by Millie Adams
She piled the plate high with salad, french fries, bread, pastry. Steak.
“Quite an assortment.”
“It is what I want. Isn’t that what this is about? What I want?”
“Yes.”
She suddenly felt a bit bratty and quite self-indulgent. But she wanted it. For just these few moments.
“Eat pastries first,” she said.
“Is that by royal command?”
“Unless you don’t want to. Eat what it is you want. But do not let protocol stop you from eating the pastries.”
“Annick, protocol never stops me from anything.”
She studied him. “No. I expect not.”
She had done so much reading about him. About The King and about Maximus. And she wondered which bits and pieces were true. She wondered if he was half so...wicked as the tabloids claimed.
And then she wondered why she was quite so interested. Yes, she had been prepared to offer her body to him. The very idea made her warm now. What would she have been? If she had been free? What foods would she have liked? Would she have had a score of lovers by now?
She very much liked the look of this man. She wanted to touch him. It stood to reason that if she were around other men who possessed a certain level of attractiveness, she might wish to touch them too. And if she had full freedom...she might have.
She turned her focus back to the food, but she could feel his eyes on her.
“You must realize, Annick, that your plan will not work.”
She looked at him again. “What?”
“Adviser. Guard. These are not official titles. It is not a statement. It is not strong.”
“And you think you can do better than this plan?”
“I know I can. It isn’t enough to have me by your side. You want ‘The King’? I will be the King, Annick. But you will be my wife.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“FOOLISHNESS!” SHE SAID, without even thinking. “I cannot marry you.”
“And why not?”
“You said you didn’t want power,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “A lie. You are making the ultimate power grab now that you are here.”
“You brought me here—you can hardly accuse me of engineering it. But think about it. What stronger stance will you take as a Queen than having a King beside you? And I can protect you, truly protect you. I can be in your chamber at night.”
Heat crackled up her spine. “You said you did not want my body.”
“I do not. But this is a traditional country. Do you think you won’t create rumors by bringing me here? Me? With my reputation?”
Her eyes went narrow and bright. “Okay. I see. But...but to what end?”
“Any end. The end that makes the most sense.”
“And what do you get out of it?”
“The good I can do commanding an army outstrips what I can do alone. Don’t you think?”
“For how long?” she asked, her chest squeezing tight. “How long would we have to...?”
“For life. A royal marriage cannot be anything else, but we can live separate lives.”
“And...and children?” she asked, her throat dry as sandpaper.
“There will have to be children. For your kingdom.” His words were like stone. “But no need to concern ourselves with them for now, don’t you think?”
She shook her head, her ears buzzing like they were filled with bees. “Years.”
“Years,” he agreed.
“I am angry with you,” she said, her heart thundering hard. “Because this is not stupid. Not foolish. But I do not want it.”
“I didn’t want to come here in the first place, but you brought me. If you bring a lion into your house, you cannot be angry when he goes on the hunt, can you?”
She sat there, her scalp and cheeks burning with shame.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Sex,” she responded.
“A topic you seem invested in.”
Her face was like fire now. “Well, you asked me for marriage, and that means it matters. Is what they say about you true?”
“Who, and what?”
“The papers. They say you’re very wicked. That you...that you have an insatiable appetite for women. In a sexual sense.”
“I understood what you meant.”
“Well, I find that I’m curious. If it is true.”
“No.”
Her stomach felt something strange. It was a lot like disappointment, though it shouldn’t have been. “Oh.”
“I’m not insatiable. I suppose, if you ask some, I’m wicked. But...insatiable implies a bit more passion than perhaps I feel.”
“You are not passionate?”
He looked down the table. “You’re hungry, yes?”
“Yes, I am hungry. Maybe five times a day. I eat small amounts at a time typically.”
“Sex is another appetite,” he said.
The words were flat, and practically spoken. And she did not think they should make her stomach go tight.
“When I am hungry, I eat. When I want a woman, I seek one out. I do not see the point in denying hungers. But I’m not a glutton.”
“Hmm,” she mulled. “Perhaps I am.”
“Do you think?”
She looked at her plate of food, which was half-demolished. And she looked at what remained. “Yes. I think I might be. I have been denied, and this is all here. And I want it all. Everything I have missed.”
“You think it will be the same with other things?”
“I’m beginning to wonder.” She frowned. “Will you have love affairs?”
“I do not intend that we should be beholden to only each other,” he said. “Be as gluttonous as you wish.”
“So, you would have me take lovers, then?”
“Eat your food, Annick.”
His patience with her was wearing very thin. She could see.
“I suppose I must learn to be less forthright.”
“Probably.”
“It’s just I’m very tired of this.”
“I’m sorry, but a life in the public eye is to an extent signing up for a life of subterfuge. This is something I know a lot about. And you did not answer me.”
“This is not fair. I want to be me, and I want to be free, but that is not... It is not possible, is it?”
“No. For a life of public service means always carrying yourself with a certain amount of diplomacy.”
“Yes. Though...”
“There is no though,” he said. “If you wish to be taken seriously as a leader, if you wish to be seen as something other than a child, caught in the center of all this, if you wish to be a Queen, to escape the tragedy that has happened to you, then you have to behave like any leader would be expected to behave.”
“I have done,” she said, feeling irritated now. And exceptionally hard done by. “I went and kidnapped you, did I not? I behaved as a leader would. I refused to subject my country to further unrest by keeping us at risk. I am strong.”
“Then you will learn to show it in a way that the world recognizes. You asked me to come and help you. I have offered marriage. Now, don’t resist me.”
She let out a particularly delicious French curse and then took another bite of delicious pastry. At least her fury paired well with butter.
“Don’t take it personally.”
“I’m tired,” she said. “That is all.”
“Go to bed.”
“No. I’m tired of my life. For a moment, I looked at all this food and I thought, why should I not have everything I want? But then you reminded me. You reminded me that I must be, in some way, still not me.”
“You can be you. With the friends that you have here in the palace. It’s just that with diplomats you are going to have to en
deavor to behave in a certain fashion.”
“All right. I endured prison these many years. Why not more?”
“It is prison?” he asked. “To be married to me?”
“I do not know.” She looked at the table laid out before her. She would have had to choose a husband someday. And he was a good choice. The idea made her skin feel oversensitive. “No. I suppose it’s not.”
“And a gentle reminder, that you have taken me prisoner.”
“You have agreed,” she said.
“In the way that you agreed?”
She waved a hand at him. “Don’t do that. Don’t try to paint yourself as some sort of victim, when we both know you’re not. You would not stand for it. You have agreed to help me, and I cannot say that I know why, but I do know this—you have chosen to. I was prepared to fight to bring you over to my side, but I did know that I needed to bring you to my side. I knew that I was not going to be able to hold you as a prisoner.”
“Indeed, Annick.”
“Don’t you ever feel tired? Two lives. It’s too many lives. I did not even do it so successfully, and it was too many for me.”
“It is not,” he said. “Because I am living one of them for someone who cannot live at all. Perhaps if you thought of it that way, it would help.”
Her heart twisted, the sympathy that she felt surprising her. She had lost so much it was rare that anyone else’s loss touched her. Then again, she didn’t often sit and speak to another person. Not like this.
“Who did you lose?”
“It doesn’t matter. Who doesn’t matter—not anymore. But dedicating my life to removing men from the world who create destruction? That is a fitting tribute to their memory. Trust me on that.”
“It is strange, is it not? That sometimes to become avengers of atrocities we must commit some of the same. You know, me kidnapping you.”
“We do what we must. I cannot despise you too greatly because of that.”
“I find I cannot despise you, this marriage bargain notwithstanding. But then, it was never my goal.”
“What is your favorite?”
She looked at all the food. “I couldn’t choose.”
“You must have a favorite.”
“Choice. That’s my favorite.”
He smiled and nodded slowly. “That is a good answer.”
CHAPTER SIX
HE SLEPT WELL in the palace, and there was something surprising about that. It was strange to be here as himself, when the last time, he had been here as The King.
He looked in the closet, shaking his head. The way that Annick had gone about procuring a wardrobe for him was one of the most ridiculous things he’d ever heard. But also, ingenious, and it was true what he’d said to her last night. He had to respect her determination. She was a strong, feral creature, and if Stella had wanted him to pour his energy into anything, it would’ve been helping Annick.
It was not all truism that drove him, not really. There was something more difficult to pin down. He had been working for years now to try and make Stella’s death mean something. The problem was, there was not much in the way of meaning to be found in the death of a beautiful young woman caught in a firefight between businessmen that she should’ve had nothing to do with. He was not a man who sat. He was not a man who stood idly by and let things happen, and he had been unable to do anything when it had mattered most.
He dressed in a suit and marveled at the fact that it really did fit perfectly.
He paused for a moment, guessing where he thought Annick might be.
And for some reason, he knew she would still be in her room.
There’d been something watchful about her in the large dining room. She had said she was not accustomed to big meals like that, and what he wondered was if Annick was still uncomfortable in large spaces. She had been kept in a dungeon most of her life, so he could see why. He paused in front of a woman wearing what he took to be the palace uniform. “Princess Annick’s room?”
She eyed him warily. “If Annick has not given you the location of her chambers...”
“I will find it, thank you.”
If he were Annick, he would have put him close by. She would want him to be near enough to be convenient. Perhaps far enough to feel safe.
Then there was the simple question of where the primary bedchamber in the house was most likely to be located. He paused at the end of the corridor. At the double doors there.
“There you are.” And then he flung them open.
“Eh!” She made a sharp exclamation and scrambled back on the bed, covering herself with her sheets. Annick had her hair in a braid and was wearing what appeared to be an extremely virginal white nightgown. She had coffee and pastries around her.
“Good morning,” he said.
“I did not say you could come in.”
“No. You didn’t.” He shrugged carelessly. “But I didn’t ask.”
“Treason,” she said.
“To enter the Princess’s bedchamber unannounced? My fiancée’s bedchamber.”
“I may have agreed,” she said, sniffing loudly. “But it is not announced.”
“I assume you will announce it soon.”
“Indeed,” she said. “At the coronation. I made a plan of it last night.” She gestured toward a notebook on the bed, and he could not explain it, but his stomach went hollow.
She was...cute. And he could not remember the last time he’d found anything or anyone cute.
“Why do you eat in here?”
“I like it. I did not have a real bed for a great many years. This is one of my favorite places to be. Bed.”
She looked at him, and then suddenly color flooded her face.
And he felt an answering desire tug low in his gut.
What he’d said to her last night was true.
Sex for him was simply an appetite to be sated.
He was not the prowling, ravenous wolf that the tabloids made him out to be.
He had loved only one woman in his life, and he had loved her very dearly. They had been young, and while sex had been a part of their relationship, it had been...sweet. He had not been Stella’s first lover, but her second, and she his. Their lovemaking had hardly been the kind that rattled the walls.
But they had cared for each other. At first, he had thought that maybe women just wouldn’t be a part of his life, but it had gotten to a point where it didn’t seem like there was any reason to not have sex. His heart could not be touched. That was simply a fact. His body, though...
There was no point making it an issue. No point making it much of anything.
Annick unfortunately engaged, not his heart, but his sense of obligation. And along with it, desire. This was not as simple as he liked his attractions to be.
They would have to have children, for the sake of the kingdom. And what was marriage to him? Nothing.
But he would have her gently. With care for what she’d suffered. And it wouldn’t be about desire.
He would have control.
“Is that so?”
“Yes. Would you like a pastry?”
“Thank you,” he said. “Though I would prefer coffee.”
“I have that as well.”
“An extra cup?”
“I have that too,” she said. “Coffee service can be made in my room.” She looked very pleased with that.
He crossed the space and found the coffee station. Where he poured himself a cup of black brew, then went and sat on the end of her bed.
She turned pink, all the way to the roots of her hair. “What is my lesson today, then?”
“What lesson do you feel is the most important?”
“Well. At the coronation, I will need to know dancing. I do not know dancing. I will also have to carry on conversation with people I don’t know
. And...I will need clothes.”
“A stylist can be employed for that, and they will help you figure out what it is you like. And combine it with what it is you want to say.”
“What does this mean?”
“Your clothes send a message. As you mentioned to me earlier, they liked to dress you in white because it sent the message that you were pure. An unsullied figurehead. In that same way, you will be making statements now.”
“I need to look powerful. Confident. I don’t want to look pure. I want to look like a warrior.”
“Then all you need to do it is to speak to the stylist about it.”
“All right. Dancing, can you help me with that?”
“Yes. More than that, I can help you project the right feelings. In the world we live in now, where pictures are taken constantly, if you’re going to be pretending to be something you’re not, you have to be very good at it.”
“Is that how you ended up consulting people on image?”
“No. It could’ve been anything. It is something I slipped into and I am good at it. Very good. I’ve spent my life in Southern California, around people who are nothing but image conscious. And yes, I had to learn to fit in. I had to learn to pretend that I was one of them.” His chest went tight. “That I was like my father.”
“Your father...”
“Robert King. Self-made businessman extraordinaire. Not as entirely on the up-and-up as he would like the world to believe.” His father had secrets. Secrets he knew would hurt his whole family. Secrets that had already hurt the innocent. “My father is an expert at looking like he belongs.”
“Is that where you learned it from?”
Perhaps it was simply in his blood. “I don’t know that I learned it from him, but I discovered what a necessity it was by being his son.”
“I see.” He did not think she did. But it didn’t matter. She didn’t need to see.
“Get dressed,” he said.
“I do not take orders,” she said, narrowing her eyes and curling her fingers around her coffee cup like claws. “I’m to be Queen.”
Half his mouth lifted. It might have been a smile, though he hadn’t decided to do it, which was strange. “A boon for you, surely.”
