Billionaires: The Royal: The Queen's New Year Secret / Awakened by Her Desert Captor / Twin Heirs to His Throne. Maisey Yates

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      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 told you,” she said, studying her wrecked manicure, “it doesn’t make sense. It’s too tangled up in all of my issues to approach sense.”

      “I suppose it makes as much sense as me being angry at myself. I had you on that desk when you presented me with the divorce papers and most of my anger was directed at me. For having a chance to have you, five long years to make love to you in any way I chose. Squandered. In the interest of control. Control I felt a deep conviction over, but that in the end I despised. You tell me how that makes sense.”

      “I can’t tell you how. Only that it does. Because it mirrors much of what I feel.”

      “I think that’s enough honesty for one evening, don’t you?” he asked, his tone growing hard suddenly, his dark eyes shuttered.

      “I’m not done with the cookies,” she said, taking another one out, this one dipped in chocolate.

      “Then, I will wait. Because I find I’m not done with you.”

      “Oh,” she said, putting the cookie back in the tin. Suddenly, she didn’t care much about the cookie.

      “Come on, agape. Let’s go to bed.”

      * * *

      Kairos had never spent the night with a woman. Not even his own wife. He questioned why he hadn’t now. Because it was a thing of brilliant luxury. Luxury and satisfaction he had never known, to wake up with a soft, beautiful woman twined around his body. During their nap the evening before, they had not touched while they’d slept, but sometime during the night she had moved nearer to him, or he nearer to her. Her soft legs were laced through his.

      Last night he’d had her more times than he could count. Every time he thought he was satisfied, desire would reach up again and grab him by the throat, compel him to have her. Another side effect of not sleeping with your wife was that intimacy was confined to a single moment. Something planned, something carefully orchestrated. There was always a definite start time. Then an end when he returned to his own bed.

      The lines blurred when you didn’t leave the room.

      He found he quite liked the lines blurred.

      He drew the covers back slightly, the pale morning light washing over her curves, revealing bruises on her skin. One on her back, four at her hips. His fingerprints.

      He gritted his teeth, regret warring with arousal inside of him. There was something primal and masculine in him that celebrated the fact his mark remained. The fact that he had declared her his with these outward signs. She no longer wore his wedding ring, but she wore his touch like a brand.

      What kind of monster was he?

      “Tabitha,” he asked, “are you awake?”

      “No,” she mumbled, rolling over onto her stomach, her blond hair falling over her face like a golden curtain. “If I were awake my eyes would be open.”

      His chest tightened, his stomach twisting. There was something charming about her like this. Not bound by her typical control, not conscious of the fact that she thought of him as little more than a stranger.

      “You answered my question,” he said.

      “It would be rude not to,” she muttered.

      “I suppose that’s true.”

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