Temporarily His Princess

by Olivia Gates

  Elation blazed in his eyes before he crushed her lips in an assuaging yet distressing kiss, groaning inside her. “Next time we’re here, or on my jet—yes, I have only one—we’re going to do our dueling and eating and bantering in bed. I hope you know what it cost me to not take you there this time.”

  “Because it’s your king and queen’s bed?”

  “Bellissima, I’ll have to refresh your memory that when it comes to taking you, I don’t care where we are.”

  As if she needed her memory refreshed. She’d spent years wishing it erased. He’d once taken her at work, in the park, in his car, everywhere—the only uncharacteristic rule breaking he’d done back then. But…

  “Then why didn’t you?”

  Winding a thick lock of her hair around his hand, he tugged her closer, whispered against her cheek, “Because I want to wait. For the ring. For our wedding night.”

  *

  After that she had no idea what she said or what happened. Agitated all over again at being hit with the reality of what she was doing, she functioned on auto as they landed in what must have been the royal airport and disembarked.

  A Mercedes was awaiting them at the bottom of the stairs. The driver saluted Vincenzo with a deep bow, gave him the key then rushed to another car. Then Vincenzo was driving them out of the airport on a road that ran by the shore.

  She gazed dazedly at the picturesque scenery as the powerful car sped on the smoothest black asphalt road she’d ever been on. She didn’t ask where they were going. Now that she’d given up resisting, she wanted him to surprise her, and she had no doubt he’d keep doing that. This time she’d enjoy it. Having no expectations, knowing the worst was to come, freed her, allowing her to live in the moment.

  For someone who worried every single second she was awake, and most of the moments she slept, too, it was an unknown sensation. Like free fall. And she was loving it more by the second.

  Vincenzo bantered with her nonstop, acting the perfect tour guide, pointing out landmarks and telling her stories about each part of the island. He said he’d take her to Jawara, the capital, and the royal palace, later. For now, he wanted to show her something else.

  Letting the magic of this land with its balmy weather and brilliant skies seep through her, she soaked up his information and consideration. Then coming around a hill, in the distance there was…

  She sat up straight, her heart hammering.

  This…this was his home. His ancestral home.

  She’d researched this place in her greed to find out everything about him. She’d read sonnets about it, written by Moorish poets, sonnets about the princes who inhabited it, and defended and ruled the countryside at its feet. Back when she’d thought she’d meant something to him, she’d ached for the time he’d take her there, as he’d promised.

  Now she knew she meant nothing to him, and he hadn’t promised anything, and yet he’d just taken her there.

  Life was truly incomprehensible.

  Photos had conveyed a complex of buildings overlooking a tranquil sea with gorgeous surrounding nature. But its reality was way more. Layer upon layer of natural and man-made wonders stretched as far as her vision did, drenched in the Mediterranean sun and canopied by its brilliant skies.

  The centerpiece of the vista was a citadel complex that crouched high on a rocky if verdant hill like something out of a fantasy. At its foothills spread a countryside so lush and a town so untouched by modernity, she felt as if they were traveling through time as they approached.

  The complex sprawled on multiple levels over the rugged site, the land around it teeming with wildflowers, orange trees and elms. As they approached, Vincenzo folded back the roof so she could hear the resident mockingbirds filling the afternoon with songs. He told her they were welcoming her.

  Then they were crossing an honest-to-goodness moat, and she did feel she’d crossed into a different era.

  Driving through huge wooden gates, Vincenzo drove around a mosaic-and-marble fountain in a truly expansive cobblestone courtyard, parking before the central tower. He hopped out without opening his door and ran around to scoop her into his arms without opening hers.

  Giggling at his boyish playfulness, she glanced around embarrassedly at the dozens of people coming and going, no doubt the caretakers of his castle, all with their gazes and grins glued on her and Vincenzo.

  He climbed the ancient stone steps with her protesting that she was too heavy all the way. By the time they arrived at a stone terrace at the top, he’d proved she wasn’t, for him. He was barely breathing faster. He’d always been fit. But he must have upped his exercise regimen. She couldn’t wait to test his boosted stamina….

  The moment he put her down on her feet, she rushed across the terrace and came up against the three-foot-high balustrade looking over the incredible vista that sprawled to the horizon. Well-being surged through her in crashing waves, making her stand on tiptoe, arch her back and open her arms wide as if to encompass the beauty around her.

  Vincenzo came up behind her, stopping less than a whisper away, creating a field of screaming sensuality between them, his lips blazing a path of destruction from her temple to the swell of her breasts. By the time he took the same path back up, she was ready to beg for his touch.

  She didn’t have to. He finally pulled her against him, arms crisscrossing beneath breasts that felt swollen and heavy. His murmur thrummed inside her in a path that connected her heart and core, melting both. “Dea divina mia, my divine goddess, now I know what this place lacked in my eyes. Your beauty gracing it. I won’t be able to think of this place again except as a backdrop to showcase and worship you.”

  That was…extravagant. When had he learned to talk like that? With the women who flowed in and out of his bed?

  A fist squeezed her heart dry of beats.

  Steady. She had no right to feel despondent or disillusioned. Vincenzo wasn’t hers. He never had been.

  But the thought still didn’t sit right. Those women had always seemed as if they’d been there to serve his purpose. She couldn’t see him serenading them. So where did the poetry come from? Why was he so free with it? She’d already promised him the pretense and the passion.

  So was he only going all-out to make her feel better about both?

  Yeah. That had to be it.

  But he’d said his passion had always been real. Whatever his reasons for his past cruelty, it didn’t matter. For now, she could have heaven.

  “If you think I add to the scenery that much, I’ll pose for a photo shoot if you ever need to put the place up for sale. I can see the ad with the title ‘Property in Paradise.’” She turned in his arms. “But seriously, now I’ve seen it up close, I’m wondering how you don’t live here most of the time.”

  “Maybe now I will.” His tone remained that tempting burr. But she felt it. An earnestness. A query. One he couldn’t be asking. This was a fake marriage, with a nonexistent future. He wouldn’t be considering her or soliciting her endorsement before he made plans for his own future.

  Ignoring a pang of regret, she pretended she didn’t hear the subtext in his comment. There was probably none, anyway.

  “So, what now?”

  “We start preparing for next week.”

  “What’s next week?

  He pressed her against the balustrade and spanned her rib cage with his large hands, the translucence of his eyes bottomless reflections of the vivid sky. Then he said, “Our wedding.”

  Seven

  “Our wedding?”

  Vincenzo’s heart dipped in his chest at the frown on Glory’s face as she echoed his words.

  Was she angry again? After the magical flight here, when she’d gradually relaxed, seeming to accept their situation and then enjoy being with him, he’d almost forgotten how resistant she’d been. But what if her acquiescence had been a lull, and now she’d come to her senses and would start antagonizing him again? He couldn’t stomach a return to friction, would give anything for
their newly forged harmony to continue. Even if it meant letting her make the decisions from now on.

  She threw her hands in the air. “God, I was determined to stop repeating your words like an incredulous parrot. Then you go and say something that forces me into being one!”

  She had sounded and looked deliciously startled frequently in the past couple of days. Was that all? She was annoyed at herself for parroting his declarations?

  He watched her intently, considering his response so he wouldn’t trigger a relapse into hostilities. “Why is what I just said worthy of incredulous parroting?”

  “When you talk you don’t hear yourself? Or was it one of the other Vincenzos who said our wedding is next week?”

  Her smirk blanked out his mind with the memory of having those sassy lips beneath his, soft and pliant, burning with urgency, spilling moans of pleasure. He needed to devour them again. But he had to settle this first.

  He backed her up against the balustrade, his gaze sweeping her from her piled-up hair to her turquoise stilettos, hunger an ever-expanding tide inside him. “That was the one and only Vincenzo talking. So is a week too long? I can make it sooner. I probably should. We probably wouldn’t survive a week.”

  She picked up her dropping jaw and replaced it with a more bedeviling smirk. “It’s okay, this happens with a newly installed sense of humor. Sometimes you can’t turn it off. Or you’re such a new user, you don’t know how to. Let’s hope you get the hang of it soon.”

  This wasn’t the first time she’d made comments to that effect. Had he been that much of a humorless boor before?

  He guessed so. He’d been too focused on what he’d thought paramount he’d forgotten to lighten up.

  But back then he’d thought his behavior suited her, the driven, dead-serious woman he’d thought her to be. Serious about work and passion. A delightful, challenging wit hadn’t been among the things he’d thought she possessed, what he’d told himself he’d have to live without, with so many qualities to make up for the deficiency. Now he realized being a sourpuss had made her turn her humor off, making him miss knowing this side of her.

  How much more had he missed? Was it possible other things he’d believed about her would turn out to be as totally wrong? How, when he’d had proof of them?

  No. He was leaving this alone. This bomb had already detonated once and destroyed his world around him. He wasn’t lighting its fuse again.

  What mattered now was that she seemed to relish his new lightheartedness. He’d never dreamed they could have anything like the time they’d spent on the flight, filled with not only mounting hunger, but escalating fun, too.

  He wanted more.

  He went after it.

  “You’re right. It’s a joke thinking I can wait a few days. We’ll have the wedding today.”

  It was exhilarating. Teasing her, soaking up her reactions, opening himself wide for her retaliations, every barb targeting his humor triggers.

  She obliged him with another bull’s-eye. “This is worse than anything I feared. That humor program had a virus that scrambled you up. We’ll have to uninstall everything in your brain and reformat you.”

  He pulled her into him, groaning at the electric thrill that arced between their bodies. “I like me all scrambled up like that. So shall I rush the delivery of the catering, minister and guests? I can have everything ready by eight tonight.”

  She arched to look up, pressing her lushness closer to him. He’d never remained that hard, that long. And he loved it.

  “So he first hits his opponents with a ludicrous offer, then, as they gasp in disbelief, he follows up with an insane one, making them grab for the ludicrous lesser evil.”

  “You’re not an opponent.”

  At her raised eyebrow, though it was mocking and not cynical, he felt that nip of regret again. One that made him wish he could erase the past, both distant and recent. What he’d give to restart everything from this point, with them who they were today, with no yesterdays to muddy their enjoyment of each other, and no tomorrows to cast shadows over it.

  He caressed that elegant, dense eyebrow. “Put that down before someone gets hurt. Namely me. At least more than I’m already hurting.” He ground his beyond-pain hardness into her, showing her she should have mercy on him. The eyes that rivaled Castaldini’s skies darkened, her body yielding, shaping itself to his seeking. Her response, as always, heightened his distress, his delight. He groaned with them both. “So you want to postpone the wedding till next week.”

  A choppy laugh shook those globes of perfection against his chest. How he didn’t have them free of their restraints and in his hands and mouth already, he had no idea. “And then he makes it all sound like his opponent’s decision.”

  “‘He’ has no opponents here. He’s just negotiating.”

  “I can sniff out the faintest scent of negotiating a mile away. I can’t even detect a trace now.”

  “It must be because I learned the undetectable negotiation method at the hands of a mistress of the art.”

  “Seems I didn’t teach you but transferred it to you. That skill has been nowhere to be found when I most needed it.”

  He tugged a loose glossy lock from the satin hair that shone in his homeland’s sun like burnished copper. “But ‘your’ decision to postpone is well-advised. Next week’s forecast says it will be a perfect day for a wedding.”

  She curled that dewy, edible lip. “Every day is a perfect day on Castaldini. But…” Something like panic spurted in her eyes. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” At his nod, she grabbed his lapels. “And what do you mean wedding?”

  It was his eyebrows’ turn to shoot up. “The word has more meanings than the one agreed on since the dawn of humanity?”

  She shook her head, something frantic creeping into her eyes. “I thought we were just going to get a ring, sign a marriage certificate and report to the king so he can officially send you to your UN post.”

  It pained him that she expected only a cold ritual to befit the barren deal he’d proposed forty-eight hours ago.

  Sorrow filled him for what should have been with this woman his heart and body had chosen, but wasn’t and wouldn’t be.

  Suddenly, all levity drained from him, loosening his embrace.

  Unable to remain in such intimate contact with her anymore, he stepped away. And saw it. A quiver of insecurity. A crack in the veneer of confidence and cheek.

  He should have felt that was the least she deserved. To suffer some uncertainty and trepidation. But he didn’t. It hurt him to see her looking so…bereft. He hated to see vulnerability in those indomitable eyes.

  He forced himself to smile at her, to reach a soothing hand to her cheek. “If you didn’t think I was talking about a wedding with all the trimmings, why were you surprised at all when I said next week? Or today? The ceremony you describe could have been concluded in a couple of hours.”

  “Forgive me if I’m boggled by the idea of any brand of ceremony. I was never married before, you know, for real or for pretense, and a date, let alone one so soon, makes me feel this is actually happening.”

  He watched her lips shaking, attempting a smile of bravado and failing, and could no longer deny it.

  His gut was having a fit, sanctioning no evidence but what it sensed. It insisted she wasn’t the hardened manipulator he’d once thought her. That person would have grabbed his deal, would now be working his evident eagerness to milk more from him. But she wasn’t. She was really shaken.

  And for the first time, he put himself in her place. Taken away from everything she knew to a strange land, her choice stripped away, her family not only unable to come to her aid, but the reason for her predicament. Her only company and precarious support was the man behind it all. And he kept blowing hot and cold, to boot. She must be feeling lost, helpless. And to a woman who’d been mistress of her own fate for so long, that must be the scariest thing she’d ever experienced.

  His gut finally communica
ted with his brain, reaching a decision.

  If he took out the terrible blot of her betrayal from their lives, he could connect the woman he’d once loved with this woman he laughed so easily with, the woman he now wanted more than he’d known he was capable of wanting. And he didn’t want that woman to be under any form of compulsion.

  Taking another step back, severing any intimacy, he exhaled. “It doesn’t have to happen.”

  More uncertainty flooded her eyes. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean you don’t have to marry me.”

  *

  Glory wondered if the sun had overheated her brain.

  That would explain feeling and hearing things that couldn’t be real. When Vincenzo had stepped away, she’d felt as if she was teetering on a cliff without his support. Then, because of the distance that had come over him, she’d felt she’d fallen into the abyss of the past, discarded all over again.

  That remoteness couldn’t have been real. Not after all his pursuit and passion. And he couldn’t have just said…

  “I don’t have to marry you?” There she went, parroting him again. She swallowed the knot of anxiety that rose in her throat. “Just a minute ago you wanted me to marry you in seven hours or seven days, and now… Just what are you playing at?”

  He stuffed his hands into his pockets. “Nothing. No more games, Glory. But don’t worry. I’ll still help your family. Of course, they can never again as much as forge a note to your nephew’s kindergarten or take a cent from a tip dish.”

  Her heart slowed, as if fearing every beat would make this real. “Y-you mean that?” His slow nod, his solemn gaze cleaved into her. “Wh-what will you do about King Ferruccio’s decree?”

  “I don’t know. I’m thinking on the fly here. Maybe I’ll ask someone else.”

  Her heart boomed now, each beat almost tearing it apart.

  She couldn’t bear thinking he’d marry someone else, even in pretense. “Why?”

  His shrug was heavy; his spectacular face gripped in the brooding she hadn’t seen there since she’d met him again. “It just suddenly hit me, how wrong this whole thing is.”