Maisey Yates – The Queen's Baby Scandal (страница 3)
But now that she was here… Now that she was here in this club with dance music wrapping itself around her skin, and the thrill of her deceit rocketing through her like adrenaline, a smile spread across her lips.
Freedom.
This was a moment of freedom. A moment to last a lifetime.
Yes, she was doing this to claim the maximum amount of freedom a woman in her position ever could. But even so, she would go back to her life of service when all this was said and done. But this… This was a moment out of time.
Not a moment to think about the future. Of what it would be like to finally have the power over her country she deserved. To finally get out of her father’s stranglehold. Not a moment to ponder how the ache of loneliness she felt inside might finally be assuaged by holding a child of her own. A child she would love no matter what.
She was Alice, through a looking glass. Not Astrid.
And she was going to seduce a man for the first time in her life. Possibly the last.
All she had to do was find him. And then she saw him, there could be no mistaking him. He was up on a platform above the dance floor, surveying the party below. It could be only him. That dark, enigmatic gaze rolling over the crowd with an air of unquestionable authority.
Astrid was royalty in Bjornland. She was the queen.
But there was no mistaking that here in this club, Mauro Bianchi was king.
The king of sin, of vice, of pleasure.
The kind of king who would never be welcome in a state and steady nation such as hers. But the perfect king for tonight.
She took a breath and made her way over to the stairs, thanking a lifetime of deportment for her ability to climb them with ease even in those spiked, crystal heels she had on her feet. She let her fingers drift along the rail in a seductive manner, the kind that she had been warned against as a girl. She had been taught to convey herself as cool. Sexless, really.
She was the first female monarch in Bjornland since the 1500s. The weight of the crown for her could never have been anything but heavy.
Her father had ever been resentful of the fact that it was the daughter who had been born first. Resentful. Distrustful. Doubtful.
But her mother… It was her mother who had made absolutely certain that there would be no creative shifting of birth orders.
Astrid had been born first. And her mother had had the announcement issued with speed and finality.
Her mother had also made sure that Astrid’s education had been complete. That she had been trained in the art of war. Not just the kind found on the battlefield, but the kind she would face in any and all political arenas.
There was a ruthlessness, her mother had told her, to all rulers. And a queen would need to hone her ruthlessness to a razor-sharp point, and wield it with more exacting brutality than any king.
And so she had been instructed on how to hold herself, how to be beautiful, without being sexual.
She was throwing all of it away right in that moment. Allowing her hips to sway, allowing her fingertips to caress the railing like she might a lover.
She had never had a lover.
But it was the aim of tonight.
And so, she could forget everything she had learned, or rather, could turn it upside down in this place that was like a mirror of her normal life.
That was how she felt. As if she’d stepped through the looking glass. As if she was on the other side of wealth and beauty. Not the weighted, austere version, but this frivolous palace made of ice. Transient and decadent. For no purpose other than pleasure.
She tossed her hair over her shoulder, and the moment she stepped onto the dance floor, she looked up.
Her eyes collided with his.
He saw her. He more than saw her.
It was as if there was an electric current in the air.
And so she did something she would have never done on any other day when her eyes connected with a strange man’s from across the room.
She licked her lips. Slowly. Deliberately.
And then she smiled.
She tossed her hair over her shoulder and continued onto the dance floor.
There were many women, and men, dancing by themselves and so she threw herself into the middle of them, and she allowed the rhythm to guide her movements.
She knew the steps to any number of formal dances. Music composed to complement a dance, not music created to lead it.
But she let the beat determine the shift of her hips, the arch in her spine. And for one, wonderful moment she felt like she was simply part of the crowd. Exhilarating. Freeing.
And then she felt the crowd move. But it was more than that. There was a change in the air. In everything around her.
And she knew already what it meant.
The king was on the dance floor.
She turned, and she nearly ran into a broad chest, her face coming just to his collarbone.
He was wearing a black jacket, black shirt with the top two buttons undone, exposing a wedge of skin and dark hair, tantalizing and forbidden—in her estimation—as no dignitary she had ever encountered would approach her without his tie done up tight.
She looked up, and her heart nearly stopped. And then when a smile tipped his lips upward, it accelerated again.
Photographs had not prepared her.
She’d first seen him in a gossip magazine a year ago when Astrid had brought in a copy of a particularly vile rag that had featured a scandal about Astrid’s brother—who had not spent life on his best behavior in the slightest.
But it wasn’t Gunnar and his naked exploits with a French model that had held Astrid’s attention. First of all, it was a terribly
But second of all…
Oh, there had been Mauro. A dissolute, salacious, scandalous playboy in a tux, with one woman clinging to each arm as he walked through one of his clubs.
Her heart had stopped. The world had stopped.
That was just a photograph.
In person…
He was beautiful, but not in the way the word was typically used. He was far too masculine a thing for simple beauty. Hard and angular like a rock, his jaw square and sculpted, his lips perfectly shaped and firm looking. His dark eyes were like chips of obsidian, the lights on the dance floor swallowed up in those fathomless depths.
He said nothing, and she wouldn’t have been able to hear him anyway. But he extended his hand, and she took his, the spark of fire that ignited at that point of contact spreading over her body like a ripple in the water. Sharp and shocking at its core, rolling over her wider and broader as it expanded.
He caught her and held her against his body.
She had danced with men before, but they had not held her like this. So close that her breasts were crushed to hard, muscular midsections, a large commanding hand low on her back.
And then his lips touched her ear, his whisper husky. “I’ve never seen you before.”
She moved back, tipping her chin upward so that she could see him, so that she could look him full in the face. Except, she could hardly sustain it. She looked down.
And he captured her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze again. If she hadn’t been wearing those heels she would have been so incredibly dwarfed by him there would have been no responding. But he lowered his head, and she leaned in.
“Because I’ve never been here before.”
“It’s always nice to see an unfamiliar face,” he said, this time brushing her hair back from her face as he whispered.
“Dance with me,” she said, not bothering to whisper this time.
The way that the rather predatory grin slid over his mouth told her that he understood.
That she wanted to do more than dance.
His eyes burned into hers as he gripped her hips, dragging her toward him as they moved in time with the music. She felt his touch everywhere, not just where he had his hands, but all the points in between, down deep, in the most intimate parts of her. She had danced with men before, but it had never been like this. Of course, the perfectly polished aristocrats who had always attended the balls she’d been at had never been anything like this.
There was an element of danger to this man. And she found herself drawn to it.
In fact, she found she wanted to fling herself against it. Against him. She had always been asked to be strong, but she had also been sheltered in many ways. Her take on the world was theoretical. And now, she was being tasked with ruling an entire country, while still suffering from that same fate.