Achilles expected a reaction. He expected her to see him at last as she had failed to see him before. The scales would fall from her eyes, perhaps. She would recoil, certainly. He had always known that it would take so very little for people to see the truth about him, lurking right there beneath his skin. Not hidden away at all.
But Valentina did not seem to realize what had happened. She continued to look at him the way she always did. There wasn’t the faintest flicker of anything like revulsion, or bleak recognition, in her gaze.
If anything, her gaze seemed warmer than before, for all it was wet. And that made him all the more determined to show her what she seemed too blind to see.
“You are not hearing me, Valentina. I’m not speaking in metaphors. Do you have any idea what I have done? The lives that I have ruined?”
She smiled at that, through her tears. “I know exactly who you are,” she said, with a bedrock certainty that shook him. “I worked for you. You did not wine me or dine me. You did not take me on a fancy date or try to impress me in any way. You treated me like an assistant, an underling, and believe me, there is nothing more revealing. Are you impatient? Are you demanding and often harsh? Of course.” She shrugged, as if this was all so obvious it was hardly worth talking about. “You are a very powerful man. But you are not a monster.”
If she’d reached over and wrenched his mangled little heart from between his ribs with her elegant hands and then held it there in front of him, it could not possibly have floored him more.
“And you will not convince me otherwise,” she added, as if she could see that he was about to say something. “There’s something I have to tell you. And it’s entirely possible that you are not going to like it at all.”
Achilles blinked. “How ominous.”
She blew out a breath. “You must understand that there are no good solutions. I’ve had no idea how to tell you this, but our... What happened between us had consequences.”
“Do you think that I don’t know that?” he belted out at her, and he didn’t care who heard him. He didn’t care if the whole of her pretty little kingdom poured out of the party behind them to watch and listen. “Do you think that I would be here if I was unaware of the consequences?”
“I’m not talking about feelings—”
“I am,” he snapped. “I have not felt anything in years. I have not wanted to feel. And thanks to you all I do now is feel. Too damned much, Valentina.” She hadn’t actually ripped his heart out, he reminded himself. It only felt as if she had. He forced himself to loosen his grip on her before he hurt her. “And it doesn’t go anywhere. Weeks pass, and if anything grows worse.”
“Achilles, please,” she whispered, and the tears were falling freely again. “I never wanted to hurt you.”
“I wish you had hurt me,” he told her, something dark and bitter, and yet neither of those things threaded through him. “Hurt things heal. This is far worse.”
She sucked in a breath as if he’d punched her. He forged on, throwing all the doom and tumult inside him down between them.
“I have never loved anything in my life, Princess. I have wanted things and I’ve taken them, but love has always been for other men. Men who are not monsters by any definition. Men who have never ruined anything—not lives, not companies and certainly not perfect, virginal princesses who had no idea what they were signing up for.” He shook his head. “But there is nothing either one of us can do about it now. I’m afraid the worst has already happened.”
“The worst?” she echoed. “Then you know...?”
“I love you, glikia mou,” he told her. “There can be no other explanation, and I feel sorry for you, I really do. Because I don’t think there’s any going back.”
“Achilles...” she whispered, and that was not a look of transported joy on her face. It wasn’t close. “I’m so sorry. Everything is different now. I’m pregnant.”
CHAPTER TEN
ACHILLES WENT SILENT. Stunned, if Valentina had to guess.
If that frozen astonishment in his dark gold gaze was any guide.
“And I am to be queen,” she told him, pointedly. His hands were still clenched on her shoulders, and what was wrong with her that she should love that so much? That she should love any touch of his. That it should make her feel so warm and safe and wild with desire. All at once. “My father thought that he would not have an heir of his own blood, because he thought he had only one daughter. But now he has two, and Natalie has married Rodolfo. That leaves me to take the throne.”
“I’m not following you,” Achilles said, his voice stark. Something like frozen. “I can think of no reason that you have told me in one breath that I am to be a father and in the next you feel you must fill me in on archaic lines of succession.”
“There is very strict protocol,” she told him, and her voice cracked. She slid her hands over her belly. “My father will never accept—”
“You keep forgetting who I am,” Achilles growled, and she didn’t know if he’d heard a word she’d said. “If you are having my child, Valentina, this conversation is over. We will be married. That’s an end to it.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“On the contrary, there is nothing simpler.”
She needed him to understand. This could never be. They could never happen. She was trapped just as surely as she’d ever been. Why couldn’t he see that? “I am no longer just a princess. I’m the Crown Princess of Murin—”
“Princess, princess.” Achilles shook his head. “Tell me something. Did you mean it when you told me that you loved me? Or did you only dare to tell me in the first place because you knew you were leaving?”
That walloped Valentina. She thought that if he hadn’t been holding on to her, she would have staggered and her knees might well have given out from beneath her.
“Don’t be ridiculous.” But her voice was barely a whisper.
“Here’s the difference between you and me, princess. I have no idea what love is. All I know is that you came into my life and you altered something in me.” He let go of her shoulder and moved his hand to cover his heart, and broke hers that easily. “Here. It’s changed now, and I can’t change it back. And I didn’t tell you these things and then leave. I accepted these things, and then came to find you.”
She felt blinded. Panicked. As if all she could do was cower inside her cage—and worse, as if that was what she wanted.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” she told him instead. “You might be a successful businessman, but you know nothing about the realities of a kingdom like Murin.”
“I know you better than you think. I know how desperate you are for a normal life. Isn’t that why you switched places with Natalie?” His dark gaze was almost kind. “But don’t you understand? Normal is the one thing you can never be, glikia mou.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said again, and this time her voice was even softer. Fainter.
“You will never be normal, Valentina,” Achilles said quietly. His fingers tightened on her shoulder. “I am not so normal myself. But together, you and I? We will be extraordinary.”
“You don’t know how much I wish that could happen.” She didn’t bother to wipe at her tears. She let them fall. “This is a cage, Achilles. I’m trapped in it, but you’re not. And you shouldn’t be.”
He let out a breath that was too much like a sigh, and Valentina felt it shudder through her, too. Like foreboding.
“You can live in fear, or you can live the life you want, Valentina,” he told her. “You cannot do both.”
His dark gaze bored into her, and then he dropped his other hand, so he was no longer touching her.
And then he made it worse and stepped back.
She felt her hands move, when she hadn’t meant t
o move at all. Reaching out for him, whether she wanted to or not.
“If you don’t want to be trapped, don’t be trapped,” Achilles said, as if it was simple. And with that edge in his voice that made her feel something a little more pointed than simply restless. “I don’t know how to love, but I will learn. I have no idea how to be a father, but I will dedicate myself to being a good one. I never thought that I’d be a husband to anyone, but I will be the husband you need. You can sit on your throne. You can rule your kingdom as you wish. I have no need to be a king. But I will be one for you.” He held out his hand. “All you have to do is be brave, princess. That’s all. Just be a little brave.”
“It’s a cage, Achilles,” she told him again, her voice ragged. “It’s a beautiful, beautiful cage, this life. And there’s no changing it. It’s been the same for untold centuries.”
“Love me,” he said then, like a bomb to her heart. What was left of it. “I dare you.”
And the music poured out from the party within. Inside, her father ruled the way he always did, and her brand-new sister danced with the man Valentina had always imagined she would marry. Natalie had come out of nowhere and taken her rightful place in the kingdom, and the world hadn’t ended when brides had been switched at a royal wedding. If anything, life had vastly improved for everyone involved. Why wasn’t that the message Valentina was concentrating on?
She realized that all this time, she’d been focused on what she couldn’t do. Or what she had to do. She’d been consumed with duty, honor—but none of it her choice. All of it thrust upon her by an accident of birth. If Erica had taken Valentina instead of Natalie, she would have met Achilles some time ago. They wouldn’t be standing here, on this graceful balcony, overlooking the soothing Mediterranean and her father’s kingdom.
Her whole life seemed to tumble around before her, year after year cracking open before her like so many fragile eggs against the stones beneath her feet. All the things she never questioned. All the certainties she simply accepted, because what was the alternative? She’d prided herself on her serenity in the face of anything that had come her way. On her ability to do what was asked of her, always. What was expected of her, no matter how unfair.
And she’d never really asked herself what she wanted to do with her life. Because it had never been a factor. Her life had been meticulously planned from the start.
But now Achilles stood before her, and she carried their baby inside her. And she knew that as much as she wanted to deny it, what he said was true. She was a coward. She’d used her duty to hide behind. She could have stayed in London, could have called off her wedding. But she hadn’t.
And had she really imagined she could walk down that aisle to Rodolfo, having just left Achilles in London? Had she really intended to do that?
It was unimaginable. And yet she knew she’d meant to do exactly that.
She’d been saved from that vast mistake, and yet here she was, standing in front of the man she loved, coming up with new reasons why she couldn’t have the one thing in her life she ever truly wanted.
All this time she’d been convinced that her life was the cage. That her royal blood trapped her.
But the truth was, she was the one who did that.
She was her own cage, and she always would be if she didn’t do something to stop it right now. If she didn’t throw open the door, step through the opening and allow herself to reach out for the man she already knew she loved.
Be brave, he’d told her, as if he knew she could do it.
As if he had no doubt at all.
“I love you,” she whispered helplessly. Lost somewhere in that gaze of his, and the simple fact that he was here. Right here in front of her, his hand stretched toward her, waiting for her with a patience she would have said Achilles Casilieris did not possess.
“Marry me, glikia mou. And you can love me forever.” His mouth crept up in one corner, and all the scars Valentina had dug into her own heart when she’d left him seemed to glow a little bit. Then knit themselves into something more like art. “I’m told that’s how it goes. But you know me. I always like to push the boundaries a little bit farther.”
“Farther than forever?”
And she smiled at him then, not caring if she was still crying. Or laughing. Or whatever was happening inside her that was starting to take her over.
Maybe that was what it was to be brave. Doing whatever it was not because she felt it was right, but because it didn’t matter what she felt. It was right, so she had to do it.
“Three forevers,” Achilles said, as if he was promising them to her, here and now. “To start.”
And he was still holding out his hand.
“Breathe,” he murmured, as if he could see all the tumult inside her.
Valentina took a deep breath. She remembered lying in that bed of his with all of New York gleaming around them. He’d told her to breathe then, too.
In. Out.
Until she felt a little less full, or a little more able to handle what was happening. Until she had stopped feeling overwhelmed, and had started feeling desperate with need.
And this was no different.
Valentina breathed in, then out. Then she stepped forward and slid her hand into his, as easily as if they’d been made to fit together just like that, then let him pull her close.
He shifted to take her face in his hands, tilting her head back so he could fit his mouth to hers. Though he didn’t. Not yet.
“Forever starts now,” Valentina whispered. “The first one, anyway.”
“Indeed.” Achilles’s mouth was so deliriously hard, and directly over hers. “Kiss me, Valentina. It’s been too long.”
And Valentina did more than kiss him. She poured herself into him, pushing herself up on her toes and winding her arms around his neck, and that was just the start.
Because there was forever after forever stacked up in front of them, just waiting for them to fill it. One after the next.
Together.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ACHILLES MADE A terrible royal consort.
He didn’t know who took more pride in that, he himself or the press corps, who finally had the kind of access to him they’d always wanted, and adored it.
But he didn’t much care how bad he was at being the crown princess’s billionaire, as long as he had Valentina. She allowed him to be as surly as he pleased, because she somehow found that charming. She’d even supported him when he’d refused to allow her father to give him a title, because he had no wish to become a Murinese citizen.
“I thank you,” he had said to Geoffrey. “But I prefer not to swear my fealty to my wife by law, and title. I prefer to do it by choice.”
Their wedding had been another pageant, with all the pomp and circumstance anyone could want for Europe’s favorite princess. Achilles had long since accepted the fact that the world felt it had a piece of their story. Or of Valentina, certainly.
And he was a jealous bastard, but he tried not to mind as she waved and smiled and gave them what they wanted.
Meanwhile, as she grew bigger with his child she seemed to glow more by the day, and all those dark things in him seemed to grow lighter every time she smiled at him.
So he figured it was a draw.
She told him he wasn’t a monster with that same deep certainty, as if she’d been there. As if she knew. And every time she did, he was more and more tempted to believe her.
She gave birth to their son the following spring, right about the time her sister was presenting the kingdom of Tissely with a brand-new princess of their own, because the ways in which the twins were identical became more and more fascinating all the time. The world loved that, too.
But not as much as Valentina and Natalie did.
And as Achilles held the tiny
little miracle that he and Valentina had made, he felt another lock fall into place inside him. Maybe they could not be normal, Valentina and him. But that only meant that the love they would lavish on this child would be no less than remarkable.
And no less than he deserved.
This child would never live in the squalor his father had. He would never want for anything. No hand would be raised against him, and no fists would ever make contact with his perfect, sweet face. His parents would not abandon him, no stepfathers would abuse him, and it was entirely possible that he would be so loved that the world might drown in the force of it. Achilles would not be at all surprised.
Achilles met his beautiful wife’s gaze over their child’s head, lying with her in the bed in their private wing of the hospital. The public was locked outside, waiting to meet this latest member of the royal family. But that would happen later.
Here, now, it was only the three of them. His brand-new family and the world he would build for him. The world that Valentina would give their son.
Just as she’d given it to him.
“You are mine, glikia mou,” he said softly as her gaze met his. Fiercely. “More now than ever.”
And he knew that Valentina remembered. The first vows they’d taken, though neither of them had called it that, in his New York penthouse so long ago.
The smile she gave him then was brighter than the sun, and warmed him all the same. Their son wriggled in his arms, as if he felt it, too. His mother’s brightness that had lit up a monster lost in his own darkness, and convinced him he was a man.
Not just a man, but a good one. For her.
Anything for her.
“Yours,” she agreed softly.
And Achilles reckoned that three forevers would not be nearly enough with Valentina.
But he was Achilles Casilieris. Perfection was his passion.
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