Pato, of course, had smiled.
She’d opened her mouth to say something, anything. To blister him with the force of all the anger and humiliation and dark despair that swirled in her. To save herself from the truths she didn’t want to face, truths that moved in her like blood, like need, like all the rest of the things she didn’t want to accept.
“I told you how I feel about challenges,” he’d said before she could speak, dropping his hands from behind his head and shifting in his chair, his gaze intense. “Disrespect me all you like, I don’t mind. But you should bear in mind that, first, it will reflect on you should you be foolish enough to do it in public, not on me. And second, you won’t like the way I retaliate. Do you understand me?”
She’d understood him all too well. Adriana had fled his office as if he’d been chasing her, when all that had actually followed her out into the gleaming hall was the sound of his laughter.
And her own deep and abiding shame at her weakness. But then, she carried that with her wherever she went.
Adriana shifted in her seat now, flipping the pages in her book as if she was reading fiercely and quickly, when in fact she hadn’t been able to make sense of a single word since the plane had left the airport in Nice, France. Pato was still on his mobile phone, speaking in Italian to one of his vast collection of equally disreputable friends, his low voice and wicked laughter curling through her, into her, despite her best efforts to simply ignore him.
But she couldn’t seem to do it.
Her body remembered London too well, even all these weeks later. It thrilled to the memories. They were right there beneath her skin, dancing in her veins, pulsing hot and wild in her core. All it took was his voice, a dark look, that smile, and her body thundered for more. More heat, more flame. More of that darkly addictive kiss. More of Pato, God help her. Adriana was terribly afraid that he’d flipped some kind of switch in her and ruined her forever.
And that wasn’t the only thing he’d ruined.
“You are clearly a miracle worker,” Lenz had said as the young royals had stood together outside a ballroom in the capital city one evening with their various attendants, waiting to make their formal entrance into a foundation’s gala event. “There hasn’t been a single scandal since you took Pato in hand.”
Adriana had wanted nothing more than to bask in his praise. Lenz had always been, if not precisely comfortable to be around, at least easy to work for. He’d never been as dangerously beautiful as Pato, but Adriana had always found him attractive in his own, far less flashy way. The sandy hair, the kind blue eyes. He was shorter than his brother, more solid than lean, but he’d looked every inch the king he’d become. It was the way he held himself, the way he spoke. It was who he was, and Adriana had always adored him for it.
Ordinarily, she would have hung on his every word and only allowed herself to think about the way it made her ache for him when she was alone. But that night she’d been much too aware of Pato standing on the other side of the great doorway, with Princess Lissette. Adriana had been too conscious of that golden gaze of his, mocking her. Reminding her.
He was grooming you to be his mistress.
And when she’d looked at Lenz—really looked at him, searching for the man and not the Crown Prince of Kitzinia she’d always been so awed by—she’d seen an awareness in his gaze, something darker and richer and clearly not platonic.
There had been no mistaking it. No unseeing it. And no denying it.
“I’m afraid I can’t take credit for it, Your Royal Highness,” she’d said, feeling sick to her stomach. Deeply ashamed of herself and of him, too, though she hadn’t wanted to admit that. She’d been so sure Lenz was different. She’d been so certain. She hadn’t been able to meet his eyes again. “He’s been nothing but cooperative.”
“Pato? Cooperative? You must be speaking of a different brother.”
Lenz had laughed and Adriana had smiled automatically. But she’d been unable to ignore how close he stood to her, how familiar he was when he spoke to her. Too close. Too familiar. Just as her father had warned, and she’d been too blind to see it. Blind and ignorant, and it made her feel sicker.
Worse, she’d been grimly certain that Pato could see every single thought that crossed her mind. And the Princess Lissette had been watching her as well, her cool gaze sharp, her icy words from the ball in London ringing in Adriana’s head.
She is widely regarded as something of a pariah.
Adriana had been relieved when it had been time for the royal entrance. They’d all swept inside to the usual fanfare, the other attendants had disappeared to find their own seats and she’d been left behind in the hall, finally alone. Finally away from all those censorious, amused, aware eyes on her. Away from Lenz, who wasn’t at all who she’d imagined him to be. Away from Pato, who was far more than she could handle, just as he’d warned her.
Adriana had stood there for a very long time, holding on to the wall as if letting go of it might tip her off the side of the earth and away into nothing.
“You seemed so uncomfortable with my brother last night,” Pato had taunted her the very next day, his golden gaze hard on her. She’d been trapped in the back of a car with him en route to another event, and she’d felt too raw, too broken, to contend with the man she’d glimpsed in London, so relentless and powerful. She’d decided she preferred him shiftless and lazy, hip deep in scandal. It was easier. “Or perhaps it’s only that I expected to see more chemistry between you, given that you wish to make such a great and noble sacrifice to save him.”
His tone had been so dry. He was talking about her life as if he hadn’t punched huge holes right through the center of it. Adriana had learned long ago how to act tough even if she wasn’t, how to shrug off the cruel things people said and did to her—but it had been too much that day.
He’d taken everything that had ever meant something to her. Her belief in Lenz. Her position in the palace. Her self-respect. Everything. And finally, something had simply cracked.
“I understand this is all a joke to you,” she’d said in a low voice, staring out the window at the red-roofed city, historic houses and church spires, the wide blue lake in the distance, the Alps towering over everything. “And why shouldn’t it be? It doesn’t matter what you do—the people adore you. There are never any consequences. You never have to pay a price. You have the option to slide through life as pampered and as shallow as you please.”
“Yes,” he’d replied, sounding lazy as usual, but when she’d glanced back at him his gaze was dark. She might have thought he looked troubled, had he been someone else. Her stomach had twisted into a hard knot. “I’m a terrible disappointment. Sometimes even to myself.”
Adriana hadn’t understood the tension that had flared between them then, the odd edginess that had filled the interior of the car, fragile and heavy at once. She hadn’t wanted to understand it. But she’d been afraid she did. That Pandora’s box might have been opened, and there wasn’t a thing she could do to change it after the fact. But that didn’t mean that she needed to rummage around inside it, picking up things best left where they were.
“Your brother was the first man who was ever kind to me,” she’d said, her voice sounding oddly soft in the confines of the car. “It changed everything. It made me believe—” But she hadn’t been able to say it, not to Pato, who couldn’t possibly have understood what it had meant to her to feel safe, at last. Who would mock her, she’d been sure. “I would have been perfectly happy to keep on believing that. You didn’t have to tell me otherwise.”
“Adriana.” He’d said her name like a caress, a note she’d never heard before in his voice, and she’d held up a hand to stop him from saying anything further. There had been tears pricking at the back of her eyes