Crowned: Gowns & Crowns, Book 4

by Jennifer Chance

  Ari shrugged, but his gaze followed her every move. The water poured into the glass, the glass traveling to her lips. It would have been unnerving from anyone else, but Fran knew that drill. She studied others like it was her job, too.

  She suspected Ari’s memories hadn’t all returned.

  “I refused to let anyone else move you, and for a long while my parents stayed with me here, though we were at some distance.” He gestured down the room where a similar collection of chairs and couches stood beneath another constellation of paintings. “It was my turn to ask them questions.” His expression tightened. “So many things have happened in the past year. It seems like I’ve been gone a lot longer.”

  “And how are you doing?” She set the glass down again and leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. Ari seemed remarkably refreshed for someone who’d been through yet another trauma in the past few hours, while she felt as tired as a worn out shoe.

  She was pretty sure Edeena Saleri never felt like a worn out shoe.

  Ari seemed to consider the question seriously, measuring his response. That was different too, subtly so. Ryker had been less reserved, more rash in his replies. How else would the new Ari, the real Ari, differ from the man she’d only just begun to know?

  “I’m not as frustrated as I would have expected,” Ari said. “The role comes more naturally than I feared it would when I first understood who I was supposed to be. I don’t remember all the details—most of the details, if you want the honest truth—but I remember the people. I remember their influence in my life. My parents, my brother, Dimitri, even Stefan and Cyril. I understand who I can trust, which is pretty much everyone I’ve met now. I understand that there are those out there I won’t be able to trust, but I don’t yet know why.” He shrugged. “And I feel stronger, in a strange sense.”

  That made her lift her brows. Ari was such a vital force, she couldn’t imagine him ever feeling weak. Before she could ask the question, he continued.

  “Up to now—the life I led and the way I led it—came with an acceptance that of course this was the way it was going to be. But now it’s more than simple acceptance. Now I’m choosing to be this person, I’m deliberately making these decisions. It’s a different approach.” His lips twisted. “One my parents aren’t entirely sure what to do with, I suspect.”

  Fran lifted her hands to her hair, relieved it remained caught up in its series of clips. She had lost her own sense of deliberate action since returning to the palace, and she needed to reclaim it, too. “Your mother doesn’t know everything about the work camp,” she said.

  Ari shook his head. “Not everything, but most of it.” He gestured dismissively. “Eventually I’ll tell her the truth. It’s not information she can’t handle, there’s simply no value in her knowing it now. She would want to do something with it—tell someone, demand answers or justifications. And that’s not practical.”

  That sounded so unlike Ryker that Fran felt the smallest twinge of remorse. She pulled off her blanket completely, folding it up as Ari watched. “There wouldn’t—” she hesitated, then firmed her resolve. Francesca Simmons didn’t hesitate. She was calm, cool, serene. She asked for what she wanted because by asking she likely got it. And right now, Fran wanted more than anything to be alone in a space with four walls and a closed door, recovering her equilibrium. “Is there a guest room where I could spend the night without waking Nicki or the others?” she asked. “I can’t imagine they know I’m here yet.”

  He nodded. “Of course.” He stood with her, his gaze raking over her body, as if making sure she wasn’t leaving anything behind. “The others have no idea you’re here, and they’re together. Dimitri and Kristos won’t betray your presence until you’re ready—or at least until dawn when Lauren and Emmaline wake up demanding answers.”

  “Ha! Well, then I have what, a few hours?”

  “At least.” Ari stepped around the table and gestured her to precede him, then shifted slightly and held out his hand instead. After the smallest of hesitations, Fran took it, blinking away the flash of quick tears that sprang to the backs of her eyes at the touch of his fingers on hers. Now, suddenly, this man was a stranger to her—as if she had lost her memories, not the other way around.

  “There’s a room nearby that looks over the city, all the way down to the ocean,” he murmured. “Will that suit?”

  “I think I’ll manage.”

  They stepped out into the hallway and Fran noted it was also softly lit—and abandoned. No guards stood at the ready, Dimitri and Stefan weren’t lurking at the far end of the corridor. “They’ve given you the run of the place?” she asked. “That seems…trusting.”

  Ari laughed, stepping onto a staircase at the second corner. “I suspect their largesse doesn’t extend beyond the palace’s exterior doors.” But his manner was easy, as if living under a microscope was no hardship. Then again, after his past year, he might be grateful for that level of security. He squeezed her hand, the gesture once again striking her as more Ryker than Ari, and she found herself wondering at the distinction.

  The explanation probably wasn’t all that deep, she decided. She knew Ryker—she didn’t know Ari. And now one had been replaced with the other.

  She’d done what she needed to do. The prince was back in the arms of his family. She could move on with her life…would move on. Tomorrow. First thing.

  “It worries me when you’re too quiet,” Ari murmured as he climbed another flight of stairs. “I always suspect you’re thinking too much.”

  The teasing note in his voice drew a smile to her face despite herself. “No one has ever accused me of that.”

  “In that, I suspect you’re wrong. Here we are.”

  The stairway emptied out to a hallway as well-appointed as the ones a few floors down, the long corridor carpeted with a rich golden rug, and the walls lined with mirrors and artwork, even in such an out-of-the-way corner of the palace. Ari stopped before a door outfitted with an unusual keypad—a slender black screen instead of the standard hole for a metal key or a numerical pin. With a rueful chuckle, he pressed three fingers to the pad, and the lock snicked open.

  “They told me it would still work,” he said, his voice wistful. “I made that keypad when I was a teenager in a fit of rebellion, and ordered all the keys to the room destroyed. I always knew my parents had some way of overriding it, but they didn’t take it down.” He shook his head. “They should have, after a year.”

  He pushed the door open and Fran was instantly struck by the size of the room—it was small. Probably the smallest guest chamber she’d seen in the castle, the size of her own room master suite back home in her Georgetown apartment. But the far wall was comprised almost entirely of glass, with a view that swept down the city and out to the distant sea.

  “When the sun rises, it’s like the entire world lights up,” Ari said, staring out the window.

  “It’s beautiful now.” Fran couldn’t help but stare too. In an instant, she knew this wasn’t simply a random guest room, but Ari’s own bedroom, set off from the rest of the royal apartments, a tiny cramped space by comparison, but one that was uniquely him. This is where he’d brought her, and she understood the significance of that too. They’d have their final idyll together, whatever she wanted to make of it.

  She found she wanted to make a great deal.

  Ari tensed as Francesca moved away from him, toward the enormous window that dominated the room. It’d been a risk, coming here. He’d told his parents he would see to it Francesca didn’t spend the night in the gallery, and they hadn’t asked him where he would deposit her. By that time in the evening, he’d proven his understanding of the royal palace layout had survived in his memories, regardless of anything else.

  And the room was exactly like he’d left it, he realized. Apparently his parents had had an override code, as he’d often wondered. Someone had come in to dust, anyway. But he suspected that his clothes remained in the drawers and closet, his watches still in
their tray on the dresser. He expected—hoped—that everything inside the dressers remained intact as well. The only thing that seemed different was the stack of journals on the table by the bed. There was a new bin beside the table—a year’s worth of magazines neatly lined up.

  But right now all he was interested in reading was Francesca’s mood…and he couldn’t. As usual she played her cards close, putting on the face that people expected to see. But he didn’t want a mask. He wanted the woman beneath.

  She turned and lifted a hand to him. “Show me?” she asked, and though he didn’t quite understand her question, he readily moved down to join her at the window. When he reached her he paused a moment, taking in her profile. Francesca was beautiful, lit by the distant glow of the city, the murky blue of the far off sea giving an otherworld cast to her skin.

  “How long have you used this as your bedroom?” she asked as he settled in behind her. She shifted back, her shoulders to his chest, and he understood the meaning of that small gesture, her willingness to touch him—be touched by him. His heart shifted in his chest and his arms naturally went around her, the feel of Francesca in his arms as right as the crashing of the far-off waves.

  “Since I was ten,” he said, brushing his lips over her hair. “I found the room while exploring the palace. Back then it was used as dusty, forgotten study, somewhere for my grandfather to tuck himself away, reading his endless books. When he passed, I declared it my own sanctuary.” He chuckled, recalling the work that went into the room. “I took down the shelves and replaced them with cabinets to store my equipment out of sight, I removed all the curtains. My mother was horrified, but—they let me do it. I think they were glad for anything that kept me quiet for long hours at a time.”

  “It’s perfect,” she murmured, her voice a soft murmur in the near darkness.

  “It is,” he agreed. Far more so because she was there.

  As if she could read his mind Francesca looked up at him, her body wrapped in his embrace. “Thank you for bringing me here,” she whispered. And when she lifted herself up on her toes, it was the most natural thing in the world for him to meet her halfway. Their lips touched, and suddenly it was as if there was not enough time in the world, not enough oxygen for them both to breathe. His arms tightened and he felt her knot her fingers in his shirt, her intensity flaring as hot as his. He wanted her—and she wanted him back, the relief of that revelation almost making his knees buckle…

  Almost.

  Instead Ari growled and turned Francesca back toward the bed, happier than he had any right to be that the room was so small, the furniture so scant that there was nothing blocking their progress. They tumbled to the bed in a rush of urgency, and he wasn’t sure who was moving faster to remove the other’s clothes and throw them on the floor. But Francesca laughed, her eyes bright with excitement, her warmth radiating out despite the coolness of that room, and he wanted to capture that warmth, to hold it against his heart against any pain and darkness that might come his way.

  There would be no darkness anymore, not as long as Francesca was in his arms. He rolled over to reach for the nightstand drawer but she took advantage of him stretching out on his back and moved sinuously on top of him, her legs straddling his hips. Batting away his hands, she reached over to the stand, her precarious position wobbling to the point where, to be a gentleman, he needed to plant his hands on either side of her hips.

  It was a hardship, his life.

  He drank in the sight of her as she opened the drawer and rooted inside—the long extension of her arms, the flowing curves her waist, belly, hips and breasts. He’d seen her naked in the sunlight but this—with the glow of the moon setting her alight, her hair once more spilling out of its pins to tumble halfway down her back—this was the Francesca that would fuel a thousand fevered dreams. This was how he would always remember her…and he more than most knew the power of memory.

  She giggled, finally sitting upright and triumphantly holding up a glinting foil wrapped package. “You make a habit out of bringing girls back to the palace?”

  “No, but I had to keep protection somewhere.”

  “Uh-huh. Well I cannot believe your parents left your room this intact.” She surveyed the package critically. “Assuming this isn’t ten years old.” Her mock-serious gaze transferred to his face. “Because that would be bad.”

  “It’s definitely not ten years old,” he assured her, but he kept his tone light, easy. There was no reason to betray the first thought he’d had in his head at her teasing words, but the truth of that thought burned through him, removing all others that came before or after it.

  It would not be bad to have a reason to keep Francesca by his side for a lifetime. It wouldn’t.

  Even that realization fled his mind a moment later when Francesca’s fingers drifted up his shaft, galvanizing his attention. “I think, first,” she murmured. “There’s something else I’d like to try.”

  He lifted himself on his elbows, staring as she slid down his legs and dropped between his thighs. She bent forward and kissed her way along his upper leg, not unlike what he’d done to her earlier that day, except he had nowhere near the level of restraint she did. It had been so long since he’d been kissed so intimately that tiny explosions of anticipation and panic were skyrocketing through his brain—getting louder and more intense as she reached the straining length of his shaft.

  “Francesca,” he gritted out, but she chuckled, the tremor of her mouth against the soft skin of his sac twisting him inside out. She drew her tongue up the length of him once, twice, teasing him with her mouth as she sighed out a gentle breath over his hyper-sensitized skin.

  “I think…one thing more,” she said. Then she closed her mouth over him. Ari collapsed back, the sensations ripping through him a thousand time stronger than anything he could remember happening before, and he felt the climax build inside him as if he was seventeen not twenty-seven—not a full-grown man who could hold himself in check, for God’s sake. She plunged down over him again and drew all the way out, and his back fairly arched off the bed. At some point he began cursing—but in Garronois, his language skills deteriorating as Francesca finally took mercy on him. If mercy could be what you called it. She sheathed him and then, finally, with a slowness that nearly made him pass out with need, settled her beautiful body over him and slid home.

  Ari’s eyes flashed open, and he’d not realized he’d had them closed. He blinked to see Francesca smiling down at him, her hair now fully down around her shoulders. When had that happened?

  “Better?” she murmured, as she moved against him once, twice.

  “Better,” he growled. But he clasped his hands to her hips, not to guide her but to hold her in place as he rolled her to the side, then onto her back.

  She widened her eyes, then sighed as he pushed deep inside her. “Oh…” she sighed. He settled his mouth over hers, kissing her lips, her cheeks, then a soft, coursing line to where he could whisper in her ear.

  “I think this is better still, though,” he said, and he filled her further, reveling in the way she tightened around him, slick and hot. “I want to be able to touch you, to kiss you.” He pulled back and stared at her, knowing he could gaze into those eyes a million more times and never tire of the passion he saw in their depths, the passion and rightness and truth. “I want to watch you while I make love to you, and learn every possible way to make you happy.”

  Her eyes darkened at the intensity in his voice, which sent another surge of desire racing through him. Good. She should know he was serious. Francesca had become more than the woman who had rescued him from the sea of his own lost memories, the companion who’d supported him when he needed her most. At this point, she was his anchor and his rock, his beating heart. He didn’t fully know where she’d come from, but he knew where she belonged.

  Which was with him.

  “Is that a royal command?” she said as if he’d spoken this last thought out loud, her voice ever so slightly te
asing.

  He braced his hands on the bed, and leaned toward her again, knowing that nothing would ever feel so right as this.

  “You better believe it,” he whispered.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Fran awoke in a rush, her sense of equilibrium once more shattered, her confusion paramount for a harrowing split second.

  Then a warm arm shifted along her side, dropping to her belly to pull her close. Ari. Or Ryker. Or, it could be Conti for all she cared.

  “Morning,” he murmured as she reached up to push back her hair. She and Ari were tangled together in a flurry of sheets, the pillows half-tumbled off the bed, but they might as well be in a theater, as strongly as her attention was drawn to the enormous screen in front of them. Not a screen, of course, a window.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she breathed, slipping out of Ari’s grasp and sitting upright.

  The sky over the Aegean Sea was startling in its beauty. Rich, rolling pink clouds skidded through a gradually lightening sky, and the sun rising to the left, out of sight, sent beams of glittering wonder across the glassy sea. She grabbed up a sheet and wrapped it around herself as she moved toward the window, trying to see everywhere at once. From this vantage point the city itself looked like a fairytale construct, vehicles scooting down narrow alleyways, chimneys puffing out smoke from the bakeries lining the streets, even a few townspeople up and about—on their way to work, to the beach, or simply out for an early morning stroll.

  She didn’t move as the bed creaked, Ari’s feet hitting the floor with a thud that was oddly reassuring, given the fantasy world in front of her. Without him in the room with her, she would have been unmoored. “It’s like this every morning?” she asked.

  “Most mornings.” His voice was gruff, gravelly, and she realized—she’d never woken up with him before. Her entire understanding of the man was summed up in a few days of intense experiences, not a true foundation of who and what he was. The thought made her unduly melancholy and she was glad he also wasn’t looking at her as he came up to the window. “The sea changes more than you think it should, morning to morning. The city, it changes all the time. Buildings go up and come down, festivals and parades pop up in one part only to seemingly move overnight to another. It’s a never ending stream of change.” She could hear the happiness in his voice. “I don’t need to watch TV to get a fix on the pulse of the city, I simply need to watch. The world around us, it’s not so easy. But here, it’s different.”