to think his penchant for risk taking had been his downfall. That he had overrated his negotiating skills when it came to a princess who harbored a very personal anger toward him.
He betrayed not one ounce of the relief flooding through him as he nodded to his aide, Takis. “I’ll go up.”
Taking the steps to the upper deck of his old friend Panos Michelakos’s yacht, anchored in Carlisle Bay while its owner took care of business in the West Indies, he found Stella standing at the railing of the impressive seventy-foot boat, looking out at the ocean.
She was silhouetted against the dying rays of the sun, her hair, the color of rich honey, hanging loose down her back. Her slim body was encased in a white skirt and caramel-colored tank top. She looked every inch the cool, sophisticated golden girl she was reputed to be, except he knew from experience Stella was anything but cold. She brought passion to everything she did.
He was fairly sure the image of her in bloodred lingerie, curled up in his bed at the Akathinian palace, would forever be imprinted on his brain. Stored there to torture him with the memory of the one woman he had never allowed himself to have; the one who had never left his head.
A slow curl of heat unraveled inside of him as the erotic image painted itself across his brain. It had been late, the early morning, when he’d climbed the stairs to his room after a palace party, head hazy from too many shots of tsipouro. He’d let himself into his suite unaware anyone else was there, stripped off his clothes, left them in a pile on the floor and collapsed onto the king-size bed.
It was only when his splayed arm had touched silky soft female skin that he’d become aware he wasn’t alone. He’d thought maybe he had drunk too much and dreamed up the lingerie-covered Stella until she’d started talking, telling him he was the most exciting man she’d ever met, that their kiss earlier in the library had been incredible and she wanted him to be her first.
His twenty-three-year-old brain had nearly exploded. She was every red-blooded male’s fantasy come true with her high, perfect breasts and mile-long legs. His body had definitely not been in tune with his head. She’d been too innocent, too pure, too full of her ambitions to change the world for a man caught in a struggle to define himself as different from his autocrat of a father to ever pursue. A man unsure he could ever live up to the lofty ideals she’d built around him.
Somewhere in his liquor-soaked brain, he’d summoned up the sanity to scoop her up, carry her to the door and deposit her on the other side, telling her to go kick sand in her own playground. He’d been sure someday the shattered look on her face would be worth it when she realized he’d spared her a broken heart. That women, for him, were fleeting pleasures meant to be enjoyed, then discarded in the must-win, must-conquer existence that had characterized his life.
But after that night, he sensed his callousness had dug far deeper than he’d believed in a tough, resilient Stella. That his need to underscore he was not the man for her, not the man for any woman in their right mind, had hurt her deeply.
* * *
She sensed his presence before he revealed himself. Turning, hands curling around the rail, a charge rocketed through her. Her soon-to-be fiancé was studying her with an intense curiosity in his hawk-like gaze that seemed to strip the layers from her skin, deconstructing every one of the protective barriers she’d come armed with.
Her chin dipped as he moved toward her. “Planning your next move, Kostas?”
“Admiring you. You still have the power to stop me in my tracks.”
Her stomach folded in on itself, a renegade wave of heat spreading through her in places that needed to remain ice-cold. “No need for flattery,” she said, injecting some of that much-needed, cool composure into her tone. “You know why I’m here.”
“Honesty,” he countered as he came to a halt in front of her, “is something you will always get from me, Stella. Whether you like what I have to say or not.”
Another veiled reference to his humiliating rejection of her? A current of awareness zigzagged through her as she took him in. In a short-sleeved shirt and trousers today, the fading light of the sun illuminating the deep lines etching his eyes and mouth, there was a life experience imprinted on the hard contours of his face that lent him a somberness she didn’t recall. A knowledge.
If those deeply embedded marks that had taken purchase on him made her wonder what the forces had been that had changed him so, had driven him to Tibet on a soul-searching expedition, she pushed that curiosity aside. She was here to negotiate her future.
“I’m good with honesty,” she drawled, holding his dark gaze. “It’s always been my forte. Along with sticking to my principles and reaping the messes I sow.”
He ignored the gibe. “What changed your mind?”
“You were right. Notorious dissident that I am, I cannot turn my back on our two countries. Nor on my big dreams, because yes, I do still have them. But there are conditions attached to my becoming your queen.”
He leaned against the rail and folded his arms over his chest. “Let’s hear them.”
“I will not be a figurehead...smothered by the patriarchal establishment. You will give me real power and status.”
“Do you have any advance thoughts?”
“A seat on your executive council.”
His gaze flickered. “That would be most...unusual.”
“Say yes, Kostas, or this isn’t happening.”
He gave her a long look. “Kala. You can have a seat on the council. But I warn you it will not be an easy ride. Akathinia may be enlightened, but Carnelia is still stuck in the Dark Ages.”
“I like a challenge. Clearly. Second, I will continue my work with the current organizations I support unless my schedule proves to be excessive.”
“I have no problem with that. You do great work. What you cannot do is waltz around active war zones. It’s too risky.”
Heat lanced through her. “I do not waltz, Kostas. The photograph of me with those children raised millions of dollars toward the support of a regional disarmament treaty.”
He tilted his head. “An unfortunate choice of words. But the fact remains, I need my queen alive.”
Not because he cared, because she was of value to him.
“Third,” she continued, “you will not take a mistress. Should you do so, I will have the power to divorce you immediately. It will not require a decree signed by government.”
“I’m not your father, Stella. I have no intention of indulging in affairs. Why would I when I have a woman like you in my bed?”
Her gaze rested on his. “Speaking of which, this will be a political marriage. As such, I will not be under duress to sleep with you.”
His gaze narrowed. “That might be a problem given the fact I need to produce an heir quickly in order to secure the Laskos line. Also, your fourth point seems to be in direct contradiction to your third. I can’t have a mistress, but we aren’t going to have sex?”
She waved a hand at him. “The heir—we can make that happen.”
“How does that work?” He took a step closer, dwarfing her with his height and breadth. “We have conjugal visits? I seek you out when the temperature is right?”
She tilted her head back to look up at him, every cell in her body going on high alert at the proximity of such blatant masculinity. “Something like that.”
A dark glitter filled his gaze. “Setting yourself up as a martyr, Stella? The sacrificial lamb sent to slaughter for the king’s pleasure?”
Her chin lifted. “I would not be the first princess to sacrifice myself to the call of duty. History is littered with them. We are valued for our beauty and poise, our compassion and empathy, but in the end are