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The King of Liandero was immersive and magnetic. He was impossibly compelling. One look at him turned into a stare, and it felt physically impossible to break that stare. The first time Aeryn had seen him in person she’d forgotten to breathe and had nearly made herself faint. He required a second look. Longer contemplation.

He was fascinating.

The longer she’d looked at him, the more she’d wanted to look at him more—and that had been before she’d met him.

He was funny, which should not have been a possibility in a man who lived a life so divorced from reality. He was self-deprecating. He was good at making others do the talking rather than monologuing himself, which he certainly could have done without comment, as the king of all he surveyed. Literally.

But Vesuvius always seemed genuinely interested. He was never afraid to admit he didn’t know something and always seemed eager to learn new things. Aeryn had found everything about him surprising and intriguing—and that was before she’d understood the ruinous chemistry between them. That was before she’d experienced the exquisite joy and horror of his hand on hers.

The touch that had changed everything and set them on this path, years ago.

Vesuvius had a smile and a laugh that were both carefree and contagious, though he saved the full force of them for the private moments where he could be himself. That meant only her, he had told her once, and the two close friends he considered his brothers. Everyone else got the dutiful king.

And he was nothing if not the epitome of duty.

He had taken his throne at the tender age of twenty-two and had always conducted himself appropriately in the public eye. Oh, there had always been whispers of more salacious behavior, particularly in the company of his friend Kyriakos—currently the ruling Prince of Zaccaria, an island kingdom in the Mediterranean. It had always been the calming presence of his best friend and highest minister, the aristocratic and ruthlessly correct Saviero Cimarosa, who had usually quieted those whispers.

Vesuvius had been a revelation to Aeryn. She had not considered herself particularly naïve or foolish when she had first gone to Liandero. She had done her doctoral work on Marcellus Dano, the Lianderoan artist whose work was almost entirely the property of the Lianderoan crown. The museum had agreed that she was the perfect one to curate the collection in the Lianderoan Royal Art Gallery, representing the Chicago art museum where she’d worked in some or other capacity since interning there when she’d been an art history major at Northwestern.

Aeryn had traveled quite a bit. She’d been to most major cities in North America by that point and had been working her way around Europe. She’d spent her junior year abroad in France and had spent the summer before and after backpacking around with friends, interacting with all kinds of different people along the way.

All of this to say that she had not been some wide-eyed, idiotic farm girl with a target on her back—not least because her parents had never had a farm—when she’d found herself in the Kingdom of Liandero, face-to-face with King Vesuvius himself.

And still, it had been like being hit with a sledgehammer. She’d never quite recovered.

Now, staring at him as he stood there in her foyer, no longer caked in snow but still wet and soaked through, she felt much the same as she had back when she’d first laid eyes on him five years ago.

“You’re going to catch a terrible cold,” she said, grudgingly. “You’d better take a hot shower to warm up. I’ll see if I can find you something dry to wear. And then maybe you can tell me what the hell you’re doing here.”

She thought there was something troubled in that hazel gaze of his, but she couldn’t engage with it. Not when she was too busy trying not to free-fall back into that same dizzy, delighted space she’d been in five years ago. Something that should not have been possible, given that she knew exactly what had happened in between.

Aeryn shooed him up the stairs of the brownstone, ordering herself not to think about what she was doing. If it was anyone else she knew, turning up on her step in the middle of a blizzard on Christmas Eve of all nights, she would do the same. She wouldn’t conduct an interrogation with them half-frozen to death in her front hall.

Or anyway, she hoped that she wouldn’t. Though she never would have thought that he would allow her to see him again, so really, she needed to accept that anything could happen.

She did not take him into her bedroom when they reached the next floor, with its attached bathroom, because that felt entirely too intimate and suggestive. And then she hated herself for thinking such a thing. Still, she led him to the guest bedroom and pointed him toward the bathroom there. Then she left him to it.

And it was possible she closed the door a little bit performatively. She could admit that. She made sure it was shut tight behind her. She was also aware that her heart was still pumping much too hard in her chest. But it wasn’t until she heard the water turn on, the old pipes kicking into gear in the old walls, that she kicked herself into gear too.

She had to go back downstairs to look in the far reaches of the linen closet for any sort of clothing that might fit him, and came up with a pair of gray sweatpants and a flannel shirt her father must have left here at some point or another, possibly when both Aeryn and Faith had succumbed to a terrible flu when she was still a tiny baby. That time was a blur, but her parents had been here, taking care of both of them. She’d forgotten that she’d never returned those clothes to him.

Now she was grateful, because she went back upstairs, put the clothes on the guest bed, and then fled the room before she heard the water turn off again.

Because the last thing she needed to do was be anywhere near a bed when Vesuvius was present. And naked. That was begging for trouble.

She ducked into her own room, exchanging the dress she’d worn to the gala for something far cozier and more protective, if she was honest. A fleecy, cozy set of lounging pants and a half-zip top that was both comfortable and in no way alluring. She even put her hair up, knotting it on the back of her head because she knew how much he liked it down. How much he liked to pull his fingers through it and, sometimes, use it to anchor her head just so, so he could keep her in place while he—

None of that, she ordered herself.

Out in the hallway again, she listened for him and heard the vague sounds of someone moving around the old redone floors in the guest room, so she quickly padded downstairs to the kitchen. She turned the burner on so the kettle she’d only had time to fill with water after she’d come home would heat, and then she went into the living room. The Christmas tree gleamed in the dark, but that was too cozy, so she turned on the lights. And the gas fire while she was at it, just in case it was too cold.

It was a few minutes later when she heard him on the stairs, and she had to order herself not to hold her breath. Moments later, she watched him come into the living room…almost gingerly. Some kind of strange awareness seemed to prickle through her then as she tried to understand why he was acting like this. Not at all his usual commanding self.

“You look like you’re hurt.” She frowned at the gash at his temple. He had rolled up the sleeves of the flannel shirt that was almost too small for him, since he was far more muscular than her father, and she could see another gash on his arm. “What on earth happened to you?”

What she meant was, how could anything happen to a man who was never alone? Who could not take a step without a security briefing and several teams in place?

Vesuvius looked around the room and his frown grew deeper. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but at that moment, the kettle let out its piercing wail.