of you,” I say. “But you put my reputation on the line tonight, too, Your Highness.” He winces, and the sight is something so wholly unexpected, my heart tugs involuntarily. “You may have nothing to lose, but I do. My sister does. Her business supports our family. We have responsibilities. This whole marriage thing that you see as a joke is how we put a roof over our heads. It’s how we—”
He steps around from the chair and nearer to where I stand, the movement stealing the words from my mouth. I suck in a breath as he takes a step closer and then hold it as he rests a palm on my cheek.
“I’m an ass,” he says, and I nod. “One royal prick,” he adds, and I don’t disagree. “Perhaps I could have been more civil to the countess. But where I truly fucked up was that I wasn’t thinking of how this would affect you.”
I clear my throat. “Wh-what important detail?” I stammer. His brows pull together. “Before, you said I was missing one important detail.” I can smell the sweet scotch in the warmth of his breath. I bite my lip to keep from reacting.
He rests his forehead against mine, the gesture far too intimate, and my breath hitches.
“I asked you to come tonight, Kate, because in the span of six days, I seem to have gone from wanting nothing to do with you and what you’ve been hired for to not wanting you out of my sight.”
He braces a palm against the door behind me, and I take a step back so I’m flush against it.
“Nikolai,” I whisper. “We can’t.” My insistence is different than the other day at the bridge. I could take his teasing—could even pretend that we might continue our encounters and leave it at just sex. But now? What he is suggesting now is beyond possibility.
“What if there was a way?” he asks, his lips dangerously close to my own. “What if I could make you truly mine?”
My throat tightens at the thought. “But I was hired to—”
“I know,” he says. “And I will continue to see the women with whom you match me. I will even be civil. But I make you this promise. I’ll marry none of them.”
As much as the idea of him touching another woman, let alone marrying one, already hurts in a way it should not be able to, I need him to do it because my family depends on it. Irony, you’re a cruel bitch.
“When do you need to be married by?” I’m playing with him because I already know. Maybe if I smile the pain will ebb. One can always hope.
“My twenty-ninth birthday.”
“Which is...” As if the heir’s birthday isn’t a national holiday.
His lids narrow as he tries to figure out what game I’m playing. “Ninety days from now.”
I close my eyes and take in a long breath. Then I press my palm to his chest. “I’ll make you a wager.”
He laughs softly. “Go on.”
“I’ll see you married by your birthday,” I say, my fingers already itching to grab at his tie.
He surprises me with a soft kiss before he answers. “I look forward to disappointing you.”
I grip his tie and pull him as close as he can get. “And what’s more, I promise you will be happy with the woman.” After all, I know exactly what His Highness likes. Who better to find him not just a queen but happiness as well?
I swallow the pang of regret, the one that has me wishing for what cannot be. I do not want for him a life of misery, but I cannot let my own family fall into ruin. I will succeed. For both of us.
“You’d have to be one hell of a matchmaker, sweetheart,” he says.
“Trust me.” I fight to keep the tremor from my voice. “I’m the best.”
Nikolai
IT ISN’T UNTIL nightfall that I realize that Kate never laid out the terms for our wager. I sit at my baby grand piano, my fingers flying over the keys, weaving a complex, sensual sound. Don’t believe classical music can be sexy? Listen to Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde before dismissing me. Harmony and dissonance. Brutal discord only to be thwarted by soaring passion. Music pours through me as I toy over the many ways I can extract payment from the lovely Miss Winter. Such an interesting paradox that her hair holds hints of flame even as her name promises coldness. She is both fire and ice.
I picture her lips sheathing my cock, taking me down to the root on the banks of the river. There had been a promise in her eyes, a promise that she’d be mine, if I reached out and made a claim. And so I will—at least physically, but the pleasure of the flesh is as much as I can offer. And pleasure I shall give her.
If only she had royal blood...then...perhaps she could make me overcome my vow.
“Who is the lucky lady?” a deep voice says behind me, and I strike a wrong key.
Damn it.
I turn around, ready to bite the head off whoever dares to venture into my inner sanctum, and find my brother Benedict regarding me with an arched brow.
We look so much alike save for the eye color and the goodness that emanates from him just as something wicked brews inside me. I am darkness and shadow. He is golden light. I hear the whispers. I know those that think him a bastard—Benedict himself included. I pay those words little heed. Full brother or half, he is my best and only true friend.
“Welcome home, Bastard,” I say. It’s a joke between us. We wear our vulnerabilities like armor. It’s the way we survive as the lords of the land, all eyes on us.
“That was Wagner, no?” He cocks his head. “You only play that when a woman has you tied in knots.”
His memory is keen.
“Dear brother, don’t you know? If there is a woman and knots to consider, I am the one doing the tying. Apologies if I offend your holy sensibilities.” I eye Benedict’s simple clerical garb. My brother is a seminarian, a year away from taking his holy vows and entering the priesthood, much to the eternal pride of our father. When the idea of his virginity is not causing me nightmares, the idea is amusing in the extreme. Benedict is one of the most sought-after men in Europe, and he chooses to marry the church.
I hope God keeps his bed warm.
“What good is the spare to my heir if he is celibate?” Father likes to roar after a drink too many. While he speaks in jest, there is a glimmer of truth.
Benedict takes it all in stride. All he wants to do is please the king—to prove himself worthy of his lineage no matter what the rumors say. When Benedict declared his life belonged to the church, Father was the first to commend him.
How many times have I wondered if a woman could ever tempt him from his path? But he assures me that his destiny is fixed. That the pleasures of the flesh pale in comparison to the rhapsody of the soul.
I have to say, burying my face between Kate’s thighs takes me to the gates of heaven.
