The Queen's New Year Secret

Of course, she had never imagined that a young American girl who had come to Petras on a study-abroad program would have a chance with the king of the nation.

Oddly, he was almost more compelling now, in this moment, than he’d been at the first. She had slept with this man for five years. Had seen him naked countless times. The mystery should have been gone. She knew they didn’t light the sheets on fire, they never had. It was her, at least she imagined it was. He was her only lover, so she had no one else to compare it with.

Apparently, he went out and found women with red lipstick, and things were different. He was different.

Rage mingled with the sexual heat rioting through her.

She ran her hands over his chest, the heat of his muscle and skin burning her palms. She should be disgusted by him. She shouldn’t want to touch him. Instead, she was insatiable for him. If he had been with another woman, then she would wipe her from his mind. Would erase her touch from his body with her own. She would do what she had not managed to do over the course of five years of marriage. She would make him crave her. Make him desire her.

And then she would leave him.

She leaned forward, parting her lips, scraping her teeth over his chin. He growled, pressing her up against the desk again, pushing her dress the rest of the way down her hips, allowing it to pool on the floor. She didn’t recognize him in this moment, didn’t recognize herself.

“Did you have someone else?” She asked the question through clenched teeth, as she worked the buckle on his belt, then set about to opening the closure on his dress pants.

He leaned in, claiming her mouth with his, the kiss violent, hard. Bruising. He forced her lips apart, his tongue sliding against hers as he claimed her, deep and uncompromising. She let the rage of the unanswered question simmer between them, stoking the flame of her desire.

He took hold of the front of her bra, pulling it down, revealing her breasts. He bent his head, taking one tightened bud into his mouth and sucking hard. She gasped, threading her fingers through his hair, holding him tightly against her. She wanted to punish him, for tonight, for the past five years. She didn’t know what else to do but to punish him with her desire. Desire she had kept long hidden. Until tonight, they had never so much as yelled at one another. This was more passion than either of them had ever shown.

Perhaps it was the same for him. An outlet for his anger. A punishment. But it was one she would gladly allow herself to be subjected to. Because for all that she knew she would walk away from this damaged, destroyed, she knew that he would not walk away from it unscathed either.

He shifted, blazing a path between her breasts with the flat of his tongue, his teeth grazing her neck, her jaw, before he finally claimed her mouth again. He reached between them, freeing his erection, so hot and hard against her skin.

She planted her hands on his shoulders, pushing them beneath the fabric of his shirt, scraping her fingernails along his flesh, relishing the harsh sound that he made in response. He tightened his hold on her, setting her up on the surface of his desk, moving to stand between her spread thighs. He pressed his arousal against her slick, sensitive skin, still covered by her flimsy panties, rolling his hips, sending a shock wave of pleasure through her body.

“Answer me,” she said, digging her fingernails more deeply into his shoulders.

He shifted, sliding his hands down beneath the fabric of her underwear, his fingertips grazing the sensitized bundle of nerves there. “You want to know if I did this to another woman?” His words were rough, jagged. He hooked his finger around the edge of her panties, drawing them to the side, pressing the head of his shaft to the entrance of her body. “You want to know if I did this with another woman?”

“Just answer the question,” she hissed.

“I think you would have me either way.”

Her face heated, humiliation pouring through her. He was right. In this moment, she would be hard-pressed to deny him or her body anything. “Is that why you won’t tell me? For fear I’ll turn you away?”

“I’m used to you turning me away, Tabitha. Why should I waste a moment of regret over it now?”

She slid her hands down his well-muscled back, cupping his ass. “You would regret this.” She rolled her hips forward, taking him deeper inside her body, just another inch. “You would regret not finishing this.”

“No,” he said, and for a moment, her heart sank. For a moment, she thought he meant he would not regret losing out on this moment between them. For a moment, she thought that yet again, she was alone in what she was experiencing. “I was not with anyone else. I did not touch another woman. She propositioned me. She whispered in my ear. I said no.”

Then he kissed her before driving deep into her body. She gasped, and he took advantage, tasting her deeply as he flexed his hips again, withdrawing slightly before seating himself fully inside her again.

A rough groan escaped her lips, white-hot pleasure streaking through her. She clung more tightly to him, wrapping her legs around his back, urging him on. Urging him to take it harder, faster. She had no patience. Had no more desire in her to cultivate an effort to take things slow, to practice restraint. There was nothing but him, nothing but this. Nothing but years of anger, frustration, being uncovered as their inhibitions were stripped away layer by layer, with each thrust of his body into hers.

A shudder wracked his large frame, pleasure stealing his control. She relished that. Took pride in it. But it wasn’t enough. She wanted to give him pleasure, she absolutely did. Wanted him to think of this later, to regret all of the years when they didn’t have this. To look back on this one moment and ache forever. For the rest of his days, no matter whom he married down the road. Whoever came after her, whether she bore children for him or not, Tabitha wanted him to always think of her.

But pleasure wasn’t enough. She wanted to punish him too. She dug her fingernails deep into his skin and he growled, angling his head and biting her neck, the action not gentle at all, painful. He flexed his hips, his body making contact with that sensitive bundle of nerves, and she knew that he was trying to do the same to her that she was doing to him. As if she deserved his wrath. As if she deserved his belated, angry gift of pleasure. He was the one who had done this to them. This was his fault.

She tightened her grip on him, met his every thrust with a push from her own body, met his each and every growl with one of her own. She had been passive for too long. The perfect wife who could never be perfect enough. So why bother? Why not just break it all?

She closed her eyes tightly, fusing her lips to his, kissing him with all of the rage, desire and regret that she had inside of her, the action pushing them both over the edge. It had been so long. So very long. Not just since she had been with him, but since she had found pleasure in his arms. So many months of coming together when she was at the optimum place in her cycle, perfunctory couplings that meant nothing and felt like less than nothing.

This was different than anything that had come before it. He’d given her orgasms before, but nothing like this. Nothing this all-consuming. Nothing this altering. This devastating. This was like a completely different experience. She was falling in the dark with no way of knowing when she would hit the bottom. All she knew was that she would. And when she did, it would be painful beyond anything she had ever known before. But for now, she was simply falling, with him.

The last time. The last moment they would ever be together.

She wanted to weep. With the devastation of it. With the triumph of it. This was it for them. The final nail in the coffin of their marriage. How she desperately needed it. How she resented it. She wanted to transport herself somewhere in the future. Years from now, maybe. To a time when she’d already healed from the wounds that would be left behind after they separated. A moment in time when she would have already learned to be Just Tabitha again, and not Tabitha, Queen of Petras, wife of Kairos. But Tabitha, on her own.

At the same time, she wanted to stay in this moment. Forever. She wanted to hold on to him forever and never let go.

Which was why she needed to let go. She so badly needed to let go.

The pleasure stretched on, an onslaught of waves that never ceased and she couldn’t catch her breath. Couldn’t think beyond what he made her feel. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair. Why was this happening now? She had always believed this was there between them, that it could be unlocked, somehow, but they had never found it. Not until this moment. This very last moment.

Finally the storm subsided, leaving her spent, exhausted. Smashed against the rock. She was wrung out. She had nothing left in her to give. No more rage. No more desire. Nothing but an endless sadness for what her life had become. She looked at the man still holding her tightly. The man still inside her body. The man she had made vows to.

A man who was a stranger, half a decade after she’d first made love to him.

“I hate you,” she said, the words a hoarse whisper that shocked even herself. A tear slid down her cheek and she didn’t bother to wipe it away. “For every one of the past five years you have wasted, I hate you. For being my husband but never really being my husband. I hate you for that too. For not giving me a baby. For making me want you even when I hate you.”

He pushed away from her, his gaze dark. “Let me guess, you hate me for that too.”

“I do. But the good thing is, that after today, we won’t have to see each other.”

“Oh, I think not, agape. I think we will have to see each other a great many times after today. A royal divorce is going to be complicated. There will be press. There will be many days in court—”

“We signed a prenuptial agreement. I remember the terms well. I don’t get anything. That’s fine. I’ve had quite enough from you.”

He made no move to dress, made no move to collect her clothes. And he didn’t look away as she bent to gather them, pulling them on as quickly as possible, internally shrinking away from his gaze. Finally, she was dressed. It was done. It was over.

She made her way toward the door on unsteady legs, everything inside her unsteady, rolling like the sea.

“Tabitha,” he said, his voice rough, “I want you to know that I don’t hate you.”

“You don’t?” She turned to face him, her eyes meeting with his unreadable face. As immovable as stone.

He shook his head slowly, his eyes never leaving hers. “No. I feel...” He paused for a moment. “I feel nothing.”

She felt as though he had stabbed her directly in the heart. Anguish replaced any of the pleasure, any of the satisfaction that had been there before. He felt nothing. Even in this moment he felt nothing.

The rage was back then, spurring her on, keeping her from falling over. “You just screwed me on your desk,” she said, “I would have thought that might have made you feel something.”

She was all false bravado. It was either that or burst into tears.

His expression remained bland. “You’re hardly the first woman I’ve had on a desk.”

She swallowed hard, blinking back more tears. She had made the right choice. She knew she had. Had he yelled at her, had he screamed, had he said that he hated her too, she might have wondered. But those black, flat, soulless eyes didn’t lie. He felt nothing. He was indifferent, even in this moment.

Tabitha had heard it said that hate was like murder. But she knew differently. It was indifference that killed. And with his, Kairos had left her mortally wounded.

“I wish you luck in your search for a more suitable wife, Your Highness,” she said.

Then she walked out of the door, out of his life.

CHAPTER THREE

“WHERE IS YOUR WIFE, Kairos?”

Prince Andres, Kairos’s younger reformed rake of a brother, walked into Kairos’s office. There was still glass on the floor from where Tabitha had shattered it two days ago. Still a dark stain where the scotch had splashed itself over the wallpaper.

All of it shouted the story of what had happened the night Tabitha had left. At least, it shouted at Kairos. Every time he walked in.

It was nearly as loud as his damned conscience.

I feel nothing.

A lie. Of course it was a lie. She had stripped him down. Reduced him to nothing more than need, desperate, clawing need.

Another woman walking away from him. Threatening to leave him there alone. Empty. While his pride bled out of him, leaving him with nothing.

He couldn’t allow that, not again. So he’d said he felt nothing. And now she was gone.

“Why? What have you heard?” Kairos asked, not bothering to explain the glass, even when Andres’s eyes connected with the mess.

“Nothing much. Zara tells me Tabitha called to see if I could find out if you were using your penthouse anytime soon. I wondered why on earth my brother’s wife would be stooping to subterfuge to find out the actions of her own husband.”

Kairos ground his teeth together, his eyes on the shards of glass.

I feel nothing for you.

If only that were true. He was...he didn’t even know what to call the emotions rioting through him. Emotions were...weak and soft in his estimation, and that was not what he felt.

He was beyond rage. Beyond betrayal. She was his wife. He had brought her up from the lowest of positions, made her a queen, and she had the audacity to betray him.

“No explanation, Kairos?”

Kairos looked up at his brother. “She probably wants to go shopping without fear of retribution.”

“Right. Are the coffers of Petras so empty she has to worry about your wrath? Or is her shoe closet merely so full.”

Kairos had no idea what her closet looked like. He never looked farther than her bed when he was in her room. “She left me,” he said, his tone hard, the words like acid on his tongue.

Andres had the decency to look shocked. Surprising, because Andres was rarely shocked and he was never decent. “Tabitha left you?”

“Yes,” he ground out.

“Tabitha, who barely frowns in public for fear it might ignite a scandal?”

Kairos dragged his hand over his face. “That is the only Tabitha I know of.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Neither do I,” Kairos said, his voice a growl.

He paced across the office, to the place where the remains of that glass of scotch rested. It reminded him of the remnants left behind after an accident on the highway. One of the many similarities the past few days bore to a car crash.

I hate you.

He closed his eyes against the pain that lashed at him. What had he done to make his wife hate him? Had he not given her everything?

A baby. She wanted a baby.

Yes, he had failed her there. But dammit all, he’d given her a palace. Some women couldn’t be pleased.

“What the hell did you do?”

“I was perhaps too generous,” Kairos said, his tone hard. “I gave her too much freedom. Perhaps the weight of her diamond-encrusted crown was a bit heavy.”

“You don’t know,” Andres said, his tone incredulous.

“Of course I bloody don’t. I had no idea she was unhappy.” The lie was heavy on his chest.

You knew. You didn’t know how to fix it.

“I know I haven’t been married very long...”

“A week, Andres. If you begin handing out marital advice before the ink is dry on your license, I will reopen the dungeons just for you.”

“Perhaps if you’d opened the dungeons for Tabitha she wouldn’t have left you.”

“I am not going to keep my own wife prisoner.” But dear God, it was tempting.

Andres arched a brow. “That isn’t what I meant.”

Heat streaked along Kairos’s veins, and he thought again of that last night here in his office. Of the way she’d felt in his arms. His cool ice queen suddenly transformed into a living flame...

I hate you.

“We do not have that sort of relationship,” Kairos said, his voice stiff.

Andres chuckled, the sound grating against Kairos’s nerves. “Maybe that’s your problem.”

“Everything is not about sex.”

Andres shrugged. “It absolutely is. But you may cling to your illusions if you must.”

“What do you want, Andres?”

“To see if you’re okay.”

He spread his arms wide. “Am I dead and buried?”

His brother arched a brow. “No. But your wife is gone.”

Kairos gritted his teeth. “And?”

“Do you intend to get a new one?”

He would have to. There was no other alternative. Though the prospect filled him with nothing but dread. Still, even now, he wanted no one else. No one but Tabitha.

And now that he’d tasted the heat that had always shimmered between them as a tantalizing promise, never before fulfilled...

Forgetting her would not be so easy.

“I do not want a new one,” he said.

“Then you have to go and claim the old one, I suppose.”

Kairos offered his brother a glare. “Worry about your life, I’ll worry about mine.” He paused for a moment, staring again at that pile of broken glass. The only thing that remained of his marriage. “I will not hold her prisoner. If Tabitha wants a divorce, she can have her damn divorce.”

* * *

Tabitha hadn’t seen Kairos in four weeks. Four weeks of staring at blank spaces, eyes dry, unable to find any tears. She hadn’t cried. Not since that single tear had fallen in his office. Not since she’d told him how much she hated him—and meant it—with every piece of herself. She had not cried.

Why would you cry for a husband that you hated? Why would you cry for a husband who felt nothing for you?

It made no sense. And so, she hadn’t cried. Tabitha was nothing if not sensible. Even when she came to divorce, it seemed.

She was slightly less sensible when it came to other things. Which was why it had taken her a full week of being late for her to make her way to the doctor. She had no choice but to use the doctor she had always used. She didn’t want to, didn’t want to be at risk by going to a doctor who was employed by the royal family. But her only other alternative was going to one she had no relationship with. One she had no trust in at all. News of her and Kairos’s divorce had already hit the papers, and it was headline news. If she went to an ob-gyn now, everything would explode. She couldn’t risk it. So she was risking this. She swallowed hard, her hands shaking as she sat on the exam table. Her blood had already been drawn, and now she was just waiting for the results.

She had waited so long to come to the doctor because she was often late. Her period never started on time. For years upon years every time she had been late she’d held out hope. Hope that this time it wasn’t just her cycle being fickle. Hope that it might actually be a baby.

It was never a baby. Never.

But it had been a full week, and still nothing. And she couldn’t overlook the fact that she and Kairos had had unprotected sex.

Nothing unusual there, though. They always had. For five years they’d had unprotected sex, and there had been no baby. The universe was not that cruel. How could God ignore her prayers for five long years, and answer them at the worst possible moment?

It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be.

For the first time, when the doctor walked back into the room, her expression unreadable, Tabitha hoped for the no. She needed it. Needed to hear that the test was negative.

She knew now that she couldn’t live with Kairos. It was confirmed. She couldn’t make it work with him. He didn’t care for her. And she...she felt far too much for him. She could not live like that. She simply couldn’t.

“Queen Tabitha,” Dr. Anderson said, her words slow. “I had hoped that King Kairos might have accompanied you today.”

“If you read the paper at all, then you know that he and I are going through a divorce. I saw no reason to include him in this visit.” The doctor looked down and Tabitha’s stomach sank. A no was an easy answer to give. A no certainly didn’t require Kairos’s presence.

“Yes, I do know about the divorce,” the doctor said. “All members of royal staff had been briefed, of course.”

“Then you know why he isn’t here.”

“Forgive me for asking, my queen,” the doctor said. “But if you are in fact carrying a child, is it his?”

“If I am? You’ve seen the test results. Don’t play this game with me. Do not play games with me. I’ve had enough.”

“It’s just that...”

“This is my test. It has nothing to do with him. My entire life does not revolve around him.” Tabitha knew she was beginning to get a bit hysterical. “I left him. I left him so that he wasn’t at the center of everything I did. We don’t need to bring him into this.”

“The test is positive, my queen. I feel that under other circumstances congratulations would be in order,” Dr. Anderson said, her tone void of expression.

Before this, before the divorce proceedings, Dr. Anderson had always been friendly, warm. She was decidedly cool now.

A King Kairos loyalist, clearly. But Dr. Anderson didn’t have to live with him.

“Oh.” Tabitha felt light-headed. She felt like she was going to collapse. She was thankful for the table she was seated on. Had she been standing, she would have slipped from consciousness immediately.

“Based on the dates you have given me I would estimate that you are...”

“I know exactly how far along I am,” Tabitha said.

Flashes of that night burst into her mind’s eye. Kairos putting her up on the desk, thrusting into her hard and fast. Spilling himself inside of her as they both lost themselves to their pleasure. Yes, there was no doubt in her mind as to when she had conceived. January 1.

The beginning of the New Year. What was supposed to be the start of her new beginning.

And all she had was a chain shackling her to Kairos now that she had finally decided to walk out the door and take her freedom.

Of course this was happening now. When she’d released hold of her control. Her inhibitions. There were reasons she’d kept herself on a short leash for so many years. She’d always suspected she couldn’t be trusted. That she would break things if she was ever allowed to act without careful thought and consideration.

She’d been right to distrust herself.

She balled her hands into fists and pressed them against her eyes.

“Are you all right?” Dr. Anderson asked.

“Does it look like I’m all right?” Tabitha asked.

“It’s only that...is it the king’s baby?”

Rage fired through Tabitha then. “It is my baby. That’s about all I can process at the moment.”

Dr. Anderson hesitated. “It’s only that I want to be certain that I didn’t overstep.”

As those words left the doctor’s mouth, the door to the exam room burst open. Tabitha looked up, her heart slamming hard against her sternum. There was Kairos. Standing in the doorway, looking like a fallen angel, rage emanating from him.

“Leave us,” he said to the doctor.

“Of course, Your Highness.”

The doctor scurried out of the room, eagerly doing Kairos’s bidding. Tabitha could only sit there, dazed. She supposed that there was no such thing as doctor-patient confidentiality when the king was involved.

She turned to face her nearly ex-husband—who was looking at her as though she were the lowest and vilest of creatures. As if he had any right. As if he had the right to judge her. After what he had said. After what he had done.

“What’s the matter, Kairos?” she asked, schooling her expression into one of absolute calm and stillness. It was her specialty. After years of hiding her true feelings behind a mask for public consumption, she went about it with as much ease as breathing.

“It seems I’m about to be a father.” He moved nearer to her, his dark eyes blazing. Any blankness, any calm he had presented the night she had left him standing in his office was gone now. He was all emotion now. He was vibrating with it.