One Night With The Prince: A Royal Without Rules

“And second,” he said silkily, “if we had, you wouldn’t have to ask. You’d know.”

“Oh,” Adriana said faintly, not sure she was breathing. “Well. If you’re sure...?”

Pato shook his head. “I’m sure.”

She believed him. He was only looking at her now, all that gleaming attention of his focused on her. He wasn’t even touching her, and she felt branded. Scalded. Changed. She had a perfect memory of his hand on her arm, the heat of it, the punch of it, the way everything inside her had wound deliciously tight. She believed him, and yet there was something inside her that almost wished—

Stop, she snapped at herself, off balance and scared and much too close to falling apart.

Adriana realized belatedly that far too much time had passed and she’d done nothing but stare at him, while he watched her and no doubt read every last thought that crossed her mind. He was lethal; she understood that now, in a way she hadn’t before. He was lethal and she was in bed with him and somehow by the grace of God she hadn’t succumbed to his darker nature or, worse, hers...

Adriana frowned. “Did you say I begged?”

Pato smiled.

“For what?” she asked in an appalled whisper. “Exactly?”

He smiled wider.

“This can’t be happening.” She was barely audible, even to her own ears, but she felt each word like a stone slamming through her. “Did I—” But even as she asked, she shut herself off. “No. I don’t want to know.”

“You begged very prettily,” he told her then, that wild gleam in his eyes, which made her feel much too hot, too constricted, as if she might burst wide-open. “If it helps.”

It helped confirm that she hated herself, Adriana thought, that old black wave of self-loathing rising in her and then drenching her, drowning her, in all the ways she’d let herself down. Blood really will tell, she thought bitterly. You’ve been fooling yourself all these years, but in the end, you’re no better than any of them. Righetti whores.

She managed to take a breath, then another one.

And then, through her confusion, one thing became perfectly clear: it was time to accept who she was, once and for all. And that meant it was time to change her life.

“Thank you, Your Royal Highness,” she said stiffly, not looking at him. “I’m sorry that I let myself get so out of control and that you had to deal with me. How incredibly unprofessional.”

She scrambled to crawl out of the bed, away from him. This had to end. What was she was doing here, disgracing herself with a prince, when she could be living without the weight of all of this in some happy foreign land like her brothers? She’d been so desperate to prove herself—and now she’d proved only that she was exactly who everyone thought she was.

Enough, she thought grimly.

And there was what Lenz had said, the way he’d said it, but she didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to let it hurt her the way she suspected it would when she did.

It seemed to take an hour to reach the edge of the bed, and as she went to swing her feet to the ground, Pato simply reached out and hauled her back by the arm until she was on her side and facing him. No sheet this time to hide behind. Just far too much of her nearly naked body far too near his. Panic screamed through her, making her skin burst into flames.

“You can’t just...manhandle people!” she exclaimed heatedly.

Pato shrugged, and the total lack of concern in the gesture reminded her forcefully that, black sheep or not, he was a royal prince. Pampered and indulged. Used to getting whatever he wanted. He wasn’t required to concern himself with other people’s feelings, particularly hers.

That should have disgusted her. It alarmed her that it didn’t.

“I think we’re a bit past worrying about professionalism,” he said, his voice mild, though his eyes were intent on hers, and his mouth looked dangerous in a new way with his jaw unshaved and his thick hair so unruly.

And all of him so close.

“I need to leave,” she replied evenly. “The palace, the royal family—I should have done it a long time ago.” She started to pull away from him, but he only shifted position and smoothed his hand down to the indentation of her waist. He rested it there, almost idly, and she froze as if he was pressing her to the bed with brute force.

It would have been easier if he had been, she recognized on some level. It would have been unambiguous. But instead he was only touching her, barely touching her, and she couldn’t seem to form the words to demand he let her go. She only trembled. Inside and out.

And he knew. His eyes gleamed, and he knew.

“At least let me get back under the sheet,” she said desperately.

“Why?” He shrugged again, so lazy. So at ease. “You’re showing less skin than you would if you were wearing a bikini.”

“You’ve never seen me in a bikini,” she managed to say. “It would be inappropriate.”

His fingers traced the faintest pattern along the curve of her body, and she could no more help the shiver of goose bumps that rose on her skin than she could turn back time and avoid this scenario in the first place. He looked at the telltale prickle of flesh, his hand tightened at her waist and she let out a tiny, involuntary sound that made his golden gaze darken and focus on her, hot and hungry.

But when he spoke again, his voice was light.

“I hate to be indelicate, Adriana, but I’ve already seen all of this. You’re about eight hours too late for modesty.”

“It’s time for me to leave,” she said, desperate and determined in equal measure. “You never wanted an assistant in the first place, and I think it’s high time I rethink my career prospects.”

Pato only raised a dark brow.

“I have no business being at the palace,” she said urgently. “The princess was right. If I’d had any idea that working for your brother would harm his reputation, I never would have taken the job in the first place. I would never want people to think less of him because of me. I would never want to compromise his reputation, or—”

“You can’t possibly be this naive.”

Something Adriana had never seen before moved over Pato’s face. His hand tightened briefly, and then he released her and sat up in a smooth roll.

He shoved his hair back and pinned her with a glare when she scrambled away from him and to her knees on the far side of the bed, pulling the sheet back over her as she went. She had never seen him look like that. Brooding, dark. No hint of his famous laughter, his notorious smile.

“I’m being rational, not naive,” she countered, unable to tear her eyes away from him when he looked like this, as if he was someone else. Someone ruthless and hard. Not like easy, careless Pato at all. “Your brother was the first person to believe in me, but it was wrong of me to take advantage of that.”

Pato shook his head, rubbing at his jaw with one hand as if he was keeping words back manually.

“I abused his kindness,” she continued, her unease growing. “His—”

“For God’s sake, Adriana,” Pato spat out. “He wasn’t being kind. He was grooming you to be his mistress.”

CHAPTER FOUR (#u42e1f619-d2d7-5205-b1df-9abd9277b5c2)

FOR A LONG, breathless moment, Adriana could only stare at him, another piece of her world crumbling into dust in this bed, shattering in that relentless golden gaze.

“That’s absurd.” She felt turned inside out. “He would never do something like that.”

“You know all about his previous assistants, I’m sure,” Pato said, in that same blunt way, a hard gleam in his gaze and no hint of a curve on that mouth of his. “Did you never question why he cycled so many of them through that position? And why they all had such different sets of credentials? One an art historian, another a socialite? Lenz prefers his mistresses be accessible.”

Adriana felt as if she’d slipped sideways into some alternate reality, where nothing made sense any longer. Lenz had wanted her, all this time, as she’d so often daydreamed he might—but not as his mistress. She’d never wanted that. And now she sat too close to naked in the morning sun with Pato, of all people, who looked like some harsher version of himself, and she was terrified that he might be right. Hadn’t her father said the same thing only yesterday?

“He’s a good man,” she whispered, shaken.