present danger.
When she’d realized in how much danger the kingdom was in, she’d raved and ranted that her father should draft either Leandro or Durante to the duty, that they weren’t entitled to refuse when stakes were that catastrophic. But he’d told her why either Leandro or Durante would still end Castaldini as they knew it—Leandro by his incompatible political views, and Durante by bringing an end to the very law around which Castaldini had been built.
She’d struggled to enumerate the measures that could be installed so that either man’s reign wouldn’t do the predicted damage, but her father had countered every one with an undeniable projection of how it would fail. He’d told her that, before she’d become part of it, the Council had discussed everything in dozens of raging closed sessions, until they had admitted there was no other way out. Did she think anything less could have made them reach the decision to make the offer to Ferruccio?
So this was it. It was down to Ferruccio. It was up to him to save Castaldini. He was, in every way, the only one who could.
And that bastard—and the epithet had absolutely nothing to do with his birth, but with his character, his behavior—cared nothing about it. He cared only about getting his way. He wanted his “incentive.” Her.
She’d once thought him a god. He lived up to the belief in many ways. He now did in the most maddening way of all. To save king and country, she had to offer herself at the altar of the vicious deity he’d turned out to be.
She twisted around in bed, reached across to her nightstand, picked up her cell phone.
Time to discuss the terms of her sacrifice.
She pushed the buttons. The private number he said only a handful were privileged enough to have. She’d never called it before. She’d memorized it the first time he’d given it to her, with the second invitation she refused. She was in no position to refuse him…anything…anymore. As he’d said she would be.
The line clicked open before the first ring ended.
He’d been waiting for her. Figured.
She waited for him to speak. To gloat. But there was only a protracted moment of absolute silence on the other end.
He was waiting for her to initiate the second and final round.
Good luck with that, as he’d said. She was holding her breath as she did to get rid of hiccups. She had this ridiculous conviction that if she held it long enough, she’d get rid of this whole nightmare. Yeah, right. By passing out, maybe.
At last he breathed, the sound of his inhalation, then slow exhalation pooling warm moistness at the juncture of her legs. And that was before he murmured darkly, intimately, “Clarissa.”
She covered the mouthpiece with her hand and almost coughed out the air that would have ruptured her lungs if she’d held it in another second. Just get it over with.
She drew in a hasty breath then blurted it out along with the question that had been eating at her. “What did you mean by ‘taking’ me with the crown? You want to marry me, right?”
A bark of cruelly masculine laughter ricocheted inside her skull. “Marry you? Without a long, hard test drive?”
She shut her eyes. How did he do it? How did every word he uttered blind her with arousal even as it also did with anger?
“So you want to have an affair first?” she seethed.
A shorter laugh revved through the ether to buzz through her every bone. “It might be an affair only. You might dissatisfy me, and it would end there.”
She counted to ten. “If you’ll be satisfied with an affair, considering the situation, as you’ve so…kindly said, I have no option but to accept. But I need to set parameters up-front.”
He tsked. “Parameters? How businesslike of you. Highly in-appropriate, when you’re discussing the plunge into sensual decadence I had planned.”
She jerked onto her back, tremors coalescing into one violent shudder before she went still and tense all over. “Had? Does that mean you’ve changed your mind?”
He let her reach screaming pitch before he said, “I have.”
She almost felt her components scatter apart with the sudden loss of the tension that had been holding her together. The cacophony of emotion that rushed to fill the void was a deafening mixture.
Relief yelled loudest. Thankfulness mumbled its grudging concession. But to her disbelieving chagrin, it was disappointment that somehow made its whimpers heard over everything else.
It seemed he’d paused, knowing that these reactions would prey on her. His next words made that clear—made them all redundant. “I’ve changed my mind about what you deserve.”
She gritted her teeth. “Meaning?”
“Meaning that for six years, you must remember with crystal clarity, I’ve given you the courtesy of being the pursued. But I’ve decided that you’ve forfeited your right to such consideration.”
“And in your infinite wisdom, what did you decide I deserve?”
“That you must get down from your high tower and do all the running from now on. After all, you’re a record-holding champion at it.”
“If that means you’ll be running ahead, there’s nothing I’d love more than to run after you until you drop.”
She knew his smile turned to its most wicked. The illicit excitement that thrummed through her told her so. “No danger of that. I’m not as fast as you are, but my stamina is legendary.”
And the terrible thing was that she knew he was stating facts. He wasn’t a self-deceiving braggart like so many men she’d heard making such pompous claims. He was a man who knew his worth, his powers, and made no pretense at false modesty. A man who’d survived and triumphed over obstacles and dangers, over horrors she couldn’t begin to imagine. He also had the most glamorous women in the world fighting for a place on his one-night-stand waiting list. She’d bet he had stamina by the freight-load.
She harumphed. “So you’ll employ that Herculean stamina to stay one step ahead as I play ‘pursuer’ this time around. Any rules to this game I should be aware of? Any points to be scored? Any ultimate goal? Or is this going to be a wild swine chase?”
His chuckles rose at her insult. He loved it when she played rough, didn’t he? Who knew he had a masochistic streak. But then, it made sense. A steady diet of simpering obedience and syrupy adulation must make him sick to his stomach. What better than the corrosive sourness of her irreverence to equalize the queasiness?
If that was the case, he’d be happy to know she had verbal abuse by the truckload to pour over his arrogant head.
Meanwhile, he poured the black magic of his amusement directly into her brain. “As long as you keep the wild part of that chase going, this…swine will let you get as creative as you like about the rules. Points are scored at my discretion, of course. As for the ultimate goal, it’s changing my mind. You see, I’m no longer convinced you’re a…good enough incentive. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to convince me otherwise.”
