The Queen's New Year Secret. Maisey Yates

stripped away layer by layer, with each thrust of his body into hers.

      A shudder wracked his large frame, pleasure stealing his control. She relished that. Took pride in it. But it wasn’t enough. She wanted to give him pleasure, she absolutely did. Wanted him to think of this later, to regret all of the years when they didn’t have this. To look back on this one moment and ache forever. For the rest of his days, no matter whom he married down the road. Whoever came after her, whether she bore children for him or not, Tabitha wanted him to always think of her.

      But pleasure wasn’t enough. She wanted to punish him too. She dug her fingernails deep into his skin and he growled, angling his head and biting her neck, the action not gentle at all, painful. He flexed his hips, his body making contact with that sensitive bundle of nerves, and she knew that he was trying to do the same to her that she was doing to him. As if she deserved his wrath. As if she deserved his belated, angry gift of pleasure. He was the one who had done this to them. This was his fault.

      She tightened her grip on him, met his every thrust with a push from her own body, met his each and every growl with one of her own. She had been passive for too long. The perfect wife who could never be perfect enough. So why bother? Why not just break it all?

      She closed her eyes tightly, fusing her lips to his, kissing him with all of the rage, desire and regret that she had inside of her, the action pushing them both over the edge. It had been so long. So very long. Not just since she had been with him, but since she had found pleasure in his arms. So many months of coming together when she was at the optimum place in her cycle, perfunctory couplings that meant nothing and felt like less than nothing.

      This was different than anything that had come before it. He’d given her orgasms before, but nothing like this. Nothing this all-consuming. Nothing this altering. This devastating. This was like a completely different experience. She was falling in the dark with no way of knowing when she would hit the bottom. All she knew was that she would. And when she did, it would be painful beyond anything she had ever known before. But for now, she was simply falling, with him.

      The last time. The last moment they would ever be together.

      She wanted to weep. With the devastation of it. With the triumph of it. This was it for them. The final nail in the coffin of their marriage. How she desperately needed it. How she resented it. She wanted to transport herself somewhere in the future. Years from now, maybe. To a time when she’d already healed from the wounds that would be left behind after they separated. A moment in time when she would have already learned to be Just Tabitha again, and not Tabitha, Queen of Petras, wife of Kairos. But Tabitha, on her own.

      At the same time, she wanted to stay in this moment. Forever. She wanted to hold on to him forever and never let go.

      Which was why she needed to let go. She so badly needed to let go.

      The pleasure stretched on, an onslaught of waves that never ceased and she couldn’t catch her breath. Couldn’t think beyond what he made her feel. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair. Why was this happening now? She had always believed this was there between them, that it could be unlocked, somehow, but they had never found it. Not until this moment. This very last moment.

      Finally the storm subsided, leaving her spent, exhausted. Smashed against the rock. She was wrung out. She had nothing left in her to give. No more rage. No more desire. Nothing but an endless sadness for what her life had become. She looked at the man still holding her tightly. The man still inside her body. The man she had made vows to.

      A man who was a stranger, half a decade after she’d first made love to him.

      “I hate you,” she said, the words a hoarse whisper that shocked even herself. A tear slid down her cheek and she didn’t bother to wipe it away. “For every one of the past five years you have wasted, I hate you. For being my husband but never really being my husband. I hate you for that too. For not giving me a baby. For making me want you even when I hate you.”

      He pushed away from her, his gaze dark. “Let me guess, you hate me for that too.”

      “I do. But the good thing is, that after today, we won’t have to see each other.”

      “Oh, I think not, agape. I think we will have to see each other a great many times after today. A royal divorce is going to be complicated. There will be press. There will be many days in court—”

      “We signed a prenuptial agreement. I remember the terms well. I don’t get anything. That’s fine. I’ve had quite enough from you.”

      He made no move to dress, made no move to collect her clothes. And he didn’t look away as she bent to gather them, pulling them on as quickly as possible, internally shrinking away from his gaze. Finally, she was dressed. It was done. It was over.

      She made her way toward the door on unsteady legs, everything inside her unsteady, rolling like the sea.

      “Tabitha,” he said, his voice rough, “I want you to know that I don’t hate you.”

      “You don’t?” She turned to face him, her eyes meeting with his unreadable face. As immovable as stone.

      He shook his head slowly, his eyes never leaving hers. “No. I feel...” He paused for a moment. “I feel nothing.”

      She felt as though he had stabbed her directly in the heart. Anguish replaced any of the pleasure, any of the satisfaction that had been there before. He felt nothing. Even in this moment he felt nothing.

      The rage was back then, spurring her on, keeping her from falling over. “You just screwed me on your desk,” she said, “I would have thought that might have made you feel something.”

      She was all false bravado. It was either that or burst into tears.

      His expression remained bland. “You’re hardly the first woman I’ve had on a desk.”

      She swallowed hard, blinking back more tears. She had made the right choice. She knew she had. Had he yelled at her, had he screamed, had he said that he hated her too, she might have wondered. But those black, flat, soulless eyes didn’t lie. He felt nothing. He was indifferent, even in this moment.

      Tabitha had heard it said that hate was like murder. But she knew differently. It was indifference that killed. And with his, Kairos had left her mortally wounded.

      “I wish you luck in your search for a more suitable wife, Your Highness,” she said.

      Then she walked out of the door, out of his life.

       CHAPTER THREE

      “WHERE IS YOUR WIFE, Kairos?”

      Prince Andres, Kairos’s younger reformed rake of a brother, walked into Kairos’s office. There was still glass on the floor from where Tabitha had shattered it two days ago. Still a dark stain where the scotch had splashed itself over the wallpaper.

      All of it shouted the story of what had happened the night Tabitha had left. At least, it shouted at Kairos. Every time he walked in.

      It was nearly as loud as his damned conscience.

      I feel nothing.

      A lie. Of course it was a lie. She had stripped him down. Reduced him to nothing more than need, desperate, clawing need.

      Another woman walking away from him. Threatening to leave him there alone. Empty. While his pride bled out of him, leaving him with nothing.

      He couldn’t allow that, not again. So he’d said he felt nothing. And now she was gone.

      “Why? What have you heard?” Kairos asked, not bothering to explain the glass, even when Andres’s eyes connected with the mess.

      “Nothing much. Zara tells me Tabitha called to see if I could find out if you were using your penthouse anytime soon. I wondered why on earth my brother’s wife would be stooping to subterfuge to find out the actions of her own husband.”