One Night With The Prince: A Royal Without Rules

That was a lie, she thought now, cupping a hand over the nape of her neck as if she could ease the tension she felt. Adriana knew exactly what was happening. She didn’t want to understand it, because she didn’t want to admit it. Yet the way her father had looked at her today, as if she was somehow visibly tainted by the family history, made it impossible to keep lying to herself.

She’d heard it all her life. It had been flung at her in school and was whispered behind her back even now. It wasn’t enough that she was assumed to be traitorous by blood, like all her male relatives. She was the only female Righetti of her generation, and more, was the very image of her famous forebears—there were portraits in the Royal Gallery to prove it. They were well-known and well-documented whores, all the way down to Adriana’s great-aunt, who had famously beguiled one of the king’s cousins into walking away from his dukedom, disowned and disgraced.

And Adriana was just like them.

She knew exactly how tainted she really was, how very much she lived down to her family’s legacy. Because it wasn’t Lenz who had dreamed of something more familiar. It was her.

Lenz was good and kind, and he’d believed in her. He’d given her a chance. Adriana was the first Righetti to set foot in the palace since her traitorous ancestor had been executed there a hundred years ago, and Lenz had made that happen. He’d changed everything. He’d given her hope. And in return, Adriana had adored him, happy simply to be near him.

And yet she’d dreamed of Pato in ways she’d never dreamed of his brother. Wild and sensual. Explicit. Maybe it shouldn’t surprise her that she couldn’t get Pato out of her head, she thought now in a wave of misery. Maybe it was programmed into her very flesh, her bones, to want him. To want anything, anyone royal, moving from one prince to the next. To be exactly what she’d always been: a Righetti.

That was what they said in the tabloids, which had pounced on her switch from Lenz’s office to Pato’s with malicious glee, after three years of going a bit easier on her. She’s failed to snare Prince Lenz with her Righetti wiles—will the shameless Pato be easier to trap?

Maybe this had all been inevitable from the start.

Her mobile phone chirped at her from the bedside table, snapping her eyes open. She reached for it and tensed when she saw the name that flashed on the screen. It felt like confirmation that she was cursed. But she picked it up, because Pato was her job. Her responsibility. It didn’t matter what she felt.

It only mattered what she did, and she controlled that. Not him. Not the ghosts of her slutty ancestors. Not her own treacherous blood.

Stop being so melodramatic, she ordered herself, pulling in a deep breath. Nothing is inevitable.

“It’s eight-fifteen in the morning,” she said by way of a greeting, and she didn’t bother to sweeten her tone. “Surely too early for your usual debauchery.”

“Pack your bags,” Pato said, sounding uncharacteristically alert despite the hour. “We’re flying to London this afternoon. There’s some charity thing I had no intention of attending, and now, apparently, must. My brother commands it.”

Adriana blinked, and sorted through the possibilities in her head.

“Presumably you mean the Children’s Foundation, of which you and your brother are major benefactors,” she said crisply. “And their annual ball.”

“Presumably,” he agreed, that alertness blending into his more typical laziness, and prickling over her skin no matter how badly she didn’t want to be affected. “I don’t really care, I only follow orders. And Adriana?”

“Yes?” But she knew. She could hear it in his voice. She could imagine that smile in the corner of his mouth, that gleam in his eyes. She didn’t have to see any of it—she felt it. Her eyes drifted shut again, and she hated herself anew.

“It’s never too early for debauchery,” he said in that low, stirring way that was only his. “I’d be delighted to prove that to you. You can make it back to the palace in what? Twenty minutes?”

“You need to stop,” she retorted, not realizing she meant to speak, and then it sat there between them. Pato didn’t reply, but she could feel him. That disconcerting power of his, that predatory beauty. She dropped her forehead into one hand, kept her eyes shut. “I’m not your toy. I don’t expect you to make my job easy for me, but this is unacceptable.” He still didn’t speak, but she could feel the thrum of him inside her, the electricity. “Not every woman you meet wants to sleep with you.”

He laughed, and she felt it slide through her like light, illuminating too many truths she’d prefer to hide away forever. Exposing her. Making that curl of heat glow again, low and hot, proving what a liar she was.

“Rule number four,” he began.

“Would you like to know what you can do with your rules?” she demanded, desperate.

“Adriana,” he chided her, though she could hear the thread of laughter in his voice. Somehow, that made it worse. “I’m fairly certain I could legally have you beheaded for speaking to me in such an appalling fashion, given the medieval laws of our great kingdom. I am your prince and your employer, not one of your common little boyfriends. A modicum of respect, please.”

She was too raw. Too unbalanced. It crossed her mind then that she might not survive him. Certainly not intact. That he might be the thing that finally broke her.

“I apologize, Your Royal Highness,” she said, her voice much too close to a whisper. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“Rule number four,” he said again, softly. And meanwhile her heart thudded so hard in her chest that she could feel the echo of it in her ears, her teeth. Her sex. “If you can’t muster up the courage to say it to my face, I’m not going to take it seriously.”

Because he knew, of course. That she was using this phone conversation to hide, because she doubted her own strength when he was standing in front of her. He’d watched it, hadn’t he? Exploited it. He knew exactly how weak she was.

And now she did, too.

“London,” she said, changing the subject, because she had to end this conversation right now. She had to find her balance again, or at least figure out how to fake it. “A charity ball. I’ll pack appropriately, of course.”

“Say it to my face, Adriana,” he urged her, and she told herself she didn’t recognize what she heard in his voice then. But her skin broke out in goose bumps, even her breasts felt heavy, and she knew better. She knew. “See what happens.”

“I should be back in the palace within the hour, Your Royal Highness,” she said politely, and hung up.

And then sat there on the edge of her bed, her head in her hands, and wondered what the hell would become of her if she couldn’t find a way to control this. To control herself.

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

CHAPTER THREE (#u42e1f619-d2d7-5205-b1df-9abd9277b5c2)

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.