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“As much as it does for you,” she bit out. “A relationship is about respecting and appreciating each other. Knowing each other so we can support one another. And clearly you don’t know me at all right now. So we’re each going to have to learn how to drop our guards, to let each other in, to be in a relationship or this isn’t going to work.”
His lashes lowered. “Sex is a vital part of a relationship. Sex is intimacy.”
“It’s one level of intimacy,” she countered. “If I give in to you now, if I let you use sex as a weapon between us, as a way to avoid the issues we have, we are never going to confront them.”
His gaze darkened. “Love is a fantasy people like to believe in. It has no place in the real world. We’d all be better off if we acknowledged that and viewed relationships as the mutually beneficial transactions they are.”
“Transactions?” She lifted a brow. “I am certainly no expert here, given my poor track record, but my parents were in love, Nik. It was my mother’s love for my father that sent her into the spiral she went into. She loved him that much.”
“And that type of dependency we are to aspire to?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I honestly don’t know. What I do know is that this is not working. Will not work. So figure out if you want this to succeed. And how you plan to do it.”
He muttered an oath. Out of words. Out of everything.
She lifted her chin, her gaze on his. “What you said, in New York, about finding out what happens when winning isn’t enough anymore... I think this is your chance to get to the heart of that. To confront the demons you obviously have and figure out what drives you. Otherwise, you’re going to detonate like the bomb you are right now and I don’t think anyone, yourself included, wants that to happen.”
Turning on her heel, she stalked into the bathroom. He watched her go, clenching his hands by his sides. Why wouldn’t she just admit what she’d done? Why wouldn’t she just move on? He was willing to. He was being more than fair.
Diavole. He needed this thing with her sorted. Done. He could not fight battles on multiple fronts.
CHAPTER SIX
IN THE DAYS that followed Nik’s confrontation with King Idas, tensions continued to mount. The Carnelian king responded to Nik’s challenge to back off by mounting a series of military exercises off the coast of Carnelia, leaving the people of both Akathinia and Carnelia to watch in alarm as the two countries slid closer toward a confrontation.
It was the wake-up call Nik had needed. Sofi´a had been right. His grief was ruling him. He had been allowing his emotions to dominate his thinking, gut reaction to rule, something that might have worked in the eat-or-be-eaten world he’d inhabited in Manhattan, but couldn’t be allowed free rein as king of his country.
It didn’t matter if he hadn’t wanted it, if he was still railing against the unfairness of having his life in New York ripped away from him, he had a nation depending on him to make the right choices at perhaps the most crucial period in its history. He could no longer be the one-man show he’d been in New York where risk taking had been the oxygen he’d breathed, he had to rule by consensus. He had to listen to all the voices.
He had a choice to make. He could accept the role he’d been given and everything that came with it, truly accept it and move forward, or he could continue to fight it. There was no question which way it had to go. He needed his peace of mind back.
An alliance with Aristos Nicolades in place in exchange for Nik’s support of a casino license for the billionaire, Nik had come to Carnelia, his enemy’s turf, to give diplomacy a shot, a council-approved plan in his hand. Although he was convinced the council was wrong in its estimation Idas was bluffing at future aggression, he would give the plan a shot, knowing a more robust armed forces was on the way as insurance.
He stood, looking out at a picture-perfect view of the mountainous Carnelian countryside, a host of emotions running through him as he waited for the king to arrive.
Athamos had perished in those mountains from which Akathinia had once been ruled, his car plunging to the rocky shore below in a death too horrific to imagine. His great-grandfather Damokles had fought for and achieved Akathinia’s independence over a century ago on the Ionian Sea he could see sparkling from the king’s personal salon, winning his nation’s right to self-determination.
