clinging to his ankles. Nor would she.
She would be perfectly serene, she chanted to herself as she let herself into his office. Efficient and competent. And she wouldn’t verbally spar with him anymore, as he obviously viewed it as a form of flirtation, and she found it far too easy to slip into, putting herself at risk. Last night was a mistake, never to be repeated. No conversation was necessary, no embarrassing postmortem. It was done. She marched around the quietly opulent office, turning on lights and arranging the papers he wouldn’t read on his desk. The two of them would simply...move forward.
Or so Adriana told herself, over and over, as she waited for him to appear.
He didn’t come. She waited, she lectured herself more sternly, and still he failed to saunter in, disheveled and lazy and wearing something that violated every possible palace protocol, the way he usually did. When Adriana realized he was going to miss his engagement with the Kitzinian Red Cross—after what she’d gone through to get him back into the country, specifically to meet with them—she braced herself, smoothed her hands over the very conservative suit she’d chosen this morning, which was in no way protective armor, and set off through the palace to find him.
Pato’s bed, she was relieved to find when she made it to his bedroom, was empty.
It was only then, while she stared at the rumpled sheets and the indentation in the pillows where his head must have been at some point last night, that Adriana admitted to herself that maybe she was a little too relieved. That maybe it had hurt to imagine that he could have carried on with his usual depravity after she’d left him last night.
You are nothing but another instrument, she reminded herself harshly, amazed at her capacity for self-delusion. And he happens to be a remarkably talented musician—no doubt because he practices so very, very often.
If only she could make that sink in. If only she could make that traitorous part of her, the part that insisted on wild fantasies and childish hope no matter how many times it was crushed out of her, believe it.
“You look disappointed,” Pato drawled from the doorway behind her. Adriana whirled around to face him, her heart leaping out of her chest. “Shall I ring a few bored socialites and have them fill up the bed? Just think of all the sanctimonious lectures you could deliver.”
He sounded the way he looked this morning: dangerous. Edgy. Dark and something like grim. Adriana’s breath tangled in her throat.
Pato was draped against the doorjamb, looking as boneless as he did rough around his gorgeous edges. His eyes glittered, too dark to shine like gold today, and he hadn’t bothered to shave. His hair stood about his head in a careless mess, and he was wearing an open, button-down shirt over those ancient jeans he preferred, she’d often thought, because they molded so tightly to his perfectly formed body. He looked moody and formidable, that ruthless power he usually concealed a black cloud around him today, making it impossible for Adriana to pretend she’d imagined it.
And the way he was looking at her made her heart stutter.
She’d been so sure that she was prepared to see him again. She wasn’t.
Her whole body simply shuddered into a blazing, embarrassing heat at the sight of him. She felt as if she’d been lit on fire. Her nipples hardened as her breasts swelled against her bra. Her belly tightened, while her core melted into that hot, needy ache. Her skin prickled with awareness, and she could feel the dark heat of his gaze all the way through her, from the nape of her neck to the soles of her feet. Not ten minutes ago she’d vowed she wouldn’t spar with him anymore, but she understood in a flash of insight that it was that or simply surrender to this wildness inside her—and she wasn’t that far gone, surely. Not yet.
“I’m relieved, actually,” she managed to say, making her voice as brisk as she could. “The last thing I wanted to do today was troll about your usual dens of iniquity, looking for you in the dregs of last night’s parties, especially when you are expected to charm the Red Cross in less than hour.”
He looked at her for a long moment, his beautiful face hard and his eyes dark, and yet she had the strangest notion that he was in some kind of pain. She had to grit her teeth to keep herself from doing something stupid, like trying to reach out to him. Like imagining that she of all people could see beneath his surface to the far more complicated man beneath.
Such hubris, a voice inside her hissed, and we all know what comes after pride like yours. Like night follows day.
“It’s amazing,” Pato said in a low voice, something in it raising the fine hairs on the back of her neck. “It’s as if you never wrapped your legs around my neck and let me taste you. You may not remember it, Adriana, but I do.”
Adriana went utterly still.
She should have anticipated this. She should have known. It had been the same when she was seventeen. She could still remember with perfect clarity the faces of all her schoolmates who’d gathered around to point and stare and laugh as she’d walked out of that party alone. Used and humiliated. She could still remember the name they’d called her snaking along with her like a shadow, following her, connected to her, the truth of her as far as they’d been concerned. Inevitable.
The Righetti whore.
Pato was only one person, not a crowd of cruel teenagers, and yet she recognized that this was worse. Much, much worse. She could feel it deep inside, in parts of her that pack of kids had never touched.
But she’d be damned if he’d see her cry again, Adriana thought then with a sharp flash of defiance. She’d rather he executed her alongside Almado Righetti’s ghost in the old castle keep than show him one more tear.
“Is this the part where you call me a whore?” she asked, her stomach in a hard knot but her voice crisp. Her head high. “You’re not doing it right. It works much better when mixed with public humiliation, so you can get the satisfaction of watching me walk a little gauntlet of shame. Would you like me to assemble a crowd? We can start over when they arrive.”
Pato didn’t move, but his eyes went completely black. Frigid and furious at once. Adriana crossed her arms over her chest and refused to cower or cringe. That deep defiance felt like strength, sweeping through her, making her stand tall. She would never bow her head in shame again. Never. Not even for a prince.
“If you want to call me names, feel free to do it to my face,” she told him. “But I should warn you, I won’t fall to pieces. I’ve survived far worse than you.”
It shouldn’t have been possible for his eyes to flash even darker, but they did, and she could feel the pulse of his temper rolling off him in waves. She told herself it didn’t bother her in the least, because it shouldn’t. It couldn’t.
“You think you’re ready to go to war with me, Adriana?” he asked, that mild tone sounding alarms inside her, sending a little chill racing down her back. “I told you what would happen if you used that word again.”
“Here’s a news flash, Your Royal Highness,” she snapped, ignoring the alarms, the chill, that look on his face. “I’ve been at war since the day I was born. I’m hardly afraid of one more battle, especially with a man best known for the revealing cut of his swimming costume and his ability to consume so much alcohol it ought to put him in a coma.” She eyed him while a muscle she’d never seen before flared in his jaw. “Is that what today’s little display of temper is all about? You’re drunk?”
Pato straightened from the door, and her
