A Royal Without Rules

Because she was terribly afraid that if she couldn’t, Pato would.

CHAPTER THREE

THE CHARITY BALL in London was, of course, as tedious as every other charity ball Pato had ever attended. He smiled. he posed for obligatory photographs with Lenz and the chilly Lissette, as well as with any number of other people whose names he forgot almost before he heard them. He then contemplated impaling himself on the dramatic ice sculpture near the lavish buffet to see if that might enliven the evening in some small way.

“Restrain yourself,” Adriana replied, in that stuffy voice that he found amused him far more than it should, when he announced his intentions. Pato angled a look at her.

She stood beside him as she had all evening, never more than three steps away, as if she’d put him on an invisible leash and was holding it tight. Her lovely face was smoothed to polite placidity, she knew exactly how to blend into the background whenever someone came to speak to him, and she held her mobile phone tight in one hand as if she planned to use it to subdue him if he made a break for it. She’d been nothing but irritatingly serene and unflappably professional since she’d returned to the palace with her packed bag this morning. And all this time, across the span of Europe and the whole of London, she’d managed to avoid looking at him directly.

Pato found her fascinating.

“Restraint?” he asked, noting the way her shoulders tensed beneath the cap sleeves of the elegant black sheath she wore when he spoke. Every time he spoke. It made him want to press his mouth to her collarbone, to lick his way up the curve of her neck to the subdued sparkle of small diamonds at her ears. “I’m unfamiliar with the concept.”

She smiled slightly, but kept her attention trained on the dance floor in front of them. “Truer words have never been spoken, Your Royal Highness.”

He laughed. He liked it when she slapped at him, when her voice was something more than cool, smooth, bland. He liked when he could sense her temper, her frustration. He found that the more he told her how bored he was, the less bored he actually felt.

Pato knew he was on dangerous ground. He didn’t care. He hadn’t enjoyed himself so much in years.

A curvy brunette in a slinky dress slithered up to him then, her heavily kohled eyes sweeping over Adriana dismissively before she leaned in close and ran her hands over Pato’s chest.

“Your Royal Highness,” she purred, her lips painted a sultry red that matched the fingernails she ran along the length of his tie. “We meet again. I knew we would.”

Pato smiled indulgently. He had no idea who she was. “And you were right.”

Beside him, he felt Adriana bristle, and he enjoyed that immensely, so he picked up the brunette’s hand and kissed it, making her lean even more heavily against him.

“Dance with me,” she commanded him in a sultry voice.

Pato didn’t feel like dancing and he wasn’t particularly fond of commands, but he could feel Adriana’s disapproval like a cold wind at his back, and so he smiled wider.

“I’m afraid I’m here with my own version of an electronic ankle bracelet,” he said blithely, turning slightly. He indicated Adriana with a nod of his head, and was pleased to notice she flushed. At the attention? Or was that the sweet kick of her temper? And why did he want so badly to know? “It’s like a walking house arrest.”

The brunette blinked, looking from him to Adriana and then back.

“What did you do?” she asked, wide-eyed, no doubt plotting her call to the tabloids as she spoke.

“Haven’t you heard?” Pato asked, his eyes on Adriana and the way her hand tensed around her mobile as she glared out at the crowd. “I’ve been very, very naughty. Again.”

The brunette made some reply, but Pato watched Adriana, who dragged her gaze to his then as if it hurt her to do it. Even better, her meltingly brown eyes shot fire at him.

“There you are,” he said quietly, with a satisfaction he didn’t bother to hide. He smiled when her eyes narrowed. He tried to make his voice sound like a supplicant’s, but what came out was more like lazy challenge. “Am I allowed to dance, Adriana? Is that permitted?”

“Stay where I can see you,” she ordered him, all smooth command, as if she really did have him under her control. His smile deepened when she turned a cool gaze on the brunette. “Please don’t force me to invoke Kitzinian law, ma’am. No leaving the ballroom. No public displays. Keep it clean and polite. Do you understand?”

The woman nodded, looking slightly dazed, and Pato laughed.

“My very own prison warden,” he said, as if he approved. “I am duly chastened.”

He pulled the brunette into his arms as he took to the floor, but he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off Adriana, who stood where he’d left her, looking calm and unruffled. Serene. She even gazed at him across the swell of bodies, a kind of victory in her dark eyes. He felt it like a direct challenge.

When the interminable dance was finished, he murmured the appropriate things to the brunette, forgot her and then prowled back over to the assistant he’d never wanted in the first place. This time, she looked at him as he approached. More than that, she met his eyes boldly. He didn’t know why that should affect him far more than the way the lush brunette had leaned against him throughout the dance, trying to entice him with her curves.

“You don’t know who that woman is, do you?” Adriana asked when he reached her side, her tone mild. Polite. Pato knew better than to believe it.

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“But you slept with her.” Something like panic flared in her dark gaze, intriguing him even as she blinked it away. The tips of her ears were red, he noticed, up there near her swept-back blond hair, and her eyes were too bright. “Didn’t you?”

“Probably.” He arched a brow at her. “Are you asking that in an official capacity, Adriana? Or are you jealous?”

“I’m merely curious,” she said with a sniff, sounding as if she was discussing something as dry and uninteresting as his daily schedule. “I imagine, at this point, you can’t walk across a single room in Europe without tripping over legions of former conquests.”

“Well,” he said. “I rarely trip.”

“It must be difficult, at this point, to find someone you haven’t already been intimate with.” She smiled at him, that killer smile he’d seen before, sweet and deadly, which was supposed to be a weapon and instead delighted him. “Then again, it’s not as if you can remember, anyway, can you?”

Pato stood there for a moment, that same jagged restlessness beating at him, making him want things he’d given up a long time ago. Making him hard and wild, and shoving him much too close to a line he couldn’t allow himself to cross.

And still she smiled at him like that, as if she could handle this kind of battle, when he knew she was completely unaware of how much danger she was in.

“Ah,” he said in the low voice he could see made her shiver, and then he smiled as if she was prey and he was already on her. In her. “I see.” And he was closer than he should have been. He was much too close and he didn’t care at all, because her eyes widened and were that intoxicating shade of the finest Swiss chocolate. “You’re under the impression that you can shame me.”

They stared at each other, while laughter and conversation and the music kicked around them. Her lovely face flushed red. He saw the flash of that same panic he’d seen before, as if she wasn’t at all as controlled as she pretended, but she didn’t look away. Brave, he thought. Or foolish.

Pato lost himself in her dark gaze then, electric and alive and focused on him as if nothing else existed. As if he was already buried deep inside her, and she was waiting for him to move.

That image didn’t help matters at all. He blew out a breath.

“Come,” he said shortly, annoyed with himself. He turned on his heel and started across the great ballroom, knowing she had no choice but to follow, to keep him on that absurd leash of hers. And she did.

“Where are you going?” she asked as she fell into step with him. He didn’t think that hint of breathlessness in her voice was from walking, and it carved out something like a smile inside him.

“It’s like we’re chained together, Adriana.” he couldn’t seem to find his footing, and that was a catastrophe waiting to happen. And still, he didn’t care about that the way he knew he should. “Think of the possibilities.”

“No, thank you,” she replied, predictably, and he indulged himself and wrapped his hand around her upper arm, feigning solicitousness as he moved her through the door that led out toward the gardens. She jumped when he touched her, electric shock and that darker kick beneath it. He knew because he felt it, too. Her skin was softer than satin, warm and smooth beneath his palm, she smelled faintly of jasmine, and he shouldn’t have done it. Because now he knew.

Her eyes flew to his, and it punched through him hard, making him want to push her back against the nearest wall, lift her against him, lose himself completely in the burn of it. In her.

“Are you sure?” he asked, as they moved from the bright light of the ballroom into the soft, cool dark outside. He led her across the wide patio, skirting the small clumps of people who stood clustered around the bar tables that dotted it here and there. “Five minutes ago my sexual escapades were foremost on your mind. Don’t tell me you’ve lost interest so quickly.”

He looked down at her, and made no effort to contain the heat in him. The fire. He felt a tremor run through her, and God help him, he wanted her more than he’d wanted anything in years.

“I didn’t realize you were so sensitive about your scandalous past, Your Royal Highness,” she said, in a rendition of her usual cool he might have believed, had he not been looking into the wild heat in her gaze. “I’ll take care not to mention it again.”

“Somehow,” he murmured, his grip on her arm tightening just enough to make her suck in a breath, just enough to torture himself, “I very much doubt that.”

At some point, he was going to have to figure out why this woman got to him like this. But not tonight. Not now.