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“It’s different when I say it.”
It wasn’t as if there was ever a moment in Zeus’s presence when his arrogance didn’t seem to take over the room. Or the taxiing plane, in this case. But every now and again, it seemed to boil inside of her. “How is it different?”
“Because you like it when I say it, Nina.”
And suddenly, it was as if he had gripped her between his hands and was squeezing tight, forcing all the breath from her body.
All she could think about was kissing him. Hurling herself from her seat and finding his mouth with hers. The wild longing seemed to expand within her, crowding out any possibility of anything else, even breath—
You need to stop, she ordered herself.Now.
Nina made a little show of rubbing her belly and murmuring to the baby, who was fast asleep inside her. And then wondered if that was the kind of mother she was going to be. The kind who shamelessly used her own child to get out of awkward moments of her own creation.
“Why do you look sad?” Zeus demanded, still lounging there as the plane began to gather steam along the runway. “Surely you cannot be so distraught over the use of a nickname.”
“First, I can be distraught about anything I wish,” Nina retorted. “Whether you like it or not. But I was thinking about motherhood.”
Their gazes seemed to tangle then, and suddenly everything seemed...stark. Stripped down in ways she wasn’t sure they had ever been before—not since that night. Not since they stayed awake as the hours grew narrower and told each other things that could only belong in moments like that.
Stolen. Illicit. Never to be repeated.
She had no doubt, as the plane leaped from the earth, that Zeus was remembering the very same thing.
Are you lonely?she had dared to whisper, there in his vast guest rooms in the old Haught Montagne castle. A far cry from where she lived, down in the servants’ quarters.
He had held her beside him, pulled fast to his side because they had not let each other go all night, but he did not laugh. The look he gave her was...quizzical.
What would make you ask such a thing of me? I’m forever surrounded by people. I could not be lonely if I tried.
An orphanage is filled with people, she’d replied.And yet it is the loneliest place on earth.
He had looked at her for a long time, still not smiling, so she had no choice but to notice how truly beautiful he really was. All those sculpted lines. That heartbreakingly sensual mouth.Princes do not believe in loneliness, he had said.
She had traced his cheek, his jaw, with her fingers. She had wanted to remember this, remember him, with everything she was.I don’t think it works that way.
He had rolled her over to her back, setting himself over her again, and already she had been soft and ready for him. It was as if, after that first impossible kiss, he had made her body his.
And she had loved it.
Yes, he had whispered harshly. His green eyes glittered.I am always lonely.
And then he had thrust deep inside her, and she had stopped doing anything so difficult as forming words.
Now, Nina was glad they were on a plane. And that takeoff was a distraction. And that she could fuss around with the new maternity outfit she wore, one of the many items of clothing that had appeared in her bedchamber over the last week. She’d gone and looked for the clothes she’d come with, only to find them missing.
I will be certain to take it up with the palace laundry, my lady, Daphne had said mildly enough.But who can say when I’ll be able to speak tothem? You had better wear these things in the meantime.
Nina hadn’t had any doubt whose order it was to dress her differently, but still. She thought she ought to protest. She ought to put upsomeresistance, surely. But the look of pleasure and heat in Zeus’s gaze the next time he saw her in something that accentuated her new curves...did something to her.
A bit of acid stomach, perhaps, she told herself tartly as the plane hit cruising altitude and the man across from her was still lounging there as if propped up by indolence instead of his own arm.
And she thought, with great clarity, that discussing the moment they’d had at takeoff might actually kill her.
“What is it you do when you disappear all day?” she asked instead, though she suspected she knew. As impossible as it was to imagine this man doing anything virtuous—or even vaguely responsible. “I would have thought debauching virgins was something you had down to a science, requiring very little time. And more to the point, I did think most of your trysts occurred at night.”
He treated her to one of those smiles of his, wolfish and edgy, a perfect match for the heat in his green gaze and the echoing blast of fire deep inside her.
“I don’t think you really want to know.”
