The Queen's New Year Secret

Every night. “The queen wasn’t in the mood to go out.”

Those lips pursed into a pout. “Is that right?”

“Yes.” A lie. He hadn’t told Tabitha where he was going tonight. In part, he supposed, to needle her. There was a time when they would have been sure to put in a public appearance during every holiday. When they would have put on a show for the press, and possibly for each other.

Tonight, he hadn’t bothered to pretend.

The redhead leaned in, the cloud of perfume breaking through his thoughts and drawing him back to the moment, her lips brushing against his ear, his shirt collar. “I happen to know that our host has a room reserved for guests who would like a bit more...privacy.”

There was no ambiguity in that statement.

“You are very bold,” he said. “You know I’m married.”

“True. But there are rumors about that. As I’m sure you know.”

Her words stuck deep into his gut. If the cracks were evident to the public now...

“I have better things to do than read tabloid reports about my life.” He lived his tragic marriage. He didn’t want to read about it.

She laughed, a husky sound. “I don’t. If you want a break from reality, I’m available for a few hours. We can bring in the New Year right.”

A break from reality. He was tempted. Not physically. But in a strange, dark way that made his stomach twist, made him feel sick. It was down deep in the part of him that wanted to shake Tabitha’s foundation. To make her see him differently. Not as a fixture in her life she could ignore if she wished. But as a man. A man who did not always behave. Who did not always keep his promises. Who would, perhaps, not always be there.

To see if she would react at all. If she cared.

Or if their relationship had well and truly died.

But he did nothing. Nothing but stand, moving away from the woman, and the temptation she represented. “Not tonight, I’m afraid.”

She lifted her shoulder. “It could’ve been fun.”

Fun. He wasn’t sure he had any idea what that was. There was certainly nothing fun about his line of thinking. “I don’t have fun. I have duty.”

It wasn’t even midnight, and he was ready to leave. Normally, his brother, Andres, would be here, more than willing to swoop in and collect the dejected woman, or any other women who might be hanging around eagerly searching for a royally good time.

But now, Andres was married. More than that, Andres was in love. Something Kairos had never thought he’d see. His younger brother completely and totally bound to one woman.

Kairos’s stomach burned as though there was acid resting in it. He walked out of the club, down the stairs and onto the street where his car was waiting. He got inside and ordered the driver to take him back to the palace. The car wound through the narrow streets, heading out of the city and back toward his home.

Another year come and gone. Another year with no heir. That was why he had commanded Andres to get married in the first place. He was facing the very real possibility that he and Tabitha would not be the ones producing the successor to the throne of Petras.

The duty might well fall to Andres and his wife, Zara.

Five years and he still had no child. Five years and all he had was a wife who might as well be standing on the other side of a chasm, even when they were in the same room.

The car pulled through the massive gates that stood before the palace, then slowly toward the main entrance. Kairos got out without waiting for the driver to assist him, storming inside and up the stairs. He could go to Tabitha’s room. Could tell her it was time they tried again for a child. But he wasn’t certain he could take her icy reception one more time.

When he was inside her body, pressed against her, skin to skin, it still felt as if she was a thousand miles away from him.

No, he had no desire to engage in that farce, even if it would end in an orgasm. For him.

He didn’t want to go to bed yet either.

He made his way up the curved staircase and headed down the hall toward his office. He would have a drink. Alone.

He pushed open the door and paused. The lights were off, and there was a fire going, casting an orange glow on the surroundings. Sitting in the wingback chair opposite his desk was his wife, her long, slender legs bared by her rather demure dress, her hands folded neatly in her lap. Her expression was neutral, unchanging even as he walked deeper into the room. She didn’t smile. She gave almost no indication that she noticed his presence at all. Nothing beyond a slight flicker in her blue eyes, the vague arch of her brow.

The feeling that had been missing when the other woman had approached him tonight licked along his veins like a flame in the hearth. As though it had escaped, wrapping fiery tendrils around him.

He gritted his teeth against the sensation. Against the desire that burned out of his control.

“Were you out?” she asked, her tone as brittle as glass. Cold. Chilling the ardor that had momentarily overtaken him.

He moved toward the bar that was on the far wall. “Was I here, Tabitha?”

“I hardly scoured the castle for you. You may well have been holed up in one of the many stony nooks.”

“If I was not here, or in my room, then it is safe to say that I was out.” He picked up the bottle of scotch—already used this evening by his lovely intruder, clearly—and tipped it to the side, measuring a generous amount of liquid into his glass.

“Is that dry tone really necessary? If you were out, just say that you were out, Kairos.” She paused then, her keen eyes landing at his neck. “What exactly were you doing?” Her tone had morphed from glass to iron in a matter of syllables.

“I was at a party. It is New Year’s Eve. That is what people customarily do on the holiday.”

“Since when do you go to parties?”

“All too frequently, and you typically accompany me.”

“I meant, when do you go to parties for recreational reasons?” She looked down, her jaw clenched tight. “You didn’t invite me.”

“This wasn’t official palace business.”

“That is apparent,” she said, standing suddenly, reaching out toward his desk and taking hold of the stack of papers that had been resting there, unnoticed by him until that moment.

“Are you angry because you wanted to come?” He had well and truly given up trying to figure his wife out.

“No,” she said, “but I am slightly perturbed by the red smudge on your collar.”

Were it not for years of practice controlling his responses to things, he might have cursed. He had not thought about the crimson lipstick being left behind after that brief contact. Instead, he stood, keeping his expression blank. “It’s nothing.”

“I’m sure it is,” she said, her words steady, even. “Even if it isn’t nothing it makes no difference to me.”

He was surprised by the impact of that statement. By how hard it hit. He had known she felt that way, he had. It was evident in her every interaction with him. In the way she turned away when he tried to kiss her. In the way she shrank back when he approached her. She was indifferent to him at best, disgusted by him at worst. Of course she wouldn’t care if he found solace in the arms of another woman. So long as he wasn’t finding it with her. He imagined the only reason she had put up with his touch for so long was out of the hope for children. A hope that faded with each and every day.

She must have given up completely now. A fact he should have realized when she hadn’t come to his bed at all in months.

He decided against defending himself. If she didn’t care, there was no point discussing it.

“What exactly are you doing here?” he asked. “Drinking my scotch?”