by Millie Adams
“That seems convoluted.”
“It’s not really. Not at all. Just the way things ended up. My father quite literally found him on a business trip and brought him home. Took care of him. I think my sister was in love with him for most of her life.”
“But you weren’t.”
She laughed. “I remember very clearly telling Minerva that I didn’t like men who were quite as hard as Dante.”
A tense silence settled between the two of them. She hadn’t meant to say that. Because of course that implied that perhaps it had changed. And perhaps there was a hard man that she might find appealing after all.
She gritted her teeth.
“And I still don’t,” she said. “So. Just so we’re both clear.”
“Very clear,” he said.
“Now. Ice cream.” She increased her pace and breezed straight into the shop. And she did not miss the look of absolute shock on the faces of the proprietors inside. It wasn’t to do with her. It was to do with Javier.
“I saw that there was ice cream,” she said cheerily. She approached the counter and looked at all the flavors.
“We make them all here,” the woman behind the counter said, her voice somewhat timid. “The milk comes from our own cows.”
“Well, that’s wonderful,” Violet said. “And makes me even more excited to try it.” There was one called Spanish chocolate, and she elected to get a cone with two scoops of that. She kept her eyes on Javier the entire time.
“You don’t want anything?”
“No,” he said, his voice uncompromising.
“You’re missing out,” she said.
She went to pay for the treat, and he stepped in, taking his wallet from his pocket.
“Of course we cannot ask Your Royal Highness to pay,” the woman said.
“On the contrary,” Javier said, his voice decisive. “You should be asking me to pay double. Consider it repayment.”
The woman did not charge Javier double, but she did allow him to pay.
“I didn’t need you to buy my ice cream,” she said when they were out on the street.
“It’s not about need. It is about... What feels right.”
“You’re that kind of man, huh? The kind that holds open doors and pays for dinner?”
He laughed, a dark, short sound. “You make me sound quite a bit more conventional than I am.”
“A regular gentleman.”
“I would not say that.”
“Well, what would you say, then? You’re single-handedly setting out to save the country, and you saved a little girl from child marriage. You worked for years to undo the rule of your father.” She took a short lick of her ice cream. It was amazing. “I would say that runs toward gentlemanly behavior, don’t you?”
“I think that’s overstating human decency. I would like to think that any man with a spine would do what I did in my position. Inaction in my position would be complicity. And I refused to be complicit in my father’s actions.”
“Well. Many people would be, for their comfort.”
She looked down the alleyway and saw a lovely hand-painted mural. She darted there, and he followed. It was secluded, ivy growing over the walls, creeping between the brick.
“I just need a picture of this.”
She held out her hand, extending her ice-cream cone to him. “Can you hold this?”
He took it gingerly from her grasp, looking at it like it might bite him. She lifted her brows, then turned away from him, snapping a quick picture and then another for good measure.
He was still holding the ice-cream cone and looking aggrieved, so when she returned, she leaned in, licking the ice-cream cone while he held it still.
His posture went stiff.
He was reacting to her, she realized. The same way that she reacted to him. And she didn’t like how it made her feel. Giddy and jittery and excited in a way she couldn’t remember feeling before.
And she should pull away. She should.
But instead, she wrapped her hand around his, and sent electric sensation shooting through her body.
“You should taste it,” she said.
“I told you, I didn’t want any.”
“But I think you do,” she insisted. “You should have some.”
She pushed his hand, moving the cone in his direction, and she could see the moment that he realized it was better to take the path of least resistance. He licked the ice cream slowly, his dark eyes connecting with hers.
She realized she had miscalculated.
Because he had his mouth where hers had been.
Because she was touching him and he was looking at her.
Because something in his dark eyes told her that he would be just as happy licking her as he was this ice cream.
And all of it was wrong.
Why couldn’t she hate him? She should.
Why couldn’t she get it into her head that this was real? That it was insane. That she should want to kick him in the shins and run as far and fast as she could. Call for help at the nearest business, rather than lingering here in an alley with him.
“It’s good,” she said, her throat dry.
“Yes,” he agreed, his voice rough.
Then he thrust it back into her hand. “I think I’ve had enough.”
“Right.”
Her heart clenched, sank. And she didn’t know what was happening inside of her. Didn’t know why her body was reacting this way, now, to him. Didn’t know why she felt like crying, and not for any of the reasons that she should.
“I’m not done exploring the city, though. And I wouldn’t want to take my ice cream back in your car. I might make a mess.”
But the rest of the outing was completely muted. Not at all what it had been before.
And that it disappointed her confused her even more than anything else.
When she was back at the palace, back in her room, she lay down and covered her head. And only then did she allow herself to think the truth.
She was attracted to the man who was holding her captive.
She was attracted to the brother of the man she was being forced to marry.
But more important, he was attracted to her. She had seen it.
She had very nearly tasted it.
Thankfully, they had come to their senses.
She spent the rest of the night trying fitfully to be thankful when all she felt was frustrated.
And she knew that she had come up with a plan, no matter how it made her stomach churn to think of putting it into action.
She had no choice.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HIS BROTHER STILL hadn’t returned.
Javier was tired of being tested. He had been avoiding Violet since they had come back from the city the other day. The temptation that she had presented to him was unacceptable.
That he had the capacity to be tempted was not something that he had first seen. But Violet King had tested him at every turn, and the true issue was that he feared he might fail a test if she continued.
He curled his fingers into fists. No. He was not a weak man.
Even before he had turned on his father, he had not had an easy life. He had faithfully served in his father’s army. And that had required work guarding the borders in the forests, camping out for long periods of time. His father’s paranoia meant that he was certain that enemies were lurking behind every tree.
And Javier had found that to be so. His father had had many enemies. And Javier had done his job in arresting them.
He wasn’t sure what he wished to avoid thinking about more. That period of time in his life, or his current attraction to Violet.
“Of course, the architecture is nothing compared to the natural beauty. You got a little peek outside the window, but more to come later
on this beautiful vacation spot.”
He heard Violet’s voice drifting down the corridor, coming from the expansive dining room where his brother often held dinner parties.
It was a massive room with a view that stretched on for miles, a large balcony connecting it and the ballroom and making the most of those views.
Violet was standing right next to the window, her cell phone in her hand. She waved—not at him, but at her screen—then put the phone down at her side. “I was filming a live video. Doing more to tease my location.”
“Of course you were,” he said.
She gave him a bland look. “Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it’s not valid.”
“Oh, I would never think that.”
“Liar. If you don’t understand it, you think it’s beneath you.”
“I didn’t say I didn’t understand it.”
“But you do think it’s beneath you.”
“That was implied in my statement, I think.”
“You’re impossible.”
She walked nearer to him, and he tried to keep his focus on the view outside. But he found himself looking at her. She had most definitely regained her precious makeup. She looked much as she did that first day he had seen her, which he assumed was a signature look for her.
“So you must go to all this trouble,” he said, indicating her makeup, “to talk to people who aren’t even in the room with you.”
She winked. “That’s how you know I like you. If I talk to you in the same room, and I don’t bother to put my eyelashes on.”
“Your eyelashes are fake?”
“A lot of people have fake eyelashes,” she said sagely. “I used to have them individually glued on every week or so, but I prefer the flexibility of the strips so I can just take them off myself at the end of the day.”
“I have to say I vastly don’t care about your eyelashes.”
He looked down at her, at the dramatic sweep of those coal black lashes they were discussing. And he found that he did care, more than he would like. Not about the application, but that he wished he could see them naturally as they had been the other morning. Dark close to her eyes, lighter at the tips. He appreciated now the intimacy of that sight.
And he should not want more.
“You know what I do care about?” she asked. “Outside. I would like to go outside.”
“Well, the garden is fenced in, feel free to wander around. Just don’t dig underneath it.”
“Very cute. Another joke. We could write that in your baby book. However, I would like a tour.”
“A tour of the grounds?”
“Yes.”
“Of the garden, or of the entire grounds? Because I warn you, they are quite wild.”
“I find I’m in the mood for wild.”
She smiled slightly and enigmatically. He could not tell whether she intended for the statement to be a double entendre.
But the moment passed, and he found himself agreeing to take her out of the palace.
One path led to the carefully manicured gardens that had been tamed and kept for generations. A testament to the might of the royal family, he had always thought. And as a result, he had never liked them.
“This way,” he said. “This is where Matteo and I used to play when we were boys.”
The rocky path led down to a grove of trees. Heavily shaded, and next to a deep, fathomless swimming hole.
A waterfall poured down black, craggy rocks into the depths.
The water was a crystalline blue, utterly and completely clear. The bottom of the river was visible, making it seem like it might not be as deep as it was. But he knew that you could sink and sink and not find the end of it.
He and Matteo had always loved it here. It had seemed like another world. Somewhere separate from the strictures of the palace. Though, at that point he had not yet come to hate it.
Still. He had appreciated the time spent outdoors with his brother. His brother had been most serious at that age.
Perhaps because he had always known that the burden of the crown would be his.
“This is beautiful,” she said. He expected her to reach for her phone immediately, but she didn’t. Instead, she simply turned in a circle, looking at the unspoiled splendor around them.
“Yes. You know something? I know that my father never set foot down here.” He stared at the pool. “And now he’s dead.”
“That’s a tragedy,” Violet said. “To live right next to something so beautiful and to never see it.”
“There were a great many things my father didn’t see. Or care about. He cared about his own power. He cared about his own comfort. This is just one of the many things he never truly looked at. Including the pain that he caused his own people.”
“But you did. You do,” she said.
“For better or worse.”
“You used to swim down here?”
“Yes.”
“Did you laugh and have fun?”
“Of course I did.”
“I can’t imagine you having fun.”
“I can assure you I did.”
“It’s safe?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She took her phone out of her pocket and set it on the shore. Then she looked back at him and kicked her shoes off, putting her toe in the water. “It’s freezing,” she said.
“I said it was safe. I didn’t say it wasn’t frigid water coming down from an ice melt.”
She stared at him, a strange sort of challenge lighting her eyes.
“What?”
“Let’s swim.”
“No,” he said.
He realized right then that the outright denial was a mistake. Because her chin tilted upward in total, stubborn defiance. And the next thing he knew she had gone and done it. Gone in, clothes and all, her dark head disappearing beneath the clear surface. And she swam.
Her hair streaming around her like silken ribbon, her limbs elegant, her dress billowing around her. And he was sure that he could see white cotton panties there beneath the surface. He felt punched in the gut by that. Hard.
“Swim with me,” she said.
“No.”
She swam up to the edge, giving him an impish grin. “Please.”
He remembered her words from the other day. Don’t you do anything for yourself?
He didn’t. He didn’t, because there was no point.
But swimming wasn’t a betrayal.
He could feel his body’s response to that in his teeth. A twist in his gut. Because he knew what he was doing. Knew that he was pushing at that which was acceptable.
But the water would be cold.
And he would not touch her. Tension rolled from his shoulders, and he unbuttoned his shirt, leaving it on the banks of the river. His shoes, his pants. And leaving himself in only the dark shorts that he wore beneath his clothes.
Then he dived, clearing her completely, sliding beneath the surface of the water at the center of the pool, letting the icy water numb his skin like pinpricks over the surface of it. Maybe it would knock the desire that he felt for her out of his body.
Maybe.
He swam toward her, and he saw something flash in the depths of her eyes. Surprise. Maybe even fear.
He stopped just short of her.
“Is this what you had in mind?”
“I didn’t expect the strip show.”
The characterization of what had occurred made his stomach tighten. Or the cold water had no effect on his desire.
He couldn’t understand why. Why this woman, at this moment, tested him so.
Any retort she might have made, any continuation of the conversation seemed to die on her lips.
And he knew. He knew that he had just gone straight into temptation. Had
literally dived right in. Whatever he had told himself in that moment on the shore was a lie. All he had wanted to do was to be closer to her.
He had never experienced anything like this. Had never experienced this kind of draw to a woman before. To anyone.
She had nothing in common with him. A spoiled, sheltered girl from the United States. But when she looked at him, he felt something. And he had not felt anything for a long time.
She began to draw closer to him.
“Don’t,” he said.
“I just...” A droplet of water slid down her face, and her tongue darted out. She licked it off. She reached out and dragged her thumb over the scar on his cheek. “How did you get this?”
Her touch sent a lightning bolt of desire straight down to his groin. “It’s not a good story.”
“I don’t care.”
“You think you don’t care, but you haven’t heard it.”
Her hand was still on him.
“Tell me,” she insisted.
“You know you should be afraid of me,” he said. “And here you are, pushing me.”
“You said you wouldn’t hurt me.”
“And I wouldn’t. Intentionally. But you are here touching me as if I cannot be tempted into anything that we would both regret.”
“Who says I would regret it?”
He gritted his teeth. “You would.”
“Javier...”
“I was helping a man escape from prison. Wrongfully arrested by my father. One of his guards attempted to put a stop to it. It was war, Violet, and I did what had to be done.”
She said nothing. She only looked at him, her eyes wide.
“Yes. It is what you think.”
“You did what you had to,” she said softly.
“But that’s what I am. A man who does what he has to. A man who is barely a man anymore.”
She slid her thumb across his skin, and he shuddered beneath her touch. “You feel like a man to me,” she whispered.
“You are not for me.”
He pushed away from her and swam back to the shore. She watched him dress, the attention that she paid him disconcerting. Then she got out of the water, the thin fabric of her dress molded to her curves. He could see her nipples, clearly visible, and his arousal roared.
