A Royal Without Rules

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.”