A Royal Without Rules

She inclined her head at the clear evidence that he wanted her, badly and unmistakably, then looked up to hold his gaze with hers, her chocolate eyes dark and still too hot.

“I can see how much you appreciate it, Your Royal Highness,” she said softly, but with that kick beneath that he couldn’t help but enjoy. He didn’t understand why he liked her edginess. Why he liked how unafraid she was of him, even now.

He could still taste her. He was so hard for her it hurt, and he wasn’t used to denying himself anything. Much less women. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d tried. Pato had slept with any number of women who had assumed he’d be a conduit to his brother, who had cold-bloodedly used him for that purpose. It had never bothered Pato before.

He didn’t know why it bothered him now—why that look on her face in the shadows last night kept flashing in his head. He only knew he wouldn’t—couldn’t—be this woman’s path to his brother, no matter her reasons, no matter how convoluted it all was. He wanted her head to be full of him, and nothing else.

“We can’t always have what we want,” he said quietly. He meant it more than she knew.

“You can. You do.” She frowned at him. “You’ve made a career out of it.”

Pato shook his head. “You’re not going to win this argument with me. No matter how sweetly you pout, or how naked you get. Not that I don’t enjoy both.”

She made a small sound of frustration, mixed, he could tell from the color in her cheeks, with that embarrassment that he found himself entirely too obsessed with. When was the last time he’d met a woman who still blushed?

“Is there any woman alive you haven’t slept with?” she demanded. “Or is it only me?”

“It’s only you,” Pato assured her, not knowing why he was doing this. Not understanding what there was to gain from it. Surely it would be better simply to have her. That was the time-honored approach to situations like this. Chemistry never lasted. Sex was white-hot for only a small while, and then it burned itself out. The only thing denial ever did—or so he’d heard—was make the wanting worse.

But he had never wanted someone like this. And having tasted her, he very much doubted that sex would be a cure. More like his doom.

He didn’t know where that thought came from, and yet it clawed into him.

“You didn’t even know the word no until today!” she snapped at him.

“If I were you,” he said in a low voice that he could see got to her when she shivered again, as if he’d run his fingers down the line of her elegant neck, “I’d quit now, before tempers are lost and consequences become far greater. I’d put on some clothes and remember myself. My place. Just a suggestion.”

She pulled in a breath, and her hands balled into fists, and then she shook her head slightly as if she really was remembering herself.

“I told you I’d resign,” she said after a moment. Her mouth firmed. “And I will. Today, in fact.”

“No, you will not.”

She should resign. He should see to it she was sacked, barred from the palace, kept away for her own good. She should take her melting brown eyes and that impossibly tempting body of hers, her irritating martyr’s love for the undeserving Lenz, and leave Kitzinia far behind. She should protect herself from her family’s history, from the endless, vicious rumor mill that comprised the highest levels of Kitzinian society, and was even nastier than usual when it came to her.

He wished he could protect her himself.

He was, Pato realized then, in terrible trouble. But this was a game, he reminded himself, and Adriana was a part of it. His strange, protective urges didn’t matter—they couldn’t. She wasn’t going anywhere. He needed her to stay right where she was.

“You won’t help me help your brother, and you won’t let me leave,” Adriana said, her voice as stiff as her body had become, her brown eyes rapidly cooling, which he told himself was better. “What will you let me do?”

“I suggest you do your job.” It came out harsher than he’d intended, and he saw her blink, as if it hurt. He tried to force his usual laughter into his voice, that devil-may-care attitude he’d perfected, but he couldn’t quite do it. “If you can. I can’t promise I’ll cooperate, but then, you knew that going in.”

“I don’t want—”

“I am Prince Patricio of Kitzinia and you are a Kitzinian subject,” he said, more himself in that moment than he’d allowed himself to be in years, and that, too, was trouble. Big trouble. It was too soon to be anything but Pato the Playboy, even here—and still, he couldn’t stop. “You serve at my pleasure, Adriana. Yours is irrelevant.”