Stolen To Wear His Crown (Mills & Boon Modern) (The Royal Guard, Book 1)

by Marcella Bell

  She loved him the way a woman loved a man.

  Passionate, greedy, and demanding. Intense, delicate, and needy. She loved him for trying to make her strong enough for the job at the same time as trying to make up for everything becoming royalty had changed in her life. She loved him with her full self. And so, for the first time, she felt engaged—fully and completely—with everyday life. She was no longer preparing for the future or breaking over the past. She was here, in the present moment, absolutely in love.

  And it was time to meet the Chancellor.

  The Chancellor, a slender gray-haired woman with impeccable style and wireless glasses, wore a graphite pantsuit and sensible black pumps. Her husband was on a well-televised reconciliation tour of the African continent, so she had brought her college-aged son Werner to attend the dinner with her instead. The two of them stood with a number of other Farden officials who had made the trip alongside the family.

  Chancellor Klein’s son’s interest in politics was well known, and he was expected to make a bid to turn his family into Farden’s first political dynasty within the next decade. Already famous in his own right, the striking blond youth also happened to be athletic and highly intelligent, on his way to graduating with honors from Cambridge. Werner was the kind of star pupil Mina had seen pass through her classroom only rarely, as they typically bypassed Cyrano’s humble Capital University to travel to more internationally renowned institutions.

  Mina smiled warmly as she and Zayn closed the distance between themselves and the foreign visitors, first catching Chancellor Klein’s savvy blue eyes before turning her gaze slightly to include her son.

  As their eyes connected the young man’s expression took on a glint Mina did not immediately recognize, both haughty and hungry at the same time, and she schooled her features so as not to give away her confusion as she allowed him to take her hand. He bent over it with a kiss and a smile while Zayn engaged with his mother.

  In English, he said, “I had heard the Queen of Cyrano was a common woman of rare beauty, but the reports do not do you justice.”

  Rather than feeling flattered, she realized his words had set off an unpleasant sensation, crawling along the outer edges of her skin.

  “You’re very kind, Mr. Klein. It’s lovely to have you and your esteemed mother here in our beloved Cyrano.”

  “And it is lovely to be here. Cyranese hospitality lives up to its legend.”

  She had no idea why, but although his words were innocent, Mina felt the urge to use hand sanitizer after he’d said them.

  Obviously catching the tail-end of Werner’s sentence as he turned from the Chancellor, Zayn said, “I am glad to hear that. We’re here to serve. Let our staff know what you would like, and we’ll do everything we can to accommodate you.”

  Having made their introductions and initial contact, Zayn and Mina had turned to make their way to the dining room when Werner Klein leaned toward one of his companions with a chuckle and said, in distinctly audible German, “I’d like to see if his wife could accommodate me.”

  Mina sucked in a quiet breath. At her side, Zayn was suddenly all rapid motion and purpose, closing the short distance they’d walked away from the younger Klein in seconds, to return to his side.

  The sudden movement of the King caused a ripple of awareness to go through the crowd, drawing conversations to a halt and bringing all of the attention in the room to him—just in time to witness the precise cocking back of his elbow and the jackhammering of his fist directly into Werner’s face.

  One. Two. Three. And Werner collapsed on the ground.

  Color draining from her face, the Chancellor took a step toward her son but then seemed to hesitate, unwilling to approach the darkly radiating monarch.

  Dressed in black, and towering over the unconscious man, Zayn looked every inch the medieval warrior King, despite the modern lines of his suit and his insistence that Cyrano had moved past its history.

  Werner’s cronies stepped closer, gaining confidence after their friend’s embarrassment. In moments, there would be an all-out brawl.

  Watching as Zayn’s plans crumbled around him, Mina felt something click inside her. Dr. Aldaba might never have been caught dead in her current outfit—too distracting, after all—but the impenetrable professor and scientist was as much a part of her bones as Queen Amina.

  She squared her shoulders and crossed the space between her and the two men as if she was strolling across her lecture room rather than a ballroom at a grand event.

  She placed cool fingertips on the King’s elbow and he stilled, the radiating physicality of his intent toward the younger man dimming. And as she restrained him she also said in soft, smooth, and rapid German, her tone at once censuring and commanding—the same tone her mother had used on her to calm her rare tantrums as a child, “Gentlemen. I don’t believe it is considered polite to scuffle indoors. I’m going to have to insist you take this outdoors.”

  Zayn shot her a glance that she knew had more to do with the fact that she’d held back her language abilities than the censure in her tone. He did step back, however.

  The other men, having been accessories to Werner’s original comment, were not handling the revelation of the Queen’s language skills nearly so well. Two sets of eyes were glued to Mina in abject horror. She recognized the look of individuals staring career failure in the face, but couldn’t muster much empathy. She had been a teacher long enough to recognize a group of entitled rich kids a mile away.

  As the threat of physical violence dissipated, the Chancellor stepped inside the circle, her hawk eyes taking in the fact that her son was on the floor and that all his cronies had lost their color.

  “What’s going on here?” she asked quietly, speaking in German as well.

  Mina opened her mouth, ready to answer for all of them, using the tone she had used as a professor to report to a parent on a student’s progress, but Zayn’s hand on her wrist stopped her.

  “I would advise that you leave your son at home next time, Chancellor Klein.”

  Zayn’s voice was a whip through the room and Chancellor Klein’s mouth dropped open.

  Mina grimaced, adding public rebuking to the list of primeval King’s rights that Zayn was exercising tonight. But even though she felt for the woman—it wasn’t her fault her son’s behavior had been inexcusable—Mina couldn’t help but observe, as Zayn dragged her out of the ballroom, that he had been right. The open-mouthed expression really did make one look like a fish.

  CHAPTER TEN

  ZAYN’S REIN ON his temper was hanging by a thin thread, and he had already taken violent action against the son of a head of state.

  “You will never speak of my wife again,” he had growled in German, just before hitting the man with the cold clarity and precision his instructors had always told him to seek.

  As a man, Zayn had encountered Werner Klein’s kind many times, and he knew that the best way to deal with that kind of bully was to smash them like an ant and move on. And he’d done exactly that.

  That was not, however, how a king dealt with his problems.

  Kings treated men like Klein as gnats—unworthy of notice or reaction.

  No. He had not acted like a king. He had acted like a man—and not just a man, but a hot-headed youth, the kind of young man he had been when he had gone away to college, wild and unable to carry the responsibility of the crown, rather than the level-headed monarch he’d schooled himself to be.

  And it was all because of Mina.

  He had acted more like his father than himself, and that was a luxury he could not afford—not when vipers lay in wait to take advantage of his every weakness.

  He had put his woman before the needs of the nation.

  The thought bounced around inside him like an angry wasp he could neither force out of his consciousness nor bury beneath his growing fury.

/>   “Slow down, Zayn. I’m new to this height of heel.”

  Mina’s breathless voice finally broke through the storm that was his thoughts. Immediately he slowed, turning to take her in.

  Her hair was as controlled as it had been the day they had met, but tonight it elegantly highlighted the sweep of her cheekbones, somehow directing the eye to her lush mouth.

  Her mouth was, he knew, an erotic playground, barely charted in the handful of times he’d had the privilege to explore it. And her body, contoured and showcased as it was now, in her one-piece pantsuit, was sexy and untouchable at the same time—a frustrating combination that antagonized the hunger that lived inside him even as it stoked it.

  He gave his head a small shake. He was thinking about her too much.

  Closing his eyes again, he took a deep breath. He would get them to the car, return to his office once they arrived back at the palace, and immediately begin damage control for the evening. Then he would return to his quarters and go to bed.

  A desperate and resolute part of him vowed that it would be alone. Not with her. It couldn’t be with her. Not until he had regained his control. It was imperative that he master his reactions to her. The night had made it clear that the issue was no longer merely a personal matter.

  In the time they’d been married he’d learned that there was nothing he could focus on that was compelling enough to keep images of her at bay. He was helpless against the flow of erotic flashes of her that danced across his mind the moment his guard was down—and he held the fate of a nation in his hands.

  Distance was the only thing that would work. And maybe a drink.

  “Zayn!” Mina stomped her foot as she said it, standing on the curb, arms crossed in front of her chest.

  He turned his attention to her—or rather the real her. His attention had been unable to focus on anything but her since the moment she’d stepped through the chapel door—with effort.

  “What?” His voice held all the cutting chill it had held that long-ago day.

  “What’s going on?”

  She asked the question quietly, delicately walking around the words she didn’t say. What the hell were you thinking? You ruined our plan! Where is your self-control? And he found that irritated him more than if she’d just gone ahead with recriminations. Lord knew he had earned them.

  He hadn’t done anything so foolishly scandalous since he had been photographed in Amsterdam years ago, as a university student.

  “Zayn?” she said again, with a bit more volume but no less grating delicate concern.

  “I hit a man in the face, Mina. And as I am the King, I would think it would be clear what’s going on now: I’m trying to determine the correct order of operations to begin immediate damage control.”

  The car pulled up and their driver jumped out to open the door, wisely sensing that conversation would be neither welcome nor appreciated.

  Zayn gestured for Mina to enter the car first before following, his every movement brittle and angry. She opened her mouth, but Zayn stopped her with a hand. “If you are about to offer some meaningless condolence, Mina, I would advise against it.”

  She closed her mouth, and the ever-growing orb of rage inside of him began to take on a more beastly shape.

  It was absolutely absurd that he had actually hit the man—defending his lady’s honor like some barbarian of old—and all the more ironic for the fact that he, and his father before him, had spent the bulk of his reign working to separate Cyrano’s reputation from its tumultuous feudal past. He had just undone all that with a single action.

  “Zayn.”

  Mina’s fingertips pressed lightly at his elbow again. She had scooted closer to him at some point, her perfect body just inches away from his now, and he hadn’t noticed. He was deteriorating faster than he’d feared possible.

  His entire body stilled.

  She leaned closer, placing her palms on either side of his face to draw his gaze to her own. Green and gold swam together, warm and accepting, in a loving promise that it was possible to come back from this. That together it was possible to come back from anything.

  And then she was pressing her lips softly against his in a kiss that was feather-light and over before it began. Pulling back, she sparkled, an open smile on her face, emanating that same strange sunlight only she seemed to possess.

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  She didn’t say I love you, but she didn’t need to. He heard it. And, hearing it, he broke open.

  It began as a faint crack in the dam that held back the deep black. His hands thrust out to cup either side of her face, his fingers wrapping around her skull while his thumbs tilted her chin up. His internal structure began to give way as the crack raced across its surface, branching out at rapid speed, freeing the rage of waters held back too long.

  Their lips met. Hers were soft and pliant and open, not only willing to absorb the weight and wrongness of his sin, but asking for it, begging him to bury it deep inside her, where she could turn it into something better—something good.

  He pulled her into his lap with the force of a wave off the sea. Like so much flotsam, she tumbled into him, ever willing to be swept up in the fierce power of his embrace, open to him whenever he had need. And wasn’t that the problem? She was a drug, offered freely, over and over, her only price the abandonment of his honor.

  He wanted to push her away.

  Instead, he absorbed her.

  He demanded her entire focus with his lips, controlled her body, gripping her thighs on either side of him with no intention of allowing her to move, decimating her shields with his will to own and command her entire being.

  The car pulled into the palace at some point. He lifted her out, unwilling to break their kiss, and somewhere along his route, carrying her to the Queen’s Wing with her legs locked around his waist, the hot core of her scalding even through the fabrics that separated them, he waved off her guards and shooed away the staff.

  But he made sure she wasn’t aware of any of that. As far as she was concerned, the only thing that existed was him and the sensations he aroused. He would have it no other way. Here, he would be the master and commander. She would experience the feeling of being completely unmoored, completely at the mercy of another human being, her very behavior tethered to whims of another.

  He pressed her against the wall in her bedroom, the rigid steel length of him teetering between threat and promise as she leaned into him with force to match his. And then it wasn’t enough to press, to be separated by barriers, even those as insubstantial as clothing.

  Her carried her to the bed, where he placed her gently on her back before placing his hands on her hips and turning her around until she faced away from him, on her hands and knees. Impatient to have the glorious curves of her at his full disposal, he unzipped her suit and pushed it off her shoulders from behind.

  Breathing heavily, she pulled the top half off before he took over, pulling the suit over her hips before lifting her to remove it the rest of the way. Her thong winked at him from between the round globes of her derrière, flimsy and audacious at the same time, like something a French harlot might wear in a bygone era. The image aroused him and gave even greater form to the beast inside him, lending it claws with which to break its way out.

  And then he was scraping his teeth along the same trail his caressing palms had taken, tasting her from behind while she cried out his name, the sound an entreaty and a plea at the same time. He happily obliged until she trembled, her body shaking as it dove into bliss.

  It wasn’t enough to taste her anymore. He needed to possess her. To break her into a thousand pieces and make each and every one of them irrefutably his.

  Pulling away from her, he realized he was still fully clothed, but rather than delay to remedy the fact he simply unbuckled his belt and slipped himself free of his trousers. He was
straining and hard and ready.

  He made quick work of positioning himself behind her before sliding in, thick and heavy meeting wet and tight, against the backdrop of her helpless moans.

  He managed to make three long, slow strokes before the beast demanded more. More speed. More pressure. More intensity.

  The fire burning inside him was stoked to an explosive level as Mina’s cries echoed in the rounded architecture of her bedroom. His hips became pistons, moving in and out of her, helpless to do anything but return over and over again.

  Her body was slick with sweat and he sensed her peaking. But he wouldn’t allow her release until she felt like him: weak-willed, insatiable, and selfish. Hammering deep inside her, their bodies in a single rhythm, he refused to take them both over the edge until he knew he wasn’t alone and never would be—not in this.

  And when she gasped, crying, “Please, Zayn!” and her inner muscles desperately clenched around him, he knew it was true and they detonated.

  Hours later, well past midnight, she lay deeply asleep, un-haunted by the ghosts of her father and the wreckage of the evening. He envied her. He was not faring so well on that front, and lying in her bed, listening to the quiet sounds and murmurs of her sleep, wasn’t going to make it any better.

  What he really needed was a drink. A drink would be the answer to the gnawing craving inside him that seemed to return the instant it was satisfied. He refused to let it be anything else. It was absolutely not the woman who stole his breath, and his attention, and his focus by her simple existence.

  Sliding out of her bed, he ignored the tight squeeze the motion brought to his chest. There was no point lying beside her, drawing her into his arms, trusting they would sort everything out in the morning. That was foolish and, worse, neglectful.

  He had a job to do.

  And he would do it with a drink.

  He would call for one as soon as he was out of her rooms. It would be waiting for him on his desk—sharp, no ice, and doubtless strong, just the way he liked it—when he got to his office.