Chapter Six

Right before I was hit, I saw a flash out of the corner of my eye. A blurry movement. Gray rubbed on black and then I was slammed into a wall.

I was face to face with a monster.

Dark, angry, the size of a bear. Golden eyes gleaming in the night. His heavy forearm was pressed against my collarbone and throat. He could crush me, but then…he froze. He wasn’t expecting me. Good. This was my chance.

I opened my mouth to scream. I should have used that energy to run instead. Because before I got a breath in, his forearm rolled just so slightly into the soft flesh of my neck, cutting off any ability to scream. His other hand, he clamped over my mouth.

Terror scraped along the inside of my skin, crawling like biting ants, but something strange and fierce in my brain told me not to fight.

The huge bear loomed over me, body pressing ever so slightly into mine, his mouth lowered to my ear.

“Don’t move,” he growled as his palm relaxed only slightly against my mouth.

“Where exactly do you think I’m going to go?” I hissed, pushing back ineffectually at the solid mass of muscle that was currently pinning me into place.

He pulled back. “Do be quiet, Your Highness.”

I froze. Shock, surprise, fear tumbled together as it hit me.

The man had spoken to me in Driedish.

A perfect, native Driedish accent.

Your Highness.

He knew who I was.

And I knew those eyes, even in the dark.

“Hugh?” I said, my voice barely more than an exhalation against the heat of his still-hovering hand.

The bear nodded, a precise movement. No energy spared, because all one million kilowatts were totally focused on me.

All of that muscle tensed against me, to keep me in place.

All of the ferocity, leashed only for me.

All of his attention.

On.

Me.

It was all a goddamned lie.

I pushed back, my hands free of the soaps and towels that had flown everywhere when Hugh Konnor sprang out of the fucking shadows and scared the shit out of me. “What the hell are you thinking?” Scratch that. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Let the record show that while I had pushed him with quite a bit of my available strength, the man barely budged. But he did move his palms to the wall beside me, so perhaps I should have been grateful.

I was not.

“Let me go!” I slapped at his arms, but he caught my hands easily and wrapped them around my back. If anyone saw this, they would assume we were in the middle of a passionate embrace. In the dark, against a wall. Tangled together.

But this was Hugh—no, I mentally adjusted the way I saw him. This was Konnor. A royal bodyguard. A man from my past had found me.

Not only that, but it was that man.

The man I had told Signore Rossi about, the man who had definitely not been my first love.

He was also the man who was most definitely about to get his ass kicked out of my apartment as soon as I could figure out how to put on an extra hundred pounds of muscle and win an arm-wrestling contest with an ex-soldier who had at least fifteen years of military and national-security experience.

“Let me go,” I hissed again. “You have no right to barge in here and take me prisoner!”

Konnor’s grip relaxed, but he didn’t let me go. “There’s a man in your apartment.”

I paused for a moment, processing the strange way he said that. A declaration, not a question. But… “Seriously?” My voice rose. “Don’t tell me you’ve come all this way to throw a man out of my boudoir. I’m seriously flattered. Last time we met you couldn’t have cared less who I had in my bed. My grandmother must not be giving you enough work to do back at the palace.”

His golden eyes glinted in the dark. “Do you know that there’s a fugitive in your apartment?”

“Which one?”

His dark brows crunched together.

“I own this apartment we’re standing in. Are you a fugitive?” Oh. My mouth dropped as I drew a quick breath. “Is that why you’re hiding in the dark?” So many possibilities flew through my imagination. “Are you kidnapping me?”

“Christ,” Konnor swore. He let my hands go but he still loomed in front of me, as solid and unyielding as the plaster wall at my back. “I didn’t even know you were here,” he spat. “So stop playing games and tell me if Christian Fraser-Campbell is upstairs in that apartment.”

This was about Christian? That pale, sickly shadow of a man? I opened my mouth to confirm that yes, Christian was recovering from a bad bout of flu in my spare room, but something made me stop.

That something was my intense irritation at this current situation.

“Did you rent this apartment?” I demanded. His head tilted slightly. I’d take that as a yes. “And you did it with the purpose of interrogating me about who I invite into my home?”

“Look. I don’t have time—”

“I’m a private citizen now, Konnor. I don’t have to do anything you—”

He swore again, slapped the wall and took three steps back. “We can do this the hard way or the easy way.”

“Or no way,” I offered, quite reasonably, I thought.

“You let me in and introduce me to your guest,” he said with a grimace. “Or I bust down the door with a team of my colleagues and we take him by force.”

A flush of heat and I saw red. “How dare you!” I sputtered. “You can’t do that!”

He leaned in and smiled without joy. “Like you said, you’re a private citizen now. I assure you I can.”

And while Konnor was thoroughly pissing me off, I realized that what was most maddening was…he was right. I was not a princess. I had been cut off from the family. I couldn’t threaten him with retribution from the Queen because she wouldn’t answer my phone calls anymore.

I was simply a woman. Powerless in the face of sheer brute force.

Or was I?

“On whose authority do you enter these premises?” I demanded.

He shrugged, an infuriating posture. “I rented it out. Paid for two nights.”

My fists clenched. “And that gives you the legal authority to enter my private apartment?”

“I’m an officer of the law—”

“In Drieden,” I interrupted, trying desperately to find a loophole that would put me back in control.

“There’s international reciprocity, especially in the case of imminent danger, like when…” He cocked his head. “I heard something. Did you hear that?”

“What?”

He started walking toward the back entrance.

“What did you hear?” I demanded, following him.

“That cry for help.” His steps quickened as he entered the utility area and reached for the door that led to the stairway.

“I didn’t hear—” I broke off because I realized my idiocy. He was already half a flight ahead of me, taking those stairs three or four at a time, and I knew he’d find the door lodged open because I had left it like that just in case Christian called out for me.

Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.

I heard a crash, a shout, a Driedish curse.

I ran into my apartment and saw the back end of Konnor running out the front door. The security system monitors were all ablaze and lit up.

Christian.

I knew he was gone even before I looked for him. The apartment felt deserted. But still I checked the spare room. His shoes were nowhere to be found.

I barely had time to think through my next steps. It was really instinct telling me what to do.

Christian had left his small leather bag.

Take it.

My computer.

Shove it in the bag.

A coat. My keys. My wallet.

I’ll buy what I need later.

Any second, Konnor and/or his buddies from the Royal Secret Service were going to come back in here and demand that I give them whatever they were looking for.

They expected me to be a good little princess, docile and obedient and completely okay with them ruining the story of the year.

Like hell I was.

Go.