“Just because it hasn’t been done before doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”
Her dark eyes met his and made something twist in him, sharp and serrated.
“We both know I did nothing of the kind,” she said, her voice soft and matter-of-fact. She let out a small breath. “All I managed to do was make myself one among your many conquests, indistinguishable from the rest of the horde.”
“I don’t know why you’d think yourself indistinguishable,” he said, keeping his tone light.
He could have sworn what he saw flash in her dark eyes then was despair, but she swallowed it back and forced a smile that made his chest hurt.
“I should have realized,” she said, and he wondered if she knew how bitter she sounded then, how broken. “You’ve always been a trophy collector, haven’t you? And what a prize you won in London. You get to brag that the Righetti whore propositioned you and you—you, of all people—turned her down. My congratulations, Your Royal Highness. That’s quite a coup.”
For a long moment a black temper pulsed in him, and Pato didn’t dare speak. He only studied her face. She was pale now, and sat too straight, too stiff. Her eyes were dark again in exactly the same way they’d been that morning in the car, when he’d felt pushed to confront her about Lenz, and was fairly certain she’d broken his heart. Had he had one to break.
Pato hated this. He was perilously close to hating himself. For the first time since he was eighteen, he wished that he could do exactly what he wanted without having to worry about anyone else. Without having to play these deep, endless games. Adriana sat there and looked at him as if he was exactly the depraved degenerate he’d gone to great lengths to ensure he really was, when she was the first woman he’d ever met that he wanted to think better of him. The irony wasn’t lost on him.
It stung. Congratulations, indeed, he thought ruefully. This was what doom looked like as it happened, and he was doing nothing at all to prevent it.
“Adriana,” he said, trying to keep his temper from his voice. Trying to make sense of his determination to protect her not only from the things he shouldn’t allow himself to want from her, but from herself. “You and I both know you’re no whore. Why do you torture yourself over the lies that strangers tell? They’re only stories. They’re not even about you.”
“On the contrary,” she said after a moment, her voice thick and uneven. “Some of us are defined by the stories strangers tell.”
“You’re the only one who can define yourself,” he countered gently. “All they can do is tell another story, and who cares if they do?”
Emotion moved through her then, raw and powerful. He saw it on her face, in the way her eyes went damp, in the faint tremor of her lips. Her hands balled into fists in her lap and she moved restlessly in her seat, stamping both feet into the floor as if she needed the balance.
“Easy for you to say,” she stated, a raw edge to her voice. “Not all of us can be as beloved as you are no matter what you do, forgiven our trespasses the moment we make them.”
“Fondness is hardly the same thing as forgiveness.”
Her dark eyes seared into him. “You cheerfully admit each and every one of your transgressions,” she said. “There are videos, photographs, whole tabloids devoted to your bacchanals. But you are still the most popular young royal in all of Europe. No one cares how dirty you get. It doesn’t cling to you. It doesn’t matter.”
“I prefer ‘adventurous’ to ‘dirty,’ I think,” he said mildly, watching her closely, seeing nothing but shadows in her beautiful eyes. “Especially in that tone.”
“Meanwhile,” she said, as if he hadn’t spoken, “I happen to be related to three women who slept with Kitzinian royalty over a hundred and fifty years ago, and one woman who ruined a duke more recently. I’m the most notorious slut in the kingdom, thanks to them.” She pulled in a breath. “It isn’t even my dirt, but I’m covered in it, head to toe, and I’ll never be clean. Ever.” Her eyes held his for a long moment, fierce and dark. “It isn’t just another story strangers tell. It’s my life.”
Pato was aware that he needed to shut this down now, before he forgot himself. But instead, he shook his head and continued talking, as if he was someone else. Someone with the freedom to have dangerous conversations with a woman he found far too fascinating, as if both of them weren’t pawns in a game only he knew they were playing.
“You must know that almost all of that is jealousy,” he said, letting out a small laugh at the idea that she didn’t. “You’re a legend, Adriana, whether you earned it or not. Women are envious of the attention you get, simply because you have a notorious name and the temerity to be beautiful. Men simply want you.”
She let out a frustrated noise, and snatched up her book again, that smooth mask of hers descending once more. But he could see right through it now.
“I don’t want to discuss this,” she said, more to the book than to him. “You can’t possibly understand. There’s not a day of your life you’ve been envious of anyone, because why should you be? And you certainly don’t want me. You made that perfectly clear in London.”
Pato didn’t know he meant to move. He shouldn’t have. But one moment he was on the couch and the next he was looming over her, swiveling her chair around and leaning over her, into her, planting his hands on the armrests and caging her between his arms. Risking everything, and he didn’t care.
“I never said I didn’t want you,” he growled down at her.
Pato felt unhinged and unpredictable, capable of anything. Especially a mistake of this magnitude—but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. Adriana still smelled of jasmine and her eyes were that rich, deep brown, and he didn’t have it in him to fight off this madness any longer.
“Not that I want to revisit the most humiliating morning of my life,” she said from between her teeth, “but you did. If not in words, then in actions. And don’t misunderstand me, I’m grateful. I wasn’t myself.”
“The question on the table that morning was not whether or not I wanted you.” He moved even closer, watching in satisfaction as her pretty eyes widened with a shock of awareness he felt like hands on his skin. “The question was whether or not I wanted to sleep with you knowing full well you planned to shut your eyes and imagine Lenz in my place. They’re not quite the same thing.”
She paled, then burst into that bright red blush that Pato found intoxicating. He liked her cheeks rosy, her cool exterior cracked and all her masks useless, the truth of her emotions laid bare before him.
“What does it matter?” Her voice was barely a whisper. “It didn’t happen. Crisis averted. There’s no need to talk about it now.”
“I told you I wouldn’t forget,” he said, intent and hungry, “and I haven’t. I remember the noises you made in the back of your throat when I kissed you, when you rubbed against me like silk, hot and—”
“Please!” Her voice was low. Uncertain. “Stop.”
“What do you want, Adriana? That’s tonight’s question.”
He leaned in closer, so he could hear the tiny hitch in her breath, and so he could find the pulse in her neck that was drumming madly, giving her away,
