She’d expected Prince Rodolfo to be seedier in person than in his photos. Softer of jaw, meaner of eye. And up himself in every possible way. She had not expected to find herself so stunned at the sight of him that she’d had to reach out and hold on to the furniture to keep her knees from giving out beneath her, for the love of all that was holy.
And then he’d spoken, and Natalie had understood—with a certain, sinking feeling that only made that breathlessness worse—that she was in more than a little hot water. It had never crossed her mind that she might find this prince—or any prince—attractive. It had never even occurred to her that she might be affected in any way by a man who carried that sort of title or courted the sort of attention Prince Rodolfo did. Natalie had never liked flashy. It was always a deliberate distraction, never anything real. Working for one of the most powerful men in the world had made her more than a little jaded when it came to other male displays of supposed strength. She knew what real might look like, how it was maintained and more, how it was wielded. A petty little princeling who liked to fling himself out of airplanes could only be deeply unappealing in person, she’d imagined.
She’d never imagined...this.
It was possible her mouth had run away with her, as some kind of defense mechanism.
And then, far more surprising, Prince Rodolfo wasn’t the royal dullard she’d been expecting—all party and no substance. The sculpted mouth of his...did things to her as he revealed himself to be something a bit more intriguing than the airhead she’d expected. Especially when that look in his dark eyes took a turn toward the feral.
Stop, she ordered herself sternly. This is another woman’s fiancé, no matter what she might think of him.
Natalie had to order herself to pay attention to what was happening as the Prince’s surprisingly possessive words rang through the large room that teemed with antiques and the sort of dour portraits that usually turned out to have been painted by ancient masters, were always worth unconscionable amounts of money and made everyone in them look shriveled and dour. Or more precisely, she had to focus on their conversation, and not the madness that was going on inside her body.
You are mine didn’t sound like the kind of thing the man Valentina had described would say. Ever. It didn’t sound at all like the man the tabloids drooled over, or all those ex-lovers moaned about in exclusive interviews, mostly to complain about how quickly each and every one of them was replaced with the next.
In fact, unless she was mistaken, His Royal Highness, Prince Rodolfo, he of so many paramours in so many places that there were many internet graphs and user forums dedicated to tracking them all, looked as surprised by that outburst as she was.
“That hardly seems fair, does it?” she asked mildly, hoping he couldn’t tell how thrown she was by him. Hoping it would go away if she ignored it. “I don’t see why I have to confine myself to only you when you don’t feel compelled to limit yourself. In any way at all, according to my research.”
“Is there someone you wish to add to your stable, princess?” Rodolfo asked, in a smooth sort of way that was at complete odds with that hard, near-gold gleam in his dark eyes that set off every alarm in her body. Whether she ignored it or not. “Name the lucky gentleman.”
“A lady never shares such things,” she demurred. Then smiled the way she always had at the officious secretaries of her boss’s rivals, all of whom underestimated her. Once. “Unlike you, Your Highness.”
“I cannot help it if the press follows me everywhere I go.” She sensed more than heard the growl in his voice. He was still standing where he’d been when she arrived, arranged before the immense fireplace like some kind of royal offering, but if he’d thought it made him look idle and at his ease he’d miscalculated. All she could see when she looked at him was how big he was. Big and hard and beautiful from head to toe and, God help her, she couldn’t seem to control her reaction to him. “Just as I cannot keep them from writing any fabrication they desire. They prefer a certain narrative, of course. It sells.”
“How tragic. I had no idea you were a misunderstood monk.”
“I am a man, princess.” He didn’t quite bare his teeth. There was no reason at all Natalie should feel the cut of them against her skin. “Were you in some doubt?”
Natalie reminded herself that she, personally, had no stake in this. No matter how many stories her mother had told her about men like him and the careless way they lived their lives. No matter that Prince Rodolfo proved that her mother was right every time he swam with sharks or leaped from planes or trekked for a month in remotest Patagonia with no access to the outside world or thought to his country should he never return. And no matter the way her heart was kicking at her and her breath seemed to tangle in her throat. This wasn’t about her at all.
I’m going to sort out your fiancé as a little wedding gift to you, she’d texted Valentina when she’d recovered from her shell shock and had emerged from the fateful bathroom in London to watch Achilles Casilieris’s plane launch itself into the air without her. The beauty of the other princess having taken her bag when she’d left—with Natalie’s phone inside it—was that Natalie knew her own number and could reach the woman who was inhabiting her life. You’re welcome.
Good luck with that, Valentina had responded. He’s unsortable. Deliberately, I imagine.
As far as Natalie was concerned, that was permission to come on in, guns blazing. She had nothing to lose by saying the things Valentina wouldn’t. And there was absolutely no reason she should feel that hot, intent look he was giving her low and tight in her belly. No reason at all.
She made a show of looking around the vast room the scrupulously correct butler who had ushered her here had called a parlor in ringing tones. She’d had to work hard not to seem cowed, by the butler or the scale of the private wing he’d led her through, all dizzying chandeliers and astoundingly beautiful rooms clogged with priceless antiques and jaw-dropping art.
“I don’t see any press here,” she said, instead of debating his masculinity. For God’s sake.
“Obviously not.” Was it her imagination or did Rodolfo sound a little less...civilized? “We are on palace grounds. Your father would have them whipped.”
“If you wanted to avoid the press, you could,” Natalie pointed out. With all the authority of a person who had spent five years keeping Achilles Casilieris out of the press’s meaty claws. “You don’t.”
Was it possible this mighty, beautiful prince looked...ill at ease? If only for a moment?
“I never promised you that I would declaw myself, Valentina,” he said, and it took Natalie a moment to remember why he was calling her Valentina. Because that’s who he thought she was, of course. Princess Valentina, who had to marry him in two months. Not mouthy, distressingly common Natalie, who was unlikely to marry anyone since she spent her entire life embroiled in and catering to the needs of a man who likely wouldn’t be able to pick her out of a lineup. “I told you I would consider it after the wedding. For a time.”
Natalie shrugged, and told herself there was no call for her to feel slapped down by his response. He wasn’t going to marry her. She certainly didn’t need to feel wounded by the way he planned to run his relationship. Critical, certainly. But not wounded.
“As will I,” she said mildly.
Rodolfo studied her for a long moment, and Natalie forced herself to hold that seething dark glare while he did it. She even smiled and settled back against the delicate little couch, as if she was utterly relaxed. When she was nothing even remotely like it.
“No,” he said after a long, long time, his voice dark and lazy and something else she felt more than heard. “I think not.”
Natalie held back the little shiver that threatened her then, because she knew, somehow, that he would see it and leap to the worst possible conclusion.
“You mistake me,” she said coolly. “I wasn’t asking your permission. I was stating a fact.”
“I would suggest that
you think very carefully about acting on this little scheme of yours, princess,” Rodolfo said in that same dark, stirring tone. “You will not care for my response, I am certain.”
Natalie crossed her legs and forced herself to relax even more against the back of her little couch. Well. To look it, anyway. As if she had never been more at her ease, despite the drumming of her pulse.
She waved a hand the way Valentina had done in London, so nonchalantly. “Respond however you wish. You have my blessing.”
He laughed, then. The sound was rougher than Natalie would have imagined a royal prince’s laugh ought to have been, and silkier than she wanted to admit as it wrapped itself around her. And all of that was a far second to the way amusement danced over his sculpted, elegant face, making him look not only big and surprisingly powerful, but very nearly approachable. Magnetic, even.
Something a whole lot more than magnetic. It lodged itself inside of her, then glowed.
Good lord, Natalie thought in another sort of daze as she gazed back at him. This is the most dangerous man I’ve ever met.
“I take it this is an academic discussion,” Rodolfo said when he was finished laughing like that and using up all the light in the world, so cavalierly. “I had no idea you felt so strongly about what I did or didn’t do, much less with whom. I had no idea you cared what I did at all. In fact, princess, I wasn’t certain you heard a single word I’ve uttered in your presence in all these months.”
He moved from the grand fireplace then, and watching him in motion was not exactly an improvement. Or it was a significant improvement, depending on how she looked at it. He was sleek for such a big man, and moved far too smoothly toward the slightly more substantial chair at a diagonal to where Natalie sat. He tossed himself into the stunningly wrought antique with a carelessness that should have snapped it into kindling, but didn’t.
It occurred to her that he was far more aware of himself and his power than he appeared. That he was something of an iceberg, showing only the slightest bit of himself and containing multitudes beneath the surface. She didn’t want to believe it. She wanted him to be a vapid, repellant playboy who she could slap into place during her time as a make-believe princess. But there was that assessing gleam in his dark gaze that told her that whatever else this prince was, he wasn’t the least bit vapid.
And was rather too genuinely charming for her peace of mind, come to that.
He settled in his chair and stretched out his long, muscled legs so that they almost brushed hers, then smiled.
Natalie kept her own legs where they were, because shifting away from him would show a weakness she refused to let him see. She refused, as if her life depended on that refusal, and she didn’t much care for the hysterical notion that it really, truly did.
“I don’t care at all what you do or don’t do,” she assured him. “But it certainly appears that you can’t say the same, for some reason.”
“I am not the one who started making proclamations about my sexual intentions. I think you’ll find that was you. Here. Today.” That curve of his mouth deepened. “Entirely unprovoked.”
“My mistake. Because a man who has grown up manipulating the press in no way sends a distinct message when he spends the bulk of his very public engagement ‘escorting’ other women to various events.”
His gaze grew warmer, and that sculpted mouth curved. “I am a popular man.”
“What I am suggesting to you is that you are not the only popular person in this arrangement. I’m baffled at your Neanderthal-like response to a simple statement of fact, when you have otherwise been at such pains to present yourself as the very image of modernity in royal affairs.”
“We are sitting in an ancient castle on an island with a history that rivals Athens itself, discussing our upcoming marriage, which is the cold-blooded intermingling of two revered family lines for wealth and power, exactly as it might have been were we conducting this conversation in the Parthenon.” His dark brows rose. “What part of this did you find particularly modern?”
“The two of us, I thought, before I walked in this room.” She smiled brightly and let her foot dangle a bit too close to his leg. As if she didn’t care at all that he was encroaching into her personal space. As if the idea of even so innocuous a touch did nothing at all to her central nervous system. As if he were not the sort of man she’d hated all her life, on principle. And as if he were not promised to another, she snapped at herself in disgust, but still, she didn’t retreat the way she should have. In case she was wondering what kind of person she was. “Now I suspect the Social Media Prince is significantly more caveman-like than he wants his millions of adoring followers to realize.”
“I am the very soul of a Renaissance man, I assure you. I am merely aware of what the public will and will not support and I hate to break it you, princess, but the tabloids are not as forgiving of royal indiscretions as you appear to be.”
“You surprise me again, Your Highness. I felt certain that a man in your position could not possibly care what the tabloid hacks did or did not forgive, given how much material you give them to work with. Daily.”
“The two of us can sit in this room and bask in our progressive values, I am sure,” Rodolfo murmured, and the look in his dark eyes did not strike Natalie as particularly progressive. “But public sentiment, I think you will find, is distressingly traditional. People may enjoy any number of their own extramarital affairs. It doesn’t make them tolerant when a supposed fairy-tale princess strays from her charmed life. If anything, it makes the stones they cast heavier and more pointed.”
“So, to unpack that, you personally wish to carry on as if we are single and free, but are prevented from following your heart’s desire because you suddenly fear public perception?” She eyed him balefully and made no attempt to hide it. “That’s a bit hard to believe, coming from the man who told me not twenty minutes ago that he refused to be declawed.”
“You are not this naive, princess.” And the look he gave her then seemed to prickle along her skin, lighting fires Natalie was terribly afraid would never go out. “You know perfectly well that I can do as I like with only minimal repercussions. It is you who cannot. You have built an entire life on your spotless character. What would happen were you to be revealed as nothing more or less than a creature as human as the rest of us?”
CHAPTER FOUR
RODOLFO HAD LONG ceased recognizing himself. And yet he kept talking.
“It will be difficult to maintain the fiction that you are a saint if your lovers are paraded through the tabloids of Europe every week,” he pointed out, as if he didn’t care one way or the other.
Somehow, he had the sense that the confounding woman who sat close enough to tempt him near to madness knew better. He could see it in the way her green eyes gleamed as she watched him. She was lounging in the settee as if it was a makeshift throne and she was already queen. And now she waved a languid hand, calling attention to her fine bones and the elegant fingers Rodolfo wanted all over his body. Rather desperately.
“It is you who prefer to ignore discretion,” she said lightly enough. “I assume you get something out of the spotlight you shine so determinedly into your bedroom. I must congratulate you, as it is not every man who would be able to consistently perform with such an audience, so many years past his prime.”
“I beg your pardon. Did you just question my...performance?”
“No need to rile yourself, Your Highness. The entire world has seen more than enough of your prowess. I’m sure you are marvelously endowed with the—ah—necessary tools.”
It took Rodolfo a stunned moment to register that the sensation moving in him then was nothing short of sheer astonishment. Somewhere between temper and laughter and yet neither at once.
“Let me make sure I am following this extraordinary line of thought,” he began, trying to keep himself under control somehow—something that he could not recall ever being much of an issue before. Not with Princess Valentina
, certainly. Not with any other woman he’d ever met.
“Whether or not it is extraordinary is between you and your revolving selection of aspiring hyphenates, I would think.” When he could only stare blankly at her, she carried on almost merrily. “Model slash actress slash waitress slash air hostess, whatever the case may be. You exchange one for another so quickly, it’s hard to keep track.”
“I feel as if I’ve toppled off the side of the planet into an alternate reality,” Rodolfo said then, after a moment spent attempting to digest what she’d said. What she’d actually dared say directly to his face. “Wherein Princess Valentina of Murin is sitting in my presence issuing veiled insults about my sexual performance and, indeed, my manhood itself.”
“In this reality, we do not use the word manhood when we mean penis,” Princess Valentina said with the same serene smile she’d always worn, back when he’d imagined she was boring. He couldn’t understand how he’d misread her so completely. “It’s a bit missish, isn’t it?”
“What I cannot figure out is what you hope to gain from poking at me, Valentina,” he said softly. “I am not given to displays of temper, if that is what you hoped. Perhaps you forgot that I subject myself to extreme stress often. For fun. It is very, very difficult to get under my skin.”
She smiled with entirely too much satisfaction for his comfort. “Says the man who had a rather strong reaction to the idea that what he feels constitutes reasonable behavior for him might also be equally appropriate for his fiancée.”
“I assume you already recognize that there is no stopping the train we’re on,” he continued in the same quiet way, because it was that or give in to the simmering thing that was rumbling around inside of him, making him feel more precarious than he had in a long, long time. “The only way to avoid this marriage is to willfully cause a crisis in two kingdoms, and to what end? To make a point about free will? That is a lovely sentiment, I am sure, but it is not for you or me. We are not free. We belong to our countries and the people we serve. I would expect a woman whose very name is synonymous with her duty to understand that.”
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