by Kelly Hunter
He must choose a queen...
But will his desire outweigh his duty?
King Augustus is shocked when his country delivers him a courtesan. The only way to set her free is to marry someone else! But Sera’s surprising innocence and undisguised yearning for him is temptation itself, pushing Augustus’s legendary self-control to the limits. Because Augustus knows that if he dares give in to his attraction, he won’t rest until Sera becomes his queen!
Feel the heat in this tale of innocence and desire!
Augustus took the tea and let his fingers brush hers. Sera stilled, and so did he.
He didn’t believe in instant attraction. He’d never been a slave to his body’s baser demands. But if one tiny touch could send this much heat and awareness coursing through him, imagine what she could do with full-body contact?
“It’s a trap,” he said at last.
“How so?” Her gaze was steady, her features as smooth as marble.
He gestured toward the depictions of service laid out before him, and it was all very tempting, except that beneath the surface pleasures lay a darker truth altogether. Mind, body and soul, she wasn’t here to serve. She was here to own him. “What wife could ever compete if I had this at my disposal? Where else would I go but here, where every whim would be served up to me on a gilded plate? By the time I’d satisfied every corrupt thought lying dormant in my soul it would be too late for either of us to escape. I’d own you in ways you’ve never dreamed of. And you’d own me.”
Claimed by a King
Irresistible royal passion!
Meet the powerful rulers of Byzenmaach, Liesendaach, Arun and Thallasia.
Their royal duty must come before everything.
Nothing and no one can distract them.
But how can Casimir, Theodosius, Augustus and Valentine deny the fierce flames of desire when they meet the only women ever to threaten their iron resolve?
Read Casimir of Byzenmaach’s story in
Shock Heir for the Crown Prince
Read Theodosius of Liesendaach’s story in
Convenient Bride for the King
Read Augustus of Arun’s story in
Untouched Queen by Royal Command
and look out for Valentine of Thallasia’s story, coming soon!
Don’t miss this sinful, sexy quartet by Kelly Hunter!
Kelly Hunter
Untouched Queen by Royal Command
Kelly Hunter has always had a weakness for fairy tales, fantasy worlds and losing herself in a good book. She has two children, avoids cooking and cleaning and, despite the best efforts of her family, is no sports fan. Kelly is, however, a keen gardener and has a fondness for roses. Kelly was born in Australia and has traveled extensively. Although she enjoys living and working in different parts of the world, she still calls Australia home.
Books by Kelly Hunter
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Claimed by a King
Shock Heir for the Crown Prince
Convenient Bride for the King
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Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EPILOGUE
EXCERPT FROM THE GREEK'S FORBIDDEN INNOCENT BY ANNIE WEST
PROLOGUE
Augustus
THEY WEREN’T SUPPOSED to be in this part of the palace. Fourteen-year-old Augustus, Crown Prince of Arun, had been looking for the round room with the domed glass roof for at least six years. He could see that roof from the helicopter every time they flew in or out, but he’d never been able to find the room and no adult had ever been willing to help him out.
His father said that those quarters had been mothballed over a hundred years ago.
His mother said it was out of bounds because the roof was unsafe.
Didn’t stop him and his sister looking for it, even if they never had much luck. It was like a treasure hunt.
They wouldn’t have found it this time either, without the help of a map.
The floor was made of moon-coloured marble, and so too were the columns and archways surrounding the central room. The remaining furniture had been covered with dusty drapes that had probably once been white. Above all, it felt warm in a way that the main castle living areas were never warm.
‘Why do we not live in this part of the palace?’ asked his sister from somewhere not far behind him. She’d taken to opening every door of every room that circled the main area. ‘These look like bedrooms. I could live here.’
‘You want fifty bedrooms all to yourself?’
‘I want to curl up like a cat in the sunlight. Show me one other place in the palace where you can do that.’
‘Mother would kill you if you took to lounging about in the sun. You’d lose your milky-white complexion.’
‘Augustus, I don’t have a milky-white complexion—no matter what our mother might want. I have black hair, black eyes and olive skin—just like you and Father do. My skin likes the sun. It needs the sun, it craves the sun. Oh, wow.’ She’d disappeared through another marble archway and her voice echoed faintly. ‘Indoor pool.’
‘What?’ He backtracked and headed for the archway, bumping into his sister, who was backing up fast.
‘Something rustled in the corner,’ she muttered by way of explanation.
‘Still want to live here?’ He couldn’t decide whether the hole in the ground was big enough to be called a pool or small enough to be called a bath. All he knew was that he’d never seen mosaic floor tiles with such elaborate patterns before, and he’d never seen exactly that shade of blue.
‘I still want to look around,’ his sister offered. ‘But you can go first.’
He rolled his eyes, even as pride demanded he take the lead. He’d been born to rule a country one day, after all. A rustling sound would not defeat him. He swaggered past his sister and turned to the right. There was a sink for washing hands carved into the wall beside the archway, and taps that gleamed with a dull silver glow. He reached for one and, with some effort, got it to turn but there was no water. Not a gurgle, a splutter or even the clank of old pipes.
‘What is this place? What are all these stone benches and alcoves for?’ his sister asked as she followed him into the room. She kept a wary eye on the shadowy corners but eventually turned her attention to other parts of the room.
It was an old map of the palace that had guided them here. That and a history teacher who preferred giving his two royal students books to read so that he could then nap his way through afternoon lessons. Their loss. And sometimes their freedom. If they got caught in here, he could probably even spin it that they were continuing their history lesson hands-on.
‘Maybe it was built for a company of warrior knights who slept in the rooms and came here to bathe. They could have practised sword-fighting in the round room,’ his sister suggested.
‘Maybe.’
Kings had ruled from this palace stronghold for centuries. It was why the place loo
ked so formidable from the outside and had relatively few creature comforts on the inside, no matter how many generations of royals had tried to make it more liveable. There was something about it that resisted softening. Except for in here. There was something soft and strangely beautiful about this part of the palace. Augustus plucked at a scrap of golden silk hanging from a peg on a wall and watched it fall in rotting pieces to the floor. ‘Did knights wear embroidered silk bathrobes?’
His sister glanced over and gasped. ‘Did you just destroy that?’
‘No, I moved it. Time destroyed it.’ Rational argument was his friend.
‘Can I have some?’
Without waiting for permission, she scooped the rotting cloth from the floor, bunched it in her hand and began to rub at a nearby tile.
‘It’s going to take a little more than that to get this place clean.’
‘I just want to see the pictures,’ his sister grumbled, and then, ‘Oh.’ She stopped cleaning.
He looked, and...oh. ‘Congratulations. You found the ancient tile porn.’
‘It’s art, you moron.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘I wish we could see better in here,’ his sister said.
‘For that we would need electricity. Or burning torches for all the holders in the walls.’ He closed his eyes and a picture came to mind, clear as day. Not knights and warriors living in this part of the palace and bathing in this room, but women, bound in service to the reigning King.
Augustus had never read about any of his ancestors having a harem, but then, as their eighty-year-old history teacher was fond of telling them, not all facts made it into their history books. ‘So, bedrooms, communal bathing room, big gathering room...what else?’
There were more rooms leading from the centre dome. An ancient kitchen, storage rooms with bare shelves, larger rooms with fireplaces, smaller rooms with candle stubs still sitting in carved-out hollows in the walls. They found chests of drawers and sideboards beneath heavy canvas cloth, long mirrors that his sister swore made her look thinner, and even an old hairbrush.
‘I don’t think people even know this stuff is here,’ Moriana said as she put the brush gently back into place. ‘I don’t know why they’re ignoring it. Some of it’s really old. Museum-old. The back of this brush looks like ivory, inlaid with silver, and it’s just been abandoned. Maybe we should bring the history prof down here. He’d have a ball.’
‘No.’ His voice came out sharper than he meant it to. ‘This is a private place. He doesn’t get to come here.’
Moriana glanced at him warily but made no comment as they left the side room they’d been exploring.
All doorways and arches led back to the main room. It was like a mini town square—or town circle. He looked up at the almost magical glass ceiling. ‘Maybe our forefathers studied the stars from here. Mapped them.’ Perhaps he could come back one night and do the same. And if he took another look at those naked people tiles in the room with the empty pool, so be it. Even future kings had to get their information from somewhere. ‘Maybe they hung a big telescope from the ropes up there and moved it around. Maybe if they climbed the stairs over there...’ He gestured towards the stairs that ran halfway up the wall and ended in a stone landing with not a railing in sight. ‘Maybe they had pulleys and ropes that shifted stuff. Maybe this was a place for astronomers.’
‘Augustus, that’s a circus trapeze.’
‘You think they kept a circus in here?’
‘I think this is a harem.’
So much for his innocent little sister not guessing what this place had once been. ‘I’m going up the stairs. Coming?’
Moriana followed him. She didn’t always agree with him but she could always be counted on to be there for him at the pointy end of things. It didn’t help that their mother praised Augustus to the skies for his sharp mind and impeccable self-control, and never failed to criticise Moriana’s emotional excesses. As far as Augustus could tell, he was just as fiery as his sister, maybe more so. He was just better at turning hot temper into icy, impenetrable regard.
A king must always put the needs of his people before his own desires.
His father’s words. Words to live by. Words to rule by.
A king must never lose control.
Words to be ruled by, whether he wanted to be ruled by them or not.
They made it to the ledge and he made his sister sit rather than stand. He sat too, his back to the wall as he looked up to the roof and then down at the intricately patterned marble floor.
‘I feel like a bird in a cage,’ said Moriana. ‘Wonder what the women who once lived here felt like?’
‘Sounds about right.’ He wasn’t a woman but he knew what being trapped by duty felt like.
‘We could practise our archery from up here.’ Moriana made fists out in front of her and drew back one arm as if pulling back an imaginary arrow. ‘Set up targets down below. Pfft. Practise our aim.’
‘Bloodthirsty. I like it.’ Bottled-up anger had to go somewhere. He could use this place at other times too. Get away from the eyes that watched and judged his every move. ‘Swear to me you won’t tell anyone that we’ve been here.’
‘I swear.’ Her eyes gleamed.
‘And that you won’t come here by yourself.’
‘Why not? You’re going to.’
Sometimes his sister was a mind-reader.
‘What are you going to do here all by yourself?’ she wanted to know.
Roar. Weep. Let everything out that he felt compelled to keep in. ‘Don’t you ever want to be some place where no one’s watching and judging your every move? Sit in the sun if you want to sit in the sun. Lose your temper and finally say all those things you want to say, even if no one’s listening. Especially because no one’s listening.’ Strip back the layers of caution and restraint he clothed himself in and see what was underneath. Even if it was all selfish and ugly and wrong. ‘I need somewhere to go where I’m free to be myself. This could be that place.’
His sister brought her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. The gaze she turned on him was troubled. ‘We shouldn’t have to hide our real selves from everyone, Augustus. I know we’re figureheads but surely we can let some people see what’s underneath.’
‘Yeah, well.’ He thought back to the hour-long lecture on selfishness he’d received for daring to tell his father that he didn’t want to attend yet another state funeral for a king he’d never met. ‘You’re not me.’
Sera
Sera wasn’t supposed to leave the house when her mother’s guest was visiting. Stay in the back room, keep quiet, don’t ever be seen. Those were the rules and seven-year-old Sera knew better than to break them. Three times a week, maybe four, the visitor would come to her mother’s front door and afterwards there might be food for the table and wine for her mother, although these days there was more wine and less food. Her mother was sick and the wine was like medicine, and her sweet, soft-spoken mother smelled sour now and the visitor never stayed long.
Sera’s stomach grumbled as she went to the door between the living room and the rest of the once grand house and put her ear to it. If she got to the bakery before closing time there might be a loaf of bread left and the baker would give it to her for half price, and a sweet bun to go with it. The bread wasn’t always fresh but the sweet treat was always free and once there’d even been eggs. The baker always said, ‘And wish your mother a good day from me’. Her mother always smiled and said the baker was a Good Man.
Her mother had gone to school with him and they’d played together as children, long before her mother had gone away to learn and train and become something more.
Sera didn’t know what her mother meant by more; all she knew was that there weren’t many things left in their house to sell and her mother was sick all the time now and didn’t laugh any more unl
ess there was wine and then she would laugh at nothing at all. Whatever her mother had once been: a dancer, a lady, someone who could make Sera’s nightmares go away at the touch of her hand...she wasn’t that same person any more.
Every kid in the neighbourhood knew what she was now, including Sera.
Her mother was a whore.
There was no noise coming from the other room. No talking, no laughter, no...other. Surely the visitor would be gone by now? The light was fading outside. The baker would close his shop soon and there would be no chance of bread at all.
She heard a thud, as if someone had bumped into furniture, followed by the tinkle of breaking glass. Her mother had dropped wine glasses before and it was Sera’s job to pick up the pieces and try to make her mother sit down instead of dancing around and leaving sticky bloody footprints on the old wooden floor, and all the time telling Sera she was such a good, good girl.
Some of those footprints were still there. Stuck in the wood with no rugs to cover them.
The rugs had all been sold.
No sound at all as Sera inched the door open and put her eye to the crack, and her mother was kneeling and picking up glass, and most importantly she was alone. Sera pushed the door open and was halfway across the room before she saw the other person standing in front of the stone-cold fireplace. She stopped, frozen. Not the man but still a visitor: a woman dressed in fine clothes and it was hard to look away from her. She reminded Sera of what her mother had once been: all smooth and beautiful lines, with clear eyes and a smile that made her feel warm.
Sera looked towards her mother for direction now that the rule had been broken, not daring to speak, not daring to move, even though there was still glass on the floor that her mother had missed.
‘We don’t need you,’ her mother said, standing up and then looking away. ‘Go home.’
Home where?
‘My neighbour’s girl,’ her mother told the visitor. ‘She cleans here.’
‘Then you’d best let her do it.’
