My Royal Temptation

by Riley Pine

  She must have run the whole way and not bothered using the restaurant’s elevator. Her cheeks are flushed to a rosy red, and her chest rises and falls, heaving her breasts against the thin cotton of her T-shirt. The sight captivates me more than all the silk in Spain.

  “The countess left in a rage,” Kate continues. “She threatened to kick X in the parking lot if he didn’t get out of her way. I’m pretty sure that counts as a scene.”

  I chuckle at the thought of anyone accosting X. I’ve seen him pin a paparazzo against a wall with one hand while dismantling his camera with the other, the action as simple as flossing his teeth. I have no idea who the hell X was before he came to the palace, but one thing is for certain: he’s survived worse than the Countess of Wynberry.

  “We weren’t a good fit,” I say lazily, sitting back in my chair. “And because no photographers are allowed inside—”

  Kate lets out a breathy laugh. “Oh, there were photographers outside. I can attest to that.” She shakes her head. “I have to admit my surprise... On paper you and the countess were a perfect match.” Her tone is disappointed even as the relief is plain on her face. Strange how I am in tune to the subtleties of her emotion when we’ve barely been acquainted for the span of a week.

  “She had a hard time hearing key truths,” I say.

  “Truths?” She crosses her arms and lowers her chin. A wayward auburn strand falls across her forehead. “Nikolai, what on earth did you tell that poor woman?”

  Poor woman? Perhaps that was the perfect term for her. While the countess was rich in material wealth, she lacked human qualities like warmth, companionship and kindness, characteristics I can usually dismiss. But for some reason, tonight I cannot.

  “Take a seat, Kate.” I gesture to the chair opposite me. “I’ll tell you exactly what I said if you allow me to feed you bite by bite.”

  Kate

  I cross my arms. “I’m quite stuffed,” I say, not daring to glance at the dessert on the table. Even out of the corner of my eye it looks heavenly. “Beatrice fed me well with yet another back-seat feast, and I will under no circumstances let you be seen in public feeding a palace employee.” Never mind that we are in a private room.

  He reaches over and takes a bite of the rich-looking confection, his tongue slowly stroking the spoon, and I swallow. Then I narrow my eyes at him.

  “Oh, fine,” he says. “Have it your way. I simply told her what we both already know, that whoever my bride will be, it will be nothing more than a business arrangement. There will be no physical obligation other than her providing me with my own heir—however long that may take. And I will be free to satisfy my needs with whomever suits my fancy. Oh, I may have also mentioned that she will under no circumstances have any say in how I rule this country.”

  I throw my hand over my mouth, but it doesn’t stifle my gasp. “Nikolai!” I shout, not caring that his private room is not exactly soundproof.

  He shrugs. “Oh, come now,” he says. “I explained she’d want for nothing—that she’d be free to dally with anyone she pleased, so long as she was discreet.”

  I clench my teeth. “I know you don’t plan on taking your marriage seriously, but no woman deserves to be spoken to like that. You could have been more—more delicate, and you know it. But you care nothing for anyone other than yourself, so you did it the Nikolai way. I should have known this job would be impossible. That you’d be impossible. You didn’t want me here to help. Did you? You wanted me here so I’d have a front-row seat to the Nikolai Lorentz show.”

  My cheeks burn as I bunch my fists at my sides. One minute I’m taken aback by how beautiful he is—how he can level me with his gaze. The next I am reminded all too clearly of who he is. He is my prince—and soon, my king. He has the power to behave as he does, and I am nothing more than a subject.

  I push back my chair. “I’ll call for a taxi,” I say, trying to keep my voice even. Anger will get me nowhere. It won’t get the countess the respect he should have paid her, and it certainly won’t earn any for me. He owes me nothing.

  He lets me get as far as the door before he speaks.

  “Kate,” he says, all pretense gone from his voice. “Wait.” Then I hear him let out a breath. “Please.”

  I turn to face him, and he’s standing, too. But I don’t dare move any closer. Even across the table he feels too near now. Because if there’s one word I never expected to hear directed at me from him, it is that last one. Please.

  “What?” I ask, the fight draining from me as he holds me with his steely, intent stare.

  He runs a hand through his perfectly styled hair, loosening it so he looks more as he did on the bridge—or after he’d dived into the river to save me.

  “You’re right,” he says. “About most of it, but you’re missing one important detail.”

  I cross my arms and raise my brows but say nothing.

  “Of course I didn’t need any help,” he says, palms resting on his chair. “I care nothing for my reputation. I leave that to my father, my stepmother, to all those paid to give a fuck. I suppose I’ll have to clean up my act a bit once I’m king, though.”

  He flashes that irresistible grin, but I don’t let myself fall prey to it, not this time.

  “I know you don’t care what others think of you,” I say. “But you put my reputation on the line tonight, too, Your Highness.” He winces, and the sight is something so wholly unexpected, my heart tugs involuntarily. “You may have nothing to lose, but I do. My sister does. Her business supports our family. We have responsibilities. This whole marriage thing that you see as a joke is how we put a roof over our heads. It’s how we—”

  He steps around from the chair and nearer to where I stand, the movement stealing the words from my mouth. I suck in a breath as he takes a step closer and then hold it as he rests a palm on my cheek.

  “I’m an ass,” he says, and I nod. “One royal prick,” he adds, and I don’t disagree. “Perhaps I could have been more civil to the countess. But where I truly fucked up was that I wasn’t thinking of how this would affect you.”

  I clear my throat. “Wh-what important detail?” I stammer. His brows pull together. “Before, you said I was missing one important detail.” I can smell the sweet scotch in the warmth of his breath. I bite my lip to keep from reacting.

  He rests his forehead against mine, the gesture far too intimate, and my breath hitches.

  “I asked you to come tonight, Kate, because in the span of six days, I seem to have gone from wanting nothing to do with you and what you’ve been hired for to not wanting you out of my sight.”

  He braces a palm against the door behind me, and I take a step back so I’m flush against it.

  “Nikolai,” I whisper. “We can’t.” My insistence is different than the other day at the bridge. I could take his teasing—could even pretend that we might continue our encounters and leave it at just sex. But now? What he is suggesting now is beyond possibility.

  “What if there was a way?” he asks, his lips dangerously close to my own. “What if I could make you truly mine?”

  My throat tightens at the thought. “But I was hired to—”

  “I know,” he says. “And I will continue to see the women with whom you match me. I will even be civil. But I make you this promise. I’ll marry none of them.”

  As much as the idea of him touching another woman, let alone marrying one, already hurts in a way it should not be able to, I need him to do it because my family depends on it. Irony, you’re a cruel bitch.

  “When do you need to be married by?” I’m playing with him because I already know. Maybe if I smile the pain will ebb. One can always hope.

  “My twenty-ninth birthday.”

  “Which is...” As if the heir’s birthday isn’t a national holiday.

  His lids narrow as he tries to figure out what game I’m playing.
“Ninety days from now.”

  I close my eyes and take in a long breath. Then I press my palm to his chest. “I’ll make you a wager.”

  He laughs softly. “Go on.”

  “I’ll see you married by your birthday,” I say, my fingers already itching to grab at his tie.

  He surprises me with a soft kiss before he answers. “I look forward to disappointing you.”

  I grip his tie and pull him as close as he can get. “And what’s more, I promise you will be happy with the woman.” After all, I know exactly what His Highness likes. Who better to find him not just a queen but happiness as well?

  I swallow the pang of regret, the one that has me wishing for what cannot be. I do not want for him a life of misery, but I cannot let my own family fall into ruin. I will succeed. For both of us.

  “You’d have to be one hell of a matchmaker, sweetheart,” he says.

  “Trust me.” I fight to keep the tremor from my voice. “I’m the best.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Nikolai

  IT ISN’T UNTIL nightfall that I realize that Kate never laid out the terms for our wager. I sit at my baby grand piano, my fingers flying over the keys, weaving a complex, sensual sound. Don’t believe classical music can be sexy? Listen to Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde before dismissing me. Harmony and dissonance. Brutal discord only to be thwarted by soaring passion. Music pours through me as I toy over the many ways I can extract payment from the lovely Miss Winter. Such an interesting paradox that her hair holds hints of flame even as her name promises coldness. She is both fire and ice.

  I picture her lips sheathing my cock, taking me down to the root on the banks of the river. There had been a promise in her eyes, a promise that she’d be mine, if I reached out and made a claim. And so I will—at least physically, but the pleasure of the flesh is as much as I can offer. And pleasure I shall give her.

  If only she had royal blood...then...perhaps she could make me overcome my vow.

  “Who is the lucky lady?” a deep voice says behind me, and I strike a wrong key.

  Damn it.

  I turn around, ready to bite the head off whoever dares to venture into my inner sanctum, and find my brother Benedict regarding me with an arched brow.

  We look so much alike save for the eye color and the goodness that emanates from him just as something wicked brews inside me. I am darkness and shadow. He is golden light. I hear the whispers. I know those that think him a bastard—Benedict himself included. I pay those words little heed. Full brother or half, he is my best and only true friend.

  “Welcome home, Bastard,” I say. It’s a joke between us. We wear our vulnerabilities like armor. It’s the way we survive as the lords of the land, all eyes on us.

  “That was Wagner, no?” He cocks his head. “You only play that when a woman has you tied in knots.”

  His memory is keen.

  “Dear brother, don’t you know? If there is a woman and knots to consider, I am the one doing the tying. Apologies if I offend your holy sensibilities.” I eye Benedict’s simple clerical garb. My brother is a seminarian, a year away from taking his holy vows and entering the priesthood, much to the eternal pride of our father. When the idea of his virginity is not causing me nightmares, the idea is amusing in the extreme. Benedict is one of the most sought-after men in Europe, and he chooses to marry the church.

  I hope God keeps his bed warm.

  “What good is the spare to my heir if he is celibate?” Father likes to roar after a drink too many. While he speaks in jest, there is a glimmer of truth.

  Benedict takes it all in stride. All he wants to do is please the king—to prove himself worthy of his lineage no matter what the rumors say. When Benedict declared his life belonged to the church, Father was the first to commend him.

  How many times have I wondered if a woman could ever tempt him from his path? But he assures me that his destiny is fixed. That the pleasures of the flesh pale in comparison to the rhapsody of the soul.

  I have to say, burying my face between Kate’s thighs takes me to the gates of heaven. Imagine what burying my cock in her would do.

  “I came to bid you good-night and let you know that I’ll be taking up residence in the south tower for the foreseeable future.”

  Benedict long ago laid a claim to the ancient keep on the far northern border of the palace grounds. He prefers its austere environment for prayer and solitude.

  “What happened to the Vatican?” I ask him. “Thought you were off to Italy for good.”

  He laughs softly. “The Vatican City is its own country,” he reminds me. “As you should have learned when studying geography.”

  “Ah, didn’t Mrs. Everdeen tutor us on that subject?”

  He inclines his head.

  “Well, I was too busy studying Mrs. Everdeen in other ways.” I smirk. “She had this trick she could do with her tongue that—”

  “You are incorrigible, brother,” Benedict says. “And yet it is bloody good to see you.”

  I cross the room and enfold him in a warm bear hug, slapping him on the back. “You too.”

  “I hear you are to be wed. Is it your bride who has you playing Wagner?”

  I shake my head. “The matchmaker.” The words are out before I can stop them.

  Damn Benedict. His kind eyes make a sinner like me yearn to confess.

  He nods thoughtfully. “Sounds like a dilemma.”

  A flicker of hope lights in me. “You’re the scholar in the family.”

  “Between you and Damien, it wasn’t hard to do.”

  Benedict is also the only one not afraid to acknowledge our younger brother’s existence in my presence.

  I ignore it this once. “If there’s a loophole to the Royal Marriage Decree, a way for me to make my own damned decisions without losing the kingdom, I need you to find it. I am determined not to wed. You know this.”

  He appears thoughtful. “Such an action will displease our father.”

  “Yes.” And by extension, that will displease my too-good brother. “And Adele,” I add. My lips curl into a grin as I know this point will make Benedict my ally.

  He brightens at that thought. He and Adele have no love lost. That witch is the only person to ever make my saintly brother lose his temper.

  “Very well,” he says, a muscle twitching in his jaw at the mention of our stepmother. “I’ll look into it.”

  “You are truly a glorious human. You’ll be canonized yet.”

  He grins at that, but his normally clear green eyes remain dark.

  “What’s the reason you are back, brother?” My light tone doesn’t mask the hint of probing seriousness. “You haven’t said.”

  His lips tilt in a smile that only I ever get to see, one that isn’t all that angelic. “It appears the Lord’s wish is to help prevent your sacrament of marriage.” He clicks his heels and disappears out the door.

  It takes me a moment to realize that he hasn’t answered my question at all.

  Kate

  What the hell was I thinking, placing a wager against someone as strong-willed as Nikolai Lorentz? If there’s anything a man like him thrives on, it’s the game, and I’ve just upped the stakes of the one he’d been playing long before I came into the picture—thinking I will get him to play by his own kingdom’s rules.

  I pace the length of the conference room, the same one where I first met the prince two weeks ago, and the same one where, afterward, the king and queen called me to a private meeting without their son.

  Shit.

  The door opens, and I freeze midpace only to find Beatrice and another member of the kitchen staff with a silver cart laden with pastries, finger sandwiches and a sterling teapot. Each woman offers me a quick nod as they begin depositing the refreshments on the table.

  “Will there be more than the king
and queen joining me in here?” I ask nervously, and Beatrice shakes her head.

  “No, Miss. These are Queen Adele’s favorites. The king orders Her Majesty’s most requested finger foods when she’s in—” The other woman flashes Beatrice a look, but Beatrice waves her off and crosses over to where I stand. “It’s really not my place, Miss, but I think you should know today is the anniversary of Miss Victoria’s passing.”

  I swallow, and my eyes widen. I am to meet with the queen on the anniversary of her daughter’s death—the daughter who was betrothed to Nikolai.

  The date hadn’t registered with me. Of course I knew of Nikolai and Victoria’s relationship. The entire continent did. But it had been years since the car crash. It wasn’t the type of thing that made news anymore. Nikolai saw to that—sees to that every moment he finds himself in the spotlight. Unless the king has any diplomatic dealings that call for broadcast coverage, Nikolai is the family’s media darling.

  Why, then? Why have my sovereign rulers called me here today, of all days, for a mere check-in on my list of possible brides for the prince?

  A throat clears, and Beatrice and I both look up to see the other kitchen servant nodding toward the entrance of the room where Queen Adele stands in the double doorway, flanked by two guards.

  She wears an exquisite black dress, long sleeved with a square neckline, the bodice hugging her womanly curves. I can see why King Nikolai was taken with her so soon after Queen Cordelia’s death. The woman is a sight to behold, her golden hair in perfect pin curls framing her face, a ruby-studded tiara atop her head. She is elegance and grace, but there is ice in her emerald stare, and I can’t help the shiver that makes my hair stand on end.

  “That will be all, everyone,” she says, and the two guards, along with Beatrice and her assistant, leave the room, pulling the doors closed behind them.

  I bow my head and curtsy as she walks toward the head of the table, and I wait for her to sit. I’m not sure where to seat myself, so like an idiot I ask, “May I pour you some tea, Your Highness?”

  “Do sit, Miss Winter,” she says, her voice laced with amusement when I expect to hear the remnants of grief. Surely she’s come from visiting her daughter’s grave. Or perhaps she will be on her way after our meeting.