Billionaires: The Royal: The Queen's New Year Secret / Awakened by Her Desert Captor / Twin Heirs to His Throne

“Well, you’re neither of those things,” she said, “but Andres isn’t exactly well-adjusted.”

Kairos laughed, thinking of his brother and the large swath of destruction Andres had spent the first thirty years of his life cutting through the kingdom, through Kairos’s own life. “He has settled, don’t you think?”

Tabitha laughed. “I suppose he has. I’m not quite sure how they managed. A real marriage. Especially out of their circumstances. If any marriage came about in a stranger way than ours, it’s theirs.”

“Zara is not exactly conventional. Or suitable,” Kairos said.

Tabitha looked up at him, deep, fathomless emotion radiating from her blue eyes. “Perhaps I should have been more unsuitable?”

Her words made his heart twist, made his stomach tighten. “Tabitha, I cannot imagine the things you have seen,” he said. He wasn’t sure why he said it. But then, he didn’t know what else to say.

“I’m the same person.”

The same person from before she had told him about her experience, he knew that was what she meant. But for him it only highlighted the fact that he didn’t truly know her at all. She was right. The Tabitha who had witnessed the murder of her stepfather was the same woman he had been married to for the past five years. The same woman he had known for nearly a decade.

But he didn’t know her. Not really. How could he? She was all things soft, beautiful and contained, and he had imagined she had grown that way, like a plant that had only ever experienced life in a hothouse.

It turned out she had been forged in the elements. An orchid put to the test in a blizzard. And she had come out of it alive. Beautiful. Seemingly untouched.

It humbled him in a strange way.

“We do not know each other,” he said.

“I’ve been saying that,” she said.

“Yes, you have been. But I didn’t realize how true it was until now. You know my life, so I did not imagine there were such secrets between us.”

“We don’t talk about your life,” she said, “not beyond what you had for dinner last night.”

He couldn’t argue with the truth of that statement. “There is nothing to tell. The evidence of my life is before you. You have seen who I am by my actions. I don’t see the point in rehashing how I felt when my mother left.”

“You felt something,” she said, her voice muted.

“Of course I did,” he said. The very thought opened up a pit of despair inside of him. Helplessness. And a dark, black rage he would rather not acknowledge lived within him. “We are strangers.”

“Strangers who have sex,” Tabitha added.

“Yes,” he said, “certainly. And yet, I’m not even entirely certain I know your body.”

Her cheeks turned pink. “You did all right with it last month.”

“And the times before that?” This line of questioning was not pleasant for him. What man liked calling his own prowess into question? But it wasn’t so simple as prowess. He had the ability, but he’d always held back with her. Always.

That was the very beginning of where he had gone wrong. He had imagined that he needed to go slowly, that he needed to mitigate the passion between them.

The truth of it was he had been attracted to her from the moment she walked into his office. Even during his engagement to Francesca. And while he had never acted on it, it had been there, shimmering beneath the surface like waves of heat over the sand. He wanted her. He had always wanted her.

He had kept a part of himself closed off because it was so strong. Because, like her, he rejected strong emotion, strong desire.

But perhaps it would be possible to open up the physical, to have that, while keeping the rest of it safe. Perhaps it might give her what she craved. Or at the very least thaw some of the chill that was between them.

“Yes, I did then. Or, maybe my clumsiness was simply covered by the explosion between us,” he said.

“There was nothing clumsy about it,” she said, the color in her cheeks intensifying.

“I have held back every time we’ve been together,” he said. “Except then.”

“Why have you held back?”

“Why have you?”

“I think I explained that.” She swallowed visibly. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. We don’t work. We’ve established that.”

“Have we?” Desperation clawed at him like a wild beast. “I’m not sure that’s true. We’ve both admitted to holding back. And I think it’s safe to say that we’re both liars.”

“I never lied to you.”

“There is one very specific word I can think of in response to that. It has to do with the excrement of a bull.”

“Crassness does not suit you, Kairos.”

“Or, perhaps it does,” he said. “How would you know?”

“I wouldn’t. And it isn’t my job to know. The function of ex-wives is just to walk off into the distance and spend all of your money. It isn’t to know you.”

“All right,” he said, an idea pushing its way into the forefront of his mind even as the words exited his mouth. “You will be free to do so. But I have conditions.”

She frowned. “What are you talking about? We both know I don’t actually get any of your money.”

“It doesn’t have to be that way. The prenuptial agreement is very rigid. And I am a man of means. It is unreasonable of me to withhold a portion of that from you after all you have...suffered at my hands. Moreover, you are the mother of my child and therefore a consistent lifestyle will need to be kept whichever household he is staying in at a given time, don’t you agree?”

“I don’t...I don’t understand.”

“As I said, there will be conditions to this agreement.”

“What do you want?”

What he wanted was for everything to go back as it had been. What he wanted was the wife she had been all those years ago. The wife he had imagined she would be forever. The perfect complement to the man he presented to her, the man he presented to the world. Yes, they were liars, but they had told such compatible lies. Such quiet lies.

This explosion of truth wasn’t compatible, and it wasn’t quiet. It had left rubble and shrapnel everywhere, the shattered pieces of the life they once had littering the ground in front of them. There was no ignoring it. There would be no putting it back together as it was. But he wouldn’t leave it. Wouldn’t give up.

They were having a child together. He would not be an absentee father. He would not allow her to be a distant mother. There would be no echoes of his childhood. Not if he had anything to do about it.

And he did. He was king, after all.

“Two weeks. I want fourteen days of honesty. I want your body, I want your secrets. I want everything. And if, at the end of that time, you feel like you still don’t know me, if then, you feel like you cannot make a life with me, then I will give you your divorce. And with it, much more favorable terms than we originally agreed upon. Money. Housing. Shared custody.”

“Why?” She looked stricken, as though he had told her she had to spend two weeks in the dungeon, rather than two weeks with her husband.