by Dani Collins
The longer she stood here, the better she felt. The waters truly were capable of healing, she decided with a sigh of reclaimed calm. She started to pull her top up over her head but froze when she heard the crunch of footsteps.
Really? She almost screamed in frustration. Who? Why? She twisted to glare at—
“Oh.”
“You’re not supposed to swim alone.” The prince’s breath fogged against the frosty air. He wore his robe and rattled the gate to open it farther before he took long strides through the snow in his slippers. As he came closer, she was able to read his frown of dismay in the moonlight reflecting as a faint blue glow off the surrounding snow. He abandoned his slippers next to her sandals and stepped into the water, hissing at the bite of heat.
She looked back the way he’d come, expecting at least a few bodyguards and one or two of his cohorts, if not a full harem of adoring women.
“Are you lost? What are you doing here?” she asked him.
“What are you doing here?”
“You inspired me,” she admitted truthfully, although Nanette’s pithy talk of refusing to compromise had also lit a fire of rebellion in her.
“To try skinny-dipping? This is hotter than the pool.”
“It is. Too hot in the summer, which is the only time this area is open to the public.” She nodded at the sign obscured by a buildup of frozen condensation. “No swimming allowed.”
“Ah. I’ve inspired you to break rules.” His mouth barely twitched, but he sounded pleased. “Live dangerously.”
“Not really. I happen to know it’s tested regularly and is always found to be potable.” The fence kept wildlife out, so risk of contamination was next to zero.
“That takes some of the thrill out of it, doesn’t it?”
His words made her think of her stepsisters’ disparagement of her. Their contempt had gone far deeper than a scoff over a moth-eaten dress. They knew she wasn’t any match for a man in his position. Sopi knew it. She was standing here prickly with self-consciousness, aware that she was still covered in sweat from laboring in the spa. Definitely not anywhere near his exalted level.
The water beckoned, but she murmured, “It was a dumb impulse. We should go back.”
He dragged his gaze from the frozen lake, eyes glittering in the moonlight, but his expression was inscrutable. “I wanted you to join me.”
“Here?” She shook her head. Part of her was tempted. Where was the harm in a nude swim with a stranger? And where had such a reckless thought come from, she wondered with a suppressed choke of laughter. But he was the first man to make her consider such rash behavior. Everything about this was a rarity for her.
“For dinner,” he clarified. “Did you...get that memo?”
The air that came into her lungs seemed to crystallize to powdered ice. “I didn’t imagine for a minute you were looking for me. Besides, every woman here got a decal—”
“I know that,” he cut in, sounding aggravated. “Now.”
She bit back a smile. “You could have sent me a proper message.”
“I didn’t know your name. My assistant asked the booking clerk, but Karl was listed as my masseur. Who are you?”
She hesitated. Tell him everything? Would he care?
“I know this is inappropriate,” he growled into the silence that she let stretch out with her indecision. “That’s why I didn’t want to make overt inquiries.”
Inappropriate? It hadn’t been, not really, until he used that word. Now she reeled, astonished that he was making this private conversation into more than she would have let herself believe it to be.
“If I’m out of line, say so. We’ll go back right now.”
“I don’t know what this is,” she admitted, hugging herself against the cold, because the hot water on her feet wasn’t enough to keep her warm when she was outside at midnight before spring had properly taken hold. “My father bought this hotel for my mother. She named it after me. Cassiopeia. My friends call me Sopi.”
“Cassiopeia.” He seemed to taste the syllables, which made her shiver in a different way. “Maude is your mother?” He sounded surprised. Skeptical.
“Stepmother. She took control of the spa after my father died. I wasn’t old enough to do it myself and... Well, I’d like to challenge her now, but lawyers cost money and... It’s a long, boring story.” She doubted he would believe the spa ought to belong to her anyway, not when she stood here all sweaty and gross. “I’m really cold. Can we—” She looked for her sandals.
“Yes. Let’s warm up.” He skimmed off his robe, tossing it to hook on the fence before he made his way farther into the pool. Naked, of course, carefully choosing his footing on the slippery rocks.
She looked to the sky, begging for guidance from higher powers.
“It’s deeper than I expected,” he said with satisfaction. He sank down as he found one of the rocky ledges that had been set in place for seating. “What are you doing? You said you wanted to try this.”
“Alone.”
“I’ll turn my head.” His tone rang with prude.
She was wearing a bra and underwear, basically a bikini. She knew that was a rationalization to stay here and swim with a man who intrigued her, but she also liked the idea of proving she could interest a prince, even if she was the only one who would ever know it.
Could she?
With an internal tsk, she decided to—for once—do something for herself. She stepped out of the water long enough to drop her drawstring pants and throw off her top.
She gingerly made her way into the pool, one eye on his profile to ensure he wasn’t witnessing her clumsy entry. She winced at sharp edges pressing into her soles, bent to steady herself with a hand on a submerged boulder and let out a sigh as she sank to her shoulders and heat penetrated to her bones.
The pool was about four feet deep and maybe six feet wide. The prince had found one of the best perches facing the lake. She bumped her foot into his and he looked at her.
“Cheater,” he accused as he noticed her bra strap.
She ducked under, unable to resist the lure of baptizing herself even though her hair would freeze into its tangled bun. Her long, strenuous day began to rinse away as she did it again. She came up with another sigh of sheer luxury.
“I didn’t bring a towel. This is literally the dumbest idea I’ve ever had, but I don’t regret it one bit.”
“I would be a gentleman and offer you my robe, but then I’d have to streak like a bald yeti across the snow to get back inside.”
“I’m pretty sure I saw one of those this morning.”
His teeth flashed white. “Have you always lived here? You’re Canadian?”
“I am. My mother was Swedish, I think. I don’t have much information on her. She was an only child, and my father was funny about her family. Didn’t like to talk about them. I don’t think my grandparents approved of him.”
“Why not?”
“Snobs, maybe? He sold two-way pagers and the early mobile phones into the European markets. Not very sexy at the time, but it was lucrative. That’s how he paid for this.” She nodded toward the hotel hidden by the spiky trees. “Then Silicon Valley crashed the party. His heart trouble started when my mother passed, and financial worries made it worse.”
Sopi didn’t know what kind of means Maude had pretended she had, but based on what Sopi had learned since, she believed Maude had misrepresented herself and worked on her father’s desire for Sopi to have a mother with the goal of taking over his bank account and assets.
“It’s a strange purchase for someone in that industry, especially since you don’t have cell service beyond the hotel.”
“My mother was struggling as a new mom in a new country. Dad traveled a lot, and she didn’t have anyone to rely on. She wasn’t working and felt very isolated. She loved her spa visits,
though. She came here on one of them, talked to the owner who was thinking of selling. My father bought it for her.”
“Romantic.”
“Not really. It was worse for wear, and she had a lot of challenges with its remote location. She knew what she wanted, though, and made it happen. It was quite successful until she passed a few years later.”
“What happened?”
“A bad flu that turned into pneumonia. Can we not talk about that? I was quite young, but it still makes me sad.”
“I understand,” he said gravely.
She recalled a bleak line in the history of Verina stating his parents had been killed in an uprising, forcing him and his brother to live in neighboring countries for fifteen years. For the first time, she wondered if the platitude he’d just used was actually true. Maybe he really did understand the hollow ache inside her.
He had braced his elbows on nearby rocks above the surface and tipped his head back to look up at the clear sky.
She took stock of where she was, soaking with a prince in the wilderness, the only sound a distant hum and a closer trickle of water seeping from the seams in the rocks and off a worn ledge into their bath.
“There you are.” He tilted his head. “The trees were in the way. Cassiopeia.”
Hardly anyone used her whole name, not when they addressed her. She’d begun to think Cassiopeia only applied to things that weren’t really hers.
“A queen, if memory serves.” It was hard to read his expression with the shadows and his beard.
She almost mentioned the silly rumor about her mother being descended from royalty but thought he might think she was trying to elevate herself to his stratosphere.
“A vain one who gets tied to a chair for eternity,” she said instead. “Maybe I am vain.” She didn’t look for the W in the sky, having searched it out nearly every starry night since childhood. “My tiny mind was blown when I learned on the first day of school that not everyone had their own constellation.”
He snorted. “I don’t.”
“Because you’re a star on earth.”
“Don’t,” he said flatly. The steam seemed to gust off the water so there was no mist between them, only clear, dry air that stung her cheeks and nose. “Don’t put distance between us.”
She swallowed her surprise, but a lump lodged in her chest, one that her voice had to strain to speak around. “There is a continent and an ocean between us.” Among other things. His mountain of society and stature, her vast desert of education and life experience.
“Rhys,” he said, laying down a gauntlet. “If you’re going to reject me, use my name so I’m clear that you mean me.” It was such an outrageously arrogant statement she wanted to laugh, yet he drew her in as his equal by offering the familiarity. Such an enigmatic man.
“I thought I was pointing out the obvious,” she said quietly.
“You’re the least obvious person I’ve ever met. Any other woman would be naked and straddled across me by now, whether I wanted her here or not. You wouldn’t even come to dinner with me. Why not?”
Cowardice.
“I didn’t think you were serious,” she repeated. “Where would this even go? That’s not opportunism talking. I don’t have affairs with rich, powerful men. You tell me what happens. How long does it last? What happens when it’s over?”
His eyes were obsidian, his jaw gleaming like wet iron. With a muttered curse in what sounded like German, he turned his glower toward the frozen lake below.
He didn’t tell her she was wrong.
Sopi felt for another of the worn rocks that provided a rough seat and settled onto it. “Do you want the truth?”
“Always,” he bit out.
“Maude wants you to marry Nanette. I thought if I facilitated that, I could get rid of all three of them and finally have my home to myself.”
A pulse of astounded silence, then he barked out a humorless laugh. He snapped his head around to glare at her. “I’ll marry if and whom I desire. It won’t be either of them. I promise you that right now.”
She kissed goodbye her pipe dream of being free of her stepfamily, which left her to contemplate whether she should allow herself to get closer to this compelling man who, for the moment, at least, was not that far away.
“I don’t know what happens, Sopi. I wish I did,” he said cryptically.
At the sound of her nickname on his lips, she found herself trying out the sound of his. “Rhys.” It caught with tugging sensations in her chest and across her shoulders.
He looked at her.
Everything altered. The air shimmered and the earth stood still. Her scalp prickled and her breasts grew tight and heavy.
“That does not sound like a rejection, süsse.” His voice melted her bones. He extended a long arm across the surface of the water, palm up in invitation.
She hadn’t consciously meant to turn this into anything, but her hand went into his. She floated across the short space between them, drawn by his firm grip to set her hand against his neck. The top of her foot hit a rock, and she reacted with a jerk of her knee, knocking it into his.
He made a noise of concern and gathered her into his lap. His hand cupped her knee and he soothed her kneecap with his thumb. “Tell me,” he murmured. “Do you feel the same when I touch you?”
“The same as what?”
The hand behind her back ran up to cradle her neck. With the lightest squeeze, he had her shuddering and turning her torso into his.
“Like that,” he growled, lips coming close enough to nibble at her chin. “The way you made me feel on the table today.”
Streaks of light and heat seemed to shoot through her at the graze of his whiskers and the mere touch of his mouth on her skin. She cupped his wet beard and searched for his lips with her own, not really knowing what she was doing, only knowing she needed the press of his mouth to her own.
They both moaned as their lips parted and slid and found the right fit. Forever, she thought. She wanted the forceful play of his mouth to consume hers forever. Then his tongue touched her inner lip, delved, and the taste of him shot lightning through her again, spearing a jolt of pleasure straight between her thighs.
She jerked away to catch her breath, stunned, but went straight back after his mouth, pressing the back of his head to encourage him to ravage her.
He growled and they kissed with more fervor, wildly, deeply, a sound rumbling in his chest like a predatory animal. His arms flexed around her, drawing her tighter into his lap and twisting her chest to rub against his.
Her bra shifted as they slithered against one another, abrading and annoying her as it kept her from feeling him with all her skin. She tried to scrabble behind herself with one hand and release it, but his confident fingers met hers and easily unclasped it. She drew back to pull her arms free and he threw it into the snow.
As she pressed herself into him, their mouths crashed together again. His hand swirled a rush of water across her ribs right before his palm flattened against her skin, stroked and shifted, teasing at her waist and shoulder blade and back to her rib cage until she couldn’t stand it. She twisted, offering her breast, and finally he claimed the swell in a firm clasp. He shaped and caressed and made her forget everything but the feel of him fondling her so blatantly.
She realized a keening noise was coming from her lips and tried to bite it back, but he caught her nipple in a light pinch and once again she had to break from their kiss to catch her breath—the sensation was so sharp.
“Too much?” He bowed his head over hers as she buried her face in his neck, as though shielding her from something. “You’re killing me.”
She realized that wasn’t just her own heart slamming unsteadily against her rib cage. His was, too. And that hard shape against her hip was him, fully aroused.
She stilled, shocked and stunned and w
ickedly curious.
“I don’t have a condom,” he muttered. “This is definitely the best and worst idea you’ve ever had.” He found her ear and flicked his tongue along the rim, making her shudder. “Are you on anything? Should we take this upstairs?”
Dazzled, it took her a moment to realize what he was asking. “I’m not on anything. I don’t do this. I’ve never done it.”
“I’m not a guest. You’re not an employee. Not right now. That’s not what this is. It’s two people who can’t keep their hands off each other.” He cursed and shifted her, but the sound he made was more a groan of suffering. He sucked on her lobe so hard she nearly came out of her skin. Then he applied his teeth, just short of pain, holding her in a tingling state between fear and trust.
If she pulled away, it would hurt, but she didn’t want to go anywhere. She petted her fingers across his wet beard, soothing the beast who held her in his tense jaws. Her pulse throbbed in her throat and low in that secretive place between her clamped thighs.
“I mean I’ve never done this,” she admitted in a quavering voice. “Made love. With anyone.”
His arms nearly squashed her breathless, and a strangled noise came out of him.
“Are you serious?” He took hold of her wet, knotted hair, holding her so her nose was nearly touching his. His eyes were depthless black orbs, threatening to pull her into another universe. Her heart galloped so hard, she thought her chest would explode.
“Who would I sleep with? No one has ever made me feel like this.”
“How?” His hand tightened in her hair, pulling her head back to expose her throat. He licked along the artery, and her nipples contracted to such tight points, they felt pierced. She pinched her thighs together.
“Like I’m on fire,” she gasped. “Like I need your hands all over me to put it out.”
His ragged laugh rang with satisfaction. This time when he claimed her breast, she arched into his touch. He caught her nipple in the crook of two fingers and applied tender pressure until she set her open teeth against his neck.
