by Kali Anthony
‘I enjoyed boarding school. Away from the constraints of the palace. Away from my parents’ cold war.’ The open battles over his father’s infidelity. ‘It seemed like bliss in comparison, even though boys can be brutal.’
There was a softness in the way she looked at him now, like sympathy, when he was owed none from her. ‘Being a prince, you would have been top of the tree.’
He threw back the last of his drink. Tempting to have more, but not sensible in the circumstances. ‘That’s not always the best position to be in. It brings with it a certain entitlement which I needed to unlearn.’
She had an uncanny way of getting him to speak the truth of everything. He put his glass down on a side table. The domesticity of this scene assailed him once more. As if she should be here. As if this was her rightful place. A delectable sense of inevitability slid through him.
As if there was no other place she should ever be.
‘You learned that at least. If you had one wish, what would it be?’
Her questions. Funny how she’d stopped asking the ones on her infernal list. However, this one seemed appropriate. He had so many wishes. That he had a sibling, so he was not all alone. That his parents had had a happy marriage like some of those he’d witnessed with his school friends. That his mother had not died. But there was one wish, above all. It came to the fore on nights like tonight, when he realised every choice was taken away by duty. That wish pricked at him like a dagger between the ribs, sliding true to his heart. His deepest secret, and some days his greatest shame.
‘Not being the Prince of Lasserno.’ Being an ordinary man with ordinary choices. He looked over at the decanter of Scotch sitting on the sideboard. He’d never drowned his regrets in alcohol before, but tonight he wanted to down the whole bottle. ‘And you?’
Hannah paled, her skin translucent in the lights. The antique diamonds glittering at her throat. She should always be in diamonds, this woman. Draped in jewels to frame her beauty. Her head dropped. She scuffed at the carpet with her pretty painted toes.
‘I wish I’d been in the car with my parents.’ Her voice was so soft he almost didn’t hear it, but the force of what she said struck him like a blow. His whole body rebelled at the thought she might not be here, that if she’d been in that car the world would be without her brilliance.
‘No!’ He cut through the air with his hand as her eyes widened. He was surprised by his own vehemence. The visceral horror that this was how she might feel. ‘You do not wish that.’
He strode towards her, the hectic glitter in her eyes telling him tears were close. He wasn’t good with tears. His mother had spilled enough of them in his presence, railing against his father. He’d been inured to most of them in the end, learning to comfort without feeling the pain himself.
The threat of Hannah’s ripped at the fabric of his being.
‘It’s my wish. It can be what I want.’
‘Survivor’s guilt.’ As if those two words could ease her dark thoughts. Had she had counselling after her parents had passed? Her aunt and uncle had sent her away to boarding school. Perhaps they’d expected her to get over things without the help a teenager might need after such a loss. ‘If this is the way you feel then you should—’
‘You don’t understand.’ She turned away from him, wrapped her arms round her waist. ‘If I hadn’t travelled with my friend that afternoon, we’d have gone a different way home. We wouldn’t have been on that road. The tractor wouldn’t have been on the bend. They might...’
They might be alive.
Alessio went to her, placed his hands gently on her shoulders. Her skin was warm, soft as satin. He circled his thumbs on her exposed flesh. She leaned back into him. As if taking, for a moment, the meagre solace he could provide.
‘We both want things we can’t have,’ he murmured.
‘You could give up the throne. I can’t turn back time.’
He let out a long, slow breath. Occasionally in his fantasies he’d allow himself to simply be a man, but he had the luxury of being able to think that way. ‘No. I can’t. I have a duty to my people and that duty is more important than anything. More important than a man’s desires.’
She disengaged from him and he mourned the loss of his hands on her skin, the warmth of her. ‘At least you can change things.’
‘I’ll always be the leader of Lasserno.’
‘Not everything has to be for duty. You talk about finding the perfect princess. Is that duty as well?’
‘All that I do is for my country.’
‘Then what feeds the man’s soul?’
He walked to the windows of the palace overlooking his capital. The city, glittering in the late evening like a bright jewel. One entirely in his care. ‘The man doesn’t exist in isolation from the Prince. They’re one and the same.’
‘What about love?’
‘What about it?’
‘You could marry for that. Love’s not about duty.’
Alessio wheeled around. He knew this story, an age-old one. Love had no place in his life. He’d seen how it ate away, destroyed when one party stopped loving the other, or perhaps had never loved them in the first place. His parents’ relationship had been the best evidence of that. It inured him to ever seeking anything more for himself. If duty it was to be, then that would extend to his princess, who’d understand the constraints of royalty, the expectations of her role.
Sure he’d had promises before...of love, of adoration...all so a woman could get a crown on her head too. He could never be sure of anyone, whether they wanted the man, the money or his family’s name, especially after Allegra’s efforts. Better he found someone who knew what this was, a dynastic endeavour. Protecting his country from a vacuum, nothing more. In many ways Hannah was the same as others, accepting the exorbitant fee he’d offered her to paint his portrait. The suspicion overran him, needy and unfamiliar. Had he not been the Prince of Lasserno, would she have agreed to paint him with no complaints? Probably. And that was something he should never forget. Even though tonight, she had seen fit to protect him at her own expense.
‘And who would I find to love? You?’
Hannah’s eyes widened, and then she laughed in a mocking kind of way, as if what he’d said was ridiculous. ‘Me? That’s absurd.’
Which was not the answer he’d been expecting. He’d expected a shy glance, some fluttering of eyelids. A woman playing coy at the hint something more might be on offer. Any reaction other than suggestions of foolishness on his part.
‘Many women want to be a princess.’
‘When they’re little girls, perhaps. But I’m all grown up, and those kinds of dreams die when you realise that’s all they are. Silly, glitter-covered fantasies which tarnish as soon as you expose them to reality. I’m an artist. A commoner. We don’t marry princes.’
Had her dreams died with her parents? He wanted to rail against it. She should be allowed to have the fantasy she could be whatever she wanted. He couldn’t have that dream, but that didn’t mean the same was unavailable to her.
‘What feeds the woman’s soul?’
The flush ran over her cheeks. ‘My art consumes me. When I paint, nothing else exists. It’s all I’ve wanted for a long time. It’s enough.’
It sounded like an excuse.
‘You look like a princess. And tonight, at the table, you acted like a queen. No royalty I know would have done better.’
It was as if she’d protected one of her own, when no one apart from Stefano ever leapt to his defence, only tried to tear him down. The warm kernel of something lit in his chest. Bright, perfect. Overlaid with an intoxicating drumbeat down low. Desire that was dark, tempting and forbidden. Something to be taken care of by himself, on the rare occasion it afflicted him, or with a willing partner who knew what this was. A few hours of passion, nothing more.
Not with a woman he’d begun
to crave with a kind of obsession. Never that.
A slow stain of colour crept up her throat. A gentle smile on her lips. The obvious pleasure in a compliment letting him know she was still a woman underneath all her talk otherwise.
‘Thank you. I’ll let you in on a secret. For a little while, I felt like one. The make-up, a pretty dress. Some exquisite jewellery that isn’t mine. It’s all smoke and mirrors really. But for one night, I’ll admit it was fun.’
She didn’t understand. It wasn’t the trappings that had her competing with royalty, but her demeanour. The way she had stood up to those who tried to cut her down. The way she had stood up for him...
‘What if for one night, it’s what we could have?’ The urgency of his need gripped him. The fantasy that he could have her for this moment. Every part of him began to prickle with anticipation, the hum of pleasure coursing through his blood. ‘If we could pretend that I’m simply a man, and you’re simply a woman.’
‘That you’re not the Prince of Lasserno? Are you asking me to grant your wish?’
A pulse beat at the base of her throat, an excited kind of fluttering that told him she wanted this too.
‘And I’d treat you like the princess that you are.’
Her pupils expanded, drowning the rockpool green of her eyes till the colour was a mere sliver. Her lips parted, as if the oxygen had been sucked from the room, and he sensed it too. The tightening of his chest as if he couldn’t fill his lungs.
She stood in front of him, glowing, beautiful in a way which evoked physical pain. He wanted her so badly he would drop to his knees and beg her like some supplicant so long as she granted him one evening, for both of them to lose themselves in the pretence they could be something other than who they were.
‘Bella?’ Her blood-red toes curled into the carpet. He clenched his hands to fists so he wouldn’t reach out, touch. Take. ‘I will do nothing unless you say yes. The choice, it is yours alone. Stay, or go.’
He had the power here. An imbalance she must never feel beholden to. He needed her to crave him as much as he craved her, to a kind of distraction.
She licked her lips. The mere peek of her tongue almost undid him. How he wanted to plunder that mouth. Tear the clothes from her body. Rip apart the fabric of both their lives for a night of pleasure, lost in her arms.
‘If I’m a princess tonight, then who are you?’
The fantasy wove around him. Something which allowed them to forget who they were and what they were doing here.
‘I’m the frog you’re about to kiss.’
‘But that means you’ll turn into a prince.’
‘I won’t be Prince of Lasserno. I’ll be your prince.’
Hers alone.
Hannah’s lips curled into a wicked smile. ‘For only one night.’
It wasn’t a question, and in a strange way that gave him some comfort. But the thought laced him with a kind of pain, that when the sun rose in the morning this blissful, illicit fantasy would be over.
‘That’s all it can ever be. Sex has a way of changing things, but it can’t change this,’ he said, as much of a warning to him as it was to her. Though the fantasy wove into a reality, where she could turn him into someone else for a few hours, because they both willed it.
‘And what about duty?’
‘Tonight?’ It could only be one night and nothing else. That was all he would allow himself. And for him, that would be enough. ‘Duty can go to hell.’
* * *
Duty can go to hell.
The words rang through her like some clarion call. He stood there, jaw hard. Hands clenched to fists at his sides. His bow tie hanging loose, and the top of his shirt unbuttoned to show the dark hair at his throat. Yet he wouldn’t come to her. She knew it. She saw it in the tense set of his body. He wanted her to decide. And she craved him, with a zeal that made little sense to her. She’d never been particularly interested in sex, or so she had always thought, the idea of getting too close to someone, letting anyone in, crushing the breath right out of her. Caring was dangerous. Loving, even more so. But around Alessio, there was no common sense. As if he were all the oxygen in the room, as if to breathe she had to have him.
She wanted to walk into his arms, into all that strength. Bury her nose to the hollow at the base of his throat. Let every part of him overwhelm her. She took a step. The first. It wasn’t so hard because this was a moment of fantasy where they could pretend to be other people. Alessio flexed his fingers as she took another step, and another. And only when she stood so close that his warmth seeped into her, did he wrap his arms round her, as strong as she’d imagined them to be. He dropped his head as if in slow motion. She rose on her toes and their lips touched. The warm press of skin to skin. Gentle, strangely innocent in a way that almost broke her heart. She dropped back, looked into his all-dark eyes, the pupils drowning out the velvet brown.
‘Look,’ she whispered, her voice cracking. A hesitation between them as if everything was tentative and the universe waited. ‘I’ve made a prince.’
And then it was as if the world exploded around them. Alessio groaned and took her face in his hands, crushing his lips to hers. She met him, her hands on his chest, fingers curling into the strong muscles there. She had no experience, but this seemed to lack all finesse, drawn from pure need. Their tongues touched, battled, as if each were trying to win over the other. Her body was all heat and fire, her exquisite dress of fine fabric a scraping interruption to his fingers on her overheated skin. She slipped her hands under his jacket, over the shoulders, tugging because every piece of clothing between them was a travesty. He let her face go, tore the jacket from his body. Tossed it to the floor.
‘Your dress. I don’t trust myself.’
She barely did her own self. But she reached round with trembling fingers and slid the zip down, slowly. As if this were a kind of performance, because she was transfixed by the hooded rapture in his eyes as he watched. There was no time for nerves, no time for doubts. Not here, not now. Tonight she was a princess, and she could do and have anything she wanted.
And how she wanted Alessio.
The dress slumped from her shoulders as she shrugged out of the bodice. The fabric slid over her body, fell to the floor. She stepped out of it, as if it were a sea of foam on the ground and she was leaving the ocean, reborn, in only the exquisite lace bra and panties which she’d purchased to match the dress. The single extravagance she’d allowed when preparing her trip to Lasserno. Her skin seemed too tight, as if she were a butterfly ready to burst from the chrysalis. It was as if for the past nine years she’d been in stasis, waiting. And now she’d been changed on a cellular level.
Hannah began to walk forward towards Alessio and he held up a hand.
‘Wait. I want to look at you. To always remember your beauty.’
There were so many things that would be left unsaid tonight, but how precious these moments were would not be one of them. Now wasn’t the time to be shy, but to be brave.
‘I need to see you too,’ she whispered, unsure as to whether her voice was loud enough with all the emotion trembling through it. Alessio’s throat convulsed with a swallow which told her all she needed to know, that he’d heard her plea. He grabbed his bow tie, dragged it from round his neck and dropped it on the floor. Undid a button on his shirt, then another and another. Tugged the zinc-white fabric from the waist of his trousers, tossing it aside the way of his coat and bow tie. She inhaled sharply at the sight before her, his broad shoulders, the muscles of his arms all sculpted and bronzed. The hair at his chest, dusting the muscles there, trailing down, darkening and disappearing at his trouser waistband. Her fingers became restless to run them through the crisp hair. To touch. He undid his belt, drew it slowly from his trousers before tossing it aside. Her eyes dropped as he gripped the top of his trousers. Even though they were black, the evidence of his arousal
was bold and obvious.
She’d done that to him.
‘Like what you see?’
‘I’d like to see more.’
He chuckled and the ripple of it rolled through her, like a promise for something she didn’t know she’d been waiting for. Anticipation at its finest.
‘Your wish is my command, Principessa.’
A thrill shivered through her, that she had any sway over this man. That he stood there, tense with his physical masculine beauty, waiting for her next word.
‘Slowly.’
The corner of his mouth kicked up and he did exactly as she demanded. It was as if each notch on the zip took an age. Almost as if time were standing still. The leisurely, deliberate tease all for her as he hooked his hands into the waistband of his trousers and his underwear. The heat of this moment flamed in her cheeks. The boldness of it, all because of what she desired. It could careen out of control at any second, but for now this was hers. Alessio bent at the waist as his trousers passed his thighs, everything hidden, then they slipped to the floor and he rose. Stepped out of the superfine black wool and kicked them and his underwear away.
He stood straight, allowing her eyes to take their fill. She might be inexperienced, but she’d seen naked men before. In art, on the internet, in life-drawing classes. This, however, was more than she had ever experienced. A perfect man, drawn by the hand of angels. Too real to be human, yet undoubtedly flesh and blood. His arousal, because of her, intoxicating.
‘I need to touch you. For you to touch me.’ His voice was tight, as if he were in pain, and she understood. The ache inside her built and built. She felt she might double over with need, self-combust if their hands were not on one another soon.
‘Yes. Please.’
He made it to her in a few strides, hands hot and hard on her hips, slipping round to her buttocks, pulling her close and against him. Burying his face in her neck and breathing her in. His lips kissing and skimming the sensitive skin there till she moaned. He slid his hands up her back as she shivered and quaked under his exquisite touch. Unhooked her bra. Slipped it over her arms and let it fall to the floor. He moved his hands to cup her breasts, stood back a mere fraction to look, brushed his thumbs to her nipples and they tightened with a burning pleasure. He looked down at her with reverence, as if she were a kind of revelation.
