Temporarily His Princess (Married by Royal Decree 1)

“Ah, si, bellissima, every inch of you has…appreciated. You were always gorgeous down to your toes, but the years have ripened you into something impossibly…more. I ached the whole time you were at my penthouse to test and taste every remembered wonder, every new enhancement. I am now in agony to explore and devour every part of you. And I know you need every part of me, too, on you, in you. I can feel your arousal echoing mine even at this distance. But if you think you’re not ready yet, I’ll come…persuade you. I’ll remind you what it was like between us, prove to you how much better it will be now we’re both older and wiser and certain of what we want.”

Fighting another surge of response and haywire heartbeats, she said, “Now that I’m older and wiser, you think I’ll let you have me without guarantees, like when I was young and stupid?”

“You want a ring first? I can bring it with me right now.”

“No. That’s not what I meant….” She gulped, her head spinning. This was zooming beyond warp speed. Just a few hours ago she’d never thought she’d see him again. Now he was almost seducing her, over the phone no less, and she was a breath away from telling him to just hurry the hell over. “I didn’t mean material guarantees. I meant guarantees of being treated with respect when you decide I’m no longer ‘convenient.’ I don’t even have the advantage or excuse of obliviousness like I did when I believed you valued me.”

A silent moment followed. Then an expressionless drawl. “Let’s leave the past buried. We’re different people now.”

“Are we? Maybe you are, whatever the hell you are. But unlike you, I have one basic character, and I’m pretty much the same person I was six years ago. Just older and wiser, as you pointed out, and aware that what you’re suggesting would cause long-term damage. And mentioning that, if I become your ‘princess,’ temporary or not…”

“When you become my princess. Very soon. Though, with the necessary preparations, not soon enough. But say the word, and I’ll be worshiping your glorious body within the hour—”

She cut him off before she combusted. “I demand to have a say in the details, since I have no choice in the fundamental stuff. If part of this charade is a ring, then I want to choose it. You’ll have it back in the end, but I’m the one who’s going to be wearing it, and ‘only a year’ is still a long time.”

His voice suddenly lost the mind-scrambling sexiness and filled with a different passion. “Then you will choose your ring. And everything else you want. As my princess you can and will have everything you wish for.”

Her heart squeezed into her throat. “Weird. I have a two-hundred-page volume detailing how I can’t have anything.”

Silence stretched over long seconds.

A forcible exhalation followed. “That volume is only to…” He stopped again. As if he couldn’t find the right words. Which was even weirder. Vincenzo was never at a loss for words.

She decided to help him out. “Only to protect you from any opportunistic ideas I might develop at contract termination. So it’s strange you’re willing to be wide-open for those same ideas at its start. Not that I want anything from you, but I’m just observing the contradictions.”

Another long silence answered her.

Then another heavy exhalation. “I changed my mind.”

He did? He was taking back his offer of “everything”? Figured. That must have been his need to have sex talking. She must have managed to douse his desire and he was back to thinking straight, and taking back his reckless concessions.

Then he went on. “You don’t have to sign if you find it excessive. And you don’t have to make a decision now. And you are free to say no. Of course, I won’t stop trying to persuade you. But for now, you can go back to sleep. I’ll come for you tomorrow at five to pick the ring. Sorry if I woke you up.”

The line went dead.

She pulled the phone from her ear, staring down at it.

What was that all about? Had that been a fourth man inhabiting his body?

What was she walking into? And with which man? Or would it be with all of them? With him changing from one to the other until he drove her mad with confusion, insane with wanting him—whoever he was—and self-destructing in the process?

Not that she had any choice. She’d enter his den, and wouldn’t exit it for the next year. It was doubtful she’d exit in one piece.

No. Not doubtful.

Impossible.

Four

“Impossible!”

Vincenzo cocked his head at his valet’s stupefaction. The fondness Alonzo always stirred in him relaxed lips that had been spastic with tension since his conversation with Glory last night.

Even over the phone, she’d seeped under his skin and into his system and confounded his common sense. He shouldn’t have called her in the first place. But he’d been unable to stop. The indiscretion alone had been enough to expose his condition, but he hadn’t left anything to her imagination, had told her in exhaustive detail he was burning for her.

Then at the first tinge of disappointment and indignation in her voice, he’d offered anything at all in hope of erasing it. He’d taken back every precaution his mind—not to mention his attorney—insisted were indispensable to protect him.

He jerked back to the moment as Alonzo, in a totally uncharacteristic action, grabbed him by the shoulders.

“Are you teasing me? Because I was lamenting the other day that it seemed both of us would end up shriveled-up bachelors? But…you never joke.” Alonzo’s vivid green eyes widened. “Dio. You mean it. You are getting married.”

He hadn’t told Alonzo why, or how. For reasons he wasn’t up to facing, he wanted Alonzo to think this was real. And to treat the whole thing accordingly. To treat Glory accordingly.

“When? How?” Alonzo grabbed his own head in dramatic disbelief. “You met a woman, fell in love with her, decided to marry her, asked her and had her agree without my knowledge?”

That would have been an impossibility, indeed. Alonzo was almost his shadow, had been indispensable to him since his teens, even before he lost his parents, smoothing out his daily life, anticipating his needs and providing him with hassle-free, meticulous support and problem solving in everything that didn’t involve work and most things that did. He’d only gotten Glory’s visit under Alonzo’s radar because he’d sent him on some needless errand. Not that Alonzo would have recognized her. In a weird coincidence, Alonzo had taken his one and only prolonged leave of absence during Vincenzo’s affair with Glory. It was probably the reason she’d been able to breach him that totally….