Bride by Royal Decree

by Caitlin Crews

  As a small boy, Reza had wanted nothing more than to come in here. Now he viewed it as a monument to a past he had best start paying better attention to before he repeated it.

  He hardly noticed when his aide left him to his thoughts.

  The fact that he’d located the lost Santa Domini princess should have made him happier. He understood this. He’d not only found her, he’d rescued her from a life that was so far beneath her it astounded him. And more, he’d brought her here to this island to teach her not only how to step back into the life she’d been stolen from, but how to operate as his queen.

  After all this time, he’d found his queen. The girl he’d been betrothed to when he was all of ten years old. The woman who represented a whole future he’d lost when that car had crashed in Montenegro when he was eighteen.

  He’d mourned her—and the loss of the life they’d been meant to build together—for longer than he cared to admit.

  But the trouble was, he wanted her. Want had never entered into it before, because it was irrelevant. Because he was not his damned father. His kingdom was what mattered. The promises their families had made and the contracts they’d signed were all that had mattered. He’d come of age expecting a queen who would take after his own mother and fade into the background, perfectly pedigreed and unquestionably correct, once she’d done her duty and provided him with an heir.

  The trouble with Maggy was that all he could think about was taking her to his bed, and duty had nothing to do with it.

  Which meant that for the first time in as long as he could remember, he wasn’t doing his.

  “What if I’m not a good king?” he’d dared to ask his parents on one of their visits here in a mild autumn. He’d still been so young. He hadn’t understood the fierce chill between his mother and father as they’d all walked together. It was all he’d known. They’d strolled down the beach while sweet winds blew in from Venice to the west and off the Gulf of Trieste to the north.

  “You will be,” his father had told him, with that regal certainty in his deep voice that had straightened Reza’s spine. His father had still been so much taller than Reza then, and Reza had been more than a little in awe of him. “Argos men have held the kingdom forever. You will do the same.”

  He had smiled when he’d looked down at Reza then, an unusual show of the emotion he usually saved for his extramarital relationship, or so the pictures Reza had been forced to destroy after his death suggested.

  The queen had not smiled. Her cold eyes had seemed to burn. “You will have no choice.”

  Reza had never forgotten that.

  Because having no choice but to put the kingdom first meant everything else fell into line behind it. Life was simple, in its way, and his father’s terrible example had helped make it so. Reza was not burdened with the personal travails that took down so many other men in his position. He had no vices, because they would harm him and thus the kingdom. He had never felt trapped by the security details forever surrounding him and cutting him off from the rest of the world, he’d felt safe. No one touched him. No one had influence over him. He belonged only to his people and the two alpine valleys that had been there in his blood at birth.

  And he was at an extreme disadvantage tonight because of it, as he stood in the middle of his bedroom floor, lost in unhelpful images of his future queen. One after the next, as if he had no control at all.

  Because the startling truth was that he didn’t have the slightest idea what to do with temptation. It had never been a factor.

  Reza only knew he had to keep himself from surrendering to this—to her—whatever the cost.

  CHAPTER SIX

  REZA HADN’T BEEN KIDDING when he’d mentioned a spa, Maggy discovered the next morning.

  She’d woken up after a strange night packed tight with odd dreams to find herself in a luxurious, sprawling ancient villa that somehow fused marvelous old Italian touches with surprisingly modern updates, from a perfect bathroom suite to its heated floors. More accurately, she’d been woken up by a cheerful attendant, who’d hurried her out of bed and into a soft robe, pressed an exquisitely made latte into her hands, and then led her through the achingly beautiful villa while she was still sipping at it.

  Maggy was far too bleary-eyed to object. She had the hectic impression of graceful rooms filled with dancing morning light, and then she was being led through a warm, glassed-in area where a pretty pool gleamed bright blue in the sun. The attendant led her to the far side of the circular pool, then into an already hot sauna.

  “Should you need anything at all, Your Highness, you need only press this button,” the attendant told her, collecting Maggy’s empty latte mug as she left and closed the heavy door behind her.

  Maggy wasn’t any more used to hearing herself called that. Your Highness. She had to bite back an involuntary giggle. But then again, what part of any of this was she used to? She knew what a sauna was, but she’d never been in one before. She blinked as she looked around the wooden room. It seemed like an outward manifestation of how she felt already—hot and airless and finding it harder to breathe by the second.

  But if this was what royals did, then by God, she would do it. She would do anything. You are royal, she reminded herself. Your blood proves it. She sat on the warm wooden slats as soothing new age music piped in, and wondered if maybe she was still sleeping. If maybe she’d wake up to find herself back in her narrow bed in her tiny room back in Vermont, late for work as usual. She reached down and pinched herself, viciously. On her thigh, then on her belly, but nothing happened. It hurt and it left her with two dull red marks, but that was it. She stayed put in this hot, cedar cell. Sweating wildly.

  Even so, she couldn’t discount the high possibility that this was a dream anyway. She’d had dreams like this before, in shocking, tactile detail. The difference was, Maggy intended to enjoy every minute no matter what. She was resolved. She tipped her head back, figured out how to breathe long and slow when the air felt nearly solid around her, and she let the deep heat soak into her.

  When the lights and heat inside the sauna turned themselves off sometime later, she emerged, sleepy-eyed and wrapped in her robe again, to find that a personal spa had been assembled for her in the great, glassed-in space on the warm stones to the side of the pool. Attendants flocked around her, buffing and waxing whatever parts of her they could reach. She was manicured and pedicured. Her brows were shaped and her hair was set with color and then cut without a single word from her. She was served a steady stream of plates filled with colorful, astonishingly good food every time she made any kind of eye contact with anyone. She was massaged from head to toe and rubbed down with creams and rinses and who even knew what else, until she felt as if she’d been pummeled into the shape of an entirely new woman.

  And when it was all done, her attendants wrapped her in a fluffy towel that could have enveloped a family of four and then led her back through the villa.

  She’d been too dead on her feet the night before and much too bleary this morning as she’d been hustled down to the sauna area to really look around. But after a day of more pampering than she’d had in her whole life, she found she could hardly keep herself from happily soaking in the place as she followed the smiling women surrounding her.

  Reza had called this the villa. But to Maggy, it was a palace. Polished marble stretching in all directions. Rooms filled with precious things beyond description. Couches that looked like works of art all their own, set on rugs that likely were. Gleaming pieces of desperately fancy furniture that were nicer than her entire previous life.

  Everywhere she looked there were arches and windows, allowing her to see that the sea was just there. It was capped with white and surging deep blue and mighty in all directions, visible from every angle. Every room showed her a new view of the water, making it seem as if the villa itself was floating on the waves. Inside, the ceilings were high and set with intricate panels that she was sure probably had some fancy name she’d never
learned. There was art on every wall, and Maggy didn’t have to know anything about it to know what she was looking at was priceless. One or two paintings she even thought she might recognize, which she was aware meant they had to be so ridiculously famous someone who’d never looked at a single piece of art in a museum or anywhere else would know them at a glance.

  She was in such a completely different world it made her head spin.

  This is definitely a dream, that cynical voice inside warned her. I wouldn’t get too comfortable if I were you.

  But she wanted to be comfortable here, and no matter if she woke up tomorrow in her tiny room in Vermont. She wanted to be the princess Reza thought she was, with a family and a history at last. So she did nothing but follow her attendants back through the meandering wing that led to the set of rooms she’d been delivered to the night before. She ignored that voice deep inside. If this wasn’t going to last, she wanted to enjoy every last bit of it. The smooth stone floors. The beautiful colors of everything she saw, from old-looking tables to tapestries on the ancient walls, to fresh flowers in every vase on almost every surface though it was still winter outside.

  She walked through her private sitting room with its fireplace, cozy sofas, and shelves full of heavy-looking books arranged amid small statues. There were windows that doubled as doors leading out toward the sea, and it made her heart feel light that she could see so far. There was a smudge on the horizon that she was pretty sure was Italy. Or possibly Croatia. And that was according to the map on the sleek, very European smartphone an aide had handed her at some point earlier today.

  “For your convenience, Your Highness,” the man had murmured.

  The phone had exactly one number programmed into it under the name Reza Constantines. Maggy had stared at it. But she hadn’t dialed it.

  She followed her little entourage into the vast, sprawling bedroom, set with delicate furniture that struck her as feminine and very thick rugs tossed across the stone floor. She’d crashed across the wide, four-poster bed last night in an utter daze as much from the flight as from her nap on Reza, and then she’d stared up at the magenta canopy until she’d drifted off approximately four seconds later. But now the bed was made up again as if for a magazine shoot and there were clothes laid out across its foot.

  “His Majesty wishes you to meet him in his private salon,” one of the attendants told her. “At your earliest convenience.”

  “I assume that means at his earliest convenience,” Maggy murmured. She’d meant to sound dry, but she was far too relaxed. It came out much softer than it should have.

  The women around her laughed, and that was its own head trip. Maggy was prickly, everybody said so. She couldn’t remember the last time a group of people had laughed around her, unless it was at her.

  “He is the king,” one of the women said quietly. “We all serve at his pleasure.”

  And Maggy felt as if she ought to object to that, on principle if nothing else, but somehow she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. Later, she told herself. You can worry about the king’s pleasure later—or maybe you’ll just wake up.

  The women surrounded her again, and after a day of it she let them without another thought. She sat on the vanity stool and realized after a few moments that they were deliberately keeping her from looking in the mirror. She didn’t fight it. This was her dream and she was going to eke every drop of this princess routine out of it before she was drop-kicked back to the real world.

  Because there was always the chance that wanting this to be real would make it so.

  One woman carefully made up her face while another blew out her hair. It took them some time. When they were done, they handed her a pile of soft, impossibly silky things it took her long, confused moments to realize were a bra and panties. Just of a far higher quality than the ones she’d bought herself in cotton value packs.

  Even her feet looked like someone else’s, she thought as she stepped into the deliriously silky panties behind the towel two attendants held up for her once she shed her robe. Tipped in a rich red now, buffed and sanded smooth and soft, they weren’t her feet. Her feet were usually hard across the heels and aching. The panties fit perfectly, as did the matching bra, and she told herself she wasn’t thinking about who could possibly have estimated her measurements so well.

  She kept telling herself that even as that same, familiar heat that was all about Reza and his hard, stern mouth rolled over her, then pooled deep in her belly again.

  But there was no time for blushing. Her attendants hurried her into the dress that waited for her at the foot of her bed, a dove-gray thing that didn’t look very interesting when they held it up, but felt like a whisper once they pulled it over her head. The shoes they slipped on her feet were the same, so high she expected them to pinch and hurt, but instead she felt as if she was wearing bedroom slippers once she stood in them.

  It explained a great deal about the things she’d seen famous people wear in magazines. Who could possibly have imagined all those crazy, acrobatic clothes were comfortable? No wonder Reza had been so dismissive about her clothes. It all made a lot more sense now.

  She felt them fasten something around her neck, cool and slippery against her skin. Someone slid a ring onto her index finger, and then they were bustling her back out of the room. She could see that the sun was setting outside the windows, sinking in an orange blaze toward the sea, but she was dazzled by the lights inside the villa, too. They were everywhere, buttery and bright, making the hallway seem as if it was merry of its own accord.

  Or maybe that was just her.

  Her attendants hurried her down the hall, and it took her longer than it should have to make the obvious connection that her suite was only the next door down from Reza’s—it was just that the rooms in the villa were very large and the hallway connecting them quite long. And in fact, the door in the far wall of her bedchamber that hadn’t opened when she’d tried it last night must lead directly into his rooms—a notion that made every nerve ending in her body shiver to instant awareness.

  But there was no time to process any of it, because she was being led directly into the king’s dazzling suite. His private salon was the size of a hotel ballroom, she thought wildly, looking all around her. The light here was as bright and glorious as the rest of the villa. It bounced off of all the inlaid gold in the different seating areas arranged in little clusters around the big room—here an elegant couch, there an impossibly graceful quartet of chairs. Even the walls themselves were lined with gold, interspersed with a deep crimson. It looked exactly the way Maggy would have imagined a king’s room should look, had she ever had cause to think about such things.

  And in the center of all that regal brightness stood Reza, in yet another perfectly crafted dark suit that made him look like a storm of a man, his gray eyes fixed to her as if this was the first time he’d ever seen her.

  As if, she thought wildly, he’d been waiting his whole life to see her.

  Maggy felt that gaze of his like a shudder, a wicked, rolling thing down deep inside of her. A new, dangerous heat bloomed there, then spread, washing over her limbs and making her pulse go liquid.

  She was vaguely aware that the attendants left them. She didn’t dare move—or she couldn’t. And Reza only stood there for what seemed to her to be a long, long time, that stern gaze on her in a way that made her feel as if all the dizzy light in the room was trapped inside of her. A part of her.

  She was certain he could see it. That he knew.

  “I don’t know what they did,” she heard herself tell him. She had no idea what she was saying. How could she tell when she didn’t sound anything like herself? “They wouldn’t let me look.”

  He said nothing. He merely held out his hand.

  Maggy didn’t know why she didn’t so much as hesitate.

  The dream, she told herself, though her dreams had never been quite this vivid. This is all part of the dream.

  The fairy-tale dream she hadn
’t allowed herself to truly indulge in for years.

  She moved across the floor and took the hand he offered her, and only then—when a different blaze of sheer fire poured into her and made her heart kick at her—did she think to question why she’d thrown herself into it like that. Into him. Only then, when it was too late.

  But Reza only led her over to a huge mirror left propped up against the wall in the farthest corner of the great room, looking as if it had stood exactly like that for centuries. It likely had. It, too, was edged in a heavy gold frame, as solid and certain as the king himself.

  He positioned her in front of the glass and stood behind her. Much too close to her. One hand holding hers and the other a faint pressure at her waist. More of that delirious fire raced through her at the contact, making her legs feel weak. Maggy knew she should push herself away from him. Get his hands off of her, for a start. She knew she should do something.

  But she couldn’t seem to do anything but stare.

  “Look at you,” Reza murmured, his voice a rough velvet much too close to her ear and the birthmark he’d known was there from the start. “They did exactly as I asked. They made you who you are. Magdalena Santa Domini.”

  The woman in the huge, gold mirror was...not Maggy. Or if she was, it was a version of herself that Maggy could hardly get her head around. A dream version she never would have dared imagine on her own. Never.

  She knew it was her and yet...it couldn’t possibly be her.

  A princess, a small voice inside her whispered, with something like awe. You look like a princess.

  They’d dyed her hair back to her natural color, a dark and lustrous chestnut, and they’d swept it back from her face. Still, the light picked up deep golds and russets that seemed to make her eyes glow. And her eyebrows looked elegant, in place of her usual unremarkable brows. Her whole face was smooth and she thought she looked different, and not only because of the subtle makeup they’d put on her. It took her a moment to realize she looked rested. Or not exhausted, anyway.