Шантель Шоу – One Night With The Prince: A Royal Without Rules (страница 17)

Adriana didn’t know what she was going to do.

“Keep looking at me like that,” Pato said then, making her realize that she’d been staring at him for far too long—and that he was staring back, his eyes gleaming with a dark fire she recognized, “and I won’t be responsible for what happens next.”

* * *

Pato expected her to throw that back in his face. He expected that cutting tongue of hers, the sweet slap of that smile she used like a razor and sharpened so often and so comprehensively on his skin. He liked both far more than he should.

But her eyes only darkened as they clung to his, and a hectic flush spread over those elegant cheekbones he wanted to taste. He was uncomfortably hard within the next breath, the wild, encompassing need he’d been trying to tell himself he’d imagined, or embellished, slamming into him again, sinking its claws deep, making him burn hot, and want.

How could he want her this much?

It had been weeks since London, and his fascination with her should have ebbed by now, as his little fascinations usually did in much less time. And most of those women had not fancied themselves tragically in love with his brother. But Adriana was always with him, always right there within his reach, prickly and unimpressed and severe. He spent his days studying her lovely face and its many masks, reading her every gesture, poking at her himself when he grew tired of the distance she tried to put between them.

This woman was his doom. He understood that on a primal level, and yet couldn’t do the very thing he needed to do to avert it. He couldn’t let her walk away. That was part of the game—but he found he couldn’t bear the thought of it.

And he didn’t like to think about the implications of that.

“Careful, Adriana,” he said quietly. Her chest rose and fell too fast and her hands clenched almost fitfully at the thick paperback she held. If he asked, she would claim she didn’t want him and never had—but he could see the truth written all over her. He recognized what burned in her, no matter what she claimed. It made him harder, wilder. Closer to desperate than he’d been in years. “I’m in a dangerous mood tonight.”

She blinked then, looking down into her lap and smoothing her hands over the abused book, and he had rendered himself so ridiculous when it came to this woman that he felt it like loss.

“I don’t know how you can tell the difference between that and any of your other moods,” she said in her usual sharp way, which Pato told himself was better than that lost, hungry stare that could only lead to complications he knew he should avoid. “They’re all dangerous, sooner or later, aren’t they? And we both know who’ll have to clean up the mess.”

“I expected applause when we boarded the plane,” he told her, smiling when her gaze came back to his, her brows arched over those warm, wary eyes that made him forget about the hollow places inside him. “A grateful speech or two, perhaps even a few thankful tears.”

“You board planes all the time,” she pointed out, her expression smooth, and that decidedly disrespectful glint in her dark eyes that he enjoyed far too much. “I was unaware that you required encouragement to continue doing so. I’ll be sure to make a note of that for future reference. Perhaps the Royal Guard can break from their regular duties protecting our beloved sovereign, and perform a salute.”

“I want only your applause, Adriana,” he told her silkily. “After all, you’re the one who insisted I become chaste and pure, and so I have. At your command.”

“I’m sorry,” she murmured, something that looked like a smirk flashing across her mouth before she wisely bit it back. “Did you describe yourself as ‘chaste and pure’? In an airplane, of all places, where we are that much closer to lightning, should you be struck down where you sit?”

She was a problem. A terrible problem, the ruin of everything he’d worked for all these years, but Pato couldn’t seem to keep himself from enjoying her. He couldn’t seem to do anything but bask in her. Tart and quick and the most fun he’d had in ages. With that sweet, hot fire beneath that would burn them both.

“Shall I tell you what I got up to at this particular benefit last year?” he asked.

“Unnecessary,” she assured him. “The video of your ill-conceived spa adventure is still available on the internet. Never has the phrase ‘the royal jewels’ been so widely and hideously abused.”

He laughed, and spread out his hands in front of him as if in surrender—noting the way her eyes narrowed in suspicion, as if she knew exactly how unlikely it was he might ever truly surrender anything.

“And look at me now,” he invited her. “Not a single lascivious actress in sight, no spa tub in a hotel room that was meant to be private, and I’m not even drunk. You should be proud, Adriana.”

She shifted in her chair, crossing her legs, and then frowning at him when his gaze drifted to trace the elegant line of them from the hem of her demure skirt down to the delicate heels she wore.

“Your transformation has been astonishing,” she said in repressive tones when he grinned back at her. “But you’ll forgive me if I can’t quite figure out your angle. I only know you must have one.”

“I prefer curves to angles, actually,” he said, and laughed again at her expression of polite yet clear distaste at the innuendo. “And it has to be said, I’ve always found lingerie a particularly persuasive argument.”

Adriana let out a breath, as if he’d hit her. Something terribly sad moved over her face then, surprising him and piercing into him. She ran her hands down the length of her skirt, smoothing out nonexistent wrinkles, betraying her anxiety.

Pato knew he was a bastard—he’d gone out of his way to make sure he was—but this woman made him feel it. Keenly. She made him wish he was a different man. A better one. The sort of good one she deserved.

“Perhaps you’ve managed to convince me of the error of my ways,” he said quietly, hating himself further because he wasn’t that man. He couldn’t be that man, no matter how much she made him wish otherwise. “Just because it hasn’t been done before doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”

Her dark eyes met his and made something twist in him, sharp and serrated.

“We both know I did nothing of the kind,” she said, her voice soft and matter-of-fact. She let out a small breath. “All I managed to do was make myself one among your many conquests, indistinguishable from the rest of the horde.”

“I don’t know why you’d think yourself indistinguishable,” he said, keeping his tone light.

He could have sworn what he saw flash in her dark eyes then was despair, but she swallowed it back and forced a smile that made his chest hurt.

“I should have realized,” she said, and he wondered if she knew how bitter she sounded then, how broken. “You’ve always been a trophy collector, haven’t you? And what a prize you won in London. You get to brag that the Righetti whore propositioned you and you—you, of all people—turned her down. My congratulations, Your Royal Highness. That’s quite a coup.”

For a long moment a black temper pulsed in him, and Pato didn’t dare speak. He only studied her face. She was pale now, and sat too straight, too stiff. Her eyes were dark again in exactly the same way they’d been that morning in the car, when he’d felt pushed to confront her about Lenz, and was fairly certain she’d broken his heart. Had he had one to break.

Pato hated this. He was perilously close to hating himself. For the first time since he was eighteen, he wished that he could do exactly what he wanted without having to worry about anyone else. Without having to play these deep, endless games. Adriana sat there and looked at him as if he was exactly the depraved degenerate he’d gone to great lengths to ensure he really was, when she was the first woman he’d ever met that he wanted to think better of him. The irony wasn’t lost on him.

It stung. Congratulations, indeed, he thought ruefully. This was what doom looked like as it happened, and he was doing nothing at all to prevent it.

“Adriana,” he said, trying to keep his temper from his voice. Trying to make sense of his determination to protect her not only from the things he shouldn’t allow himself to want from her, but from herself. “You and I both know you’re no whore. Why do you torture yourself over the lies that strangers tell? They’re only stories. They’re not even about you.”

“On the contrary,” she said after a moment, her voice thick and uneven. “Some of us are defined by the stories strangers tell.”

“You’re the only one who can define yourself,” he countered gently. “All they can do is tell another story, and who cares if they do?”

Emotion moved through her then, raw and powerful. He saw it on her face, in the way her eyes went damp, in the faint tremor of her lips. Her hands balled into fists in her lap and she moved restlessly in her seat, stamping both feet into the floor as if she needed the balance.

“Easy for you to say,” she stated, a raw edge to her voice. “Not all of us can be as beloved as you are no matter what you do, forgiven our trespasses the moment we make them.”