A Royal Without Rules

“Pato...” she said, as if his name was a prayer.

“I can’t fix this,” he told her, the same fury that had ignited in him when he’d seen the papers yesterday surging in him again. That same dark, encompassing rage that had nearly taken him apart. “I can’t protect you the way I should. The only thing I can do is let you go.” She was shaking her head and he slid his hand from her chin to her soft cheek, holding her there. “You deserve better.”

He watched her struggle to take a breath, and she didn’t seem to care that her face was wet with tears. She frowned at him.

“And what will you do while I’m out there somewhere, finding whatever it is I deserve?” she asked. She shook her head again, decisively. “Martyr yourself?”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“It’s exactly the same thing,” she retorted.

“I don’t have a choice,” he exclaimed. “This doesn’t end simply because Lenz marries today. I told you. Thrones are won by treachery. My father will be a threat until he’s dead—or until Lenz produces his own heir. Pato the Playboy isn’t going anywhere.”

Adriana watched him for a moment, then angled herself back to wipe at her eyes. His hand dropped away, and he missed touching her immediately, so much his fingers twitched.

“The Princess Lissette strikes me as highly motivated,” she said, a hint of that dryness in her voice that he adored, that he knew would haunt him forever. “I give her ten months, maybe a year, before she kicks off the next generation.”

“You have to live better than this,” he told her softly. “Please.”

Adriana looked at him for a long time. He thought she might simply agree, and it would kill him, but he would let her leave him. He had no choice. But then she sighed.

“I thought you told me love was meant to hurt if it mattered,” she said, her gaze on his, hard and warm at the same time. “And who’s the martyr now? If you order me out of the country, does that mean you can wallow on your own crucifix?”

That dug beneath his skin, straight on into the center of him, making it hard to breathe for a moment. He said her name softly—a warning, or his own version of a prayer? He wasn’t sure he could tell.

“Make it real or don’t bother calling it love, Pato,” she declared, slicing into him with his own words. Daring him. “It already hurts. It’s already painful. What’s another year of the same?”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“I’m the one they picked apart the most in those papers,” she reminded him, her eyes gleaming wet again. “I know exactly what I’m saying.”

“This has been one day of tabloid coverage,” he pointed out, determined to make her see reason. “Are you really prepared for the endless onslaught? Day after day after day, until sometimes you wonder if the story they’re telling is the truth and you’re the lie?”

She moved to him then and put her hands on his chest, leaning into him, making him want nothing more than to hold her close and keep her there forever.

“I have to think that it’s better if there’s someone else around to tell you which is which,” she whispered. “And yesterday was a bad day in the tabloids, but it wasn’t the first. I’ve been a favorite target since I turned sixteen.”

Pato couldn’t help himself. She was the only one who’d ever seen him, who’d looked straight through all the masks he wore and found him. And she thought he was a good man.

He wanted that. He wanted her. He wanted this, however he could have it.

“If you don’t go now, Adriana,” he warned her, even as he pulled her closer, “I will never let you try again. I will order you to stay with me, and it will ruin you. You will be the most infamous of all the Righettis, worse even than your great-aunt and her disgraced duke. The papers will never let it go. The people will be worse.”

She shrugged, but her eyes were tight on his. “Let them say what they want. They do anyway.”

“Your friends and family will think you’ve turned to the dark side,” he said, his tone serious, though he could feel his mouth begin to curve, and saw an instant answering spark in her warm gaze. “They will despair of you. They will stage interventions, cut you off, sell secrets and lies to the tabloids and claim you brought it upon yourself.”

“I think I love you most of all when you’re romantic,” she teased, and he could see the smile she tried to hide, even as he soaked in the words he’d wanted to hear again, ever since he’d thrown them back in her face at the cottage. “When you paint me such beautiful pictures of our future. Be still my heart.”