AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I need to look powerful. Confident. I don’t want to look pure. I want to look like a warrior.”
“Then all you need to do it is to speak to the stylist about it.”
“All right. Dancing, can you help me with that?”
“Yes. More than that, I can help you project the right feelings. In the world we live in now, where pictures are taken constantly, if you’re going to be pretending to be something you’re not, you have to be very good at it.”
“Is that how you ended up consulting people on image?”
“No. It could’ve been anything. It is something I slipped into and I am good at it. Very good. I’ve spent my life in Southern California, around people who are nothing but image conscious. And yes, I had to learn to fit in. I had to learn to pretend that I was one of them.” His chest went tight. “That I was like my father.”
“Your father...”
“Robert King. Self-made businessman extraordinaire. Not as entirely on the up-and-up as he would like the world to believe.” His father had secrets. Secrets he knew would hurt his whole family. Secrets that had already hurt the innocent. “My father is an expert at looking like he belongs.”
“Is that where you learned it from?”
Perhaps it was simply in his blood. “I don’t know that I learned it from him, but I discovered what a necessity it was by being his son.”
“I see.” He did not think she did. But it didn’t matter. She didn’t need to see.
“Get dressed,” he said.
“I do not take orders,” she said, narrowing her eyes and curling her fingers around her coffee cup like claws. “I’m to be Queen.”
Half his mouth lifted. It might have been a smile, though he hadn’t decided to do it, which was strange. “A boon for you, surely.”
“Indeed.”
“But for now, you are only a Princess. And I,” he said, turning that half smile into his best grin, the one that he knew made women flutter. The one that spurred every tabloid to print photos of him. “I am The King and you will do what I say. That is what you brought me here for, am I correct?”
“To do my bidding,” she said, pulling her knees up to her chest, the thin white material on her gown pulling down, exposing the plump, firm lines of her breasts.
He could see her nipples through the fabric. He would’ve said that he was a damn sight too jaded to get excited over a shadow of areola, but apparently when it came to Annick he was anything but immune.
He straightened the cuffs on his suit jacket. “Annick, I do no one’s bidding. I do not take jobs I don’t see as important. Now, you listen to me. I am not staying in Aillette forever. We might marry, but I will go on with my life. I will not be here to prop you up forever. That means you must learn to stand on your own feet. Congratulations, you managed to get me to the palace. Now make use of me. Do not be stubborn. Do not fight simply because you spent years being unable to fight. Because you felt weak. You weren’t weak. If you were weak, you would be dead. You wouldn’t be here. You hate that you had to hide pieces of yourself, but it kept you alive. You hate that you had to play a game, but it’s why you’re here. So now you will play a new game. And you will let me teach you the rules.”
“I don’t like this,” she said, looking at him out of the sides of her eyes.
Wretched creature that she was, he imagined she had disliked a great deal in her life. “I don’t care. If you will not work with me, if you will not do what I say, then I will walk out right now.”
“I will have the guards seize you.”
“I would hate to hurt your guards.”
“You have no weapons,” she said.
He fixed his gaze on her. “Annick, do you honestly think that I require weapons? A gun is a useful prop, but a man must know how to take care of himself. A man must know how to contain all the danger he possesses in his own body. Myself, I can seduce or I can kill...with just my hands. I don’t require weapons. As you observed, I am both Maximus King and The King. I could be anything I choose.”
“You will not kill my guards,” she said.
“I certainly wouldn’t want to. But if I decide to leave, I will leave. And only God will be able to help those who stand in my way.” He looked at her. “Now, get dressed.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
ANNICK WAS STILL stewing by the time she made her way downstairs. She had put on a pair of black wide-legged trousers and a navy blue shirt. Mostly because she knew that he expected her to come down in a dress, given that he was already clad in a suit in the early hours of the morning speaking of dance lessons.
So, she did not comply, because it was the only power she could find in the moment.
