Wild Heir (Fated Royals 4)

The water was warm, heated perhaps by the gas furnaces of the house deep below, and I was enveloped in a silky safety that let me shake off the chill of our long ride in the night. I reemerged just in time to see him kick off his boots, throw his coat on the floor and yank his shirt over his head.

It was all I could do to stop myself from moaning out loud. His torso every inch that of a Greek god's; his broad shoulders led down into a narrow, sculpted waist.

My eyes were immediately drawn to the line of hair that went down from his belly button and into his pants. But he didn’t give me the satisfaction of seeing everything, and he dove into the pool with his pants on.

He was a powerful swimmer and he vanished into the warm, dark water. I turned this way and that to see where he might reemerge, but I’d lost sight of him.

Suddenly a strong, bare arm looped around my waist and he pushed me up against the wall, reemerging in front of me, pressing his groin up against my hips.

I felt him there, hard against me, and my heart leapt into my chest. Pressing me up against the pool edge, the cool marble against the back of my neck. Rivulets of water trickled from his thick dark hair down his muscular throat.

Almost automatically, I spread my legs for him and hooked my ankles together around his waist. He slid his hand down my back far enough to dig his huge fingers into my ass and shifted me slightly, gently moving me through the water toward the underwater steps.

Once there, he caged me in with one hand on the railing above me, and pinned me tightly up against the wall of the pool. My plan was working, I just needed to be seductive yet coy an draw him in deeper.

I studied him, every detail of his beautiful face, willing him to lean in and kiss me again.

But instead, he pulled back. The look in his eyes hardened, and with a powerful thrust he pulled me into him and lifted me right up out of the pool. I dropped my legs and went stiff, trying to make it as difficult as possible for him to carry me, but it was no use.

He scooped up my clothes in his other arm and then dragged me along down the wooden hallways, with my wet feet squeaking, drenched hair dripping down my face and back.

“I wasn’t done swimming.” I squirmed and felt my naked flesh against him.

“Looks like you are.”

I huffed and decided to let it go. So sure and yet unsure of what I was doing, the thoughts tangling in my mind, making me doubt myself.

Before I knew it, he’d opened the door to a bedroom and shoved both me and my things inside. For one instant, he eyed me up and down as if trying to make some important decision.

“You’re a royal pain in the ass, Princess,” he said, and then closed the door, locking it from the outside as he went.

I stood there, naked and dripping, flabbergasted and fuming. Glancing around, I saw that I was in a comfortable enough prison. The bed was large and freshly made, there was a dressing table, a fireplace, heavy curtains over the windows, even a thick rug on the floor. But it was a prison, nonetheless.

I pounded hard on the door. “Well, you’re a kidnapping bastard!” I shouted, knowing I didn’t mean it as I felt a loss listening to his footfalls moving farther and farther away.

A cold hug of rejection tightened around me. Why had Vasile not taken me? I was there, naked, my legs around him and yet, here I was. Alone. What had I done wrong?

Clearly, the fine art of seduction was something that needed further study.Chapter 9ValeriaOne thing they didn’t teach us at Saint Theodora’s, was lock picking but that didn’t stop me from trying.

Vasile’s sudden arrival at my dorm room had one upside—I hadn’t had a chance to unbraid my hair from that godforsaken dinner, and so while my hair had fared poorly from my careless decision to take a naked swim, I still had a few hairpins at my disposal, clinging to my now-damp, unkempt locks.

After Vasile closed and locked me inside, I’d paced for a good bit, muttering every curse word I knew. As my anger ebbed, I realized I was still naked and slipped my nightdress on and came up with my lock picking plan.

The lock was an old iron pocket lock. And my hairpins are just what you’d expect for a down-on-her-luck princess.

“Damn it,” I hissed as yet another one snapped in half in my fingers.

This one had broken right at the edge of the lock. As I peered out of the keyhole, I saw it was stuck inside. I jabbed my finger at it to try to get it to wriggle free, but all that did was nick the tip of my finger.