A Royal Without Rules

by Caitlin Crews

  * * *

  Adriana walked through her family’s villa slowly, taking the time to really look around her as she did. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d paid attention to all the familiar things in front of her, which she’d somehow stopped seeing over the years. The graceful rooms, the antique furniture. The art still on the walls and the places where art had been removed and sold in the leaner years. All the things that made up a Kitzinian pedigree, a certain station in Kitzinian society, even a tarnished one. Collections of china in carved wood cabinets. Beautiful rugs, hand-tiled floors, mosaics lining the fountain in the center courtyard. Coats of arms, priceless statues and pieces of pottery handed down across centuries.

  And in the small parlor in the farthest corner of the villa, the one no one talked about and never visited by accident, were the trio of portraits. The faces of the women whose choices hundreds of years ago had sentenced Adriana to infamy in the present.

  “What they call you reflects far more on them than on you,” Pato had said. She couldn’t get his words out of her head.

  Her father might hate their family history, Adriana thought as she stood in the musty room, but he still felt called upon to preserve it. And so the portraits hung on the walls of the villa instead of being packed away in the attic or burned in the back gardens. This was his duty to the Righetti legacy, however shameful he found it.

  Adriana pulled open the heavy drapes to let the light in, and then stared up at the three great temptresses of old Kitzinia sitting there so prettily in their frames. The Righetti whores, lined up in chronological order. The harlots Carolina, Maria and Francesca.

  And, of course, Adriana herself, though she, like her great-aunt Sandrine, could not expect to be rendered in oils and hung in museums. Times had changed.

  She couldn’t help the small laugh that escaped her. She didn’t feel much like a notorious whore in the comfortable jeans and soft magenta sweater she’d tugged on when she’d arrived home from the palace. She studied the faces of the women before her, seeing herself in the shape of Carolina’s brow, the color of Maria’s hair and the curve of Francesca’s lips. None of them looked particularly like slinking sexpots, either. They simply looked like young women somewhere around Adriana’s age, all smiling, all bright-eyed, all pretty.

  Don’t lock yourself in their prison, Pato had said.

  Maybe, Adriana thought, staring at the portraits but remembering the way he’d held her when she cried, they’d simply fallen in love.

  She sat down heavily in the nearest chair, her own heart beating hard in her chest as if she’d run up a hill. How had that possibility never occurred to her before? Why had she always believed that she was descended from a line of women who were, for all intents and purposes, callous prostitutes?

  Maybe they were in love.

  It rang in her like a revolution.

  The Righetti family had always kept their own copies of these portraits, and Adriana remembered being herded into this room by her grandmother after church on Sundays, as her aunts had been before her. Her grandmother had droned on about purity and morals, while Adriana had stood there feeling increasingly cross that her brothers were allowed to entertain themselves elsewhere.

  The lecture had been repeated with increasing frequency throughout her adolescence, which was when Adriana had discovered the truth about her grandfather’s younger sister, the lovely old woman with sparkling eyes who lived in France and whose name was only ever spoken in distaste. And Adriana had internalized every word of her grandmother’s lecture. She’d accepted the fact that she was dirty, tainted. Ruined before she began. She’d never questioned a word of it.

  “Don’t use their weapons on yourself,” Pato had said so fiercely, as if it had angered him to hear her talk about herself like that. As if the casual way she hated herself, her easy acceptance of the idea that she was the dirty thing others called her, was what was upsetting.

  Not her. Not her name. Not what had happened between them.

  And she realized then, as she sat in the presence of the women who’d supposedly ruined her, that she couldn’t do it anymore. That well of ugliness she’d spent her whole life drawing from simply wasn’t there in her gut the way it always had been. In its place, she thought in some astonishment, was that defiance she’d called on at the palace—that strength she hadn’t known she had.

  She looked at the Righetti women, at their mysterious smiles and the sparkle in their eyes, and she knew something else, too. These women hadn’t been ashamed. They hadn’t torn themselves apart in penance for their sins. Adriana knew for a fact that each and every one of them had died of old age, in their beds. These were not meek, placating women. They’d been the favorite lovers of kings and princes in times when that meant they’d wielded great power and political influence. They’d made their own rules.

  And so, by God, would Adriana.

  At some point she realized that tears were flowing down her cheeks. Was this joy? Heartbreak? Despair? How could she keep track of the wild emotions that clamored inside of her? Adriana knew only that she loved him. She loved Pato, and she wasn’t ashamed of it, either. She didn’t know how she would tell her father what had happened, or what she’d do next, but she couldn’t hate herself for this.

  She wouldn’t hate herself for this.

  Adriana had thought for a moment that she might have a heart attack when she’d turned to see Lenz standing there in Pato’s doorway, when she’d seen that shocked look on his face. But seeing him there, standing next to his brother, had made everything very clear. “I don’t think you love him,” Pato had told her, and he was right. Lenz had been kind to her, no matter what his ulterior motives, and she’d been so desperate to prove to him that she wasn’t that kind of Righetti. She’d mistaken her gratitude for something more.

  But Pato had changed her, she realized now, gazing at that trinity of women before her as she wiped at her cheeks. What had happened on that plane had altered everything. He had wanted her, and he’d encouraged her to want him back. He hadn’t used her; if anything, she’d used him. Twice. And the things he’d said to her had knocked down walls inside her she’d never known were there.

  It didn’t matter what came after that. It didn’t matter if he regretted opening up to her the way he had. It didn’t matter that he’d rejected her today, or that it had hurt her terribly.

  It didn’t even matter if she never saw him again, though that possibility broke her heart. He’d given her a gift she could never repay, she understood now. She wasn’t sure she ever would have got there on her own. He’d showed her how.

  He’d set her free.

  * * *

  Later, Adriana sat on the wide sill at her open bedroom windows, looking out at the stretch of the kingdom below her, gleaming in the crisp afternoon light.

  She watched the ferries cutting through the crystal blue lake toward the cities on the far shore, racing the pleasure boats with their white sails taut in the breeze. She let her eyes trace the graceful lines of the palace, the gentle bow of the causeway that connected it to the mainland, and the towering Alps all around. There was nothing keeping her here besides sentiment. She could go back to university, collect another degree. She could travel abroad the way she’d always meant to do. There was no reason she had to stay here. None at all.

  And even so, even now, she found it hard to imagine leaving.

  Adriana heard the motorcycle long before she saw it. It was brash and loud, shouting its way through the streets of the old city. Louder and louder it roared, until it whipped around the corner at the end of the lane, charged down her street in an obnoxious cloud of noise and then stopped directly below her windows.

  Her heart slammed against her chest.

  Pato tilted back his head and glanced up, pulling off his helmet and piercing her with a long, hard look. Adriana couldn’t see
m to move. His expression was serious, unsmiling, and he paused there, one foot on the ground, handling the sleek black machine beneath him with an easy, unconscious grace.

  And his eyes gleamed gold for all that they were grave.

  She didn’t know how long they stared at each other. The whole city could have gathered around, jeering and pointing, and it wouldn’t have registered. There was only Pato. Here, beneath her window. Here.

  And then he smiled, and she felt it everywhere, like that hungry mouth of his, demanding and hot. So hot. She felt herself flush red.

  Pato crooked his finger at her, arrogant and sure. He looked anything but careless. He was impossibly powerful, decidedly male, every inch of him a prince though he wore jeans and a black T-shirt that made love to his lean and chiseled body, and held that lethally beautiful machine between his legs.

  Adriana scowled at him, because she wanted to melt, and saw his eyes heat in response. He crooked his finger again, with even more lazy command this time, and she shook her head.

  “You dismissed me for a reason, or so I assume,” she said, in a reasonable attempt at her usual brisk tone, as if she didn’t care that he was here. That he’d come when she’d thought she’d never see him again. “You can’t change your mind back and forth on a whim and expect—”

  “Adriana,” he said, and the sound of her name in his mouth like that, so quiet and so serious in the narrow, cobblestone street, made her fall silent. Pato didn’t smile or laugh; he didn’t show her that grin of his, though his golden gaze was bright. “Come here.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ADRIANA STEPPED INTO the street, pulling the door to the villa shut behind her, and felt Pato’s eyes on her long before she turned to face him. His golden gaze seared into her, brighter than the afternoon around them, making her heart pick up speed.

  “That machine is much too loud,” she told him, the stern tone surprising her even as she used it. His mouth curved in the corner. “It’s noise pollution and you are a—”

  “Get on the bike.” His voice was as commanding as that crook of his finger had been, and that gleam in his gaze had gone hotter, more challenging.

  “I no longer serve you, Your Royal Highness,” she said primly, though her heart was beating too fast, too hard, and she could see the way he studied the color on her cheeks in that lazy way of his. “At your pleasure or otherwise.”

  He still didn’t smile, though the gleam in his eyes suggested it, and then he reached out and hooked his fingers in the waistband of her jeans. Her skin ignited at his touch, making her forget what she’d been saying. The burn of it went deep when he tugged her close, so close her head fell back and all she could see was him.

  “I was cruel,” Pato said, his voice dark. “Chastising me won’t change that, though perhaps it makes you feel better. But you can admit you want me anyway.” His gaze was steady. He wasn’t toying with her. He knew. “There’s no shame in it.”

  Adriana went white, then red. Shock. Embarrassment. Fury.

  “I don’t know what makes you think—”

  Her breath left her in a rush when his fingers moved gently over the soft skin just beneath her waistband, teasing her. Tormenting her. Making whatever she was about to say a lie.

  “Adriana.” His voice was pure velvet now, wrapped around steel. “Get on the bike.” He held out a helmet.

  And she’d known she would, since the moment he’d appeared outside her windows, hadn’t she? Why had she pretended otherwise? It wasn’t as if Pato was fooled. It wasn’t as if she’d fooled herself.

  But there was admitting she loved him in the privacy of her own head, and then there was proving it beyond any doubt—announcing it out loud. And she was fairly certain that climbing up on the back of that motorcycle mere hours after he’d ripped out her heart, sacked her and undone three years of attempted rehabilitation to the Righetti reputation by kissing her like that in front of his brother constituted shouting it at the top of her lungs. To him.

  She either loved him or she was a masochistic fool, Adriana thought then. Perhaps both.

  But she donned the helmet and got on the bike.

  Pato headed away from the palace, out of the city and up into the foothills.

  Adriana clung to his back, luxuriating in the feel of all his corded, lean strength so close to her and the wind rushing around them. She was pressed into him, her arms wrapped around his waist, her breasts against his back, her legs on either side of his astride the motorcycle he operated as if it was an extension of himself. She felt surrounded by him, connected to him, a part of him.

  It was either heaven or hell, she wasn’t sure which. But she wanted it to never end.

  Eventually he turned off the main roads and followed smaller, less-traveled ones around the far side of the lake, winding his way to a small cottage nestled in a hollow, looking out over a secluded cove. Adriana climbed off the motorcycle when he brought it to a roaring stop, her legs shaky beneath her. Her body felt too big suddenly, as if she’d outgrown her skin. As if it hurt to sever herself from him. She pulled off her helmet and handed it over, feeling somewhat shy. Overwhelmed.

  Pato’s gaze met hers as he removed his helmet. His mouth moved into a small curve, and she flushed. Again. She felt restless. Hectic and hot, and the way he looked at her didn’t help. There might not be shame in wanting him, but there was too much need, and all of it too obvious now that she’d admitted it. Now that she’d stopped pretending.

  And all she could seem to do was ache.

  Adriana turned to look at the water instead, breathing in the peaceful, fragrant air. Pine and sun, summer flowers and the deep, quiet woods. It was still in ways the city never was. She watched the water lap gently at the rocks at the bottom of the sloping yard, blue and clear and pretty.

  It made the odd tension inside her ease. Shift. Turn into something else entirely. They could have been worlds away from the city, the palace, she thought. They could have been anyone, anywhere. Anonymous and free.

  “What is this place?” she asked, her voice sounding strange in the quiet, odd in her own mouth.

  “It’s my best kept secret.” Pato stepped away from the motorcycle and shoved his thick hair back from his forehead. The movement made his T-shirt pull tight over that marvelous torso of his, and Adriana’s mouth went dry. The gleam in his gaze when she met it again told her he could tell. “I come here to be alone.”

  She couldn’t let herself think about that too closely. She wanted it to mean much, much more than it did.

  “More secrets,” she murmured instead. His gaze seemed to burn hotter the longer he looked at her, more intense. She tried to shake off the strangeness, the shakiness. All that want and need, and no barriers to contain them. It made her feel off-kilter. Vulnerable. Alive. “Private stories, secret cottages. Who knew the overexposed prince had so much to hide? Or that you were capable of hiding anything in the first place?”

  He moved closer, and she felt that sizzling current leap between them and then work its way through her, lighting her up the way it always did. The way he always did. Fire upon fire, a chain reaction, sweeping over her unchecked until she was molten all the way through. As needy and as desperate as if he was already touching her. As if this morning had never happened.

  But it had, and Adriana understood, even through the sweet ache of all that fire between them, that it would again. He wasn’t hers. He could never be hers.

  And yet she’d come with him, anyway. She’d barely hesitated.

  Maybe, like the Righetti women who came before her, it was time she loved what she had for as long as she had it, instead of mourning what she might have had, were she braver. Pato had told her this was passion, this thing that flared between them. She wanted to explore it. She wanted to know what he meant. She wanted him.

  It didn’t feel like su
rrender to admit that. There was no shame. It felt like a hard-won victory.

  “You weren’t what I expected,” Pato said, as if the words were pulled from him, urgent and dark. Serious. “I’ve been hiding in plain sight for fifteen years and no one’s ever seen me, any hint of me at all, until—”

  Adriana turned to him and put her hand over his mouth, that beautiful mouth of his she’d felt devouring her very core, wicked and insinuating and warm to the touch. She felt his lips against her palm now, and the familiar punch of heat that roared through her and connected with that pulsing fire low in her belly.

  She didn’t want his secrets. Secrets came at too high a price, and she knew she’d pay a hefty one already. She wanted him. She wanted to throw herself in this fire at last, and who cared what burned?

  “Don’t,” she whispered, and smiled at him. His gaze was dark on hers for a breath, and another. Then his lips curved against her palm.

  Adriana pushed up on her toes, pressed her body flush against his at last, and took his mouth with hers. Claiming him here, now. While she could.

  Pato met her instantly. He buried one hand in her hair and hauled her against him, and this time she was ready for him. She wrapped herself around him, shameless and abandoned, and let herself glory in it. He let out a sound that was halfway between a laugh and a curse, and then he was sweeping her up into his arms and heading toward the cottage.

  “But—” she protested, though she went quiet when he looked down at her, his golden eyes hot and wild, making her shiver in anticipation as she hooked an arm around his hard shoulders.

  “Rule number six,” he growled, leaning down to nip at her nose. “Don’t ever put on a sex show in the yard. Unless it’s planned.” He shifted her against his chest, holding her with one arm while he worked the door of the cottage with his free hand. “And if it’s planned, there should be paparazzi at the ready, not horrified tourists out for a bit of pleasure boating.”

  Adriana frowned at him as he ducked into the cottage, barely taking notice of the place as he kicked the door closed behind him and carried her inside. She saw high beams and white walls, cozy furniture in bold colors. But she was far more interested in what he’d said.