IT HAD TAKEN her several hours to regain her breath after seeing him without his shirt. There it was. She was that basic.
She had known that he was spectacular. Had known that he was muscular and well-built. Because she wasn’t blind, and it didn’t take a physique detective to know that he was in very good shape underneath those clothes.
But then she had seen it.
His body. All that golden, perfect skin, the dark hair that covered his chest—she would have said that she didn’t like chest hair, but apparently she did—and created an enticing line that ran through the center of his abdominal muscles.
He was hot.
Her captor was hot.
She did not have time to ponder that. She had a mission.
She steeled herself and took one last look in the mirror before leaving her room. She had told him they could meet in the antechamber. She was pretty sure she knew which room the antechamber was. She had made it her business to figure out the layout of the palace. It was difficult. But she had done it.
And she had her phone back.
She had been feeling gleeful about that since the moment it had been deposited into her hand this morning.
And yet... And yet.
She hadn’t been able to think of a single thing to update her account with.
If she still didn’t want to call home.
Because she was mad.
Because she didn’t even know what to say.
She tucked her phone in her purse and made her way to the appointed meeting place. He was already there. She tried to force her eyes to skim over him, not to cling to the hard lines and angles of his body. To the terrifying symmetry of his face.
Terrifying and beautiful.
Saved only by that scar along his cheekbone.
She wanted to know how he got it.
She shouldn’t want to know how he got it. She shouldn’t want to know anything about him.
“Good morning. As you can see,” she said, waving her hand over her face, “I’m restored to my former glory.”
His eyes moved over her dispassionately. And she felt thoroughly dismissed. Insulted.
She shouldn’t care.
“All right. Where are we going to first?”
“The capital city. I thought that would be the perfect place to start. It’s about thirty minutes away. Down the mountain.”
“Excellent.”
Her stomach tightened, her hand shaking. And she didn’t know if it was because of the idea of being in close proximity with him in a car for that long or if it was stepping outside of this palace for the first time in several days.
The lack of reality in the situation was underlined here. By her containment. In this glittering palace of jewels it was easy to believe it was all a dream. Some kind of childhood fantasy hallucination with the very adult inclusion of a massive, muscular male.
But once they left the palace, the world would expand. And the fantasy that it was a dream would dissolve. Completely.
There was no limousine waiting for them. Instead, there was a sleek black car that was somehow both intensely expensive looking and understated. She didn’t know how it accomplished both of those things. But it did.
And it seemed right, somehow, because the car’s owner was not understated and could not be if he tried.
Looking at him now in his exquisitely cut dark suit, she had a feeling that he was trying.
That this was the most inconspicuous he could possibly be. But he was six and a half feet tall, arrestingly beautiful and looked like he could kill a hundred people using only his thumb. So. Blending wasn’t exactly an option for him.
He opened the door for her, and she got inside.
When he went to the driver’s seat, her tension wound up a notch.
It was even smaller than she had imagined. She had thought they might have a driver. Someone to help defuse this thing between them.
Between them. He probably felt nothing.
Why would he?
He was carved out of rock.
Well. One thing.
She thought of his response to her question yesterday. The way that his lips had curved up into a smile.
One thing.
The idea of this rock as a sexual being just about made her combust. She did not need those thoughts. No, she did not.
He was not the kind of man for her. Even in fantasy. She needed a sexual fantasy with training wheels. An accountant, maybe. Soft. One who wore pleated-front khakis and emanated concern. A nice man named Stephen.
The kind of man that would bring her cinnamon rolls in bed.
After... Making tender love to her.
Nothing about that appealed.
She had no idea why her sexuality was being so specific. She had never intended to make it to twenty-six a virgin.
And she had certainly never intended for this man to awaken her desire.
No. It was just exacerbated by the fact that this felt like a dream. That was all. She wasn’t connected to reality. And she was... Stockholm syndrome. That was it. She was suffering from sexual Stockholm syndrome.
When the car started moving, she unrolled the window and stuck her head out of it. Breathed in the crystal mountain air and hoped that it would inject her with some sense.
It didn’t.
It did nothing to alleviate the bigness of his presence in the tiny vehicle.
“Are you going to roll the window up? Because you know I don’t make a habit of driving to public spaces with women hanging out my car.”
She shot him a look and rolled the window up. It really did her no good to oppose him now. She was on a mission. Trying to prove something. “I was enjoying the air.”
“Now which one of us is a Saint Bernard?”
“Did you just make a joke?” She looked at his stern profile and saw the corner of his lip tip upward. “You did. You made a joke. That’s incredible.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
It felt like a deeper warning of something else. But she went ahead and ignored it. Along with the shiver of sensation that went through her body.
They were silent after that. And she watched as the trees thinned, gave way to civilization. The dirt becoming loose rocks, and then cobblestone.
The town itself was not modern. And she would have been disappointed if it was. The streets were made of interlocking stones, the sidewalks the same, only in a different pattern. Tight spirals and sunbursts, some of them bleeding up the sides of the buildings that seemed somehow rooted to the earth.
The streets were narrow, the businesses packed tightly together. There were little cafés and a surprising number of appealing-looking designer shops that Violet suddenly felt eager to explore.
“This is beautiful,” she said. “If people knew... Well, if people knew, this would be a huge tourist spot.”
“It was not encouraged under the rule of my father. And in these past years businesses have rebounded. But still...”
“There is ground to gain. Understood. Pull over.”
“What?”
“Pull over.”
She saw a bright yellow bicycle leaned against a wall. And right next to it was a window planter with bright red geraniums bursting over the top of it.
All backed by that charming gray stone.
“We need to take a photo.”
He obeyed her, but was clearly skeptical about her intent.
She got out of the car quickly and raced over to the bike. Then she looked over into the courtyard of the neighboring café. People were sitting outside drinking coffee. “Excuse me? Is this your bike?” She asked the young woman sitting there working on her computer.
The woman looked at her warily and then saw Javier, standing behind her. Her eyes widened.
“It’s fine,” Violet said. “He’s harmless. I just want to take a picture with your bike.”
“Of course,” the woman said.
She still looked completely frazzled, but Violet scampered to where it was, positioning herself right next to it and putting her hand over the handlebars. “A picture,” she said. She reached into her purse and pulled her phone out, handing it to him.
“That’s what all this is about? Also. I am not harmless.”
“Yes. Very ferocious. Take my picture.”
She looked straight ahead, offering him her profile, and tousled her hair lightly before positioning her hand delicately at her hip.
“There,” he said. “Satisfied?”
“Let me verify.” She snatched the phone from his hand and looked at the photo.
It had done exactly what she wanted to do, and with some tweaking, the colors would look beautiful against the simple gray stone.
“Yes,” she confirmed. “I am.”
She pulled up her account, touched the picture up quickly and typed:
Exploring new places is one of my favorite things. Stay tuned for more information on your next favorite vacation spot.
“There,” she said. “That’s bound to create speculation. Excitement.”
He looked down at the picture with great skepticism. “That?”
“Yes.”
“I do not understand people.”
“Maybe they don’t understand you,” she said.
He looked completely unamused by that.
“Sorry. Joke. I thought you were getting to where you understood those sometimes.”
The look he gave her was inscrutable.
“Show me the rest of this place,” she said. “I’m curious.”
He looked at her as if she had grown a second head. “You realize that I’m slightly conspicuous?”
“Usually I am too,” she said. “I guess... I just figure you ignore it.”
“You’re not conspicuous here.”
“No,” she said. “But that won’t last long, will it? I mean, if I’m going to be the Queen...”
“You’re not going to be inconspicuous as long as you’re walking around with me. That’s a pretty decent indicator that you might be important.”
“Wow. No points for humility.”
“Do you have false humility about the degree to which you’re recognized? Or what your status means? You’ve been throwing all sorts of statistics at me about your wealth and importance ever since we first met.”
“All right,” she said. “Fair enough.”
They walked on in silence for a moment. She paid attention to the way her feet connected to the cobblestones. It was therapeutic in a way. There was something so quaint about this. It was more village than city, but it contained a lot more places of interest than she would normally think you would find in a village.
“What is the chief export here?”
“There isn’t any. We are quite self-contained. What we make tends to stay here, tends to fuel the citizens.”
“That’s very unusual.”
“Yes. It also feels precarious.”
“So... If we were to manufacture my products here, I would be your chief export.”
“In point of fact, yes.”
“Though, if your other products became desirable because of tourism...”
“Yes. I understand it would mean a great deal of cash injection for the country. Though, thanks to my brother’s personal fortune, the coffers of the country have been boosted as it is.”
“Yes, I did some research on him. He’s quite a successful businessman.”
“You would like him. Other than the fact that he’s a bit of a tyrant.”
“More than you?”
“Different than me.” He relented. “Perhaps not more.”
“A family of softies.”
The sound he made was somewhere between a huff of indignation and a growl. “I have never been called soft.”
She looked at him. The wall of muscle that was his chest. The granite set of his jaw. She meant her response to be light. Funny. But looking at him took her breath. “No. I don’t suppose you have.”
There was a small ice-cream parlor up the way, and she was more than grateful for the distraction. “I want ice cream,” she said.
“Ice cream? Are you a child?”
“Ice cream is not just for children,” she said gravely. “Surely you know that, Javier.”
“I don’t eat ice cream.”
“Nonsense. Everyone needs ice cream. Well, unless they’re lactose intolerant. In which case, they just need to find a good nondairy replacement. And let me tell you, in Southern California they’re plentiful.”
“I’m not intolerant of anything.”
She tried, and failed, to hold back a laugh. “Well, that just isn’t true. I’ve only spent a few days in your company, but I can tell you that you’re clearly intolerant of a whole host of things. But, it’s good to know that dairy isn’t among them.”
“You are incredibly irritating.”
“Not the first time I’ve heard that.”
“And who told you that?”
“My older brother, for a start. Also, my surrogate older brother, Dante. He’s now my brother-in-law, incidentally.”
“That seems convoluted.”
“It’s not really. Not at all. Just the way things ended up. My father quite literally found him on a business trip and brought him home. Took care of him. I think my sister was in love with him for most of her life.”
“But you weren’t.”
She laughed. “I remember very clearly telling Minerva that I didn’t like men who were quite as hard as Dante.”
A tense silence settled between the two of them. She hadn’t meant to say that. Because of course that implied that perhaps it had changed. And perhaps there was a hard man that she might find appealing after all.
She gritted her teeth.
“And I still don’t,” she said. “So. Just so we’re both clear.”
“Very clear,” he said.
“Now. Ice cream.” She increased her pace and breezed straight into the shop. And she did not miss the look of absolute shock on the faces of the proprietors inside. It wasn’t to do with her. It was to do with Javier.
“I saw that there was ice cream,” she said cheerily. She approached the counter and looked at all the flavors.
“We make them all here,” the woman behind the counter said, her voice somewhat timid. “The milk comes from our own cows.”
“Well, that’s wonderful,” Violet said. “And makes me even more excited to try it.” There was one called Spanish chocolate, and she elected to get a cone with two scoops of that. She kept her eyes on Javier the entire time.
“You don’t want anything?”
“No,” he said, his voice uncompromising.
“You’re missing out,” she said.
She went to pay for the treat, and he stepped in, taking his wallet from his pocket.
“Of course we cannot ask Your Royal Highness to pay,” the woman said.
“On the contrary,” Javier said, his voice decisive. “You should be asking me to pay double. Consider it repayment.”
The woman did not charge Javier double, but she did allow him to pay.
“I didn’t need you to buy my ice cream,” she said when they were out on the street.
“It’s not about need. It is about... What feels right.”
“You’re that kind of man, huh? The kind that holds open doors and pays for dinner?”
He laughed, a dark, short sound. “You make me sound quite a bit more conventional than I am.”
“A regular gentleman.”
“I would not say that.”
“Well, what would you say, then? You’re single-handedly setting out to save the country, and you saved a little girl from child marriage. You worked for years to undo the rule of your father.” She took a short lick of her ice cream. It was amazing. “I would say that runs toward gentlemanly behavior, don’t you?”
“I think that’s overstating human decency. I would like to think that any man with a spine would do what I did in my position. Inaction in my position would be complicity. And I refused to be complicit in my father’s actions.”
“Well. Many people would be, for their comfort.”
She looked down the alleyway and saw a lovely hand-painted mural. She darted there, and he followed. It was secluded, ivy growing over the walls, creeping between the brick.
“I just need a picture of this.”
She held out her hand, extending her ice-cream cone to him. “Can you hold this?”
He took it gingerly from her grasp, looking at it like it might bite him. She lifted her brows, then turned away from him, snapping a quick picture and then another for good measure.
He was still holding the ice-cream cone and looking aggrieved, so when she returned, she leaned in, licking the ice-cream cone while he held it still.
His posture went stiff.
He was reacting to her, she realized. The same way that she reacted to him. And she didn’t like how it made her feel. Giddy and jittery and excited in a way she couldn’t remember feeling before.
And she should pull away. She should.
But instead, she wrapped her hand around his, and sent electric sensation shooting through her body.
“You should taste it,” she said.
“I told you, I didn’t want any.”
“But I think you do,” she insisted. “You should have some.”
She pushed his hand, moving the cone in his direction, and she could see the moment that he realized it was better to take the path of least resistance. He licked the ice cream slowly, his dark eyes connecting with hers.
She realized she had miscalculated.
Because he had his mouth where hers had been.
Because she was touching him and he was looking at her.
Because something in his dark eyes told her that he would be just as happy licking her as he was this ice cream.
And all of it was wrong.
Why couldn’t she hate him? She should.
Why couldn’t she get it into her head that this was real? That it was insane. That she should want to kick him in the shins and run as far and fast as she could. Call for help at the nearest business, rather than lingering here in an alley with him.
“It’s good,” she said, her throat dry.
“Yes,” he agreed, his voice rough.
Then he thrust it back into her hand. “I think I’ve had enough.”
“Right.”
Her heart clenched, sank. And she didn’t know what was happening inside of her. Didn’t know why her body was reacting this way, now, to him. Didn’t know why she felt like crying, and not for any of the reasons that she should.
“I’m not done exploring the city, though. And I wouldn’t want to take my ice cream back in your car. I might make a mess.”
But the rest of the outing was completely muted. Not at all what it had been before.
And that it disappointed her confused her even more than anything else.
When she was back at the palace, back in her room, she lay down and covered her head. And only then did she allow herself to think the truth.
She was attracted to the man who was holding her captive.
She was attracted to the brother of the man she was being forced to marry.
But more important, he was attracted to her. She had seen it.
She had very nearly tasted it.
Thankfully, they had come to their senses.
She spent the rest of the night trying fitfully to be thankful when all she felt was frustrated.
And she knew that she had come up with a plan, no matter how it made her stomach churn to think of putting it into action.
She had no choice.