Blackmailed By The Greek's Vows. Tara Pammi
I loved you.
His unsaid statement hung in the air.
No...he hadn’t said it. Not once.
It had all been her.
Stupid, naive Valentina building castles of love around this hard man.
She found no bump on Nikolai’s thick skull and sighed with relief. His head lolling onto her chest, he fell asleep with an undignified snore. She’d have gagged at the sweat from Nikolai’s flushed head trickling down her meager cleavage if all her reactions weren’t attuned to the man behind her.
The small hairs on her neck stood up before Kairos spoke. “Leave him alone.”
Ignoring him, she rose to her feet, and planted her hands under Nikolai’s arms.
“Move, Valentina.”
Before she could blink, Kairos hefted Nikolai up onto his shoulders and raised a brow at her.
He had carried her like that once, the hard muscles of his shoulders digging into her belly, his big hands wrapped around her upper thighs, after she had jumped into the pool at a business retreat in front of his colleagues and their wives because he’d ignored her all weekend.
He’d stripped her and thrown her into the cold shower, rage simmering in his eyes. And when he’d extracted her from the shower and rubbed her down, all that rage had converted into passion.
She’d been self-destructive just to get a rise out of him.
She looked away from the memory of that night in his eyes.
Masculine arrogance filled his eyes. “Now that the poor fool has served his purpose, shall I throw him overboard?”
“His purpose?”
“You used him to make me jealous—laughing at his jokes, dancing with him, touching him, to rile my temper. It is done, so you don’t need him anymore.”
“I told you, Nik is my friend.” She jerked her gaze to his face and flushed. “And I did nothing tonight with you on my mind. My world doesn’t revolve around you, Kairos. Not anymore.” She wouldn’t ask whether his temper was riled.
She wouldn’t.
With a shrug, he dumped Nikolai on the bed like a sack of potatoes.
Nik’s soft snores punctured the silence. If she weren’t so caught up in the confusing cascade of emotions Kairos evoked, the whole thing would have been hilarious.
But nothing could cut through her awareness of six feet four inches of pure muscle and utter masculinity. She pressed her fingers to her temple. “Please leave now.”
“Enough, Valentina. You’ve got my attention now. Tell me, did you really sign up with the escort service or was that just a dramatic touch to push me over the edge?”
“Are you asking me if I’ve been prostituting myself all these months?” She was proud of how steady she sounded while her heart thundered away in her chest.
“I thought perhaps no first. But knowing you and your vicious tendencies, who knows how far you went to shock me, to teach me a lesson, to bring me to heel?”
She walked to the door and held it for Kairos. “Get out.”
He leaned against the foot of the bed, dwarfing the room with his presence. “You’re not staying here with him.”
She folded her hands and tilted her head. The sheer breadth of his shoulders sucked the air from the room. “I’ve been doing what and who I want since the day I left you nine months ago, since I realized what a joke our marriage is. So it’s a little late to play the possessive husband.”
Hadn’t she promised herself that she’d never stoop to provoking him like that again?
She cringed, closed her eyes at the dirty, inflammatory insinuation in her own words.
But she saw the imperceptible lick of fire in his gaze, the tiny flinch of that cruel upper lip. At one time, the little fracture in his control would have been a minor victory to her.
Not anymore.
“It is a good thing then, is it not, Valentina—” the way he said her name sent a curl of longing through her “—that I did not believe all your passionate avowals of love, ne?”
Something vibrated in the smooth calmness of his tone. The presence of that anger was a physical slap. Her eyes wide, she stared as he continued, his mouth taking on a cruel tilt.
“No more pathetic displays of your jealousy. No grand declarations of love. No snarling at and slapping every woman I’m friends with. Now we both can work with each other on the same footing.”
Dios, she’d always been a melodramatic fool. But Kairos, his inability to feel anything, his unwillingness to share a thought, an emotion...it had turned her into much worse. “Non, Kairos. No more of that,” she agreed tiredly.
She didn’t even have cash for a taxi, but if she’d learnt anything in the last nine months of this flailing about she’d been doing in the name of independence, it was that she could survive.
She could survive without designer clothes and shoes, she could survive without the adulation she’d taken as her due as the fashionista that Milan looked up to, she could survive without the Conti villa and the cars and the expensive lifestyle.
She picked up her clutch from the bed, her phone from the floor. “If you won’t leave, I will.”
He blocked the door with his shoulders. “Not dressed like a cheap hooker, strutting for business at dawn, you’re not.”
“I don’t want—”
“I will throw you over my shoulder and lock you up in the stateroom.”
It should have sounded dramatic, emotional. But Kairos didn’t do drama. Didn’t utter a word he didn’t mean. And if he so much as touched her...
“Fine. Let’s talk.” She threw her clutch back on the bed and faced him. “Even better, why don’t you call your lawyer and have him bring divorce papers? I’ll sign them right now and we won’t see each other ever again.”
He didn’t exactly startle. But again, Tina had the feeling that something in him became alert. She had...surprised him? Shocked him?
What did he think her leaving him had meant?
He stretched out his wrists, undid the cufflinks on his right hand—platinum cufflinks she’d bought him for their three-month anniversary with her brother’s credit card—and pushed back the sleeve.
A shiver of anticipation curled around her spine.
He stretched his left hand toward her. Being left-handed, he’d always undone the right cuff link first. But the right hand...his fingers didn’t do fine motor skills well. She’d noted it on their wedding night, how they had felt clumsy when he tried to do anything.
For a physically perfect specimen of masculinity, it had been a shock to note that the fingers of his right hand didn’t work quite right. When she’d asked if he’d hurt his hand, he’d kissed her instead. The second time she’d asked, he’d just shrugged.
His usual response when he didn’t want to talk.
She’d taken his left hand in hers and deftly undone the cufflink on their wedding night. And a thousand times after that.
It was one of a hundred rituals they’d had as man and wife. Such intimacy in a simple action. So much history in an everyday thing.
Tina stared at the blunt, square nails now, her breath ballooning up in her chest; the long fingers sprinkled with hair to the plain platinum band on his ring finger; the rough calluses on his palm because he didn’t wear gloves when he lifted weights. It was a strong, powerful hand and yet when he touched her in the most sensitive