Secrets of His Forbidden Cinderella

by Caitlin Crews

  “That is a pity,” he said coolly. “If you share the marital bed, I will treat you as my Duchess. And we will enjoy a rustic retreat together ahead of our wedding. If you do not—”

  “I won’t. Ever.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I would stake my life on it,” she threw at him.

  He nodded. Sagely. “Then you may sleep on this couch, and I will treat you like a servant.”

  “Is this a good time to talk about what’s wrong with you? And how women can actually be more than your Duchess or your maid?”

  “Women can be anything they like,” Teo retorted, his tone harsh. “You have fewer choices because you stole mine.”

  It was a grim victory, certainly, but a victory nonetheless when she paled. And didn’t throw something back at him, for once.

  He chose not to point out that she’d already differentiated herself from her mother. Since Marie French was shameless, through and through, as Teo had personally witnessed in the dark days of her marriage to his father.

  “I expect the fire to remain lit, if banked, at all times, as I do not wish to freeze to death. I expect three meals a day, and you may rejoice in my benevolence, as I expect very little in the way of haute cuisine here.”

  “Oh, happy day,” she muttered. No longer quite so pale.

  “And this might be the most difficult for you, Amelia,” he continued. “But I expect deference.”

  “I expect you to go to hell,” she shot back.

  “I’m afraid I insist on courtesy,” he said, almost sadly. “And if I were you, I’d figure out how to obey. Before I lose my good humor altogether.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “I THINK YOU’VE forgotten that there’s also a third option,” Amelia managed to say, somehow not commenting on Teo’s supposed “good humor.” Though it was hard to get the words out through gritted teeth. And a jaw so tight she was worried it might shatter at any moment. “I could also do neither of those things. I could sit back down on this couch, ignore you and wait for you to tire of whatever game this is.”

  “You could,” he agreed, but there was something far too dangerous in the way he said it. It shivered through her, far more intense than a mere dare. “But I’m a simple man, particularly here. If you are not functioning as a servant, I will only be able to recognize you as the woman who is to be my wife.” This time, he didn’t shrug. He stared at her in a kind of steady demand that made her...restless. “And I will act accordingly, of course.”

  Amelia felt as if she’d cinched herself into something horribly tight. For a moment she wasn’t sure she could force a breath, and that restlessness made her itch. But she made herself stand still.

  And she kept her voice cool. “I want to make sure we’re both really clear about the fact that you’re threatening me. With sex.”

  She thought that might slap at him. Offend him, at the very least.

  But instead, Teo smiled in that edgy way that had been making her pulse jagged since she’d jolted awake to find him standing over her, taking over her field of vision. For a wild moment she hadn’t been able to tell if she was asleep or awake.

  There was no mistaking the fact she was awake now. He reached over and slid his hand over her hard, clenched jaw.

  And then slowly, almost lazily, dragged his thumb over her lips.

  Amelia felt as if she was the fire behind them, then. As if he’d stoked the flames—her—that easily, shaming her.

  Or maybe she only wanted to be shamed. Because what she felt was a storm of sensation, galloping through her. Her nipples felt bright, hard. Her breasts were heavy. She felt something like chills running down her limbs, then sinking deep inside her until they formed a kind of tangle, too hot and too greedy down low in her belly.

  “Do you feel threatened?” Teo asked her. Goading her. “Or do you feel something else entirely?”

  “Everything you do is a threat,” she managed to say. What she didn’t do was pull away from him. “That’s a natural consequence of kidnapping and abducting someone, I think you’ll find.”

  But his hand was still on her face, and she could feel herself shaking, deep inside. Like the tectonic plates that kept her upright—that made her who she was—were shifting whether she liked it or not.

  “I think you are trembling, cariña. I think you are terribly, surpassingly hungry.” And somehow she couldn’t pretend, even to herself, that he was talking about food. “Hot and wet, are you not?”

  “Of course not.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

  “Here’s another choice,” he said, all that edge and quiet insinuation. “I’ll make it easy for you. No need to declare yourself too openly, in a way you will not be able to take back. No need to remind us both too closely of that night back in September. All you have to do is stay exactly where you are.”

  He didn’t elaborate on what would happen if she did that. He didn’t have to.

  “...or?”

  “Or you can go into the kitchen and find a different way to please me.” One arrogant brow lifted. “I prefer to start my days with a hot fire and a small desayuno, which I keep far simpler than you Americans are wont to do. No platters of dessert masquerading as breakfast foods.” That brow seemed to arch even more intensely. “A café con leche, please.”

  He said please. Amelia heard him. But she wasn’t foolish enough—yet—to imagine that was anything but an order.

  And there was only one choice, obviously. No matter what he seemed to think. There was only one possible choice—and yet, for a terrifying moment that seemed to stretch on into eternity, she wavered.

  Amelia stood there, gazing up at him, wondering if she could truly read that austere face of his or if she only wished she could.

  Wondering what would happen if she let herself melt the way she wanted to do.

  Wondering too many things that she should have known better than to allow into her head in the light of day, when wondering what it would be like to indulge herself with this man was what had gotten her into this position in the first place.

  Pull yourself together, she snapped at herself. Now.

  She didn’t only step back, then. She jolted away from him and around him, wrenching herself out of the way of too much temptation.

  Because worse by far than the molten heat between her legs was the ache in her chest.

  Amelia blinked back the unexpected moisture in her eyes as she tried to find her way around the small kitchen. The deep sink basin boasted a pump in place of a faucet, and the water that poured out was clear and fresh. And even as her body shuddered through leftover reactions—to Teo, to this situation she found herself in, to her own body’s betrayal of her—she tried to focus on the task at hand.

  Outside the window a pretty winter sun peeked over the frozen slopes of the surrounding peaks. They were clearly very high up—and Amelia clung to the altitude as an explanation for why she felt so dizzy. It was the height, not the man. Clearly.

  And it was almost helpful, really, to have something odd and a little overwhelming to do, like become a rustic barista in an ancient cabin, on command. But then, that was the part of her unconventional life with her mother that she liked best. Amelia had always done well thinking on her feet, and making herself into whoever and whatever the moment required.

  The pumped-in water was ice cold, and she filled a small bucket and then brought it to the open pot over the fire. Then she set about building up the fire below.

  She’d assumed that this was the kind of absurd task that featured in the kinds of reality shows she liked to watch to relax, and so was pleasantly surprised when she found ground espresso in the stocked cupboards, and better still, a classic silver stovetop espresso maker to put it in. She ladled water out of the pot, then put the espresso maker on the grate.

  And when she turned to see if Teo was watching
her come to grips with his medieval kitchen, she found that simmering black gaze steady on her in a way that made her chest ache. Again.

  She reminded herself it was the altitude.

  “Is this what hereditary dukes do for fun?” she asked. Perhaps more archly than the average servant might. “Take themselves off into the mountains and pretend to be one with the common folk? I’m assuming it didn’t occur to you that us common folk like electricity and gas mains these days, just like you people in your big houses?”

  “I prefer my servants to express their deference in silence,” he said, sounding deep and mysterious, like a brick wall of privilege and that damnable sensuality she wished—oh, how she wished—didn’t get into her veins like that.

  “Then you should have kidnapped a better class of personal maid,” she shot back.

  But she was the one who turned away again, unable somehow to hold that stare of his.

  When the espresso was finally bubbling, she poured it into a cup, added milk and delivered it. And then felt that itchy restlessness sweep over her again. More acutely this time.

  “Now what?” And, yes, her voice was belligerent. Her body language matched it. “I’ve waited on you. Is that really what you want?”

  Teo took his time lifting his cup. He took his time tasting the café con leche he’d asked for, until Amelia started fidgeting with the need to slap it out of his hand—

  “Ordinarily I would say that you should go directly into cleaning, as this floor is appallingly dirty.” Teo’s gaze raked over her in a way she might have thought was dispassionate had she not been standing so close to him. Close enough to see the gleam in those black eyes. “But I am ever mindful that no matter the choices you made, and no matter my feelings about them, you are carrying my heir. I will therefore allow you an hour to yourself. I suggest you clean yourself up. Eat something. And then reapply yourself to the task at hand—and with a pleasant demeanor more suited to your role, please.”

  “I have no intention of getting naked in a tiny, remote cabin with a man who feels justified in holding me prisoner and making me his own, personal Cinderella, thank you.”

  Of course, the moment she said the word naked, all she could picture was Teo naked. It made her head spin all the more.

  “If you do not do as I ask, I will take it as an invitation to do as I wish,” Teo replied, his attention on the coffee she’d made him as if he was making offhanded remarks instead of threats.

  Threats she fully believed he would carry out.

  And for once in her life, Amelia decided that the smart move was to keep her mouth shut. Discretion was the better part of valor, or so she’d read once in school.

  Maybe being trapped on the top of the mountain with a brooding, uncompromising duke who had it in for her—and who might very well take what he wanted, with her body’s enthusiastic consent, a possibility that horrified her even as it made her belly quiver with longing—was an excellent place to discover if that were true.

  * * *

  The days took on their own, unique shape.

  Amelia slept on the couch by the fire, and though she didn’t strip down to the T-shirt she normally preferred to sleep in, she found that it wasn’t necessary to keep herself fully dressed, either. Teo made no further attempts to put his hands on her.

  She told herself that made her riotously glad.

  The cold, careful light woke her in the early mornings. She built the fire back up, then started the water boiling. In the first few days there, she’d wondered how far he was going to take it. Would he send her out into the wilderness in some attempt to rustle up food from the snow and ice? Would he make her scrub the floors with a toothbrush, like some kind of Catholic school nun?

  But she should have known that even Teo at his most rustic was far too sophisticated—or pampered—to leave himself victim to the vagaries of either nature or Amelia’s hesitant servitude. The cabin was well stocked. The cupboards were filled with dry goods and she quickly discovered that there was also a cold chest that had been conveniently filled.

  Amelia got to indulge her self-righteous indignation at his high-handedness and arrogance every time she served him, as ordered. And better still, she secretly got to indulge every last domestic urge she’d ever had, but had never had the occasion to entertain. Because Marie French did not lower herself to domestic chores. She had raised Amelia to disdain anything that smacked of what she called chambermaiding.

  A smart girl aspires to run the house, not clean it, she always said.

  But Amelia quite enjoyed a good clean. It was satisfying. It was a clear, indisputable accomplishment. And maybe it also felt a bit like penance, for deceiving Teo in the first place—something she would die before she admitted out loud.

  While the water warmed in the mornings, she liked to go outside—wrapped up tight against the cold—and breathe in the frigid air. There was nothing in any direction save snow-covered inclines, the winter sky and, not long after she rose each morning on clear days, the full, glorious sunrise.

  “Looking for your escape route?” Teo asked on one of those mornings, coming out to stand behind her there in the small clearing that she liked to think of as their yard. “It’s a long walk down.”

  And she’d only looked over her shoulder at him, hoping she looked enigmatic, because she hadn’t been thinking about walking down at all. She’d been thinking about staying here forever, happily cut off—cut free—from the noise and hustle of her life.

  Winter days were short, and sometimes the sun never rose at all. It was all snow and storm, howling winds, and the days bled one into the next, dark outside and bright within.

  As the days passed, Amelia found her shoulders seemed to drop from their usual place up at her ears. She found herself holding her breath less as she bustled around, oddly delighted that the tasks before her were simple and easily executed. Cleaning a floor was a far more appealing prospect than untangling her mother’s money issues. Sweeping or dusting felt like a holiday compared with the usual long, torturous phone calls in which her mother would tell her things no daughter wanted to know, usually involving sex. Amelia had never been much of a cook, but it was only possible to produce simple things here, so that was what she did. She didn’t have to worry about whether or not her culinary attempts were good, only that they were edible.

  And that, too, was infinitely preferable to presenting herself as her mother’s escort of an evening, subject to Marie’s cheerful critique of her clothes, her hair, even the expression she wore on her face. Not to mention the running commentary on how Amelia ought to have been living her life.

  Teo, meanwhile, was remarkably...easygoing. In comparison.

  Well. Perhaps that wasn’t the right word.

  He didn’t critique her, but he watched her. She would look up from some menial task or other to find him studying her, that stern mouth of his unsmiling and whole worlds in his eyes that she couldn’t quite read.

  Teo made her heart stutter in her chest, and she found herself in a constant state of awareness. She always knew exactly where he was, and when he went off on his hikes the cabin felt strange and almost too large without him.

  One night, after they’d eaten the simple dinner she’d made—that he insisted she serve, then eat with him—she went to rise and clear the plates as usual, but he stopped her.

  “It has been ten days,” he said, and it occurred to her with a jolt that she’d stopped counting. What did that say about her? “I expected far more complaints.”

  “Are you asking for a list of complaints? Or bemoaning the fact that I haven’t offered any?”

  “If you think you can wait me out, you should know that you can’t.” His voice was blunt, that gaze direct. “I told you already. I come from a timeless bloodline. Ten days, ten months. It is all the same to me.”

  “I’m afraid it won’t be the same, actually,�
� she said drily. “Because unless you plan to hand deliver this child yourself, there’s a very specific time limit to how long you can keep me here.”

  He made a soft noise that was not quite a laugh. “Do you imagine me incapable of flying in a medical team?”

  “Threat, threat, threat,” she said lightly, mocking him. “You gave me a choice, Teo. I took it. It’s not my fault if you’re rethinking that now.”

  To her surprise, his mouth curved. “Cariña, I am not the one who wakes in the night, gasping for air.”

  He couldn’t possibly know what she dreamed about. Amelia told herself that, fiercely and repeatedly. He couldn’t know. He could have no idea that she woke up flushed so hot she had to toss off her blankets though the room was always cold. That her thighs ached, her breasts hurt, and between her legs, she burned.

  Oh, how she burned.

  He couldn’t know any of those things. He thought she was gasping for air, not gasping his name.

  But as she gazed at him, and the way he lounged there like the Duke of impeccable lineage he was, the faintest trickle of what she told herself was horror snuck down her spine. It had to be horror, and not any of the other things that swirled around inside her, daring her to look at them straight.

  “What do you get out of this?” she asked him.

  Or, really, threw out there into all that “horror” that danced between them as surely as the snowstorm howled about outside.

  “You will have to be more specific,” Teo replied.

  “I can see the appeal of this place,” Amelia said, more sternly than necessary. Because she was desperate, suddenly, and just as desperate not to show it. “It’s so easy to forget that there’s a whole world that doesn’t live inside a mobile phone. There’s something rewarding in stepping away from it all. Learning how to listen to the thoughts inside, for a change, instead of all that external noise.”

  All of that was true. But there was also him.