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Frankie followed his instructions, but the smile she had pinned to her face earlier was starting to feel as if it was held in place via glue.
‘Perfect. Just a few more—over near the balcony.’
The afternoon sun was streaming in like arrows of gold, no less dazzling than it had been earlier that day, when they’d stood on a different balcony and watched the dawn crest over the ocean. But then he’d been wearing only boxer shorts and the trauma of his dream had clung to him like a dark cloak she’d needed to break him free of. Now, Matthias looked every inch the handsome King. A dark suit with a cream tie, his eyes glinted in his tanned face. Black hair had been styled back from his brow, and it was all she could do not to simply stare at him.
Mathilde had presented Frankie with a cream dress for the formal engagement announcement photo session—it was long and had a ruffle across one shoulder that fell to her waist before swishing out into a narrow skirt, all the way to her ankles. Teamed with a pair of heels, she at least had a small advantage on her usual height, so she didn’t feel so small when standing beside Matthias.
‘It has been forty minutes,’ Matthias bit out, lifting his gold wristwatch and staring at the time. ‘Surely you have enough?’
The photographer, busy looking at the digital screen on the back of the camera, glanced up and blinked, then nodded. ‘Almost, Your Majesty,’ he promised. ‘Just five more minutes.’
Frankie risked a glance at Matthias’s face; it was forbidding and oh, so regal. These engagement portraits were going to make them look as if they were on their way to a funeral rather than a wedding.
‘Do you need a break, deliciae?’ Matthias looked directly at her and her heart thumped in her chest.
She shook her head. ‘I’m fine. You?’
He grimaced in response. ‘Hardly my preferred way to spend time.’
‘Just against the railing, please, sir. Madam.’
Matthias assumed a nonchalant, bored pose and Frankie stood beside him. The photographer shook his head. ‘Lean into him a bit more. Like this—’ The photographer tilted his head and smiled.
Frankie compressed her lips and looked up at Matthias before moving. He was watching her, his expression sardonic.
With a small sigh, Frankie did as the photographer had suggested, but it was like being exposed to flames. Her head rested on his pectoral muscle; she could hear his heart, feel his warmth. Her smile was barely there, a whisper on her face—how could she smile when standing upright was such an effort? Matthias’s hand curved around her back and his fingers splayed wide, moving ever so slightly up and down, up and down, so heat and warmth radiated from where he touched her.
‘Smile!’ the photographer reminded her. Frankie tried, but all of her was tied up in that moment in simply feeling. Sensations were overriding anything else. The desire she was trying to fight with all her being surged inside her, making her nerve-endings quiver, making her want to burst from the room and drag Matthias to bed, to reclaim what she knew they could mean to one another.
Matthias dipped his head forward and said sotto voce, ‘You are trembling like a little leaf, mikró.’
She looked up at him, for a moment forgetting they weren’t alone. Their eyes latched and nothing—no one—existed. They were alone on the balcony, the ancient ocean rolling in the background as it had for millennia. Grey eyes held green, and she lost herself in their depths. She lost herself in the ocean of his eyes, she fell to the bottom, she drowned on the seafloor, wrapped in sand and shells, and she cared not—she forgot everything.
His head dropped slowly, as if on a time lapse, though of course it hadn’t really been so slow. To Frankie, though, it was the work of minutes: long, agonising, tense moments when her lips were tingling and her eyes were holding his and she could think of nothing else but a need to sink into his kiss. It was just a brush of his lips to hers, the lightest, most frustrating contact.
He kissed her, the photographer clicked, and her body snapped to life. The moan that escaped her lips was involuntary, just a small husky sound, and then Matthias lifted his head, his eyes not leaving Frankie’s passion-ravaged face. ‘It is enough,’ he said and his words had a cool tone.
‘Yes, sir, definitely. That’s plenty. Thank you, sir.’
Matthias turned to Frankie and extended a hand, and ridiculously she almost didn’t take it. Fear dogged her every move. Fear of this—what she was fighting, the certainty that this passion could subsume her every good intention and intellectual certainty that Matthias was not someone she could trust with her heart, her life, her love.
How absurd. She was overthinking it!
She took his hand, purely because the photographer was there and to refuse would have seemed churlish and strange, and walked with him through the gallery t
hey’d been posing in earlier. At the door she let go, pulling her hand back softly and rubbing her palms together.
‘So the engagement will be announced when?’
‘Tomorrow.’
They continued to walk down a wide beautiful corridor, lined with enormous floral arrangements. They were fragrant and stunning.
‘I need to tell my parents. They’re going to be...blind-sided.’
Matthias tilted a look at her. ‘Why?’
Frankie pulled a face. ‘Well, I’m getting married, to a man they’ve never even heard of. A king, no less!’
