A Royal Without Rules

But Pato had changed her, she realized now, gazing at that trinity of women before her as she wiped at her cheeks. What had happened on that plane had altered everything. He had wanted her, and he’d encouraged her to want him back. He hadn’t used her; if anything, she’d used him. Twice. And the things he’d said to her had knocked down walls inside her she’d never known were there.

It didn’t matter what came after that. It didn’t matter if he regretted opening up to her the way he had. It didn’t matter that he’d rejected her today, or that it had hurt her terribly.

It didn’t even matter if she never saw him again, though that possibility broke her heart. He’d given her a gift she could never repay, she understood now. She wasn’t sure she ever would have got there on her own. He’d showed her how.

He’d set her free.

* * *

Later, Adriana sat on the wide sill at her open bedroom windows, looking out at the stretch of the kingdom below her, gleaming in the crisp afternoon light.

She watched the ferries cutting through the crystal blue lake toward the cities on the far shore, racing the pleasure boats with their white sails taut in the breeze. She let her eyes trace the graceful lines of the palace, the gentle bow of the causeway that connected it to the mainland, and the towering Alps all around. There was nothing keeping her here besides sentiment. She could go back to university, collect another degree. She could travel abroad the way she’d always meant to do. There was no reason she had to stay here. None at all.

And even so, even now, she found it hard to imagine leaving.

Adriana heard the motorcycle long before she saw it. It was brash and loud, shouting its way through the streets of the old city. Louder and louder it roared, until it whipped around the corner at the end of the lane, charged down her street in an obnoxious cloud of noise and then stopped directly below her windows.

Her heart slammed against her chest.

Pato tilted back his head and glanced up, pulling off his helmet and piercing her with a long, hard look. Adriana couldn’t seem to move. His expression was serious, unsmiling, and he paused there, one foot on the ground, handling the sleek black machine beneath him with an easy, unconscious grace.

And his eyes gleamed gold for all that they were grave.

She didn’t know how long they stared at each other. The whole city could have gathered around, jeering and pointing, and it wouldn’t have registered. There was only Pato. Here, beneath her window. Here.

And then he smiled, and she felt it everywhere, like that hungry mouth of his, demanding and hot. So hot. She felt herself flush red.

Pato crooked his finger at her, arrogant and sure. He looked anything but careless. He was impossibly powerful, decidedly male, every inch of him a prince though he wore jeans and a black T-shirt that made love to his lean and chiseled body, and held that lethally beautiful machine between his legs.

Adriana scowled at him, because she wanted to melt, and saw his eyes heat in response. He crooked his finger again, with even more lazy command this time, and she shook her head.

“You dismissed me for a reason, or so I assume,” she said, in a reasonable attempt at her usual brisk tone, as if she didn’t care that he was here. That he’d come when she’d thought she’d never see him again. “You can’t change your mind back and forth on a whim and expect—”

“Adriana,” he said, and the sound of her name in his mouth like that, so quiet and so serious in the narrow, cobblestone street, made her fall silent. Pato didn’t smile or laugh; he didn’t show her that grin of his, though his golden gaze was bright. “Come here.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

ADRIANA STEPPED INTO the street, pulling the door to the villa shut behind her, and felt Pato’s eyes on her long before she turned to face him. His golden gaze seared into her, brighter than the afternoon around them, making her heart pick up speed.

“That machine is much too loud,” she told him, the stern tone surprising her even as she used it. His mouth curved in the corner. “It’s noise pollution and you are a—”

“Get on the bike.” His voice was as commanding as that crook of his finger had been, and that gleam in his gaze had gone hotter, more challenging.

“I no longer serve you, Your Royal Highness,” she said primly, though her heart was beating too fast, too hard, and she could see the way he studied the color on her cheeks in that lazy way of his. “At your pleasure or otherwise.”

He still didn’t smile, though the gleam in his eyes suggested it, and then he reached out and hooked his fingers in the waistband of her jeans. Her skin ignited at his touch, making her forget what she’d been saying. The burn of it went deep when he tugged her close, so close her head fell back and all she could see was him.