A Royal Without Rules

The brunette blinked, looking from him to Adriana and then back.

“What did you do?” she asked, wide-eyed, no doubt plotting her call to the tabloids as she spoke.

“Haven’t you heard?” Pato asked, his eyes on Adriana and the way her hand tensed around her mobile as she glared out at the crowd. “I’ve been very, very naughty. Again.”

The brunette made some reply, but Pato watched Adriana, who dragged her gaze to his then as if it hurt her to do it. Even better, her meltingly brown eyes shot fire at him.

“There you are,” he said quietly, with a satisfaction he didn’t bother to hide. He smiled when her eyes narrowed. He tried to make his voice sound like a supplicant’s, but what came out was more like lazy challenge. “Am I allowed to dance, Adriana? Is that permitted?”

“Stay where I can see you,” she ordered him, all smooth command, as if she really did have him under her control. His smile deepened when she turned a cool gaze on the brunette. “Please don’t force me to invoke Kitzinian law, ma’am. No leaving the ballroom. No public displays. Keep it clean and polite. Do you understand?”

The woman nodded, looking slightly dazed, and Pato laughed.

“My very own prison warden,” he said, as if he approved. “I am duly chastened.”

He pulled the brunette into his arms as he took to the floor, but he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off Adriana, who stood where he’d left her, looking calm and unruffled. Serene. She even gazed at him across the swell of bodies, a kind of victory in her dark eyes. He felt it like a direct challenge.

When the interminable dance was finished, he murmured the appropriate things to the brunette, forgot her and then prowled back over to the assistant he’d never wanted in the first place. This time, she looked at him as he approached. More than that, she met his eyes boldly. He didn’t know why that should affect him far more than the way the lush brunette had leaned against him throughout the dance, trying to entice him with her curves.

“You don’t know who that woman is, do you?” Adriana asked when he reached her side, her tone mild. Polite. Pato knew better than to believe it.

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

“But you slept with her.” Something like panic flared in her dark gaze, intriguing him even as she blinked it away. The tips of her ears were red, he noticed, up there near her swept-back blond hair, and her eyes were too bright. “Didn’t you?”

“Probably.” He arched a brow at her. “Are you asking that in an official capacity, Adriana? Or are you jealous?”

“I’m merely curious,” she said with a sniff, sounding as if she was discussing something as dry and uninteresting as his daily schedule. “I imagine, at this point, you can’t walk across a single room in Europe without tripping over legions of former conquests.”

“Well,” he said. “I rarely trip.”

“It must be difficult, at this point, to find someone you haven’t already been intimate with.” She smiled at him, that killer smile he’d seen before, sweet and deadly, which was supposed to be a weapon and instead delighted him. “Then again, it’s not as if you can remember, anyway, can you?”

Pato stood there for a moment, that same jagged restlessness beating at him, making him want things he’d given up a long time ago. Making him hard and wild, and shoving him much too close to a line he couldn’t allow himself to cross.

And still she smiled at him like that, as if she could handle this kind of battle, when he knew she was completely unaware of how much danger she was in.

“Ah,” he said in the low voice he could see made her shiver, and then he smiled as if she was prey and he was already on her. In her. “I see.” And he was closer than he should have been. He was much too close and he didn’t care at all, because her eyes widened and were that intoxicating shade of the finest Swiss chocolate. “You’re under the impression that you can shame me.”

They stared at each other, while laughter and conversation and the music kicked around them. Her lovely face flushed red. He saw the flash of that same panic he’d seen before, as if she wasn’t at all as controlled as she pretended, but she didn’t look away. Brave, he thought. Or foolish.

Pato lost himself in her dark gaze then, electric and alive and focused on him as if nothing else existed. As if he was already buried deep inside her, and she was waiting for him to move.

That image didn’t help matters at all. He blew out a breath.

“Come,” he said shortly, annoyed with himself. He turned on his heel and started across the great ballroom, knowing she had no choice but to follow, to keep him on that absurd leash of hers. And she did.