EVERYTHING YOU DO is motivated by ambition.
Valentina’s words played like a broken record through his mind even after a month. Taking another sip of his throat-burning Scotch, Kairos admitted it grated still.
For years after he had walked away from Theseus, all he had been able to think of was how to advance, how to prove to Theseus—and himself—that he could make it work without his former mentor’s help. And without Theseus’s legacy.
In that blind drive, he had developed a reputation for ruthless deals and an expertise in getting rid of broken parts of a company. He had forgotten that there was more to life than business deals and the next takeover. A fact Leandro had pointed out when he had first met him.
He smiled. The man was a master strategist if ever there was one. But his words had sunk in. And once he had seen Valentina, he had wanted her. The idea of marriage, settling down, making a family of his own...had held appeal.
He’d seen it as another forward move in his life, not an adjustment.
Or maybe his mistake had been to let his libido choose the wrong wife. Maybe if he hadn’t been so obsessed with winning Valentina, hadn’t reveled in how artlessly she had fallen for him, he would have said no to Leandro’s offer.
Leaning back into his seat, he swept his gaze around the nightclub. His tension deflated a little when he found Helena dancing with one of the younger board members on Markos’s board of directors.
Valentina’s accusation had been correct...and yet also not correct at the same time. It rankled that she thought so little of him, that he would take advantage of Theseus in his feeble state. And yet he had balked at explaining himself.
The more she delved beneath his surface, the more he wanted to hide himself away.
Why did it feel like giving Valentina a piece of the past was giving her a part of his soul? Why didn’t the damn woman revert to what he had considered her default?
Restlessness slithered in his blood. Even the brutal three-hour-a-day training he had been pushing on his body, in preparation for a triathlon, was still not enough to rid his body of that simmering energy.
And his sweet, little wife was the cause.
It was close to a month now since she had accepted that position in the ad agency. A month of waiting to receive a call from Chiara that Valentina had slapped someone, or fought with someone, or that she had stormed out because she had had to work too hard.
Not a peep from his wife’s boss or Helena or Valentina about her job. Not a single complaint.
They had sort of fallen into a routine as husband and wife far too easily—they had started running together in the morning, breakfasting together, and then he gave her a lift to work and they parted ways. Most evenings, they dined with Theseus and Maria until either he or she went back to work again.
And then came the long torturous nights.
His balls, he was afraid, were permanently going to shrivel if he had to take one more cold shower, if he had to untangle Valentina from himself in the middle of one more night.
She thought him a ruthless bastard anyway. So what stopped him from taking what he wanted like he’d always done?
If he waited on some twisted notion of honor, he’d have had nothing in life. He’d have still been foraging through some dumpster in the back alleys of Athens, ended up either dead or pimping some poor prostitute to make a life. It was only by taking what he wanted he’d gotten this far in life.
He wanted sex—Christos, it was all he could think of—and he had a wife who matched him in his fervor for sex if nothing else. So what the hell was he feeling guilty about?
She was changing how he saw her, and she was changing him from the inside out.
Why else did his gut clench when he saw the shadows under her eyes, when he saw her weave tiredly through dinner? Why else did he want that adoration, that love back in her eyes?
Was celibacy making him sentimental?
Andaxi!
He ordered another glass of Scotch—his second, which was one more than he ever allowed himself, when he heard the soft hush around his table. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled.
Desire came at him in that same visceral punch when his gaze found her. But with that ever-present hum came a bubble of laughter bursting out of his throat. The shocked silence around the table was enough proof that he rarely laughed like that.
He should have known she would do something like that. Knew the subdued shadow she was making herself into was...unnatural for her.
Thrown into brilliance by the multicolored strobe lights from the bar, her copper-colored sheath dress with a million metallic chips contrasted dazzlingly against her golden skin tone. The material clung to her chest and waist like a lover’s hands and then ended just below the thin flare of her hips.
His mouth dried. Her gaze swept through the club, landed on him.
The long, toned muscles of her thighs when she moved...it was pure sensuality in motion. Five-inch stiletto heels made her legs go on for miles. Her hair was in its usual braid.
Only he knew how the silky mass would caress a man’s face or how it provided an anchor to hold on to when he was driving into her wet heat. She wore no jewelry except those plain diamond studs at her ears that were a gift from Luca, and the pendant he’d given her. A foolish piece of sentimentality he’d indulged in.
His knuckles gripped the seat as she reached their table and every man’s gaze in the vicinity devoured her.
A subtle thread of her fragrance wafted over him as she bent and kissed his cheek.
“Hello, Kairos,” she said, wrapping her arms around him from behind. Her breasts pressed against his neck. Sensations assaulted him, his muscles curling with the control it took not to clamp his mouth over hers.
Slowly, that initial roar of desire settled into a simmering hum. Clarity came.
For a month, she’d been so careful around him. Never touching him unless necessary and unless they had an audience. Even then, he could feel the tension in her frame every time he came near her. Could feel her flinch every time he touched her.
Now, she was all over him. And instead of leading her into one of the backrooms specifically reserved for couples who wanted private space and taking her against the wall as every instinct was riding him to, he found himself frowning.
One elbow over the back of his seat, she looked down at him. Shadows swirled in her eyes, hiding what he wanted to see.
“Are you drunk?”
“I had three glasses of white wine while I dressed in Chiara’s personal suite after your high command.”
He noted the jut of her collarbone, the bluish shadows under her eyes. “Did you remember to eat before the wine?”
She scrunched her forehead. “No wonder it went straight to my head. You’ll have to put it down to the shock that you ordered me to meet you in a nightclub, of all places. That’s like—” she frowned, her lower lip jutting out “—the old me going to a sale in a department store, or being kind to Claudia Vanderbilt. Or the new me succeeding at something.” She laughed.
Beneath the low, husky sound, Kairos found something disconcerting. A hint of pain.
It wasn’t just the dress. Her lips were painted a dark voluptuous red—the only feature she possessed that was plump and lush. It was a color he’d once forbidden her to wear.
Because, throughout the formal dinner with his new business partners one night, all he’d been able to think of was kissing that mouth, of wanting his innocent wife’s lush mouth wrapped around his cock even as she goaded his temper by flirting outrageously with another man across the table.
Something was wrong. Because whenever something went wrong in his wife’s little world, she acted like a teenage rebel.
It had taken him this long to understand the pattern. For a smart man, he lost all capability for logic and rationality when it was Valentina.
She’d slapped Sophia when he’d refused to define his relationship with her.
She’d stripped and jumped into a pool in her underwear at a venture capitalist’s retreat in Napa Valley because he’d told her in no uncertain terms that they weren’t there for fun but business. A fact she’d been made aware of well in advance.
When he’d forced her to return the Bugatti she’d had delivered for his birthday present—bought with her brother’s money no less—she’d decided to return it recklessly and almost hit a tree in her anger.
All actions that had infuriated him.
Was this another ploy?
But what he saw this time was vulnerability in her gaze. The tremble in her fingers as she picked up his drink and took a sip. The fine lines of tension around her forehead.
Valentina never indulged in spirits at least. Something to do with her mother’s accident. And yet, here she was, not completely sloshed but without the wariness and inhibition he’d spied in her eyes in the last month.
The booth was U-shaped and he was sitting at the end. “Let me see the back of your dress,” he taunted, some devil in himself goading him.
She turned around obligingly, moving with an innate grace that had captured his attention the first time he’d met her. He gritted his teeth. He was right.
The fabric barely covered her buttocks. But Christos, his palms ached to cup them, to pull her flush against him until she felt what she did to him.
“You asked me to join you at a nightclub.” Her gaze swept over the club and landed on Helena leaning against the bar and watching them with a smirk. The glitter in his wife’s eyes brightened as her gaze swept over the cool blue knee-length dress Helena wore. In contrast to Valentina, he noticed now, she looked elegant, refined.
His wife’s tension doubled. “I assumed it was to put on a show for Helena.”
He pulled her down to sit beside him. “How has she been treating you?”
“Nothing I can’t handle. Except the little snippets of your history that she keeps dropping around the team. How many favors Theseus did you. How many disappointments you’ve had to face in life. I think everyone on the team realized she was talking about me.”
“Valentina—”
“She doesn’t bother me, Kairos.”
“No?”
She shrugged. “All the scenarios she desperately tries to plant in my head would have driven me crazy if...you still meant something to me.” She looked up then and smiled. But the smile didn’t touch her eyes. “Anyway, I came armed with the weapons I possess.”
“Weapons?” he said, his mouth twitching. For all he tried, he couldn’t muster disappointment or anger that she’d shown up dressed like a...delectable morsel he wanted to consume.
He felt anticipation and tenderness. For something was definitely not right and he wanted to fix it for her.
“She flaunts her breasts in your face every opportunity she gets. I don’t have big breasts or flaring hips. My legs are my weapons and I decided to showcase those.”
He rubbed his fingers over his face, fighting the urge, but laughed out loud anyway. He had a feeling it would hurt her feelings. And it had, if the way she gripped the table showing white knuckles was anything to go by.
“Twisted, si? That my insecurity about my body has finally found your sense of humor?”
Just like that, his smile disappeared. “What in God’s name are you talking about now?”
“The fact that I obsessed for nine months over your fascination with my lack of melons.”
“Melons?” he said, almost choking on the sip of his whiskey.
She mock-cupped her hands in front of her chest like men did when they talked about big breasts. “You know...jugs. Bazookas.”
His mind roiled, came to a jarring conclusion. “Christos, is that why you took to wearing those obscenely ridiculous push-up bras? Because you assumed I was into big breasts?”
Color streaked along her cheekbones. “Si. I wanted to please you. I was naive and foolish enough to believe that the illusion of big breasts would somehow make you appreciate me more. Make your nonexistent heart beat.”
“I hated those bras. When I touched you...all I could feel was padding.” He muttered another oath. “Where in hell would you get the idea that I liked big breasts?”
“From things you said when we watched old Hollywood movies. From the way all your love interests were built in the front. From the way you never...” She looked away, her throat bobbing up and down.
He turned her to his side until she faced him. Strips of light caressed the high sweep of her cheekbones. The narrow blade of her nose. She licked her lips nervously. He couldn’t be distracted. At least not yet.
“I never what, Valentina?”
She shuffled her legs under the table but he wouldn’t let her budge. In the end, she ended up piling her legs above and around his. It was the closest he’d been to her in months. Fever took root in his muscles.
“I don’t know why we’re talking about this.”
“Because I want to know.”
“Francesca Pellegrini told me that her husband was obsessed with her breasts.” Her cheeks burned. “But when we made lo—when we had sex, you never...spent a lot of time with my breasts. So I assumed you didn’t like them. There? Are you happy? Or would you like more humiliating details from our marriage?”
“Did it not occur to you that I might have just been in a hurry to get to other places? That unlike Francesca Pellegrini’s husband—who by the way always gawks at you, the old pervert—I might be a leg man?” he whispered, not knowing whether to laugh or groan.
She had built up so many things in her head and it was his fault. He had incessantly found fault with her.
Shame settled in his chest. He ran his knuckles over the lean line of her leg, and her breath hitched.
“You have legs that go on for miles, glykia mou. You’re so tall that I don’t get a crick in my neck when I kiss you. You fit so perfectly against me that I could hold you against the wall and be inside you in a second. When I’m inside you and you wrap your legs around me...” He cleared his throat, forgetting where he was going for a second. “But of course, forgive me for my oversight.” He let his gaze rove over the deep V plunge of her neckline. His blood became sluggish, his erection an insistent ache in his trousers. “I promise to spend more time with your breasts in the near future.”
A choking gasp fell from her mouth. Her eyes sparked outrage. “You’re not getting anywhere near my breasts.”
He raised a brow, loving the warm flush on her cheeks. “We’ll see about that.”
A waiter brought some appetizers he had ordered. He picked up a piece of cheese and held it to her mouth. “Eat.”
She shook her head, held his gaze defiantly and took another sip of his Scotch.
“You’re acting like a child. You’ll be sick if you chase wine with Scotch. You don’t do well with alcohol.”
She pouted, leaning back against the seat. “You don’t like dancing, you don’t want me to drink and you don’t like for me to have any fun. Why am I here then? If it’s for Helena’s sake, you should know she doesn’t buy our reunion.”
“Let Helena think whatever she pleases.”
“Please, Kairos. The truth, for once. Why are you here?”
“When one of the board members suggested we check out the new club, I joined them. Georgio,” he said nodding at the man standing close to Helena, his angelic features visible even from here, “is—”
“Alexio Kanapalis’s son,” she said, shocking him into stupefied silence. “Alexio tried to get the vote to oust Theseus from his own board. You booted him out instead. But Georgio stayed. So you wonder if Georgio’s loyalty lies with his father or with Theseus. Of course, that he’s so...chummy with Helena goes in its own column of uneasy matters.”
He stared at her.
She laughed. “I’m not stupid. Georgio visits my department all the time. All the ladies swarm around the pretty boy cooing over his perfectly symmetric features and all that dark blond hair. Not counting his charm and wit, he reminds me a bit of Luca.”
“Stay away from him, Valentina.”
She sighed. “How many men will you order me to stay away from?”
He ignored her question, but didn’t quite succeed at ignoring the jealousy in his gut, however, when Tina looked at the other man and his damned perfect features. “In nine months of living together, you never once had an inkling of my business affairs.”
She scrunched her nose at him. “Because I didn’t care. Not because I didn’t lack intellect.”
“And now you’re interested?”
“Si.”
“Why?”
“Because as soon as you figure out who’s behind all this, Theseus and you will come to an agreement, and the sooner I’ll be out of your life. Forever this time.”
Her eagerness to be done with their charade made him grit his teeth. “It wasn’t just to keep an eye on Georgio and Helena,” he admitted. She was always so damned honest with him. Was he such a coward that he couldn’t even admit small things to her? “You’ve been working far too hard. I thought you would like to have a change of pace for one night.”
“Did Theseus comment that you’ve not shown me any sights? Has Helena poked a hole in our happily-ever-after?”
The brittleness in her smile tugged at him. “Does there have to be a reason to want to see my wife?”
“Ah...you want sex. What did you assume—you’d spend two hours being nice to me and I’d let you screw me in the back room? I’m sure there are any number of women, including Helena, who’ll be happy to be your screw toys.”
He gripped her chin in his hand, anger and hurt riding him hard. Christos, only Valentina could turn him into a little boy. “Your insults to my character are getting annoying, Valentina. Is it so hard to believe that I wanted to give you a night away from the villa? From work?”
“Si, it is. You don’t do anything without a motive or a goal, Kairos.”
Yes, he meant to keep an eye on Helena and Georgio, but he’d wanted to give Valentina a night out on the town, too.
But his wife was as receptive as a porcupine.
Whose fault is that? Have you ever treated her as a partner, as an equal?
He slid the small package he’d had delivered the minute he’d finished his call with her brother, and pointedly ignored the awkward silence that fell when she saw it.
Leaning toward her, he kissed her cheek. Her shoulders tensed, a sudden stillness enveloping her.
God, she had such silky soft skin. All over.
His favorites were the incredible sensitive skin of her inner thighs, the neatly delineated curve where her tiny waist flared into hips, and the skin right below her right buttock where she had another mole.
He remembered her body like it was a map to some treasure.
“Happy birthday, Valentina.”
She went still. “Who reminded you?”
When he didn’t answer, she turned to him. “I know you’re not big on remembering or celebrating birthdays and anniversaries.”
His laughter when she’d joyously given him the platinum cuff links for one month of their marriage reverberated between them. He’d thought it hilarious that she bought expensive gifts for him with her brother’s money without batting an eyelid.
She’d pouted prettily, argued that he was laughing at a romantic gesture.
He remembered the crushed look in her eyes when he’d blithely stated that it had probably cost her nothing to charge her brother’s card.
Dios, he’d been an uncaring jerk of the first order. If she’d been juvenile and volatile, he’d been cruel and ruthless.
When he’d realized the wife he had acquired as part of a merger was not the elegant, refined socialite he could be proud of, not the political asset he could count on, but a living, breathing creature with feelings and wishes, he’d resented her.
When she’d avowed love for him, he’d pitied her for her grand delusions. Become indifferent to her, waited for her to grow out of it.
When she’d started acting out, he’d been infuriated.
Not once had he realized how much vulnerability she had hidden beneath the fiery temper and impertinence. How honest she’d always been.
He wouldn’t have fallen in love with her, but he could have been kinder to her. He was a man who thrived and succeeded in actively hostile environments—he could have molded her to what he wanted in a wife with one kind word or a romantic gesture.
Yet, he’d rigidly shut her out. As a clever business man, his own actions didn’t make sense to him. He had used her for only one thing. And he’d made up his mind to do it again before discarding her for good.
Her slender fingers fiddled with the strings on the small package. “Kairos?”
He cleared his throat. “Leandro called me last night. He said it was the first birthday in years that you were spending away from them. He asked where you were and what I had dragged you into.”
She pushed the gift away from her with such force that the small package flew off the other end of the table. She pinned him with a furious gaze. “I told him to stay out of my life.” Her chest fell and rose with her harsh breaths. “I told you our deal was off if you even spoke to one of them behind my back.”
When he’d have calmly walked away before, he said, “I told him this was between you and me.”
He tugged her wrist when she’d have walked away. “They’re simply worried about you. About what you’re doing back with me. About your job and even about your safety—”
“Because no one thinks I can take care of myself. That I’m capable of being anything other than a naive sister or a trophy wife. No, wait, you’ve made it clear that I failed at even that. Not much of a trophy, am I?”
Somehow, she loosened his grip on her and walked away. She cut a wide swathe through the crowd, her hips swaying.
It was only one of her tantrums, he told himself.
He was not going to chase her like some lovesick boyfriend.
She had lasted a month—a miracle in itself—before that cloak of serenity had been ripped. Just what he had expected.
There had been innumerable occasions when she’d lost it just like that. And Kairos had always let her stew in it. He’d always set the boundaries so she would understand that he would never indulge her juvenile temper.
She would come back to him. She always had done. She would walk back in, and he’d pretend like nothing was wrong.
Until one day, she had left. Walked out, a voice mocked.
Until now, he’d attributed it to her foolish, romantic delusions but for the first time, he had to consider the possibility that he had driven her away. That he hadn’t been the man she needed.
Punishing Valentina for walking out on him, seducing her and then discarding her...the very idea felt wrong now. Without honor. Yet what was the alternative?
Running his hands through his hair, he cursed long and hard.
Did he want to keep her? Knowing now that she’d always want something he couldn’t give. Something he didn’t know how to do.
And even if he did, his blind confidence all these days that Valentina would come back to him smacked of arrogance.
All he knew was that he was far from done with her. And she... Christos, even without trying this past month, the woman still had her hooks in him. There was passion between them and if he allowed it, there could be respect and even affection maybe.
Was there a chance for them?
Right now, all he knew was that she was hurt, that she needed a friend. And for once, he wanted to be everything Valentina needed.