was nothing again?

She had, at every available moment and opportunity, prostrated her feelings at his feet. Made a spectacle of herself.

How dare he think she’d given in too easily?

She wrapped a towel around herself, and stepped out.

Designer-label bags in every size and color covered the bed.

Mothership to Valentina... Calling now.

A soft sigh emerged from her lips.

She lasted nineteen seconds before she pulled the soft tissue out of the first bag and discovered a black cold-shoulder blouse and white capri pants. More casual pants and blouses. She counted four dresses ranging from a cocktail dress to a pale pink ball gown that would show off her tan beautifully.

Small, silky tissue bags of underwear and everything in her size. Makeup bags with her favorite lipsticks and perfumes with designer labels.

The bras were from the designer label she loved and sinfully expensive—two of them she had discovered recently would pay for her food for a month. And of the push-up kind she’d always preferred to make the most of her nonexistent boobage.

Sliding to the bed in her towel, Tina fingered the butter-soft cushioning of a push-up bra. In some throwaway remark he had made once when they’d watched an old Hollywood movie, she’d realized her husband had a thing for big breasts.

And hers were meager at best. So, like an idiot female, she’d gone on a rampage with lingerie, bras especially, and in the end there had been more cushioning and padding in her bra than flesh on her body.

One evening, she’d gone with an extreme push-up bra to a party—her boobs, exposed by a low neckline, almost kissing her chin and barely covering her nipples. Kairos had blown his top and called her entire outfit trampy—the first time in their marriage that he’d lost it.

He’d said, in clipped tones, that her need for every man’s attention made her the shallowest woman he’d ever met. And then he’d walked out for the night.

She frowned.

For all his smarts, hadn’t Kairos realized that she’d gone from one outrageous outfit to the next to get a rise out of him? To make up for what she thought she was lacking, for him? That from the moment Leandro had introduced her to him, she hadn’t thought of another man ever again?

Why did she have to go to such extremes to please him?

Why was she even now, making such a big deal about the fact that he’d remembered the size of her underwear, of all things?

Kairos had a mind like a super computer, remembering every small detail that went in. It had no significance.

“A starved dog would look at meat scraps with less hunger,” said a dry voice from the doorway.

Tina stood up and tugged the towel up.

He had also changed—a gray V-necked sweater that hugged his biceps and chest and dark jeans that caressed his muscular thighs. She had to swallow the feminine sigh of appreciation that wanted to come out.

“Old dogs can learn new tricks,” she said repressively.

His laughter pervaded the small cabin. Grooves etched in his cheeks, his eyes alight with humor. “I think the saying says the opposite.”

“I don’t want the clothes.”

“No choice. My wife, the fashionista of Milan, can’t dress in trashy clothes that better suit a street walker or...” he picked up the worn-out denim shorts and loose T-shirt that she had put out “...hand-me-downs. Wow, you have really taken this role to heart, ne? You would have turned your nose up at these a few months ago.”

“I would have, si. But it is not a joke, Kairos. Those are clothes that I could afford on what I made.”

He threw the shirt carelessly aside. “You have to look the part, Valentina. Believe me, you’re going to need the armor.”

She frowned at the thoughtful look in his eyes. Armor for what? She’d been so caught up in staying strong against his onslaught she hadn’t delved too much into the details. “I want to discuss this after I dress.”

A brow raised, Kairos stared at her leisurely. Water drops clinging to her skin should burn and singe for the lazy intensity of his gaze. “Still so modest, Valentina? I have seen, touched, licked, sucked every part of you, ne?”

She glared at him. “I was willing then. Not anymore.”

“But I can see you if I close my eyes.” He closed his eyes, leaning against the wall. A wicked smile dancing around his lips. “The mole on the curve of your right buttock. The mark you have on your knee from skinning it. The silky folds of—”

She pressed her palm to his mouth and whispered, “Stop, please.”

Unholy humor glinted in his silver eyes. “That’s not all. I have the sounds you make, the way you thrust your hips up when I’m deep inside you, I have them all in my head.” He tapped his temple, his nostrils flaring. “They’re the first things I recall in the morning when I wake up with—”

She drew her hand back, burned. But even beneath the sensual web around them, it was the humor in his eyes that threw her. “You’re shameless.”

His eyes followed a drop of water from her neck to the tight cinch of her towel. A devilish smile glinted around his mouth. “You know how I get in the morning, ne? You left me with no recourse.” He pulled up her left hand and frowned. “Where are your rings?”

“In my bag.”

With purposeful movements, he looked through her bag. Stalking back to her, he pushed the rings on her finger. Another sleek box appeared from somewhere.

Her heart thundered as he pulled out a simple gold chain with a diamond pendant.

The pendant was a thumbnail sized V in delicately twisted platinum and gold with tiny diamonds lining up the branches. She had seen it at a jewelry store once—on one rare occasion when they’d been out shopping together to buy a gift for her niece Izzie. Buying it with her credit card—against Kairos’s dictate that she stop spending Leandro’s money—would have been easy.

But already...something had changed in her back then.

Clothes and shoes and jewelry had begun to lose their allure. Because none of those, she had realized, made a difference in how her reserved husband saw her.

And yet he’d noticed her watching it.

She met his eyes over the fragile chain dangling in his fingers. “I... I have a lot of funky jewelry to dress the part. I can’t stand the thought of fake gifts.”

“I bought it for you. We might as well use it.” With one hand, he pushed the swathe of her hair aside, then his hands were gentle around her neck. His warm breath feathered over her face, his arms a languorous weight over her shoulders. “Throw it away after we’re done with this for all I care.”

The pendant was cold against her bare skin. Tina licked her lips, warmth pooling in her chest. “When?”

His fingers lingered over the nape of her neck, straightening the chain, but still her heart went thud against her ribcage. “When what?”

“When did you buy it?”

“When you were waiting outside, in the car. I meant to give it to you on—” he laughed, and yet beneath the mockery Tina sensed self-deprecation, even anger “—the ten-month anniversary of our wedding. I feel like a fool even saying that.”

“Then why did you buy it?” Her tummy rolled at his proximity, at the revelation. “You called me a sentimental little fool when I bought you gifts on that date. A child who celebrates every little thing.”

“Maybe you finally wore me down. But then you left two days after that shopping trip, so maybe it’s a good thing I didn’t change too much for you, ne?” he said, looking away.

This time, there was no doubt that he was angry, even bitter that she had left him. That she had given up on their marriage. She must have changed him a little if he had truly thought of giving her a gift on that date. Maybe just a little.

But still, he hadn’t acted on that anger. He had simply written her off, like a bad asset. He had only come for her when he decided he needed her. She had to remember that.

“The clothes, the shoes, everything will stay.” He walked away, a faint tension radiating from him. “I want the classy, stylish Valentina. The adoring, loving wife.”

“I can’t force the last part.”

“Pretend then. For months, you did just that anyway. Do you need anything else?”

“Underwear. Bras, to be exact,” she said the first thing that came to her lips while her mind whirled. Had he cared about her just a little? Had he bought her the necklace to make her happy?

Did his humiliating proposal that she could persuade him to try again hold a hint of what he wanted?

“The ones I have are plain cotton and will show—”

“Things I’d rather not have anyone but me see in those slinky dresses,” he finished for her, possessiveness ringing in his tone. He frowned and looked at the reams of new bras. “I had my PA order those from the boutique you spend a fortune in.”

She sighed—she really did like how big those push-up bras made her breasts look. No, what she liked was that they had made her feel like he would like her more. But no more of her crazy shenanigans. “Those don’t...fit anymore.”

His gaze moved to her chest like a laser beam. The wicked devil! “I can’t tell from under that towel.”

She picked up a pen and notepad and wrote down her size.

“No underwire, no padding, no lifting. All you’re going to get is my tiny boobs as nature made them,” she muttered to herself.

He laughed, half choking on it. She jerked her head up, realizing too late he’d been standing far too close. He stared at her as if she had grown two horns. “What?”

She pasted a fake smile to her lips. “My sanity returned nine months ago. I can’t wait for the next three months to be over.”

He scowled. Didn’t even bother to hide it.

“Fortunately, I know you well enough not to trust a word out of your lovely mouth,” said the blasted man.

If a shiver claimed her spine, she didn’t let it show on her face.

A few more months in my bed...

A rich man’s trophy wife...

Kairos would never see her as anything else.

She’d seen how he behaved with her sister-in-law Sophia, one of his oldest friends. A woman he’d proposed to before he’d decided on Tina herself.

Sophia was the smartest woman Tina knew. And she commanded Kairos’s respect. Even Leandro’s wife Alexis had Kairos’s regard.

Both women, so different, and yet they had one thing in common that she did not have.

They were successful in their own right—strong, independent women who were more than enough to take on her powerful brothers Leandro and Luca.

That was what Tina wanted to be. That was what she wanted to see in his eyes when he looked at her.

If he was going to tease and torment her for three months, then she would earn his respect, his regard. She was Valentina Conti Constantinou and she would have her own form of revenge by succeeding beyond his wildest dreams.

She would rub his face in what he was giving up. And only then, only when she had brought him to his knees, would Valentina walk away. Even her Machiavellian grandfather Antonio, who’d only ever accepted her under pressure from Leandro, couldn’t deny that she was any less of a scheming Conti now.

She turned around and faced Kairos. “I have been thinking of our deal since last night.” Steady, flat, her voice cooperated. “I have a few conditions.”

His nostrils flared. “You don’t get to negotiate.”

That she had shocked him snapped her spine into place.

She let a smile curve her mouth. She hadn’t been born a Conti, but her proud, powerful brothers had raised her to be one. “I might be vain and vapid but I’m not stupido, Kairos. You came to me last night because you need me. So, si, I will negotiate and you will listen.”

“What are your conditions?”

“You were right about the industry being a bitch. I didn’t get anywhere in nine months. I want word spread that we’re back together again. I want the names and numbers of everyone you do business with. And I want your backing.”

“I’m a respected businessman, Valentina. I will not give the weight of my name to any harebrained scheme of yours that is sure to embarrass me and sink in a few months. If you want my money, you have to wait until the divorce is final to get your hands on it.”

“Non! Not money. I want access to your rich friends and their wives. Or their mistresses. I don’t care how you put it forward. Tell them your juvenile, impulsive bratty wife is putting together a shoot and you’re indulging her. Tell them it’s the way I’m whiling away my useless life. Tell them it’s your way of indulging my tantrums. I don’t care what you tell them. I need to put together a portfolio and a shoot. I need to get word of mouth going that I’m offering my services as a personal stylist to anyone who’s got reputation, status and money.”

“A personal stylist?”

“Si.” She raised her hand, cutting him off. “If you’re going to use me, Kairos, I will use you, too. At least, we’re finally speaking the same language.”

“And what language is that, Valentina?”

“The language of transactions. You never do anything without some advantage to yourself. Our marriage has taught me one useful thing at least.”

“You’re playing a dangerous game, pethi mou, hurling accusations at me. You can only push me so far.”

“I know you’ll find it hard to believe, but I’m not doing anything to provoke you, Kairos. For the first time in my life, I’m thinking with my head. I’ve looked past the surface and not liked what I see in myself.

You have made me face reality. And for that, I shall always be grateful to you.”

“You want a divorce because you’re grateful to me?” The stony mask of his face belied how angry he was with her again. No, not anger. But he was affected by her decision.

“Just because I’ve realized what was wrong with me doesn’t mean you were right, does it? I will never give you power over me again.”

For all her brazen confidence, she’d never stripped before him, because she had thought her body imperfect, not made to his specifications and preferences.

Or maybe because she had always wanted to be perfect to please him—perfect straight hair, perfect dress, perfect posture.

It had got her exactly nowhere with him.

Without waiting for his response, her breath suspended in her throat, she picked some underwear. Her back to him, she dropped the towel. The soft exhale behind her pulled her nerves taut. Somehow, she managed to pull her panties up the right way and hooked her bra on.

The intensity of his gaze on her body burned over her skin, as if he was stroking it with those clever fingers. But she was determined to see this through, to prove to him that he wouldn’t always have the upper hand.

With barely a glance in his direction, she pulled on a pair of capri pants and a white silk top.

And then, head held high, she walked out to the main cabin, her heart a deafening roar in her chest.

She was tweaking the tiger’s tail, true. But she had to do this. She had to prove to him that she was made of stronger stuff. And then, when the three months were up, she would have his respect and then she would walk away.

CHAPTER FOUR

THEY ARRIVED AT a large estate on the island of Mykonos around six in the evening in a tinted limo.

A grove of dark green olive trees beckoned as the car drove up the curving driveway.

Lush green surrounded the whitewashed villa nestled in a picturesque setting. Blue beaches stretched as far as the eye could see.

But Tina barely took it in for her gaze stuck to the myriad expressions crossing her husband’s usually expressionless face.

His chest had risen and fallen with a deep breath at the first sight of the villa. His jaw clenched tight at the sight of a green sports model Beetle. Tenderness and ache and grim determination flashed across his silver eyes at the sight of the three people—an older man and woman and a young woman—waiting at the top of the steps.

Tina felt as if she was standing in a minefield. She’d never seen Kairos show so much emotion, much less such varying reactions.

“Kairos?” she said softly, loath to disturb the glimpse she was getting into a man she’d thought felt nothing, held nothing sacred.

His gaze turned to her from the opposite seat. And in the seconds it took him to focus on her, his expression became blank, as easily as if he’d donned a mask, completely shutting her out yet again.

But she couldn’t scream or fight him for his usual response. “What exactly does this debt to Theseus entail, Kairos?”

Hesitation like she’d never seen flickered across his face. “There are some duties I need to fulfill. That’s all you need to know.”

Curiosity ate through Tina even as she told herself to stay out of it.

In ten months of marriage, all she’d learned about him was that he was an orphan who had grown up on the streets of Athens. That he had had a mentor who had given him an education. That was it, no more.

Getting her husband to talk about himself, his past, or his emotions was like getting blood out of stone. She’d honestly never met a man who talked so little.

Something about the tension wreathed in his face made her say, “You’re not going to murder someone and ask me to lie for you in court, are you?”

His mouth twitched. “So you haven’t stopped watching American soap operas.”

“Sell me to land a business deal like that guy did in Indecent Proposal?”

He laughed. The warm sound enveloped her in the dark interior.

“Oxhi... No,” he clarified. “Even if I wanted to, I don’t think there’s a man living who’d know how to handle you, Valentina.”

“I know oxhi means no,” she said, trying to think of his statement as a compliment. “I plan to say it quite a lot to you over the next few months. In English, Italian and Greek,” she added for good measure.

Memories permeated the air between them, bringing a smile to her own lips.

For the first month of their marriage, they had had hilarious moments, teaching each other Italian and Greek. But they had both settled on English in the end.

Except when he made love to her. Then he slipped into Greek—guttural, pithy words that even now sent a shiver through her insides. Words she’d never hear again.

No, words she didn’t want to hear, she clarified for herself.

“Cold?” he asked, his head dipping down toward her as she exited the car.

She shook her head but he draped a muscled arm around her shoulders, pulling her flush against his side. A clamor of sensation rose inside her. But still, she was aware of a pair of eyes drilling holes into her.

The younger woman, she knew instinctually.

A sliver of apprehension clamped her spine. “Kairos, this feels—”

He cut her off with the press of his lips.

It began as a soft nuzzle. A tender hold of her jaw. A warning to play along in his eyes. Barely a slide of his body against hers.

A show. He was putting on a show. For that woman, Helena.

And yet, as their lips met, as her chest grazed his, as his hand descended to her hip to keep her steady, everything changed.

Nine months of deprivation came pouring out. Desire rose—swift and spiraling.

Heat and pleasure radiated from where their lips grazed and pressed. Air left her lungs. Her knees wobbled and she clutched his arm. A whimper fell from her mouth when he licked the seam of her lips.

He cursed against her lips and Tina instantly opened up. The masterful glide of his tongue against hers made her moan and press harder into his hard body. Her hands crawled to the nape of his neck, her fingers pushing into his rough hair.

The world around them dissolved. Colors burned behind her eyelids, desire making her blood heavy. She could feel the defined contours of his body digging into hers. Images and sensations from memory drowned the little thread of her will: the cradle of his hard hips bearing her down into the mattress; his rock-hard thighs pushing against the soft flesh of hers; the utterly masculine grunt at the back of his throat when she dug her nails into his back.

Heat bloomed low in her belly as he swept over every inch of her mouth with glorious, knowing strokes. No tenderness. No holding back.

Purely carnal, he thrust in and out of her mouth with his tongue.

Pockets of heat erupted all over her, her clothes caging the sensations against her hot skin.

One hand around her neck and one encircling her hip, he held her the way he needed for his onslaught, only letting her come up for air briefly before he claimed her mouth again. He bit her lower lip with such aggressive possession that she moaned. Pleasure and pain wound around her senses.

Instantly he gentled the kiss, laving the hurt with his tongue.

Softer and slower. Ache upon ache built in her lower belly, spinning and spiraling. Tina whimpered against his mouth, craving release. Craving this closeness with him.

“Enough, Kairos! Introduce us to your little plaything.”

The venom in that voice, hidden beneath a vein of sweet playfulness, was ice water over Tina’s head. She pulled away, heart thundering a million miles an hour in her ears. Her lips stung, her entire body thrummed with need.

“Helena, please be...polite,” came another soft voice.

His fingertips trailing lazily against her jawline, his chest rising and falling, Kairos let out a soft growl that reverberated along her trembling body. Tina sensed his shock as her own senses began to clear.

“Nine months...” he whispered against her mouth, his forehead touching hers in uncharacteristic affection. “Even if I hadn’t needed you here for this day, pethi mou... You and I are not through.”

The words were feral. Possessive. And not meant for their audience.

Tina licked her lips and tasted him there. But all he meant was for sex, she reminded her sinking senses. She frowned. “It is just one kiss.”

Masculine arrogance etched into every line of his face. “You will come to me, pethi mou. I simply shall not allow it to be otherwise.” He rubbed her lips with the pad of his thumb. “I might, however, decide not to give you what you want. As a punishment.”

She saw it now. He meant to use these months to work her out of his system. He didn’t like it that he still wanted her so much. And then, he would walk away.

And if the kiss had been any indication, he was right. She hadn’t even mustered a token protest. “This is a game to you, isn’t it? Like who will blink first, or who will draw first and shoot the other person?”

* * *

“You’re the one who always plays games.”

Anger and frustration pulsed through her. “No more,” she said, tilting her head toward the woman waiting. She rubbed at a piece of nonexistent lint on his shirt, felt the thundering of his heart under her palm. “My days of fighting for you are over, Kairos. That woman and you are welcome to each other.”

“I have never loved you, Valentina. When we were married, I could barely stand your theatrics and tantrums. But believe me when I say the only woman I have desired since I met you, the only woman that drives me insane with lust, is you. I want only you, glykia mou.”

The truth of his declaration reverberated through Tina, leaving her shaking. His own disbelief that he still wanted her, his frustration at his inability to understand it, much less control it, saturated his words.

She barely processed it—four sentences about what he felt or didn’t feel from Kairos was like a long speech from any other man—before she felt the younger woman right behind them. Her subtle floral perfume carried to them on the air.

His shoulders tensing, Kairos moved them toward the couple who had come down the stairs but who waited at a discreet distance. His arm remained at her waist in a possessive grip.

“Valentina, this is Theseus Markos and his wife Maria. They are—” his Adam’s Apple bobbed as he hesitated “—friends of mine.” Tension built in the older couple’s faces at his label. Jaw tight, he nodded to the younger woman. “And this is their daughter Helena. My wife, Valentina Constantinou.” Possession was imbued in the softly spoken words.

He addressed the greeting mainly to the man.

With a head full of thick gray hair, Theseus looked to be in his sixties. He had a heavy, beefy build but even in the afternoon sun there was an unhealthy pallor to his skin. As if he had spent the last few months away from it.

Tina shook his hand, which was warm beneath her fingers. “We have been very curious about you, Valentina,” he said genuinely, the wariness melting from his gaze. Unlike Kairos, his accent was thick. “Welcome to our home. We hope you are not angry with us for taking your husband away from you for so long. Kairos has been an immense help here.”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.