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A belief that had become more and more certain as the years had gone on. She didn’t know why it was, only that it was. Her parents were not outwardly loving in any real way, unless there were cameras present, but even then she just wasn’t as important as Freya and Aleksander were. Or at least she hadn’t been until now.
Now, she was needed but still not wanted.
Marit’s mouth trembled until she pressed her teeth together hard enough to make it stop. She couldn’t forget that. Whatever had come over her, she had to remember where she was and who he was. Lykos Livas was acting on her brother’s behalf and only then because he needed Aleksander’s shares. He was not here for her.
By the time Lykos returned to his seat, Marit was putting all her efforts into focusing on the music rather than the man beside her. But even then, while the right side of her brain homed in on the notes and composition of the piece, the left side insisted on memorising everything about the Greek billionaire next to her.
Billionaire? Oh, absolutely. It wasn’t the clearly expensive watch or the cut of his clothes that years as a princess had enabled her to recognise as handmade, it was his attitude: a careless irreverence that she’d not encountered before amongst the courtiers at the Svardian palace or the international delegates, or even the students at the Swiss university her parents had made her attend.
He put down her tray table and placed on it a steaming paper cup of coffee and a slightly greasy paper bag and ignored her as studiously as she ignored him. She stared at the items he had procured and felt strangely as if she were being assessed as he consumed his pastry in impossibly large, man-sized mouthfuls. She felt the dare to refuse such simple food buzz against her skin as if the force of his thoughts pressed against her. Lykos was a man just as arrogantly comfortable at the coffee cart of the TGV as he was in a five-star hotel, which was most definitely at odds with the moneyed men and women she’d met throughout her life.
And, with that, she realised that she’d never met anyone like Lykos Livas.
Everything in her wanted to rebel, to refuse the food he’d bought simply from habit. But he clearly thought her too pampered a princess to stoop to the greasy offering, and that she rebelled against more. She turned to face him, reaching blindly for the flaky pastry inside, tore off as big a chunk as she possibly could, tipped her head back and fitted as much of it into her mouth as she could. She kept her eyes on his so she saw just how hard he was trying not to smile as he ate his own piece of pastry.
‘You look ridiculous,’ he dismissed, but the way the corner of his lips twisted hit her heart hard. Making him smile against his will? One of the best things about that day so far. Especially as she had the impression it didn’t happen very often.
‘It’s really tasty,’ she said with her mouth full, flakes of iced toasted almonds peppering her stolen shirt.
‘Shut up and eat your breakfast.’
‘It’s three in the afternoon!’
‘A croissant isalwaysbreakfast,’ he replied imperiously, forcing her to choke back a laugh.
The next few hours were strange for Marit. It had started when he’d asked her about a castle.
‘But you have one, yes?’
‘Well, therearecastles that belong to the royal family,’ she’d tried to explain.
‘Any for sale?’
‘No, Lykos, none for sale,’ she’d replied.
He’d seemed strangely disappointed and, after making a cryptic comment about always having wanted a castle, he’d simply leaned his head back against the headrest and settled. At one point his eyes had drifted shut.
She wasn’t sure he was actually asleep, there was something alert about him—as if half of his mind was utterly aware of everything going on around him. Nevertheless, she took the time to study him. There was a small scar just beneath the corner of his mouth, glinting like a silvery line from the dark stubble, that marred his almost perfect jaw. His cupid’s bow was so pronounced she wanted to press the pad of her thumb to the cleft above it. Lips carelessly sensual, thick and—she bit her bottom lip, mirroring her unconscious thoughts. His nose would have been straight as an arrow were it not for the slight kink near the bridge that made her think of fists and fights. His face whispered a history that seemed contrary to every wealthy person she’d ever known. He was a curiosity she needed to ignore, she decided as she skipped the next track on her playlist and looked out of the window at the Italian landscape.
‘What’s in Milan?’
She could pretend she hadn’t heard him but that felt childish. She turned to find him looking at her as if waiting to navigate through her response for the truth and wondered what it would be like to just tell him, to give up this endless fight that she seemed to have been waging for years.
‘There’s a club I want to go to.’ Because she was watching closely, she saw the glint of disappointment in his otherwise utterly impassive face. And it stung. ‘Not that kind of club.’
This time his face blared mock innocence. ‘What kind of club did you think I was—?’
‘Not that kind of club either!’ she scolded in a whisper, hating the way her cheeks pinked up at the sudden thought of Lykos in a...in a sex club. Her body started to tremble, low and strong, and for a moment she feared that Lykos could tell. As if he sensed her body’s reaction because he went incredibly still, aside from the muscle at his jaw flexing as if he were bracing himself.
‘What’s in Milan, Marit?’ he asked again, this time a strange force in his tone that she knew instinctively not to push.
‘A blues club.’
This time, the look of surprise on Lykos’s face looked genuine.
CHAPTER FOUR
LYKOSWONDEREDWHENhe’d get a handle on Princess Marit of Svardia. At almost every turn, she did the opposite of what he was expecting. From the moment the train had pulled in to Milan and the closer and closer they got to this, apparently, world-renowned blues club, she hadn’t stopped talking. Passion and enthusiasm lit her features as she named supposedly famous musicians that had played in the hallowed halls of Sforzando which she found ‘inconceivable’ that he’d never heard of. Long gone was the pallor he’d first seen across her features, or the frustrated fury from his apartment in Paris. Blues and jazz, it seemed, brought a bronze glow to her that vibrated from her like sound waves, brushing against him like the tide.
