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CHAPTER TEN
BALTHAZARHADNOintention of doing anything of the kind.
He gave the orders. He did not follow them.
But Kendra sat before him, a vision in flowing white and her hair pinned up to catch the kiss of the sun. Her cheeks were flushed, her freckles a tempting spray across her nose and over her bared shoulders. It made him want to do nothing but eat her like a dessert far sweeter than Panagiota’s baklava.
Kendra was sugar and flame and all his now. His wife.
Hiswife.
Balthazar had not expected that word, common as it was, to get to him like this. Its meaning rocked through him, almost too hot to bear. He blamed that age-old ceremony and the words the old priest had spoken over them. He blamed the rings he’d slid onto her finger, the platinum catching the light and the diamonds so bright they nearly dimmed the sun.
But he could blame anything and everything. What he didn’t understand was how she seemed to grow more beautiful by the moment, especially when this should have been a festival arranged around his revenge, not...whatever it was she imagined she was doing. He glared at her, but she only smiled, looking happy enough to wait forever for him to do as she’d demanded.
He could not imagine what made her imagine she had any power here.
Just as he could not imagine why he wasn’t claiming his by right. And claiming her while he was at it.
“What’s the matter?” she asked almost offhandedly, a gleam in those golden eyes of hers. “Don’t tell me that the mighty Balthazar Skalas is afraid to do something here, on his own private island, that I did without blinking in the middle of a busy office? How funny. I thought you were meant to be the powerful one.”
“Do you think goading me will work?”
She only smiled.
It turned that heat inside him...volcanic.
Before he knew it, Balthazar found himself rising from his seat. As he did, he took great pleasure in watching her eyes widen.
Not quite so sure of herself, then. No matter what she said.
And that made everything inside him run molten.
He made short work of his clothing. He shrugged out of the dark suit he’d worn for the ceremony, stripping down until he stood before her wholly naked. The sun poured all over him. The sea air was like a caress.
But best of all was that expression on Kendra’s face.
It looked a great deal likeawe.
He watched her flush. He watched that same giddy heat move its way down her neck. The dress she wore left her arms bare and he could see that same flush there, then goose bumps to match as she gazed up at him.
Balthazar felt everything shift. As if the world had spun about on its axis, then flattened him as it stopped still.
But he liked it.
Because he was the one standing naked before her, but he felt not a shred of supplication. No hint of weakness.
He had never felt more powerful in his life.
Had he called her names because he had sensed this, somehow? That a display of vulnerability led straight to something far more powerful? Had he wanted to diminish this very same light in her?
The notion sat uneasily in him. It pricked at him, reminding him of the reasons they were here, and married, and the revenge he had long ago vowed to rain down upon her father and the rest of her family...
But then he forgot it all. Because her eyes moved, almost convulsively, down over his chest. He was sure he could feel it like a touch over every ridge of his abdomen, every line of muscle. And she kept going until she found the hardest part of him, ready for her where he stood.
More than ready.
“If this is a proper audition,” he managed to say, in a voice made harsh with need, “will you require the complete demonstration?”
