A Royal Without Rules. Caitlin Crews
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But as she stared at the great bed before her, the frustration that had propelled her all the way through the palace shifted. She hadn’t expected to find the redhead and a brunette, both women naked and draped over what was known as Kitzinia’s royal treasure: Prince Pato’s lean and golden torso, all smooth muscle and sculpted male beauty, cut off by a sheet riding scandalously low on his narrow hips.
Although “scandalous” in this context was, clearly, relative.
“No need to be so shy.” Somehow, Adriana didn’t react to the mocking gleam in Prince Pato’s gaze when she looked up to find him watching her, his eyes sleepy and a crook to his wicked mouth. “There’s always room for one more.”
“I’m tempted.” Her crisp tone was anything but. “But I’m afraid I must decline.”
“This isn’t a spectator sport.”
Pato shifted the brunette off his chest with a consummate skill that spoke of long practice, and propped himself up on one elbow, not noticing or not caring that The sheet slipped lower as he moved. Adriana held her breath, but the sheet just preserved what little remained of his modesty. The redhead rolled away from him as Pato shoved his thick, too-long tawny hair back from his forehead, amusement gleaming in eyes Adriana knew perfectly well were hazel, yet looked like polished gold.
And then he smiled with challenge and command. “Climb in or get out.”
Adriana eyed him in all his unapologetic, glorious flesh. Prince Pato, international manwhore and noted black sheep of the Kitzinia royal family, was the biggest waste of space alive. He stood for nothing save his own hedonism and selfishness, and she wanted to be anywhere in all the world but here.
Anywhere.
She’d spent the last three years as Crown Prince Lenz’s personal assistant, a job she adored despite the fact it had often involved handling Pato’s inevitable messes. This paternity suit, that jilted lover’s vindictive appearance on television, this crashed sports car worth untold millions, that reckless and/or thoughtless act making embarrassing headlines…He was the thorn in his responsible older brother’s side, and therefore dug deep and hard in hers.
And thanks to his inability to behave for one single day—even at his only brother’s engagement party!—Pato was now her problem to handle in the two months leading up to Kitzinia’s first royal wedding in a generation.
Adriana couldn’t believe this was happening. She’d been demoted from working at the right hand of the future king to taking out the royal family’s trash. After her years of loyalty, her hard work. Just when she’d started to kid herself that she really could begin to wash away the historic stain on the once proud Righetti name.
“Pato needs a keeper,” Prince Lenz had said earlier this morning, having called Adriana into his private study upon her arrival at the palace. Adriana had ached for him and the burdens he had to shoulder. She would do anything he asked, anything at all; she only wished he’d asked for something else. Pato was the one part of palace life she couldn’t abide. “There are only two months until the wedding and I can’t have the papers filled with his usual exploits. Not when there’s so much at stake.”
What was at stake, Adriana knew full well, was Lenz’s storybook marriage to the lovely Princess Lissette, which the world viewed as a fairy tale come to life—or would, if Pato could be contained for five minutes. Kitzinia was a tiny little country nestled high in the Alps, rich in world-renowned ski resorts and stunning mountain lakes bristling with castles and villas and all kinds of holiday-making splendor. Tourist economies like theirs thrived on fairy tales, not dissipated princes hell-bent on self-destruction in the glare of as many cameras as possible.
Two months in this hell, she thought now, still holding Pato’s amused gaze. Two months knee-deep in interchangeable women, sexual innuendo and his callous disregard for anything but his own pleasure.
But Lenz wanted her to do this. Lenz, who had believed in her, overlooking her infamous surname when he’d hired her. Lenz, who she would have walked through fire for, had he wanted it. Lenz, who deserved better than his brother. Somehow, she would do this.
“I would sooner climb across a sea of broken glass on my hands and knees than into that circus carousel you call your bed,” Adriana said, then smiled politely. “I mean that with all due respect, of course, Your Royal Highness.”
Pato tilted back his head and laughed.
And Adriana was forced to admit—however grudgingly—that his laugh was impossibly compelling, like everything else about him. It wasn’t fair. It never had been. If interiors matched exteriors, Lenz would be the Kitzinian prince who looked like this, with all that thick sun-and-chocolate hair that fell about Pato’s lean face and hinted at his wildness, that sinful mouth, and the kind of bone structure that made artists and young girls weep. Lenz, not Pato, should have been the one who’d inherited their late mother’s celebrated beauty. Those cheekbones, the gorgeous eyes and easy grace, the smile that caused riots, and the delighted laughter that lit whole rooms.
It simply wasn’t fair.
Pato extricated himself from the pile of naked women on his bed and swung his long legs over the side, wrapping the sheet around his waist as he stood. As much to taunt her with the other women’s nakedness as to conceal his own, Adriana thought, her eyes narrowing as he raised his arms high above his head and stretched. Long and lazy, like an arrogant cat. He grinned at her when she glared at him, and as he moved toward her she stiffened instinctively—and his grin only deepened.
“What is my brother’s favorite lapdog doing in my bedroom this early in the day?” he asked, that low, husky voice of his no more than mildly curious. Still, his gaze raked over her and she felt a kind of clutching in her chest, a hitch in her breath. “Looking as pinch-faced and censorious as ever, I see.”
“First of all,” Adriana said, glancing pointedly at the delicate watch on her wrist and telling herself she wasn’t pinched and didn’t care that he thought so, “it’s past noon. It’s not early in the day by any definition.”
“That depends entirely on what you did last night,” he replied, unrepentant and amused, with a disconcerting lick of heat beneath. “I don’t mean what you did, of course. I mean what I did, which I imagine was far more energetic than however it is you prepare yourself for another day of pointless subservience.”
Adriana looked at him, then at the bed and its naked contents. Then back at him. She raised a disdainful eyebrow, and he laughed again, as if she delighted him. The last thing she wanted to do was delight him. If she had her way, she’d have nothing to do with him at all.
But this was not about her, she reminded herself. Fiercely.
“Second,” she said, staring back at him repressively, which had no discernible effect, “it’s past time for your companions to leave, no matter how energetic they may have been—and please, don’t feel you need to share the details. I’m sure we’ll read all about it in the papers, as usual.” She aimed a chilly smile at him. “Will you do the honors or should I call the royal guard to remove them from the palace?”
“Are you offering to take their place?” Pato asked lazily.
He shifted, and despite herself, Adriana’s gaze dropped to the expanse of his golden-brown chest, sun-kissed and finely honed, long and lean and—
For God’s sake, she snapped at herself. You’ve seen all this before, like everyone else with an internet connection.
She’d even seen the pictures that were deemed too risqué for publication, which the palace had gnashed its collective teeth over and which, according to Lenz, had only made his shameless brother laugh. Which meant she’d seen every part of him. But she had never been this close, in person, to Prince Pato in his preferred state of undress.
It was…different. Much different.
When