A Royal Without Rules

Last night she hadn’t been able to cry. This morning, she refused to let herself indulge the urge. If the women hanging on the wall could smile, she told herself, then so could she.

She squared her shoulders, told herself she was ready to face the next battle—and that was when she heard the shouting. Her father.

Adriana threw open the door and stepped into the hall, moving toward the angry sound. Her stomach twisted into a hard knot as she tried to imagine what could be worse than yesterday’s newspaper spread, which hadn’t sent him into this kind of temper—

“You’ve done enough damage—you can want nothing more! Will you take the house down, brick by brick? Demand our blood from the stones?” Her father sounded upset and furious in a way that scared her, it was so much worse than yesterday. She picked up her speed. “How many of your sick, twisted little games—”

Adriana reached the stair, looked down and froze solid.

Pato stood there in the lower hall.

She didn’t know what poured through her then, so intense it was like an acute flash of pain, and she couldn’t tear her eyes away from him.

Pato wore the ceremonial military regalia that tradition dictated served as formal wear to a grand state occasion like his brother’s wedding, a dark navy uniform accented in deep scarlet at the cuffs, the neck, and in lines down each leg, then liberally adorned with golden epaulets and brocades that trumpeted his rank. He’d even tamed his hair from its usual wildness, making him look utterly, heartbreakingly respectable. He stood tall and forbidding, staring at Adriana’s father impassively, a trio of guards arranged behind him.

He looked every inch the royal prince he was. Like the king he could have been. He looked dangerously beautiful and completely inaccessible, and it ripped at her heart.

Adriana sucked in a breath, and his gaze snapped to hers, finding her there on the landing.

His gaze was the darkest she’d ever seen it, hard and intense, and she didn’t know how long they stood there, eyes locked together. Her father was blocking the stairs, his voice louder by the second, and yet while Pato looked at her like that, she hardly heard him.

Pato jerked his gaze away abruptly, leaving Adriana feeling simultaneously relieved and bereft.

“No more,” he said curtly, cutting into her father’s diatribe with a tone of sheer command. He seemed taller, more formidable, and yet he didn’t change expression as he stared at her father. “You forget yourself.”

The air in the villa went taut. Thin. Adriana’s father fell silent. Pato waited.

One breath. Another.

“Step aside,” Pato ordered, his voice even, but there was no mistaking the crack of power in it. The expectation of obedience. The guards behind him stood straighter. “I won’t ask again.”

Adriana’s father moved out of his way, and even as he did, Pato brushed past him, taking the steps with a controlled ferocity that made something inside Adriana turn over and start to heat. She couldn’t seem to look away from him as he bore down on her, or even catch her breath, and then he was there. Prince Patricio of Kitzinia, in all his stately splendor, looking at her with the same hard intensity as before, nothing the least bit gold in his gaze.

“You brought guards?” she asked. Of all the things she might have said to him.

“I dislike the paparazzi blocking my movements,” he said in that same even tone. Then his head tilted slightly. Regally. “Is there a private room?”

It was another command, demanding instant compliance.

Adriana didn’t hesitate any more than her father had. She waved her hand down the hall she’d come from, and Pato inclined his head, indicating she should precede him.

She did—but not without looking back.

Her father stood in the lower hall, watching her with the same tortured expression he’d worn yesterday, and the guilt swept through her again, almost choking her. She opened her mouth, as if there was something she could say to take away his horror at what was his worst nightmare come to life, right before his eyes.

But Pato’s hand was on the small of her back, urging her ahead of him. There was nothing she could say to make this better. Her father wouldn’t forgive her, and on some level, she didn’t blame him. She’d known better than to do this, and she’d done it anyway.

Adriana couldn’t stand Pato touching her—it was too much to bear, and her body only wanted him the way it always did—so she broke away as she led him back into the parlor, moving all the way across the room before facing him, her back to the far wall.

Pato stepped inside, closed the door behind him, and his gaze cut immediately to the trio of paintings on the wall. He went still, his mouth flattening into a grim line.