by C. J. Miller
“But you’re always in crisis.”
He didn’t feel that way. Responding to attacks and threats had been part of his life since he was a teenager. It was a sad truth. “When I married you, I wasn’t in crisis.”
“You married me to help you out of another catastrophe, the details of which you are keeping secret.”
Demetrius glanced over his shoulder. Though it had to happen at some point, now was not the time to have a heartfelt discussion. They were out of the hotel but not necessarily out of danger. “We can’t stand around debating my reasons or what crisis this may be. We need to move somewhere safe.” He took her hand. “Let’s go.”
She shook him off. “I’m not going with you. I can’t live my life this way.”
Staying wasn’t an option. “Regardless of what you want, you are who you are. Your connection to the king brought this forth.”
“My connection to the king or my connection to you?”
Why did she want to discuss this now? Didn’t she understand the urgency of the situation? “I won’t deny that the assailants could have been gunning for me. But an assailant came to your house in Acacia before we were married. That had nothing to do with me.”
Iliana started to cry. Demetrius was startled. He didn’t know what to do. “Stop crying.”
She looked at him through reddened eyes. “What? Stop crying?” She started crying harder.
“I don’t know what to say to you when you cry.”
“Are you a robot? Can’t you offer comfort to another human being?”
He could. But the men under his command didn’t cry. He couldn’t remember the last time he had cried. He hadn’t been around a crying person in decades. “Tell me what’s wrong and I’ll fix it. Then, you won’t have a reason to cry.”
She shook her head, looking miserable. That socked him in the gut. “You know what’s wrong.”
If he knew, he wouldn’t have told her to explain it. “Is this about the king?”
She didn’t reply.
“Our marriage?”
Silence.
“Maria?”
Still nothing.
“Come on, give me a clue.”
“Maybe it’s about all of it, Demetrius. Maybe it’s that you came into my life and you’ve shaken everything around and now I feel lost and afraid and sad.”
Demetrius understood it was a lot for her to cope with, but it bothered him more than a little to know she was distressed. When he had thought she was angry at him for withholding information about her father, her anger was an emotion he could deal with. He could argue and offer compromises or work with her. But loss, fear and sadness? How did he deal with those? “You aren’t lost. You’re my wife and the queen of Acacia’s cousin and the future marchioness of Agot.”
“Wife is a new position for me. I am not biologically related to the queen, apparently. If Stella has her way, I will inherit nothing.”
“You don’t need to be afraid. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
“Yet I’m standing outside a hotel, cold and on the run from killers.”
“Which is why I need you to come with me.”
“Come with you where?” she asked.
“I will find a safe place for us.” The sound of sirens filled the air. “Please, Iliana.”
This time when he extended his hand, she took it.
Demetrius selected a car in the parking lot. He could have looked for his car, but that could be wired to explode. A generic older sedan was his pick. He got lucky—someone had left their door unlocked. Calling on ancient, rarely used skills, he hot-wired the car and it roared to life.
Iliana was standing on the sidewalk, her mouth agape.
“Get in!” he shouted.
Iliana looked around, hesitating. They didn’t have time to debate this again.
“Please,” Demetrius said, knowing a little softness could go a long way with his wife.
Iliana climbed into the passenger seat and fastened her seat belt. Demetrius’s phone buzzed, and he handed it to her.
“What does it say?”
“Your guards are looking for you. They are injured but safe. They have their fallen comrade with them.”
Relief and pride for his team’s actions passed over him. “Ask for their password to confirm it’s them.” If they were dead, though their phones were secure, they could be used to track Demetrius.
She typed the question. Once their identity was confirmed, she sent them a message that she and Demetrius were safe and to meet them at the airport.
Ten minutes later, they were on the highway, headed toward the designated rendezvous.
* * *
Iliana couldn’t name the emotions passing through her. She felt as if she were coming apart at the seams. She needed something to ground her. During her college days, whenever she had felt confused, she had called her parents. That was no longer an option.
“I have a request,” she said to Demetrius. “I don’t want to go to Icarus. I want to go to Kontos.” Her biological mother had been born there.
If she visited the place where her mother was born, she may feel a connection to her. It was silly to think about it in those terms, but learning her roots might help her rebuild what she had lost.
“Your birth mother’s hometown,” Demetrius said. “Why? What’s there?”
Couldn’t he take her without question? Why didn’t he understand her emotional needs? She had thought their chemistry and intensity equated to emotional intimacy, but now she saw their marriage differently. It had been a hasty, hormonal and haphazard decision, and Demetrius’s ulterior motive—still a mystery to her—was behind it all. “I want to know who my mother was. More than her name, I want to know who she was as a person and what her life may have been like.”
“She’s dead. Going to Kontos won’t change that.” His voice was hard. He thought it would be a mistake to take her there.
Iliana couldn’t back down, not when this meant so much to her. “Someone had to know her in her hometown.”
“It was a long time ago, Iliana.” This time his voice was gentler.
She wasn’t ready to let it go. “There has to be information for me in Kontos. Maybe my grandmother is alive. An aunt. Someone.”
Demetrius’s mouth quirked to the left slightly. It was his tell.
“Tell me what you know.” She had no patience for his hiding information, not regarding this matter.
Demetrius shook his head. “Don’t go to Kontos.”
Suspicion crept over her. Sometimes being married to the man who knew everything was annoying to the point of madness. “You could tell me what you know and save me the effort.”
Demetrius pressed down harder on the gas pedal. “I would rather you hear this from someone else.”
“You told me the morning after our wedding that my biological parents weren’t the people who raised me, but now when I am asking you for information about my birth mother, you’re close lipped.”
“The timing made it essential for me to tell you about the king. I did not want to tell you the morning after our wedding. Believe it or not, I had hoped we would have some time as a honeymooning couple.”
Her heart thumped a little harder at his words. “This may not matter to you, or you may feel as if we have all the time in the world and I can find out terrible things in due time, but I want to know now. It is essential to me.”
Demetrius glanced at her. “Persephone Paphiti was from a broken home. She was raised by her grandmother until she died when Persephone was five. She was briefly in the foster-care system until she became a scholarship student at a boarding school, where she lived from the age of six to the age of seventeen. When she met the king, she was eighteen and working at an ice-cream store.”
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sp; “That doesn’t sound so bad,” Iliana said.
“Just a minute.” Demetrius took out his phone, flipped it to speaker and spoke to someone in French. She didn’t understand French, but she understood her name.
“What was that about?” she asked.
“Someone will meet us at the airport and bring clothes and essentials.”
“Does that mean we’re going to Kontos?” she asked.
At his swift nod, surprise and delight rolled through her. He had agreed to her request. She had thought it would require far more persuasion. “Thank you. This means a lot to me.”
“You’re looking for family. You lost your parents in a terrible car accident. Serena is busy with her new family. The king died, and his family hasn’t been welcoming to you. I understand what you hope to find. But I want to warn you that Kontos will not make you feel better. It won’t bring you closure.”
“I’m not expecting that.”
“Sure you are. The heart is reckless with hope and imagines some exists in the darkest hour, even when it is impossible.”
His voice was haunting. “Are you speaking from personal experience?”
“I am speaking what I know. I will help you look for family and ties and connections if that is your desire, but you’ll see that I am your family, too.”
His words touched her. She had been feeling adrift and he was throwing her a lifeline. “Do you mean that?” she asked.
“I do. When I spoke those two words at our wedding, I meant them then as I do now.”
She reached for his hand, slid hers into it and laid her head on his shoulder. “I’m sorry I accused you of not knowing what comfort was.”
“I was honest with you. I am glad the truth brings you relief.”
* * *
Aboard the private jet, they were flying to Kontos. Something had shifted between them. Demetrius didn’t believe she would find the answers she was looking for, but he was willing to indulge her.
Iliana was looking at him differently. She was glancing at him almost shyly. It reminded him of the way they had circled each other when she was the queen of Acacia’s personal secretary and he was the pain in the queen’s ass.
He wanted to move them onto that ground again. He wanted to recapture what they’d had the night he’d proposed and they’d married.
Testing a theory and fueled on hope, he shut off his computer and set it to the side. He gestured to his guards to give him privacy. They turned to look out the window. It was the best they could do within the confines of the plane.
He took Iliana’s hand, pulling her into the circle of his arms. He nuzzled her neck, and she leaned into him. “Come to bed with me,” he whispered.
She didn’t answer with words, instead letting her body language agree. He led her into the plane’s private bedroom. She arched her body into his, her hips brushing his, her fingers raking through his hair.
“You gave me my way,” she said.
“In regards to your travel request, yes,” he said.
“Can I have my way now?”
She lit him up so quickly, he could barely form a cohesive response. “You are my wife. I will not deny you.”
“This doesn’t mean everything is better,” she said.
“I understand that,” he said. “But it’s a chance. I’ll always take a chance with you.”
She fisted his hair and brought his mouth to hers in a possessive and hungry kiss. Waves of emotion poured off her.
She pulled at his shirt, dragging it over his head while he kicked off his pants. Cool air rushed over his skin.
She ran her fingers over his shoulders and his chest and down his abdomen. Her skin was soft against his. Moving her hands down his arms, she set his hands on her hips. He gave them a light squeeze and positioned himself against her, lining up their bodies to create perfect friction.
She took his face in her hands and kissed him, long and hot and hard.
He slipped his arms around her waist and anchored her to him, then slid back on the bed, bringing her on top of him. She brought her knees to either side of his hips and positioned her hands on each side of his head. Iliana was a sexy, passionate woman, and he was seeing that passion in action.
He had missed this, missed touching her and kissing her.
Demetrius ran his hands up her tight thighs. He slid his hand into her pants. She removed them, tossing them on the floor. His fingers brushed the strips of fabric on her hips. Lace? Some textured material, but he didn’t want it in his way.
He tugged the fabric aside, but it wouldn’t stretch enough to give him the access he needed. He tore it away from her body.
She giggled. “That was efficient.”
She reached between them and stroked him. Pulling him out of his boxers, she positioned him at her entrance. She wiggled, and the heat between her legs made him want to thrust in hard and deep. He kept his control, knowing this needed to be on her terms.
He didn’t have to wait long to have satisfaction. She impaled herself in one smooth stroke. Then she let out a sigh and her hair fell forward over her face. He shifted to brace his feet on the floor. Then he used the leverage to move them together.
She pushed her hair away and gathered it in her hands as she rode him, rocking her hips and letting out moans of pleasure. The sight was beautiful and erotic. He reached to cup her breasts, pinching her nipples lightly and evoking more sounds of excitement from her. He was close to release and he counted backward slowly, needing for her to come first.
Then she leaned forward, setting her arm on his side. He smelled soap, spicy and sweet. He had never known a woman to smell as good as she did. She dropped a kiss on his lips. The friction and the heat between them imploded, and he held her right while she came. A few seconds later, he followed her into oblivion.
This was what he remembered about his wedding night, the passion and the chemistry, the lazy, unhurried exploration.
“You don’t have to stay with me in Kontos,” she said. She was spread over him, her hair across him and the pillows.
She was an interesting woman. Independent, and yet he felt like her man, as if she needed him. “You say that while I’m inside you? I’m staying with you in Kontos.”
And he was staying with her as her husband.
* * *
Kontos was a small town close to the sea on the eastern shores of Valencia. The population was about a thousand people. It had once been a booming fishing town, but now most residents commuted to bigger cities for their jobs. Iliana had learned from an internet search on the flight over that the most notable and historic place in Kontos was the library. It was a beautiful building the residents had constructed from stones collected from the bottom of the sea, hauling the rocks to the center of town in wheelbarrows and wagons. Standing in its location for more than a hundred years, the library had been retrofitted with modern conveniences, water and electricity. It sounded like a place she’d love to visit.
Their plane had landed at a nearby private airport, and they were driving the remainder of the distance. They were traveling in a caravan, four cars in total. She assumed the additional cars were decoys for security.
“I have a couple leads on people who may have known your mother,” Demetrius said.
Iliana couldn’t hide her surprise. Her husband seemed to know everything, but he wasn’t exactly an open book. “How did you find that information?”
“I have sources looking into the matter.”
She ventured to guess he wouldn’t be sharing those sources with her.
“Would you like help investigating the leads?” he asked, closing the distance between them and taking her hand.
Not a good idea. “I can handle this. If you come with me, you’ll scare everyone into silence.” In some situations, Demetrius�
�s strength was a huge advantage. Since she had nothing to offer in return, she had to rely on the kindness of strangers for information, and she might have more success with her own methods than his intimidating ones.
“I don’t scare people,” he said, sounding a little grumpy about it.
He released her hand, and she instantly missed his touch.
“Sure you do. You give someone a look and they go silent or they cower, afraid of what you may do to them,” she said.
Demetrius frowned at her statement. She had heard of people speaking to Demetrius and being thrown in jail for offending him, but her experience had been different. He didn’t laugh often, but he had a sense of humor. She was given the breadth to speak plainly to him without fear of recourse.
He handed her a piece of paper, and she glanced at it. Three names and three addresses. “Thank you.”
“Security stays with you. No exceptions.”
“Ask them to hang back, okay?” For the same reason she didn’t want Demetrius along, she didn’t want his security intimidating people.
“They will keep the greatest distance possible while keeping you safe,” he said. “I will keep my phone close. Call if you need anything.”
She kissed him on the cheek. Before she could exit the car, he snagged her hand and kissed her full on the mouth.
“That’s a proper kiss,” he said.
“Wish me luck,” she said. She took her handbag and phone.
Demetrius drove off, and the other car remained nearby. Following her phone’s GPS, she walked to the first address on the list, aware of Demetrius’s guards on foot behind her. The address led to a pharmacy with a small retail store in the front. She approached the salesclerk and tried to appear confident. “Hi. I’m looking for Azar Hondros.”
The woman, who had long gray hair with pink highlights, looked at her fluorescent-yellow nails and then shook her head. “Sorry, you’re out of luck. He won’t be back until next week. He’s on vacation with his family. Who are you, his mistress?”
Disappointment streamed through her as she tried not to be offended by the woman’s assumption. “I don’t know him personally. I am looking for someone who may have known my mother. Her name was Persephone Paphiti.”
