KAIROS COULDN’T HELP HIMSELF. Gathering Valentina to him, he kissed the slope of her shoulder, the skin still damp from their shower an hour ago.
He had pushed her body relentlessly tonight, craving release after release, a need for escape riding him hard. He’d barely soaped her and himself after he’d pushed her against the wall and taken her. Much less toweled them both dry before they had tumbled into bed.
He felt like he had run a triathlon, so sore was his body.
Valentina had, as usual, fallen asleep and nuzzled into him but sleep had evaded him. He’d wanted to leave the bed and her.
Intimacy was always hard on him and the more he’d been determined to limit his increasing need for Valentina to bed, the more she had undone him there.
But last night he hadn’t wanted to go. He hadn’t wanted to be alone. No, that wasn’t right. He was not going to lie to himself now.
He hadn’t wanted to leave her. The haven she provided against the cruelty of the world. Against the pain that had filled him.
She was warmth and fire and heaven.
He’d seen her slave hour after hour to make it up to Chiara, to find her place in the fashion world.
He’d seen her care for Theseus and Maria in the last month, responding to their kindness. Worrying about Theseus’s health. Persuading a reluctant but smiling Maria into letting her redo her entire wardrobe, because she’d declared impishly to a stunned Theseus that being married to a grouchy bear like him for fifty years, Maria deserved to be dripping in diamonds.
The laughter that had boomed out of Theseus, the shock and gratitude in Maria’s eyes that Valentina could make her husband laugh like that again... Theseus had ordered a stunning diamond necklace for Maria on Valentina’s advice and when he’d asked Tina to pick something for herself for a present, she’d ask to be counted among his friends, no matter what.
“You like him,” he’d said to her later in the privacy of their bedroom. “And he likes you.”
“Most people like me, Kairos. I’m fun to be around most of the time. And who wouldn’t adore Theseus? Helena is truly poor that she doesn’t care for such loving parents. I never knew my father but now I know how to imagine him, at least.
“Theseus...he reminds me of you.”
He’d looked at her, shocked. “What?” She couldn’t have known what that meant to him.
“Or rather I see what you will be forty years from now. If you...”
He’d backed her against the wall then, something in her expression goading him. “If I what, Valentina?”
“If you learn to be more fun and communicative and a little less brooding.”
Before he could punish her for such insolence, she’d slipped away from him.
And in that glimpse of longing and adoration in her eyes when she looked at Theseus, he saw the similarities between them.
Just like him, she had never left that scared, little girl behind. And yet there was fire inside her and for a night, he had wanted what she could give him.
Words never came easily to him and this strange vulnerability she’d created in him robbed him of what little did come.
So, when morning dawned, he had woken her up with kisses and soft caresses, needing to be inside her desperately. Needing to hold her close one more time, needing that intimacy where he could show that he did appreciate her. The only place he could do so.
She had whimpered when he had filled his hands with her breasts.
Arched her behind into him sleepily and whispered, ‘Si...’ in that husky tone when he’d hoarsely asked if he could take her like that. So he had slowly stroked himself into her with her back pressed to his chest, her legs caught between his, played with her clit until the need for release was riding her just as hard as it did him. And when her muscles had clenched him even tighter in blissful climax, when she had clung to him, and whispered his name against his own lips again and again, only then did he claim his own release.
And every time his release rushed at him, and he was lost to the pleasure inside her, it felt as if she was stealing some other part of him. As if he was not whole anymore.
But the truth he had learned today, the renewed pain—it was a reminder. He couldn’t love Valentina, and he couldn’t bear it if...she did the same thing as people who claimed to love him had done.
He would rather hurt her now, keep her whole, than destroy her later, all in the name of love.
* * *
When he had woken up this time, she was sitting in the chair he had sat in last night. Freshly showered and dressed in his shirt, she looked the perfect mixture of innocent and siren, a woman capable of tenderness and guts.
Their gazes met and held, the air in the room redolent with the scent of sex and them. Poignant. So much emotion in her eyes that he felt inadequate.
“Come back to bed,” he said, pulling the duvet up.
Without a word she crawled back into bed, her trust in him complete.
A faint tension shimmered over her. He kept his arm around her, unwilling to let her retreat from him. Her fingers gripped his forearm, whether asking him to release her or not, he didn’t care.
He buried his face in her hair. Tugged her so close that his groin pressed into her buttocks. His chest crushed her back to him. His arm cushioned under her breasts.
“You’re not going to ask me about last night?” he whispered.
She pulled his palm to her mouth and pressed a soft kiss. “You will tell me when you’re ready.”
He stiffened. “What does that mean?”
He felt her exhale, as if she was striving to be patient. “Are you asking to know or to annoy me?”
He swatted her buttocks and she laughed.
Just hearing that sound made his chest lighter.
“It means that whether you share your past or not, whether you continue to act like a gruff bear or a fluffy unicorn, whether you lose your temper or subject me to these heavy silences...nothing changes how I see you, how I think of you. I think, finally—” her voice wobbled and she pressed her face into his hand tightly, before releasing it “—I know the true you, Kairos. Nothing and no one will shake my belief in you. Not even you.”
“And if you had seen me in that shower with her?” The question slipped from him, his tone ragged.
“Then I would have dragged her out by her lovely hair and slapped her face. Like I wanted to before you stopped me.”
“Your trust in me is that absolute, Valentina?”
“Si, it is. Even when I taunted you that you want Theseus’s company. I knew the truth, I was just too scared to acknowledge it.”
And that implicit trust in her voice broke Kairos down. Words no one had ever heard from him came pouring out. “She told them that I...was the one who got her pregnant.”
Valentina jerked, moved in his hold as if to turn around. But he arrested her movement, for he didn’t know if he could speak if she pitied him. Slowly, the rigidness in her shoulders eased. A long exhale left her but she gripped his fingers tighter. “Helena?”
“Yes. She... I...one of her high-flying friends, he ran the moment she told him. She and I...we never were close but mostly she tolerated me. Theseus wanted her to show interest in the company and she did, as long as it allowed her extravagant lifestyle. When he learnt that she was pregnant, he became extremely angry. Helena’s recklessness never knew bounds but this was too far for him. He threatened to cut her off if she didn’t change her ways, if she didn’t settle down. She realized that he meant to give me control of everything.”
“So she told her parents that you were the one who got her pregnant?”
He could feel her heart racing. Could almost see the conclusions she was running through. He held onto her, long beyond the point where he could fool himself into thinking the comfort was for her.
“Kairos, what did Theseus do?” He felt her kiss his wrist, hold it to her face as if she were bracing herself. For him. Everything she felt—the fear, the worry—it was all for him.
He let it wash over him, let himself bask in it.
“Theseus—” he cleared his throat, wishing for her sake that he was a different man “—decided that Helena and I would marry and possess equal power over the company. He trusted me to keep her in line, I suppose.”
“What did you say to his proposal?”
“I agreed. I told him I would do whatever he asked of me.”
“You were willing to be a father to some other man’s child?”
“Yes. I asked only that he believe that I had never even touched her.”
This time, there was no stopping Valentina. She turned in his arms, her gaze peering into his, as if she meant to own everything of him. A bright shine made them glitter. “And he didn’t believe you?”
“No. He wouldn’t even look at me. I don’t think he even cared if Helena and I had been...together. But, however many times I insisted, he wouldn’t say that he believed me. By denying his trust...he...he took away everything he had ever given me.
“It felt as if I was that orphan boy again looking through a glass window into what a family looks like.” His voice shook. “I don’t even remember being angry with Helena’s blatant lies. Only crushed by his silence. I...felt betrayed. I told him I didn’t want the company if I didn’t have his...respect. His trust.” His love.
Theseus had chosen Helena’s lies over Kairos’s truth, and that was what had broken Kairos’s heart, why he had left.
Unable to stay still, Tina pulled herself up on the bed and the sheet with it. Every muscle was tense in his body as if he was living through the ghastly moment again. The anguish in his eyes only showed that she had been right. There was a heart that beat under all that ruthless exterior.
She clasped his jaw and pulled him close. He became still, too rigid, as if he could physically will himself to reject her concern. But she didn’t care. All she wanted was to tell him he wasn’t alone. That she understood his pain. That it was okay to have loved Theseus so much that it still hurt after all these years.
That he was a good man, one of the best she had ever met. That her brother Leandro, as always, had made the right decision, that he had chosen for her the best man she could ever have asked for.
But she felt too fragile, stretched far too thin after everything they had shared in the last few days.
So she did the only thing she could.
She crawled to him on her knees, the sheet barely covering her breasts and her legs. He watched her with glittering eyes, as if daring her to come closer. Hands on his shoulders, she bent until their noses were touching.
Softly, slowly, she took his mouth. So rigid and hard and yet capable of such tender kisses. Mouth slanted over his, licking the seam of his lips, she willed him to accept it. The sheet slithered down her body, and she heard the hitch in his breath when her nipples grazed his chest.
When he suddenly opened up for her, she plunged her tongue inside. And just like that, the tempo of the kiss changed as he took over.
Even with her body sore in so many places, pleasure inched over her like petals unfurling ever so gently. His fingers wrapped around her neck and he kissed her back hungrily. As if he needed the taste of her to get through this moment. It took but one touch, one stroke, one moment for their hunger to rise, to sweep them away. Their harsh breaths reverberated as he pulled away.
His nostrils flared as he fought for control. He got off the bed, pulled on the shorts he had thrown off some time during the night and looked out the French windows.
She swallowed the words rising through her throat. She would not beg but neither would she retreat. Limbs heavy with exhaustion, she pulled on his discarded shirt and buttoned it down.
Slowly, as if she were dealing with a wounded animal, she reached him and tucked herself into his side until he had to relent. Until he wrapped his hand around her shoulders and pulled her close.
“What happened at the party? Something...changed.” It wasn’t what Theseus did seven years ago that had cut him.
“I figured out why Theseus didn’t believe me seven years ago. Or why he let himself be convinced that Helena was telling the truth.”
Breath on a serrated edge, Valentina wrapped her hands around his waist, refusing to be pushed out. Her heart ached for him. His words, his voice reverberated with the depth of his love for Theseus. The rawness of his wound created by Theseus’s refusal to trust his word.
“You still came back,” she whispered. “You came back when you heard he was sick.”
“How could I not? He...” His voice broke and he looked away. “He...gave me the world, Valentina. How could I not rush to his side when he had need of me? When after years of living on the streets, he had shown me compassion, affection? When he made me into everything I am today?”
“You figured out who backed the hostile takeover. That’s why you were...” She didn’t want him hurt anymore. The notion of him closing down the part of him that cared, it terrified her.
He ran a hand through his hair, his bare chest falling and rising. “Helena was in cahoots with Alexio all along, yes. But it was Maria’s stock that tilted the whole thing.”
“Maria would have gone against Theseus? But why?” Maria was devoted to her husband. The absolute love and trust between the couple...through everything, they had held together.
Whereas she had avowed love again and again to Kairos, and then run way at the first obstacle.
“I think Theseus wouldn’t...didn’t believe me over Helena back then because Maria had told him that she’d seen Helena and me...together. In bed.”
Tina gasped. “Maria backed Helena’s story knowing it was a lie?”
“Helena was desperate and Maria couldn’t say no to her daughter. She’s always been kind to me and I can almost see how she would think I was getting not a bad deal out of it, that I would be able to control Helena’s wildness if we married.”
He spoke as if it didn’t matter but it was the clear lack of emotion that told Tina how much it had hurt him to realize what Maria had done.
“You are making excuses for her. And all the guilt, it has been too much for her. That’s why she cried on your shoulder like that. That’s why she kept saying she was sorry.”
Kairos nodded.
“Why give her stock to Helena? Why deceive Theseus?”
“Theseus is stubborn to the core. He...he knew his health was deteriorating, he wouldn’t slow down, the company was doing badly. Maria told me that first day she’d been begging him to ask me for help. She’d been terrified about his health. So, coupled with Helena’s insistence that it was for the best, I think Maria signed over the proxy on her stock to Helena, which gave Alexio the boost, the vote of confidence to begin turning men loyal to Theseus toward him. Men who were genuinely worried about the company. Men who thought Alexio was the better of two bad choices. Instead, it precipitated Theseus’s heart attack.”
“But how did you stop it when Maria had already signed it over?” She frowned and then it came to her. “They see you as Theseus’s true successor. So when they saw that you had returned, they decided not to back Alexio’s coup.”
He smiled faintly, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “Again, I’m the better choice for the company.”
“You can’t seriously believe that, Kairos. They treated me like I was part of a family, as if being Kairos Constantinou’s wife was something in itself.
“Their trust in you, their confidence is absolute. It is you who always holds himself separate. Who isolates himself. I wish I could make you see it. I wish I could...”
He pulled up their laced fingers and kissed her knuckles. The intimate gesture sent a ray of hope through her. “What?”
“I wish I could change you, just a little.”
“Valentina...your trust in me about everything after the way I treated you...it has meant a lot to me. It’s a gift I never expected.”
“I’m full of surprises like that,” she added, trying to lighten the atmosphere. “What happened then?”
“When Maria saw me at Theseus’s side within a few hours of his attack, when she saw that all Helena cared about was the company and not her father... I think she started having second thoughts.”
“So Helena changed tack, told them that she truly loved you all these years. Since you will not tell Theseus the truth, you had to bring me here. Did you tell him Maria’s part in all this? How she deceived him, too?”
Any hesitation she saw in him vanished. His mouth took on that stubborn, uncompromising tilt. “I will not do anything that could harm him. And I forbid you to tell him anything.”
“What if Maria will forever continue to assist Helena? Kairos, you didn’t see the look in her eyes when he made the announcement. What if, even this evening, Helena had Maria’s backing in that...disgusting move?”
White lines fanned around his mouth, and Tina knew that the very real possibility had struck him, too. “It will never be good for both Helena and me to be here. She will only hurt them to get to me, to cut the little trust that there still is between me and Theseus. I can’t put Theseus through that. I can’t face seeing disillusionment in his eyes again. I will not tell him that his wife of fifty years lied to him to protect their daughter.”
“Maria was supposed to protect you, too.”
“Listen to me, Valentina. You have to leave what I told you here in this room. I’ve already started a head hunt for another CEO. An impartial outsider will be good for the company. Helena will be terminated from her position at the company. As soon as I locate her, I will inform her that her stock options will be set up in a trust fund from which she can draw an income, a more than comfortable one. But going forward, she will have no stake in the company. Hopefully that will stop her from trying...to ruin her parents’ lives. What she planned two nights ago...it would have broken Theseus. In so many ways.” He became again that ruthless man she had lived with for nine months. “I will cut away everything she wants if she doesn’t behave.”
“And when this is all settled to your satisfaction?”
“I will remain on the board since Theseus insists on signing over his stock to me, and I will oversee things from time to time. Other than that, I’m finished here.”
Finished here?
If he could have slammed a door down between them, the message couldn’t have been more absolute.
Hands around her waist, Tina swayed against the wall. Even the scent of his skin, the radiating warmth of his body...it felt like they could sear her skin. Tears lumped in her throat, and she breathed deeply, trying to keep them in. “You mean you don’t need me anymore in this role,” she said almost absently, as if it were happening to someone else.
As if the crack of her heart was outside, not within her.
“Ne.”
She moved her hand to point behind her toward the once-again rumpled bed. Sometime before or after he had made love to her for the third time, he had carried her to the armchair, pulled the sheets off and made the bed again with clean, crisp bedlinen. When she had looked askance at him, he had winked at her and told her he was nowhere near done.
“What was that then? The four orgasms were parting gifts to remember you by?”
He rubbed a hand over his face. “That was me being selfish, being weak. Needing escape.” He looked away and then back, as if he found it hard to focus on her. His features could have been carved in granite for the emotion in them. “Dealing with Maria’s lies, Helena’s deceit...it has reminded me I have no stomach for this.”
“Lie to yourself all you want, Kairos, but don’t equate what I feel for you with them.”
“Don’t make this hard, Valentina. I... I have an upcoming trip to Germany in four days. I’ll be gone for almost three weeks. I’m trying to tie up everything before I leave. But even then, I... I think you should return to...”
“To whatever hole I crawled out from?”
He flinched. “Like you pointed out, Helena is going to be furious. She’s focused all her anger on me now. I’ve no idea what she’s going to throw at me next and I would rather you were a thousand miles away than here when that happens.”
“Per piacere, Kairos! Treat me with respect and give me the real reason.” Pain crystallized, morphed into fury and Tina embraced it with everything she had. “Shall I send you divorce papers then? Shall I have my powerful brothers throw everything they have at you so that I can take half of everything you own? What does leaving here mean, Kairos? You will damn well spell it out for me!”
When he stayed silent, her heart slipped from her chest.
He simply stared at their clasped hands as if they were talking about the weather. “It will mean divorce. It will mean you can take me for everything I have. You can bring me to my knees.”
“You’re a bastard!”
“You have no idea how close to the truth you are.”
“That’s not what I meant. You could have left me well alone. You shouldn’t have...you should have let me think you were nothing but a ruthless jerk, Kairos.”
He clasped her cheeks with such reverent tenderness that her heart broke a little more. “But I am, Valentina. What I feel for Theseus is gratitude. Don’t you see? You were right. It is only a transaction for me. He gave me everything so I repay as much as I can.”
“That’s not true.” She fought against his grip even as he was kicking her out of his life.
“But you... I was wrong about you.” Another hard kiss, another piece of her heart forever lost to her. “When Leandro said any intelligent man would know that you are worth more than a hundred companies, he spoke the truth. You deserve everything a man can give you, Valentina. You deserve more than I can give you.”
“You’re just choosing not to.”
“No,” Kairos repeated, steeling himself against the bright sheen in her eyes. “I don’t know how to love you, Valentina. And I do not wish to learn. Go back to your brothers, pethi mou. Tell Leandro, for once in his life, he made a bad bet. Tell him he was wrong about me. Tell him—” Kairos ran his thumb over her lower lip, a cold void opening up inside him “—that I do not deserve the precious gift he gave me.”
If only he could embrace it...this, her. If only he was capable of giving her what she deserved. Needed.
She felt like home. Like warmth and acceptance. Like a splash of color to his gray canvas. After years of near starving, of no companionship, that was how Maria and Theseus’s home had felt. He had been so cautious at first, but eventually they had won him over. He hadn’t asked for anything but they had given kindness, care and love again and again, in so many ways.
Until he had believed it all. Until he had forgotten the cautiousness he had learned on the streets. Until he had forgotten the wretchedness of being alone.
Until he had started loving them, until they had simply become a part of him.
And then everything had been taken away. In one moment, everything had been lost. Seven years ago and now again...
If he trusted Valentina, if he opened himself up to everything she made him feel and things fell apart...it would be so much worse. A million times more painful. And he would break this time. If she took it away like Theseus and Maria had done, if suddenly he found himself all alone after having had a taste of...
Oxhi!
That was a fate he couldn’t even indulge in.
He was not ready for the weight of her love.
He was never going to be ready for her.
For this.
For them.
She would only starve for affection with him. He’d already trampled her spirit. If he broke her because he couldn’t love her, he couldn’t bear it.
“You’re right.” She pushed the silky mass of her hair away angrily, the innate sensuality of the gesture stealing his breath. “You don’t deserve me. I always thought I was not good enough for you. That I had to earn your love somehow. But this has nothing to do with me. You’re the coward, Kairos. You’re unworthy of me, not the other way around. You want to choose a miserable existence instead of trusting me, instead of taking a chance on us, fine. Then please stay in the other bedroom until you leave for your trip.”
Her words hit him hard. “I can have you flown back to Milan tonight.”
She backed out of his reach, a fiery tenacity to her expression. His shirt hung on her, baring most of her sleek thighs. Curves he’d never touch or feel wrapped around himself again. “I’m not leaving, you are.”
He jerked his gaze back up, the void in his gut only deepening. “Valentina—”
“I have three more weeks left with Chiara. People are counting on me to do my job. I will not let them down, I will not let myself down because you’ve decided you’ve had enough of playing marriage. I will not disappear in the middle of the night from Theseus and Maria’s lives as if I had done something wrong. As if I’m responsible for this debacle.”
“I don’t want you here,” Kairos said before he could stop himself. Her mouth pinched into a thin line. “Helena—”
“I can handle Helena. At the least, I know what to expect from her. I want to finish my work here, work the contacts I made. Maria will need someone to look after her, too.” She gazed at him for a few seconds that felt like an eternity. He couldn’t bear the disillusionment in her eyes. Broken hope.
He took a step toward her, but she shook her head and backed away. “Goodbye, Kairos.”