His Two Royal Secrets (One Night With Consequences)

by Caitlin Crews

  Then she simply shattered, there and then.

  Ares let out a laugh of dark delight that shivered its way through Pia like a new, bright flame. Then he moved to her other nipple, taking it into his mouth in the same greedy, demanding way. She tried to breathe. She tried to fight it off, but he only sucked a little harder—

  And that was it. She went tumbling from one peak to the next, and broke apart all over again.

  “I can’t believe how sensitive you are now,” he murmured, his mouth on her belly. “Let’s test it, shall we?”

  Then—slowly, carefully, ruthlessly—he stripped her of the loose, easy clothes she wore.

  And Pia was too busy falling to pieces, and gasping for breath, and crying out his name, to think about the things that would have torn her apart at any other time. Her size, for example. How fat she must look. How different than before.

  But she was too busy losing herself in Ares’s mouth. Beneath his clever, wicked hands.

  She didn’t notice when he stripped out of the rest of his clothes, too, because his hands found their way between her legs, teasing her slick flesh until she broke apart again.

  And again.

  And then, finally, Ares went and knelt before the chaise, pulling her to the edge and opening her legs wide. He held himself there, moving between her thighs. Only then did he find her soft, wet heat with the hardest part of him.

  His gaze lifted to hers. Pia held her breath. And Ares pushed his way inside.

  Slowly. Carefully.

  Almost as if this was sacred. Beautiful.

  As if she was.

  “Pia,” he murmured, as if her name was a prayer.

  And then he set about his devotions, one perfect thrust after the next.

  And she was already coming apart. She was already in pieces. Over and over again, as if the pleasure was a wave and she was caught in the undertow, tossed and tumbling and wild with it.

  She lost count of how many times he brought her to that glorious cliff and tossed her over, only to catch her on the way down and do it all again.

  It was too much, and it was beautiful and perfect, and Pia never wanted to go without it—without him, without this—again.

  She heard a distant sound and realized that she was saying those things out loud, but she didn’t have it in her to mind that, either. Not when she was captured in that undertow, lost in the whirl of it.

  Pia shook and she shook, she came down a little only to feel him surge deep inside her again, and she shook even more.

  Until she thought she might become the shaking.

  And finally, when he hit his own cliff, Ares gathered her to him. He dropped his head into the crook of her neck and called out her name as he shattered at last.

  And she understood, now, Pia thought in a kind of wonder when she surfaced to find herself tucked up on that chaise, Ares having crawled up next to her like a kind of warm, gloriously male blanket.

  It had been so hard, after New York, to understand why she’d behaved the way she had there. Why she’d done those things, and so easily and carelessly when that wasn’t her. That wasn’t how she behaved.

  But she got it now. It was this. It was Ares.

  It was extraordinary.

  He was remarkable.

  And it was no wonder that she had never been the same since.

  She found herself running her fingers up and down her belly, in the absent way she often did, and she smiled when Ares did it, too, from beside her. Tracing patterns this way and that.

  Introducing himself, she thought when one baby kicked.

  Letting them know who he was, she thought when the other followed suit.

  “Pia,” Ares said, in that low, marvelous voice of his that she loved to feel roll over her like the sweet, thick breeze from the sea before them. “You are the mother of my sons.”

  “That’s me,” she said softly, and her smile trembled a bit on her mouth. “Like it or not.”

  He looked up from her belly, leveling all that green intensity on her. His expression was grave. “I want you to marry me.”

  It was an order. A royal command.

  And what surprised Pia was how deeply, how passionately she wanted to obey him.

  But what did she know about marriage? Nothing but what she’d seen growing up. And certainly nothing that let her imagine two people so unevenly matched could make it work. She’d watched her parents’ marriage explode time and time again, sometimes in the same evening. She’d watched it fall apart a thousand times, though they’d stayed together. She’d watched the games they played with and at each other, and the pieces they’d carved from each other that she didn’t think they’d ever gotten back.

  And Eddie and Alexandrina had been a love story for the ages.

  Pia didn’t see any reason why she should subject her babies to a far grimmer, far less exalted version of her parents’ marriage. All the struggle and pain and yet none of the love.

  How could she subject herself to that? And worse still, how could she make her babies grow up like that? Hadn’t it been hard enough for her?

  She lay there on the balcony with the sea as their witness, naked and replete, still spinning in all that sensation and sweet hunger. She reached over and slid her hand over Ares’s, holding him to her.

  And she said no.

  “No.” She said it distinctly. “I won’t marry you. But you are the father to my sons, Ares. That won’t change. We don’t have to be married. We can just...be parents.”

  He was quiet for a long, taut moment.

  “And how do you think that will work when I take the throne?” he asked mildly, though Pia wasn’t fooled by his almost offhand tone. “Will the two princes have alternate weekends with their father, the King of Atilia, and then spend the rest of the time in some godforsaken Yorkshire village?”

  “We’ll figure it out, one way or another.” Pia made herself smile at him, though it felt like a risk when his green eyes were so dark. “With or without my beloved, godforsaken Yorkshire.”

  Ares rolled to his feet. Then he reached down and pulled her up from the chaise, letting her stand there before him as the night air danced over them.

  And as Pia longed for more.

  “I mean to have you as my wife,” he told her, starkly.

  “No,” she said again, and felt something hitch in her as she said it, as if the longing was tangled up on itself. “No, you don’t. You want to marry me for the babies, but it has nothing to do with me. You don’t want me for a wife. You want your babies’ mother.”

  “Why can’t I want both?”

  “No,” she said again. Calmly and firmly, despite that tumult inside her that she feared was something even more embarrassing.

  Like stark, desperate yearning, despite everything.

  And Pia expected him to argue. To rage, perhaps, the way her father would have. Or go dark and broody, the way she’d seen him do before.

  But Ares only smiled.

  CHAPTER TEN

  PIA DIDN’T KNOW what she’d expected. Perhaps she thought that having been rejected, Ares would go off somewhere. Lick his wounds with his favorite whiskey. Pretend the conversation had never happened.

  Instead, he helped her dress, pulling the softly elegant knits into place. Then he ushered her back into the dining room and took his time helping her into her seat. He sat—too close to her—at the entirely too intimate table, and they...had a perfectly civilized dinner.

  Complete with finger bowls at the end.

  “And if I drink mine?” she dared ask him. “Will you do the appropriate thing as host? All to make me feel comfortable?”

  But this was why Pia wrote columns about seemingly insignificant things like whether or not to send thank-you notes—yes, always—and whether one should flout convention in matters such as the wearing
of white in the off-season—of course, if you can pull it off.

  Because it was never about the finger bowls. It was about taking care of other people.

  It was about whether or not she felt safe with him when Pia didn’t know if she’d ever been safe in her life. Or how she could possibly know the difference when she didn’t know what such a thing felt like.

  “Marry me,” Ares replied, his green gaze tight on hers. Because he was relentless and he clearly didn’t mind her knowing it. “And you will see exactly what kind of host I am.”

  Pia did not drink from her finger bowl. And she was shaken all over again, if in a markedly different fashion, by the fact Ares hadn’t let it go. If he was chastened or upset by her refusal, he didn’t seem to show it.

  After dinner, he escorted her out into the hallway, but when she turned to make her way back toward her wing of the palace, he held fast to her arm.

  “I think not,” he said quietly. “We have only just begun to take the edge off, have we not?”

  “The edge?” Pia repeated because she didn’t dare imagine that he meant what she thought he did. What her body certainly hoped he did, as it shivered everywhere, inside and out, when she was sure she shouldn’t have been able to feel a thing. Not when she’d felt too much already.

  “Cara mia, it has been much too long since New York. My hunger for you has yet to be quenched.”

  Maybe she should have argued. Held fast to some or other standard...but Pia wanted him more than she wanted to fight him.

  All she did was nod. Once.

  Ares did not do a good job of hiding his sharp, hot grin then. He led her to his vast suite of rooms, instead. And he laid her out on his massive bed, clearly made for kings, and crawled up over her to learn every inch of her body all over again.

  And when she was writhing, and out of her head once more, he turned her over. He settled her on her hands and knees, so he could slide into her from behind.

  That time, she screamed his name when she burst apart.

  Every time she burst apart.

  And that was only the beginning of his campaign.

  He had all her things moved into his rooms and when she objected, merely lifted an arrogant brow.

  “I do not wish to traipse down a mile of palace corridors when I could more easily turn over and find you in my bed, Pia,” he told her. Loftily.

  And maybe Pia was weak. But she liked sleeping in his bed. And she liked it even more when he turned over and woke her up.

  He still maintained his schedule of events. Royal necessities that meant he was always trotting off to this or that.

  But he came home more than he had before.

  And Pia laughed at herself when she realized that was the word she used now. Home. To describe this mad, fairy-tale palace where she was locked away from the world.

  Or maybe, something inside her suggested, this is where you get to retreat from the world.

  When had her prison begun to feel like a retreat?

  She found she stopped looking at the tabloids, particularly as they now starred both of her brothers and their various romantic entanglements. It wasn’t only that she didn’t want the nasty, gossipy version of her family in her head. It was more that she liked focusing on her own life.

  Because she had a life, for once. She was growing brand-new humans inside her. She was carrying on with her writing. And she had Ares, after a fashion.

  He taught her things it was impossible to learn in a single night.

  And if her giant, pregnant body was any kind of hindrance, he never showed it. He seemed perfectly capable of coming up with new, improved ways to make sure they were both comfortable while they explored each other.

  Sometimes he talked. He made dark, delicious promises, then followed through on each and every one of them.

  Other times, he was dark, silent, and impossibly beautiful as he moved over her, in her.

  One afternoon, after he had made her sob, scream, and then beg a bit for good measure, Ares sprawled beside her. The bed was big, wide, and rumpled beneath them. Up above, the ceiling fan turned lazily, keeping the air moving. Pia could hear the ever-present sound of the ocean outside, crashing over the rocks and surging against the shore.

  And Ares was hot and beautiful, all leashed power and male grace as he lay there beside her, his fingers laced with hers.

  No matter what happened, Pia knew she would always remember this moment. When she’d almost forgot her body entirely, or could only seem to remember what he could do to it.

  Beautiful, something in her whispered. He makes you feel beautiful.

  “Marry me,” he said, the way he always did. He had asked her to marry him so many times now that she thought it had lost its power. Almost. Now it was just a thing he said.

  Pass the salt, please. Marry me.

  Pia laughed. “You know I can’t.”

  “I know no such thing.”

  She sighed, shifting in an attempt to get comfortable. “You were very clear that you wanted no wife. No children. And the children were a surprise to us both, but I think we will do very well now that we’ve adjusted to it all. But why add marriage to the mix?”

  “I remember seeing your parents at a ball,” Ares said into the quiet of the room, with only the ocean outside as accompaniment. “It was perhaps ten years ago now. It was a ghastly sort of state affair, bristling with diplomats and career socialites.”

  As he always did, now, Ares moved his hand over her belly. Finding one baby’s head, and the other’s pair of feet. Saying hello to his sons. Pia had grown used to the patterns he drew there. The way she sometimes drifted off to sleep and woke to find Ares crooning nonsense to her belly.

  She hardly dared admit how that made her feel. Riddled with hope. Laced through with sweetness. So full of impossible, unwieldy emotion, she felt it was one more part of her set to burst. At any moment.

  “I never knew my parents to subject themselves to anything grim or ghastly,” Pia said, trying to rally when everything felt too emotional these days. She was in her eighth month, and twins were usually early. Her time with them as part of her was almost over. And so, too, was her time with Ares nearing its natural conclusion. She could feel it with every breath. “They much preferred to be the life of the liveliest parties they could find.”

  “I imagine it was a business affair for your father,” Ares said. “There were stultifying speeches, as there always are. Much self-congratulation. Then the dancing began. There were the usual awkward couplings of diplomats, their wives, and so on. These things are typically excruciating. But then your parents took the floor.”

  Pia thought she knew where this was going. She smiled, settling more fully on her side. “My parents loved to dance.”

  “That was instantly apparent. I don’t know anything about their marriage, or not anything that wasn’t twisted to sell papers, but I did see them dance. I saw the way they looked at each other.”

  “Not only as if there was no one else in the room,” Pia said softly, remembering. “But as if no one else existed at all.”

  “My own parents did not dance unless it was strictly necessary for reasons of highest protocol,” Ares told her, propping himself up on one elbow and regarding her, an odd sort of gleam in his green eyes that made them seem burnished with gold. “And when they did, they did their best never to gaze at each other at all. I watched them dance at the same ball ten years ago and I imagine it was perfectly clear to everyone in the room how little esteem they held for each other.”

  “Did they not...?” Pia didn’t quite know how to phrase the question.

  Ares let out a laugh, but it was tinged with bitterness. “My father liked to indulge his temper. When it was aimed at me, he liked to throw things against walls. I am only grateful that he contained that rage to me alone and never aimed it at my mother.” He shook
his head. “They say he is a decent enough ruler, but he was a cold, unfeeling husband and is a terrible father.”

  “You don’t have to talk about this,” Pia said quietly, when she thought he wouldn’t go on.

  Ares’s eyes glittered. “My mother provided him with the requisite heir, thus securing the bloodline and the kingdom, which was all he cared about. Once that was accomplished, he felt perfectly justified in pursuing his extracurricular interests. Without caring overmuch if that might hurt her feelings. In fact, I think I can say with perfect honesty that I have never known my father to care about anyone’s feelings. Ever.”

  Pia tried to pull up pictures of the king of Atilia and his late queen in her head. And more, tried to think of them as people instead of pictures anyone could look at.

  “Your father cheated on your mother?” she asked.

  “Constantly.” Ares smiled, but it was little more than the sharp edge of his teeth. “And enthusiastically. Quantity over quality, if my sources are correct.”

  Pia let out a breath, and directed her attention to the place where their hands were still linked.

  “I think my parents cheated on each other as well,” she told him, though she’d never admitted that out loud before. No matter what the papers said. “I know they loved each other, madly and wildly. Everyone knows that. But part of that kind of love is all about hurting each other. I think the glory was in the coming back together, so they always seemed to look for new ways to break apart.”

  Ares lifted her hand and brought it to his mouth. He pressed his lips against her knuckles and Pia’s heart instantly careened around inside of her chest. Fizzy and mad, as if they weren’t already naked. As if they hadn’t already spent hours making each other moan.

  His gaze was intent on hers. “I never wanted to marry because I watched a royal Atilian marriage play out right in front of me. My father was a brute, always. And my mother was always so sad. I never wanted that for any woman bound to me, whether by duty or desire.”

  He reached over and brushed her hair back from her face, and Pia didn’t want to see the look on his then. It was...too open. Too complicated.