“I have no practice at being with one woman,” he said. “I can’t imagine a lifetime with the same person in my bed, and I have low expectations of myself in that regard.”
“Especially if your wife is ugly,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s how things are, it’s how I am.”
“I thought you were changing.”
He shook his head, taking a deep breath. “I came back because it was right, not because I have any burning conviction about the rightness of it. I can’t condemn Stavros and Eva to a life they don’t want when I was the one who was raised for it from the cradle. And it’s one thing to walk away and ignore responsibilities when actually having to rule the country is years in the future. But with the way things are now...with the way Stavros’s marriage turned out and the fact that the heir will be up to Eva without me. The fact that my father could die at any moment and a decision had to be made, that changed things. But it didn’t change me. The one thing I can give for sure is honesty, so I’m giving that. Or would you rather have lies?”
“I rather wish I would have known you, really known you, back when we were engaged. I don’t think I would have been so eager to say yes.”
“Back then you had other options, too, but now you only have two—the convent, or standing at my side, ruling a country.”
Black fire lit up in her eyes, the kind of anger he’d never seen on her face before, not in the time since he’d walked back into her life, and not in the life before. “You’re so quick to remind me of how low I’ve fallen, but let me take a moment to show you a mirror. Your face might be as beautiful as it ever was, Xander, but you are nothing more than a dead limb on the Drakos family tree. Stavros made something with this country after you destroyed it, Evangelina was brave enough to fight for something she wanted, she didn’t just run away. And what have you done?”
“Nothing,” he said, his voice rough, his heart beating, bloody and ragged. “I have done nothing, and I would seek to change that. I am trying to change that. I made mistakes, Layna, and I will not deny it. I was a hurt, frightened child when I left, and then I became jaded. Now I have no heart left to wound and about a thousand things to atone for. So I am here, and I am trying. I am offering you this, the chance to rule with me. To make a difference. To give you children. Or you can go back to your convent and hide—because you’re too afraid to face criticism—and make a small ripple in a giant pond with your good deeds when you could be changing the world. You can accuse me of anything you like, and you’re probably right. But if you turn me down, you’re turning down a chance to make a real difference.”
She snorted, her lip curled. “You say that like marrying you, sharing your bed, is an incidental I shouldn’t have to worry my head about so long as I can do my duty.”
“Lie back and think of Kyonos,” he bit out. He didn’t know why he was pushing this so hard. He should let her go. He shouldn’t be standing in the hall of his palace all but begging her to marry him. And yet he was.
Because he’d decided that Layna Xenakos would be his wife and now he couldn’t fathom it being anyone else. No one would make a better queen. No one would help his image, or his country, in a deeper way than she would.
And he wanted her. That was the end of the reasoning really. When he wanted something, he got it.
“You’re disgusting.”
“And yet you’re still here.” He put one hand on the wall behind her and leaned in. “Would it be so bad?”
“You realize that I was prepared to swear off sex for life, that if I take my vows it means no men ever. Do you honestly think you’re going to entice me with your looks?”
“Your altruism, then. And the chance to rise above where you fell. The chance to show all of Kyonos that, in the end, you have triumphed. Or, keep hiding.”
Layna struggled to catch her breath. Rage, sadness and a deep, dark need all pulled at her. Xander, near enough to touch, smelling like rain and sin and man, was enough to make her pulse go into hyperdrive.
She lied when she said sex wasn’t the way to tempt her. She was a woman who was prepared to take vows in part because she believed no man would ever want her, and, he was right, because it was easier to hide than to be out in the world experiencing rejection.
She liked men. And had things not changed the way they had, she never would have chosen a life that meant no men. No marriage. No children.
Children. A chance to make a difference.
She looked at Xander, at his strikingly handsome features. He was as perfect as he’d ever been, and the idea of him stuck with her...it was laughable.