by Maisey Yates
She licked her lips. Slowly. Deliberately.
And then she smiled.
She tossed her hair over her shoulder and continued onto the dance floor.
There were many women, and men, dancing by themselves and so she threw herself into the middle of them, and she allowed the rhythm to guide her movements.
She knew the steps to any number of formal dances. Music composed to complement a dance, not music created to lead it.
But she let the beat determine the shift of her hips, the arch in her spine. And for one, wonderful moment she felt like she was simply part of the crowd. Exhilarating. Freeing.
And then she felt the crowd move. But it was more than that. There was a change in the air. In everything around her.
And she knew already what it meant.
The king was on the dance floor.
She turned, and she nearly ran into a broad chest, her face coming just to his collarbone.
He was wearing a black jacket, black shirt with the top two buttons undone, exposing a wedge of skin and dark hair, tantalizing and forbidden—in her estimation—as no dignitary she had ever encountered would approach her without his tie done up tight.
She looked up, and her heart nearly stopped. And then when a smile tipped his lips upward, it accelerated again.
Photographs had not prepared her.
She’d first seen him in a gossip magazine a year ago when Astrid had brought in a copy of a particularly vile rag that had featured a scandal about Astrid’s brother—who had not spent life on his best behavior in the slightest.
But it wasn’t Gunnar and his naked exploits with a French model that had held Astrid’s attention. First of all, it was a terribly common thing. Even for Gunnar. It wasn’t even interesting.
But second of all...
Oh, there had been Mauro. A dissolute, salacious, scandalous playboy in a tux, with one woman clinging to each arm as he walked through one of his clubs.
Her heart had stopped. The world had stopped.
That was just a photograph.
In person...
He was beautiful, but not in the way the word was typically used. He was far too masculine a thing for simple beauty. Hard and angular like a rock, his jaw square and sculpted, his lips perfectly shaped and firm looking. His dark eyes were like chips of obsidian, the lights on the dance floor swallowed up in those fathomless depths.
He said nothing, and she wouldn’t have been able to hear him anyway. But he extended his hand, and she took his, the spark of fire that ignited at that point of contact spreading over her body like a ripple in the water. Sharp and shocking at its core, rolling over her wider and broader as it expanded.
He caught her and held her against his body.
She had danced with men before, but they had not held her like this. So close that her breasts were crushed to hard, muscular midsections, a large commanding hand low on her back.
And then his lips touched her ear, his whisper husky. “I’ve never seen you before.”
She moved back, tipping her chin upward so that she could see him, so that she could look him full in the face. Except, she could hardly sustain it. She looked down.
And he captured her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze again. If she hadn’t been wearing those heels she would have been so incredibly dwarfed by him there would have been no responding. But he lowered his head, and she leaned in.
“Because I’ve never been here before.”
“It’s always nice to see an unfamiliar face,” he said, this time brushing her hair back from her face as he whispered.
“Dance with me,” she said, not bothering to whisper this time.
The way that the rather predatory grin slid over his mouth told her that he understood.
That she wanted to do more than dance.
His eyes burned into hers as he gripped her hips, dragging her toward him as they moved in time with the music. She felt his touch everywhere, not just where he had his hands, but all the points in between, down deep, in the most intimate parts of her. She had danced with men before, but it had never been like this. Of course, the perfectly polished aristocrats who had always attended the balls she’d been at had never been anything like this.
There was an element of danger to this man. And she found herself drawn to it.
In fact, she found she wanted to fling herself against it. Against him. She had always been asked to be strong, but she had also been sheltered in many ways. Her take on the world was theoretical. And now, she was being tasked with ruling an entire country, while still suffering from that same fate.
Power, but with chains around it.
She wanted to test herself. To test those bonds.
It was what she was here to do.
“Maybe you could show me your club.”
His grip tightened on her, and he looked at her for a long moment, before taking her hand and leading her from the dance floor. He held on to her as he took her down the stairs, away from the pulsing music. But they didn’t go back to the entry, where people had crowded in. Instead, he moved her down a slim corridor with black flooring that had gold light shooting through the spaces in the tile. He pushed open a door that simply looked like another obsidian panel. “You will want a coat,” he said, not taking one for himself, but offering her a snow-white one from a rack by the door.
“Thank you,” she said, taking the coat from him and putting it on.
She quite wondered if covering her body might put her out of this advantage, but he was the one leading her, so she supposed she had better follow instruction.
Another thing she had never been very good at. But unlike waiting, it was something she had been asked to do quite a bit.
Something she now wished to avoid.
The room he led her into was made entirely of ice, the walls carved in intricate designs, crystalline, nearly see-through. By a deep navy blue couch was a wall that allowed a mirror view, however rippling and obscured, of revelers next door.
“You are quite bold,” he said. “Asking me to show you my club.”
“And yet, you seem to be showing me.”
“I don’t know that you realize just how rare it is for me to take a woman up on such an offer.”
“And here I thought you took women up on such offers on a nightly basis. I’ve read about you.”
His lips twisted upward in a cynical impersonation of a smile. “Of course you have.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Should I pretend I don’t know who you are? Should I pretend that this is simply a chance encounter, and I came to your club with no prior knowledge of who you were?”
He affected a casual shrug. “Many women would.”
“Perhaps those women have the luxury of time. I don’t.”
“You don’t have a bomb strapped to your chest, do you?”
She swallowed hard, letting the edges of her coat fall open, revealing the only thing she had against her chest, that emerald, which immediately felt cold in the icy room. “You’re welcome to look for yourself.”
His gaze flickered over her body, and it didn’t stay cool. “I see. Someone waiting for you at home, then?”
That was close enough to the truth. “Yes,” she said.
“Can I have your name?”
“Alice,” she said.
“Alice,” he repeated. “From?”
She knew her English was quite good, but that it would also be colored by an accent. His was too, though different from hers. She liked the way it sounded. She wanted to hear his voice speak his native tongue. And hers. What sort of accent would it give to her own language? And what sorts of words might he say...?
“England,” she said. “Not originally. But for most of my life.”
“What brings you to Italy?”
“Your party,” she s
aid.
“I see. Are you an enthusiast when it comes to clubs, or are you a sex tourist?”
The words were bold, and she knew that she was playing a bold game and she needed to be able to return in kind.
“In this instance, I suppose it’s sex tourism.”
“Am I to understand that you saw my picture in the news and decided to make a trip all the way to my club for sex?”
Nothing he’d said was a lie. There might be more in her reasoning, but she had seen his photo. And she had wanted him on sight.
“Chemistry is a fairly powerful thing.”
“Can you feel chemistry with a photograph?”
“I didn’t even have to go looking for you,” she said. “You came to me. So that makes me wonder if it’s possible.”
And that was the honest truth.
She had never expected Mauro Bianchi to approach her. No, she had expected that she would have to chase him down. That she would be the one pursuing him. And yet, he had simply appeared. And now, he had taken her to a VIP room. So it all rather did beg the question if chemistry could be that obvious.
The expression on his hard face did something then, and she couldn’t quite put into words what that was. He looked quite irritated, but at the same time perhaps a bit impressed with her boldness and her reasoning. And he couldn’t argue. Because here they were, sitting in this private suite, strangers who had never met until only a moment ago.
“I think the only thing to do then is perhaps test your theory,” he said, his voice lowering to a silky purr.
“That is what I’m here for,” she said, fighting to keep her voice smooth.
“Perhaps you would like to see my private suite.”
“I would like that very much,” she said.
This was moving much quicker than she had anticipated. But it was also going exactly according to plan.
She had expected...obstacles. Resistance.
Perhaps because the last year of her life had been marked by such things. Endless resistance from her father’s officials. Endless proclamations being made. Demands that she be married. The concern over her producing an heir, as for her, there would be a time limit, unlike with men.
But they had not counted on one thing. Because they had not educated themselves, not to the extent that she had.
Men. With their arrogance. Their certainty that they were right. That they could not be bested, least of all by her.
She had read the laws. She had studied. She had made sure, above all else, that she was prepared for her position, and that she would not be taken by surprise.
Because for the protection of the queen, for the protection of the throne, if she claimed that her issue had no father, that it was the queen’s alone.
And there were no questions of legitimacy. A law set into motion to protect the queen from marauders, Vikings and barbarians, anyone who might seek to use her to claim power.
And at this point in history, in time, used to protect the queen from forced marriages, and politicians who overexerted their power, and sought to keep a nation in the dark ages.
All she needed was her marauder.
And she had found him.
“Yes,” she said. “Let’s go to your room.”
CHAPTER TWO
BY THE TIME they had gone through a maze of high-gloss marble corridors and arrived at Mauro’s suite, Astrid was trembling. She did her best to try to disguise it, and hope that he would perhaps assume it was because they were surrounded by ice. But the fact of the matter was, the pieces of the structure that were not made of ice were quite comfortable, and she imagined he assumed no such thing.
She was so good at pretending to be confident, serene and as if she were in possession of every secret in all the world, that sometimes she even convinced herself such things were true.
Sometimes she forgot what she really was.
She was a queen, that much was true. A queen with quite a lot of power, education and confidence that was rightly earned.
She was also a woman who had been kept separate from peers for most of her life while she focused on her education. A woman who had danced with a man, but never, ever kissed one.
She was a virgin queen, above reproach as her mother had always instructed her to be.
But matters had become desperate, and so had she.
And she was waging war in a sense, and that meant she could not afford nerves. Even as they rolled over her in a wave, the reality of the utter disparity between the two of them a strange and intense sort of drug.
An aphrodisiac and a bit of a terror.
She was used to having a mantle of power over her, but he didn’t know who she was. And here, in this private room he had just ushered her into, he was the experienced one. He was physically so much more powerful than she could ever hope to be, and her guards were well and truly dismissed. She had no one to snap her fingers for and call for rescue. She didn’t even have her phone, as she and Latika had agreed that her being traceable to the club in any manner wasn’t acceptable.
It was why the timing of everything was so crucial.
His suite was warm, wonderfully appointed with furs in a dark ebony, and bright white cotton spread over a massive mattress.
She looked over at him, and his lips curved as he closed the door behind them.
“Second thoughts?”
“No,” she said, squaring her shoulders. “Not at all.”
“I did not take a woman who would freely admit to being a sex tourist as one who would be overcome by the nerves of an innocent.”
She laughed, so very grateful for all the years she had spent at various political events dodging barbs of every sort, allowing her an easy smile and confident stare even while verbal daggers were being thrown her way. “Naturally not. It’s only that... We haven’t even kissed yet. And I do want a bit of certainty regarding chemistry.”
“A woman of high standards.”
“Exceptionally,” she said. “I should have mentioned to you that I am—as far as sex tourists go—not a backpacker. I only go first-class. And if things are not to my liking, I don’t stay.”
A dark flame burned yet higher in his eyes, a clear response to what he obviously took as a challenge.
“I was going to offer you a drink,” he said.
“Why? Because you think you should fare better if my senses are dulled?”
He chuckled and moved to her, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her against his body. He took hold of her chin, keeping her face steady as he stared down into her eyes.
“Let us test the chemistry, then,” he said, his voice rough.
He bent down, closing the distance between them, and it was like a flame had ignited across her skin.
His kiss was rough, commanding and intense in ways she had not imagined a kiss could ever be. And this was why she had chosen him. It was why he was the only one she could fathom being with.
She had known, somehow, that he would be the one who could make her forget, for just a moment, what she was. That he could be the one who made her exult in feeling delicate. Fragile.
His masculinity was so rough. So exciting. His kiss that of a conqueror. And how she reveled in it. Gloried in his touch. His hands, large and impossibly rough, held her face steady as he angled his head and took the kiss deeper, deeper still, his tongue invading her, making her tremble, making her knees weak.
When they parted, he stared down at her, those eyes shot through with intensity. “Is that quite enough chemistry for you?” he asked.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I think that is exactly the chemistry I was looking for.”
He stood back and shrugged his jacket off, tossing it carelessly toward the couch on the opposite side of the room, and then he began to unbutton his shirt.
Astrid’s mouth went dry as she
watched him expose his body. His chest was hard looking and muscular, his abs clearly defined, with just the right amount of dark hair dusted over those sculpted ridges. And he had tattoos. Dark, swirling ink that covered his shoulder, part of his chest geometric patterns that she couldn’t quite divine the meaning of.
But the beauty of tonight was that it didn’t matter.
It didn’t matter what any of this meant to him. All that mattered was what it meant to her.
Freedom. Wildness.
A night with her very own barbarian.
The kind of man she would scarcely have been allowed to speak to if her handlers were present. Much less be alone in a room with.
Much less be on the verge of...
“Pictures don’t do you justice,” she said.
“I have a feeling that dress doesn’t do you justice,” he returned. “But I would like to see for a fact if this is true.”
With shaking fingers, she reached around behind her back and slowly lowered the zip to her dress, letting the soft white fabric release itself from her body and fall to the ground, a pale, silken pool at her feet.
She was still wearing those impossibly high heels and a pair of white panties. Nothing more. He seemed to approve.
Her breasts grew heavy, her nipples tight, her body overcome with restless anticipation.
Then he sprung into action, his muscles all languid grace and lethal precision as he took her in his arms and swept her up off the floor, carrying her over to that large bed and setting her down on the soft, black fur that was spread over the top.
He said something in Italian, something completely unfamiliar to her, something she assumed was something like a curse, or just something so filthy no one would have ever seen fit to teach her. Anticipation shimmered deep and low inside her.
He drew away from the bed, his eyes never leaving hers as he slowly undid his belt, drawing the zipper on his pants down as he divested himself of the rest of his clothing, leaving him completely naked in front of her.
Astrid was one for research. For being prepared when going to war. And as such, she had done a fair share of figuring out just what happened between men and women in bed, not simply in the perfunctory sense. She had done a bit of pictorial research.
