A Royal Without Rules

“I was cruel,” Pato said, his voice dark. “Chastising me won’t change that, though perhaps it makes you feel better. But you can admit you want me anyway.” His gaze was steady. He wasn’t toying with her. He knew. “There’s no shame in it.”

Adriana went white, then red. Shock. Embarrassment. Fury.

“I don’t know what makes you think—”

Her breath left her in a rush when his fingers moved gently over the soft skin just beneath her waistband, teasing her. Tormenting her. Making whatever she was about to say a lie.

“Adriana.” His voice was pure velvet now, wrapped around steel. “Get on the bike.” He held out a helmet.

And she’d known she would, since the moment he’d appeared outside her windows, hadn’t she? Why had she pretended otherwise? It wasn’t as if Pato was fooled. It wasn’t as if she’d fooled herself.

But there was admitting she loved him in the privacy of her own head, and then there was proving it beyond any doubt—announcing it out loud. And she was fairly certain that climbing up on the back of that motorcycle mere hours after he’d ripped out her heart, sacked her and undone three years of attempted rehabilitation to the Righetti reputation by kissing her like that in front of his brother constituted shouting it at the top of her lungs. To him.

She either loved him or she was a masochistic fool, Adriana thought then. Perhaps both.

But she donned the helmet and got on the bike.

Pato headed away from the palace, out of the city and up into the foothills.

Adriana clung to his back, luxuriating in the feel of all his corded, lean strength so close to her and the wind rushing around them. She was pressed into him, her arms wrapped around his waist, her breasts against his back, her legs on either side of his astride the motorcycle he operated as if it was an extension of himself. She felt surrounded by him, connected to him, a part of him.

It was either heaven or hell, she wasn’t sure which. But she wanted it to never end.

Eventually he turned off the main roads and followed smaller, less-traveled ones around the far side of the lake, winding his way to a small cottage nestled in a hollow, looking out over a secluded cove. Adriana climbed off the motorcycle when he brought it to a roaring stop, her legs shaky beneath her. Her body felt too big suddenly, as if she’d outgrown her skin. As if it hurt to sever herself from him. She pulled off her helmet and handed it over, feeling somewhat shy. Overwhelmed.

Pato’s gaze met hers as he removed his helmet. His mouth moved into a small curve, and she flushed. Again. She felt restless. Hectic and hot, and the way he looked at her didn’t help. There might not be shame in wanting him, but there was too much need, and all of it too obvious now that she’d admitted it. Now that she’d stopped pretending.

And all she could seem to do was ache.

Adriana turned to look at the water instead, breathing in the peaceful, fragrant air. Pine and sun, summer flowers and the deep, quiet woods. It was still in ways the city never was. She watched the water lap gently at the rocks at the bottom of the sloping yard, blue and clear and pretty.

It made the odd tension inside her ease. Shift. Turn into something else entirely. They could have been worlds away from the city, the palace, she thought. They could have been anyone, anywhere. Anonymous and free.

“What is this place?” she asked, her voice sounding strange in the quiet, odd in her own mouth.

“It’s my best kept secret.” Pato stepped away from the motorcycle and shoved his thick hair back from his forehead. The movement made his T-shirt pull tight over that marvelous torso of his, and Adriana’s mouth went dry. The gleam in his gaze when she met it again told her he could tell. “I come here to be alone.”

She couldn’t let herself think about that too closely. She wanted it to mean much, much more than it did.

“More secrets,” she murmured instead. His gaze seemed to burn hotter the longer he looked at her, more intense. She tried to shake off the strangeness, the shakiness. All that want and need, and no barriers to contain them. It made her feel off-kilter. Vulnerable. Alive. “Private stories, secret cottages. Who knew the overexposed prince had so much to hide? Or that you were capable of hiding anything in the first place?”

He moved closer, and she felt that sizzling current leap between them and then work its way through her, lighting her up the way it always did. The way he always did. Fire upon fire, a chain reaction, sweeping over her unchecked until she was molten all the way through. As needy and as desperate as if he was already touching her. As if this morning had never happened.

But it had, and Adriana understood, even through the sweet ache of all that fire between them, that it would again. He wasn’t hers. He could never be hers.