A Royal Without Rules

by Caitlin Crews

  But her eyes only darkened as they clung to his, and a hectic flush spread over those elegant cheekbones he wanted to taste. He was uncomfortably hard within the next breath, the wild, encompassing need he’d been trying to tell himself he’d imagined, or embellished, slamming into him again, sinking its claws deep, making him burn hot, and want.

  How could he want her this much?

  It had been weeks since London, and his fascination with her should have ebbed by now, as his little fascinations usually did in much less time. And most of those women had not fancied themselves tragically in love with his brother. But Adriana was always with him, always right there within his reach, prickly and unimpressed and severe. He spent his days studying her lovely face and its many masks, reading her every gesture, poking at her himself when he grew tired of the distance she tried to put between them.

  This woman was his doom. He understood that on a primal level, and yet couldn’t do the very thing he needed to do to avert it. He couldn’t let her walk away. That was part of the game—but he found he couldn’t bear the thought of it.

  And he didn’t like to think about the implications of that.

  “Careful, Adriana,” he said quietly. Her chest rose and fell too fast and her hands clenched almost fitfully at the thick paperback she held. If he asked, she would claim she didn’t want him and never had—but he could see the truth written all over her. He recognized what burned in her, no matter what she claimed. It made him harder, wilder. Closer to desperate than he’d been in years. “I’m in a dangerous mood tonight.”

  She blinked then, looking down into her lap and smoothing her hands over the abused book, and he had rendered himself so ridiculous when it came to this woman that he felt it like loss.

  “I don’t know how you can tell the difference between that and any of your other moods,” she said in her usual sharp way, which Pato told himself was better than that lost, hungry stare that could only lead to complications he knew he should avoid. “They’re all dangerous, sooner or later, aren’t they? And we both know who’ll have to clean up the mess.”

  “I expected applause when we boarded the plane,” he told her, smiling when her gaze came back to his, her brows arched over those warm, wary eyes that made him forget about the hollow places inside him. “A grateful speech or two, perhaps even a few thankful tears.”

  “You board planes all the time,” she pointed out, her expression smooth, and that decidedly disrespectful glint in her dark eyes that he enjoyed far too much. “I was unaware that you required encouragement to continue doing so. I’ll be sure to make a note of that for future reference. Perhaps the Royal Guard can break from their regular duties protecting our beloved sovereign, and perform a salute.”

  “I want only your applause, Adriana,” he told her silkily. “After all, you’re the one who insisted I become chaste and pure, and so I have. At your command.”

  “I’m sorry,” she murmured, something that looked like a smirk flashing across her mouth before she wisely bit it back. “Did you describe yourself as ‘chaste and pure’? In an airplane, of all places, where we are that much closer to lightning, should you be struck down where you sit?”

  She was a problem. A terrible problem, the ruin of everything he’d worked for all these years, but Pato couldn’t seem to keep himself from enjoying her. He couldn’t seem to do anything but bask in her. Tart and quick and the most fun he’d had in ages. With that sweet, hot fire beneath that would burn them both.

  “Shall I tell you what I got up to at this particular benefit last year?” he asked.

  “Unnecessary,” she assured him. “The video of your ill-conceived spa adventure is still available on the internet. Never has the phrase ‘the royal jewels’ been so widely and hideously abused.”

  He laughed, and spread out his hands in front of him as if in surrender—noting the way her eyes narrowed in suspicion, as if she knew exactly how unlikely it was he might ever truly surrender anything.

  “And look at me now,” he invited her. “Not a single lascivious actress in sight, no spa tub in a hotel room that was meant to be private, and I’m not even drunk. You should be proud, Adriana.”

  She shifted in her chair, crossing her legs, and then frowning at him when his gaze drifted to trace the elegant line of them from the hem of her demure skirt down to the delicate heels she wore.

  “Your transformation has been astonishing,” she said in repressive tones when he grinned back at her. “But you’ll forgive me if I can’t quite figure out your angle. I only know you must have one.”

  “I prefer curves to angles, actually,” he said, and laughed again at her expression of polite yet clear distaste at the innuendo. “And it has to be said, I’ve always found lingerie a particularly persuasive argument.”

  Adriana let out a breath, as if he’d hit her. Something terribly sad moved over her face then, surprising him and piercing into him. She ran her hands down the length of her skirt, smoothing out nonexistent wrinkles, betraying her anxiety.

  Pato knew he was a bastard—he’d gone out of his way to make sure he was—but this woman made him feel it. Keenly. She made him wish he was a different man. A better one. The sort of good one she deserved.

  “Perhaps you’ve managed to convince me of the error of my ways,” he said quietly, hating himself further because he wasn’t that man. He couldn’t be that man, no matter how much she made him wish otherwise. “Just because it hasn’t been done before doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”

  Her dark eyes met his and made something twist in him, sharp and serrated.

  “We both know I did nothing of the kind,” she said, her voice soft and matter-of-fact. She let out a small breath. “All I managed to do was make myself one among your many conquests, indistinguishable from the rest of the horde.”

  “I don’t know why you’d think yourself indistinguishable,” he said, keeping his tone light.

  He could have sworn what he saw flash in her dark eyes then was despair, but she swallowed it back and forced a smile that made his chest hurt.

  “I should have realized,” she said, and he wondered if she knew how bitter she sounded then, how broken. “You’ve always been a trophy collector, haven’t you? And what a prize you won in London. You get to brag that the Righetti whore propositioned you and you—you, of all people—turned her down. My congratulations, Your Royal Highness. That’s quite a coup.”

  For a long moment a black temper pulsed in him, and Pato didn’t dare speak. He only studied her face. She was pale now, and sat too straight, too stiff. Her eyes were dark again in exactly the same way they’d been that morning in the car, when he’d felt pushed to confront her about Lenz, and was fairly certain she’d broken his heart. Had he had one to break.

  Pato hated this. He was perilously close to hating himself. For the first time since he was eighteen, he wished that he could do exactly what he wanted without having to worry about anyone else. Without having to play these deep, endless games. Adriana sat there and looked at him as if he was exactly the depraved degenerate he’d gone to great lengths to ensure he really was, when she was the first woman he’d ever met that he wanted to think better of him. The irony wasn’t lost on him.

  It stung. Congratulations, indeed, he thought ruefully. This was what doom looked like as it happened, and he was doing nothing at all to prevent it.

  “Adriana,” he said, trying to keep his temper from his voice. Trying to make sense of his determination to protect her not only from the things he shouldn’t allow himself to want from her, but from herself. “You and I both know you’re no whore. Why do you torture yourself over the lies that strangers tell? They’re only stories. They’re not even about you.”

  “On the contrary,” she said after a moment, her voice thick and uneven. “Some of us are defined by the stories strangers tell.”

 
“You’re the only one who can define yourself,” he countered gently. “All they can do is tell another story, and who cares if they do?”

  Emotion moved through her then, raw and powerful. He saw it on her face, in the way her eyes went damp, in the faint tremor of her lips. Her hands balled into fists in her lap and she moved restlessly in her seat, stamping both feet into the floor as if she needed the balance.

  “Easy for you to say,” she stated, a raw edge to her voice. “Not all of us can be as beloved as you are no matter what you do, forgiven our trespasses the moment we make them.”

  “Fondness is hardly the same thing as forgiveness.”

  Her dark eyes seared into him. “You cheerfully admit each and every one of your transgressions,” she said. “There are videos, photographs, whole tabloids devoted to your bacchanals. But you are still the most popular young royal in all of Europe. No one cares how dirty you get. It doesn’t cling to you. It doesn’t matter.”

  “I prefer ‘adventurous’ to ‘dirty,’ I think,” he said mildly, watching her closely, seeing nothing but shadows in her beautiful eyes. “Especially in that tone.”

  “Meanwhile,” she said, as if he hadn’t spoken, “I happen to be related to three women who slept with Kitzinian royalty over a hundred and fifty years ago, and one woman who ruined a duke more recently. I’m the most notorious slut in the kingdom, thanks to them.” She pulled in a breath. “It isn’t even my dirt, but I’m covered in it, head to toe, and I’ll never be clean. Ever.” Her eyes held his for a long moment, fierce and dark. “It isn’t just another story strangers tell. It’s my life.”

  Pato was aware that he needed to shut this down now, before he forgot himself. But instead, he shook his head and continued talking, as if he was someone else. Someone with the freedom to have dangerous conversations with a woman he found far too fascinating, as if both of them weren’t pawns in a game only he knew they were playing.

  “You must know that almost all of that is jealousy,” he said, letting out a small laugh at the idea that she didn’t. “You’re a legend, Adriana, whether you earned it or not. Women are envious of the attention you get, simply because you have a notorious name and the temerity to be beautiful. Men simply want you.”

  She let out a frustrated noise, and snatched up her book again, that smooth mask of hers descending once more. But he could see right through it now.

  “I don’t want to discuss this,” she said, more to the book than to him. “You can’t possibly understand. There’s not a day of your life you’ve been envious of anyone, because why should you be? And you certainly don’t want me. You made that perfectly clear in London.”

  Pato didn’t know he meant to move. He shouldn’t have. But one moment he was on the couch and the next he was looming over her, swiveling her chair around and leaning over her, into her, planting his hands on the armrests and caging her between his arms. Risking everything, and he didn’t care.

  “I never said I didn’t want you,” he growled down at her.

  Pato felt unhinged and unpredictable, capable of anything. Especially a mistake of this magnitude—but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. Adriana still smelled of jasmine and her eyes were that rich, deep brown, and he didn’t have it in him to fight off this madness any longer.

  “Not that I want to revisit the most humiliating morning of my life,” she said from between her teeth, “but you did. If not in words, then in actions. And don’t misunderstand me, I’m grateful. I wasn’t myself.”

  “The question on the table that morning was not whether or not I wanted you.” He moved even closer, watching in satisfaction as her pretty eyes widened with a shock of awareness he felt like hands on his skin. “The question was whether or not I wanted to sleep with you knowing full well you planned to shut your eyes and imagine Lenz in my place. They’re not quite the same thing.”

  She paled, then burst into that bright red blush that Pato found intoxicating. He liked her cheeks rosy, her cool exterior cracked and all her masks useless, the truth of her emotions laid bare before him.

  “What does it matter?” Her voice was barely a whisper. “It didn’t happen. Crisis averted. There’s no need to talk about it now.”

  “I told you I wouldn’t forget,” he said, intent and hungry, “and I haven’t. I remember the noises you made in the back of your throat when I kissed you, when you rubbed against me like silk, hot and—”

  “Please!” Her voice was low. Uncertain. “Stop.”

  “What do you want, Adriana? That’s tonight’s question.”

  He leaned in closer, so he could hear the tiny hitch in her breath, and so he could find the pulse in her neck that was drumming madly, giving her away, and tease it with his tongue.

  She whispered something that came out more a moan, and he smiled against the delicate column of her throat. Her skin smelled of his favorite flowers and her hair smelled of holidays in the sun, and he wanted to be deep inside her more than he wanted his next breath.

  “And when I talk about want, I don’t mean something tame,” he said, a growl against the side of her neck, directly into her satiny skin, so he could feel her tremble against his lips. “I mean hunger. Undeniable, unquenchable hunger. Not because you’re drunk. Not because you want to martyr yourself to your great unrequited love. Hunger, Adriana. What do you want? What are you hungry for?”

  “Please...” she whispered, desperation thick in her voice. She was right there on the edge, right where he wanted her. He could feel it. He felt it flood through him, dark and thrilling and scorchingly hot.

  “I don’t think you love him, Adriana,” he told her then, and she let out a small sound of distress. “Not really. I know you’re not hungry for him. Not like this.”

  She trembled. She shook. But she didn’t argue.

  “I asked you a question,” he urged her, his mouth at her jaw. “If it helps, I already know the answer. All you have to do is admit it.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  ADRIANA’S BREATH CAME out like a sigh. A release.

  Like surrender, Pato thought, satisfaction moving through him like another kind of need, dark and demanding, like all the ways he wanted her.

  “I thought it would help your brother’s reputation,” she said almost too softly, her eyes bright with heat. “I really did.”

  He nipped at her jaw, and she shivered.

  “But I never would have suggested—” She broke off, bit her lip in agitation, then tried again. “I mean, I wouldn’t have thought of it if I didn’t—”

  Pato waited, but she only pulled in a ragged breath, then another. She could hardly sit still. She was flushed hot, shining with the same need he felt pulling at him. Coming apart, right there in the chair, and he’d hardly touched her.

  She was going to be the end of him. He knew it.

  He couldn’t wait.

  “Say it,” he ordered her. “If you didn’t...?”

  He felt her give in to it before he saw it, a shift in that tension that tightened the air between them. And then her shoulders lowered, she let out a long breath, and what stormed in him then felt like much, much more than simple victory.

  “If I didn’t want you,” she admitted hoarsely.

  Pato kissed her, hard and long and deep, his fingers spearing into her sleek chignon and sending pins scattering to the floor.

  And she met him, the feel of her mouth beneath his again—at last—like a revelation.

  He couldn’t get enough of her taste. He angled his jaw for a better fit and it got hotter, wilder, and then he thought he might explode when he felt her hands running along his arms, trailing over his chest, making him wish he could remove all the layers of his formal clothes simply by wishing them away.

  He wanted her mindless. Now. He wanted her falling apart in his arms, lost to this passion that might
very well destroy them both. He wanted to claim her.

  Pato broke away from the glory of her mouth and sank to his knees before her, making room for himself between her legs. She made a small, dazed sort of sound. He grinned at her, then simply pulled her hips toward him, pushing her skirt up toward her waist and out of his way as he positioned her at the edge of her seat.

  He ran his palms up her smooth, satiny thighs, grinning wider as she bit back a moan. He sank his hands underneath her, grasping her perfect bottom and ducking lower, arranging her so that her legs fell over his shoulders and hung down his back. Then he tilted her hips toward him.

  “Oh, my God,” she whispered, slumped down in her chair with her skirt around her waist and that delectable flush heating her face, making her dark chocolate eyes melt and shine as they met his.

  She was delicious and shivering and his. All his, at last.

  God help them both.

  “Hold on,” Pato advised her, hardly recognizing his own voice, so stark with desire was it. So focused. “You’ll need it.”

  He lifted her to him, smiling at the pretty scrap of blue lace that covered the sweet heat of her, and then he leaned forward to suck her into his mouth.

  * * *

  The shock of his mouth against the very center of her need took Adriana’s breath, so that the scream she let out sounded only inside her, ricocheting like a bullet against glass and shattering whatever it touched.

  The heat. The fire. The terrible, wonderful ache.

  His wicked, talented mouth, so hot and demanding, pressed against the tiny layer of lace that separated them. His hard shoulders felt massive and the fabric of his jacket rough against the tender skin behind her knees. His clever hands gripped her and held her fast, and his impossibly beautiful face was between her thighs so that all she could see when she looked down was that thick, wild hair of his, sunshine and chocolate and that delicious bit too long, and her own hands fisted in the mass of it as if they’d gone there of their own accord.

  She thought she’d died. She wanted to die. She didn’t know how anyone could take this much pleasure, this much scalding heat, and live through it—