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‘I’m just surprised...’
‘Mmm?’ he said distractedly as her words broke into his uncomfortable reverie.
She looked up from her study of the sheet, her teeth digging into the rosy cushion of her bottom lip. ‘I’m surprised you chose me, that’s all. There must be loads of other women who would have made a much more suitable sexual partner. Why me?’
This was usually the kind of thing a woman asked when she was fishing for a compliment, but Corso suspected that wasn’t true in this case. He thought about ignoring her question—of deftly batting it away, confident in the knowledge that nobody ever asked a king something twice. But Rosie was different. She had known him before he’d acceded to the throne. She’d once seen him with tear-bright eyes and when he’d complained about the grit which had flown in them while out riding, she had simply squeezed his arm, before swiftly dropping her hand, as if remembering that she had no right to touch the monarch. She hadn’t ever mentioned it again. She hadn’t come out with endless platitudes about how sorry she was for the loss of his mother and he had been grateful to her for that, because he had been hurting badly.
But she was no longer that young girl, running on instinct and innocence. She was a woman in her prime—poised on the brink of discovering the rich world of her own sexuality. Didn’t he owe her the truth? ‘You want to know why I couldn’t resist you?’ he questioned.
‘I’m curious.’
He hesitated. ‘You are obviously very attractive.’
‘But not your usual type?’
‘Well, no.’ It had been so long since he’d had a ‘type’ that Corso found himself wondering whether his preferences might have changed over the years. ‘If you really want an explanation, I guess you’d have to put it down to proximity.’
‘Proximity?’ she echoed, unable to keep the tang of disappointment from her voice. ‘And that’s all?’
Yes, of course that was all. Close contact plus rampaging hormones equalled explosive physical chemistry. It was no more complex than that. She needed to understand that. And he needed to understand it, too. ‘And when proximity is mixed with abstinence—it makes a very potent cocktail. You see, I haven’t been intimate with a woman for a very long time, Rosie,’ he added huskily. ‘Not for over seven years, in fact. Ring any bells?’
It took a few seconds before she answered and he saw the confusion clear from her face as she nodded. ‘You’re talking about that woman I overheard just before your party?’ she breathed. ‘What was her name?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Tiffany!’ she said triumphantly. ‘That was it. Tiffany Sackler. I warned you that she was telling a friend she wanted to have your baby. And you were very angry with me.’
‘I was more angry with myself,’ he admitted.
‘And that was enough to put you off sex?’
‘It didn’tputme offsex. It made me re-evaluate my life. It made me consider that maybe I hadn’t been thinking through my position properly. I realised I had been placing myself in an invidious position and could easily be compromised by people whose motives were not, shall we say...pure.’
‘And was it very hard?’ she ventured. ‘To go without sex for so long?’
‘Hard would not be my adjective of choice,’ he commented drily, a reluctant smile tugging at the edges of his mouth. ‘You know, you really are going to have to stop blushing like that when you’re in bed with me. It’s really very distracting.’
‘I’m serious,’ she said, seeming to hesitate before forging on. ‘It’s just quite a lot to take on board because you were so well known for being a...’
‘A what, Rosie?’ he challenged.
She clasped her fingers together. ‘A sex symbol, I suppose. A bit of a player. It must have been like a chocoholic deciding they weren’t going to eat sugar for the foreseeable.’
He stared out of the window, where the Eiffel Tower was currently lit up with the purple and turquoise colours of the Monterossian flag, as it had been since his arrival in France. ‘If you must know, at first I enjoyed the discipline of self-denial. I have always enjoyed testing myself, especially when it’s difficult. It’s like basic training when you’re in the military. No one wants to get out of bed at six a.m. and take an icy shower, before running miles with a heavy pack on your back—but that’s what makes your body into a powerful machine. Abstinence helped keep my mind focussed and it coincided with my accession to the throne, and the discovery of exactly what I had inherited.’
This time she didn’t prompt him. Not even when he couldn’t prevent his voice from distorting with the vein of bitterness he usually kept buried deep inside him. She just tucked a strand of pale hair behind her ear and gazed at him and he thought how much of her father there was in her—for didn’t she seem to share his uncanny ability of knowing when to speak and when to remain silent?
And suddenly he found himself telling her. Not all of it, no, but some. Some things he would never tell. ‘Countries are like people,’ he ground out. ‘They evolve and grow. And I didn’t like the country which mine had become. The world had moved on and the casinos, which were licensed a long time ago, had begun to attract the worst kinds of people. When I looked closely, I discovered an underbelly which sickened me. Money-laundering. Prostitution. Drugs.’ He saw her wince. ‘I knew I had to bring about a profound change. I wanted to make Monterosso into a beacon of sustainability and culture. So I shut down some of the more dubious establishments, poured money into social projects and rewilded many of our forests. I knew we had the potential to become a World Heritage site, if we could just clean up our act.’
‘That’s a pretty incredible thing you’ve done,’ she put in eagerly. ‘And that’s why you wanted to show the Forrester artefacts to the world.’
Her eyes looked so shining and full of life and in that moment she appeared so utterly idealistic—and, yes,beautiful—that Corso couldn’t bring himself to disillusion her about his motives. He had told her enough. More than enough. He knew only too well that information was power and was wary of allowing her to get any closer than she already was. Physical proximity was one thing, but anything else had the potential to be problematic. For her, rather than him. He didn’t want verbal confidences to be mistaken for real intimacy, because there was only one kind of intimacy he could guarantee. And maybe it was about time he demonstrated that to her, so there could be no mistake.
‘Come here,’ he said silkily.
He saw the indecision which flickered over her flushed face and he wondered if she recognised the significance of his request. Because this wasn’t about him reaching out to her, even though it would have been ridiculously easy to pull her into his arms and kiss her and have her moaning his name before a minute had elapsed. She had to come tohim. To acquiesce and to relinquish power to him. If she wanted this, then she needed to play by his rules—for he had been born to rule.
He watched as her eyes darkened and then, with her magnificent breasts swaying a little, she slid across the bed towards him, her body warm and soft as it collided with the hard muscle of his.
