ONE THING PIA’S childhood had taught her, like it or not, was that a person could get used to anything.
No matter how outrageous or absurd things seemed, and no matter how certain she was that they might, in fact, kill her—they never did.
She had gotten used to her parents’ excesses. The further removed she got from the operatic marriage of Eddie Combe and Alexandrina San Giacomo, the more she started to think of them as eccentrics, somehow unable to behave in any way other than the way they had. In a decade or so, she was sure, she would find herself nostalgic for her parents, their tempestuous relationship, and all those endless, theatrical fights she’d found so difficult to live through while growing up with them.
So, too, was Pia becoming used to her life in her very own prison of a palace.
She felt like Rapunzel, locked away in her little tower, visited by nothing and no one—save the man who came to her, mostly at night, and made her head spin around and around without laying so much as a finger on her.
Pia spent her days writing columns about fussy manners as stand-ins for deeper emotions, reading revolting things about herself in the tabloids—then vowing to stop reading revolting things about herself in the tabloids—and repeating the same thing over and over.
Her nights were punctuated by unpredictable glimpses of Ares.
Would he appear in the doorway as the shadows grew long, not there one moment and then a great, brooding presence in her peripheral vision the next? Would he ask her to join him for a drink with a guarded look in his green eyes and the suggestion of a banked fire in the way he held his big body? Would she agree, then sip at fizzy water as he swirled stronger spirits in a tumbler, the silence thick and layered between them? Or would they go a few rounds of conversation that always seemed so...fraught?
Pia never knew. She only knew that she looked forward to Ares’s appearances with an unseemly amount of anticipation. And missed him when his duties kept him away.
She could admit to herself, when she wasn’t making arch remarks about her prison tower, that she had always been a person better suited to life outside the glare of media attention and tabloid speculation. That night in New York had been the one and only time she’d tried to...be someone else.
Maybe, she told herself dourly in a voice that sounded a bit too much like one of Alexandrina’s mild rebukes, the reason Ares cannot bear to spend more than a few moments in your company, and no matter that you are carrying his children, is because he sees only that terrible lie when he looks at you.
She didn’t like to think about that. But how could she not? Pia was not beautiful. She was nothing like her mother. A man like Ares could have anyone, and had. Why would he want to be tethered for the rest of his life to her?
Pia had thought she’d come to terms with her looks—or lack thereof—a long time ago. It was a natural consequence of being Alexandrina San Giacomo’s only daughter. She had been destined to be a disappointment from the day she was born.
But she hadn’t marinated on that sad fact in a long time. Apparently, being hugely pregnant and mostly alone, locked up in a castle like an embarrassment that needed to be hidden away from the light, got into a girl’s head. And stayed there, hunkering down and breathing fire, whether she liked it or not.
“I will make sure that our branch of the family is better,” she promised her babies every day, shifting around on her favorite chaise as the boys kicked at her. With more and more vigor as the days rolled by and they grew inside her. “I promise.”
Pia was well into her seventh month of pregnancy when she discovered that her family had more branches than she knew.
Because it turned out that she and Matteo had another brother.
A half brother, Dominik, that their mother had given away when she was a teenager, long before she’d become an icon.
A scandalous little fact about her mother—her family—that Pia discovered by reading a tabloid.
“Did you know about this?” Pia asked Matteo in disbelief, reaching him on some business trip somewhere. When she knew he did, as the papers seemed to suggest that the new brother was dating Matteo’s personal assistant—who had always returned Pia’s calls before, yet was failing to do so at present. “How long have you known we have another relative and not told me?”
“It’s not as if you’ve been available, Pia,” Matteo said, and she would have said it was impossible for him to sound any colder than he already did. But he proved her wrong.
“I think by ‘available’ you mean, ‘sitting in a room you might accidentally enter,’” Pia said, with a little more asperity than she normally showed her brother. Or anyone. “When the common definition also includes this device I’m calling you on right now. It’s very handy for the sharing of important news, like brand-new family members appearing full grown. Or even to say hello.”
“If you wish to be kept up-to-date on everyday concerns, you would have to actually make that known,” Matteo retorted. “Instead of running away from your own father’s funeral and hiding out somewhere.”
Pia had never thought of herself as a particular heir to the famous Combe temper. But she was so angry then, and possibly something else that she didn’t know how to name, that the rest of the conversation stayed something of a blur to her.
And when she hung up, all she could think about was her mother.
Vain, beautiful, magnetic, impossible, deliriously compelling Alexandrina, who Pia had always wanted so desperately to please. And who Pia had always failed to please.
And who Pia had always thought had locked her away in that convent out of shame. Spite, perhaps. Or simple disinterest in a daughter who was so much less.
It had never occurred to her that when her mother told her that wrapping her up in cotton wool was a gift, Alexandrina had meant it. Just as it had never crossed Pia’s mind that her mother’s life could ever have been anything less than perfect. Or if not perfect, exactly as she’d wanted it.
Pia hardly knew how to think about a different Alexandrina. A woman who was...a person. A woman who had carried a child, just as Pia was doing now, and had given it away. An act of grace or shame, sorrow or hope, that Pia literally could not imagine living through herself.
Thinking of Alexandrina so young, and faced with such a tough decision...knocked Pia’s world off balance. The Alexandrina she’d known was so smooth and polished. Even when she fought with Eddie. And had certainly not been harboring any deep hurts.
And maybe that was the hardest part of grief. It was always changing. Growing, expanding, shifting to fit whatever little pockets it found.
She had to assume it would always be that way.
And she was still sorting through what it meant to have a brother she didn’t know—who, for all she knew, might want nothing to do with the family that had abandoned him long ago—when she looked up to find her very own Prince Not Quite Charming standing there in the doorway. The way he liked to do.
“How long have you been standing there?” she asked, her hands on her belly, still caught up in those confronting thoughts about her mother.
“What does it matter?” he asked, brooding and dark.
Pia forced a smile she didn’t feel. “I’ve resigned myself to the cyber spying. It’s your laptop and I have nothing to hide. Look through it at will if you feel you must. But I don’t understand why it’s necessary for you to lurk about your own palace like this.”
“I do not lurk.” His voice was even darker then, and there was a considering sort of gleam in his green gaze. “It is not my fault you are unobservant when it comes to your surroundings.”
“Well, Ares—” she began, hotly.
But he held up a hand before she could continue down one of their familiar little paths that always led to the same place. Parry, retreat, regroup—and parry again. Back and forth they would go, until it was difficult to tell who struck whom. And who left the most marks.
“Come dine with me,” he said, to her shock.
That did not usually happen. Ares was usually out for dinner, at this or that ball that Pia could follow on social media or in the papers the next day—not that she did such a thing. As that might be interpreted as too much interest in the man.
And maybe it was the novelty that had her biting her own tongue. She shifted, standing up—which took leveraging herself off the arm of the chaise these days—and then crossing to him.
He held out his hand as she approached. And Pia took it.
And it was as if the balance shifted. Or her world, still off its axis, tilted even more sharply. It felt as if the floors beneath her feet suddenly slanted terrifically, leaving her head spinning.
It wasn’t just his touch. Or it wasn’t only that. It was that solemn look, grave and intent, in those green eyes of his. Pia was sure she hadn’t seen him look at her like that since...
But she didn’t dare say it. She didn’t dare think it.
And as Ares took her hand, then led her down the halls of the palace, she was buffeted by the memories of what happened between them that night in New York. When he had taken her hand like this and led her out of that party, and then all these restless things inside her had shifted into heat. Fire.
All that longing and need, greed and revelation.
It all kept washing over her, memory after memory.
He led her to the wing of the palace she knew was set aside for his exclusive use, and into a private dining room. It could have comfortably fit a crowd, but the table was set up to feel intimate, with a view over the ocean as the last of the sunset spread pink and orange over the horizon. Pia couldn’t help thinking about the fact that they had skipped this part in New York. The sit down, have a meal, and learn about each other part.
This felt...remedial and precious, at once.
She found she was afraid to break the silence.
“I’m surprised you’re here,” she made herself say because it was best to rip the bandage off and dive straight in—another one of her father’s favorite sayings. “Your social calendar is always so full.”
“I canceled it.”
“You mean, tonight’s engagement?”
“All of it,” Ares said.
And then did not expand on that statement at all.
The staff swept in, laying out the first course, but Pia hardly noticed it. And the babies must have sensed her agitation—or maybe it was anticipation, or something far more insidious, like longing—and as she rubbed her hand over her belly, she received a volley of kicks.
She must have sighed a little, because when she looked up, Ares was frowning at her. Not from down the length of a banquet table, but from much, much closer. Within reach.
“Is something happening?” he asked.
Aside from the hand he’d offered her tonight, Ares hadn’t touched her since her first night here. And even then, it seemed to her that he had gone out of his way to avoid touching her belly. Yet when she looked at him now, he had the oddest expression on his face.
There was no doubt that he was focusing all his attention on her. On her belly, to be more precise, where her hand rubbed at the tiny little foot inside.
“One of them is kicking,” she told him. “Which means the other one will likely join in any second now and make it a football match.”
Ares looked as astonished as he did uncertain then. “Now? As you sit there?”
“Do you...? Do you want to feel it yourself?” Pia offered, surprised by the vulnerability she heard in her own voice.
And worse, the hope.
Ares rose from his chair, rounding the corner of the table that separated them. Then, without skipping a beat, he slid down before her. And there was a look on his face that she had never seen before. His green eyes were dark.
Pia smiled. “Give me your hands.”
She didn’t wait for him to offer them. She reached over, took his hands in hers, and brought them firmly against her belly.
And, sure enough, the moment his hands slid into place over her bump, two different sets of feet reacted.
Pia watched Ares’s face. The jolt of surprise. The understanding of what he was feeling beneath his palms.
And then, like a dose of pure sunshine, the wonder.
“Does it hurt?” he asked, his voice hushed.
“Sometimes it’s uncomfortable,” she said softly. “Or surprising. Or if one of them stretches out and presses their feet up against my ribs, that aches.”
He shifted, coming down on his knees before her chair, and his hands were suddenly everywhere. Moving all over her bump, as if testing it. Learning its shape.
And the more he ran his hands over her, the more Pia liked it. And in a way that had nothing at all to do with their babies or any kicking. She felt the shift in her like a flame leaping into life, from coals she’d imagined were cold.
It turned out they were only smoldering.
When Ares looked up at her again, there was a gleaming heat in his gaze that she recognized. Oh, how she recognized it. How she felt it.
“Pia,” he said, his voice low. Hot.
And an unmistakable invitation.
Pia couldn’t take this. Not for another moment. Ares was so close, his hands on her, that look of marvel and need on his beautiful face.
How could she do anything but melt? And as she melted and ran hot, that liquid greed bloomed inside her, low in her belly and deep between her legs.
Where only Ares had ever touched her.
His gaze searched hers.
Did she whisper his name? Or did it live in her already? Always?
Whichever it was, it made Pia lose her head completely. She leaned forward, slid her hands to hold his face, and then settled her mouth to his as if she might die then and there if she couldn’t taste him again.
She felt him groan, low and deep, as if it came from the depths of him. She felt his big, athletic body shake slightly, as if from the force of the same wild sensation that swept through her, too.
And then his mouth opened beneath hers and he took control.
And when he kissed her, Pia forgot that she wasn’t beautiful.
When Ares kissed her, Pia felt as if she was made entirely of glory. Light and lovely, sweet and right, strung out on the heaven in his every touch. All that hot perfection.
Ares moved closer, one hand curling around her neck as if to guide her where he wanted her. The other stayed put on her belly.
She felt untethered by her own need, and anchored at the same time.
He made her feel like she could fly. Like this was flying.
Ares kissed her and he kissed her, and Pia didn’t know which one of them was trying harder to move closer. To take the kiss deeper. She was frustrated that he wasn’t closer. She wanted his skin on hers, his hands on her bare flesh.
She wanted.
Ares groaned again, then shifted back. His mouth curved at the sound of protest she made, and he pulled her up from her chair. He set her briefly on her feet, but only briefly, because he moved then to lift her into his arms.
And here she was absurdly pregnant, yet he was still making her feel as if she weighed nothing at all.
“Ares, you can’t—”
“So help me God, Pia,” Ares growled down at her. “If you’re about to tell me that I cannot lift you when I have very clearly already done so, I will be tempted to drop you over the side of the balcony.”
And she didn’t think he was likely to do that.
But she didn’t finish her sentence, either.
He bore her outside, onto the balcony he had just mentioned, wide and open. He lay her down on a wide, low chaise, and followed her. Then stretched out beside her so they were finally—finally—touching, head to toe.
And that was almost too much.
But Ares took her mouth again, and they both groaned at the heat. The mad, glorious kick of hunger.
He kissed her and he kissed her, and she kissed him back with all the longing and need she’d kept inside her all this time. All that delirious fire that he stoked in her.
Only him.
Ares was dressed for one of his royal engagements, but he pulled back to shrug out of his jacket and his shirt, giving Pia access to those wide shoulders of his and better yet, his mouthwatering chest.
She took instant advantage, moving her hands over him and letting herself exult in his strength. His heat.
Each and every perfect ridge and tempting hollow.
And everything was too hot. Too good.
He found her breasts, so plump and big now. And he made such a deep, male sound of approval as he filled his hands with them that Pia forgot to be self-conscious. He pushed up the loose blouse she wore and freed her breasts from the front clasp of her bra.
Then he bent his head to take a nipple into his mouth.
And the sensation was so intense, so wild and overwhelming. It shot through her, a molten hot line from her nipple to her hungry sex, that Pia felt herself pull too tight—
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.