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Cayetano told himself he was not imagining other ways he could put that flush on her lovely cheeks. He told himself his hunger for her had abated. Even as he had to adjust the way he sat.
“I do not believe that a lie can flourish when faced head-on by the truth,” Cayetano told her, with perhaps more ferocity than necessary. “And you, little one, are the embodiment of that truth.”
“I’m just a farm girl,” she said, but her chin lowered a notch. “I don’t embody anything. Unless it’s Kansas dirt.”
“But you see, the DNA you care so little about will do it for you.” Cayetano was keeping his voice soft, but still she sat up straighter. He reminded himself that she was not one of his people, used to ages of struggle. Moreover, she was not one of his men. She would likely respond better to honey than salt. It was on him, then, to find some honey within. However scant. “It matters not what you believe, or who you think you are. Your blood tells the truth.”
“Maybe it’s different where you’re from,” she said with a quiet hint of steel. He liked that, too. He wanted to explore all her possibilities, when it had never occurred to him that she would interest him like this. It would take getting used to—he had only thought of what she would do for his people, not what she might do for him. Though his sex was interested in little else. “But I’ve never found truth treated as much more than an opinion.”
“I am Cayetano Arcieri,” he replied, with his own suggestion of steel. Or perhaps it was more than mere suggestion. “In some places, the very hint of my opinion is treated like a commandment.”
She blinked at that, but she didn’t alter her expression. Or attempt to curry his favor in any way. She only gazed at him, looking faintly censorious.
That, too, was new.
“That isn’t the least bit healthy,” she chided him.Shechidedhim.“If that’s true.”
And Cayetano had the strangest urge to truly laugh then, when he was not given overmuch to the practice. Still, he found he wanted to throw back his head and let go...when he never let go. That wasn’t who he was. Far too much was riding on this for levity—
But still, the urge was there, making its own ruckus inside him.
“The door to the left leads to a guest room,” he told her when the urge within him subsided. He indicated the door he meant with a nod. “Feel free to make it your own during the flight. If you find you need anything, you can find me either here or behind the door on the right.”
And if he had been an insecure man in any regard, the face she made then would have cut him straight through.
“I can’t think of any reason I would need you,” she retorted.
Much too quickly.
And he waited until she disappeared behind her guest room door, locking it loudly and ostentatiously, to grin.
But the grin soon faded and once it did, he could hardly recall how it had happened in the first place. He called in his men, and tried to get his head back into the business of this thing they were doing here. This glorious thing, this marvelous enterprise, that would finally restore his kingdom.
His life’s work, the work of so many lives before his,this closeto fruition.
Yet he soon found that when he should have been thinking critically, planning out how best to launch his lost little princess on the world—with the proof of who she was so there could be no debate, and the inevitability of her ascension, and thus his, secured in the minds of all the world—all he could think about was the scent of her hair. Like sweet almonds. Or the strength in that hand of hers that he’d held in the car. It was no princess’s hand, that was for certain. Her nails were cut low and he had felt the work she’d done all these years in the roughness of her skin.
He should have been thinking of strategy. Instead he thought,It suits her.
And more, he found himself wondering how those hands would feel on his skin. His sex.
Cayetano, who preferred his women draped in silks, round and lush, found himself growing almost uncomfortably hard at the very notion. Of a peasant’s hand on a princess, but then, he knew the truth about her. Even if she did not.
There was nothing common about her at all.
He nodded at something one of his men was saying in support of Delaney.
“She will make us a fine queen,” he agreed.
Yet what he thought was,She will make me a fine wife. Having nothing at all to do with her strategic importance and everything to do with that hunger in him that only seemed to grow—even as he sat with his men. The people who depended upon him to be rational.
He tried to call on that rationality now.
“Her unusual upbringing is a gift, I think,” he said now. “As we know, the Queens of Ile d’Montagne are not known for their work ethic.”
“Their treachery, more like,” one of his men said with a snort.
“And pretenders to the throne all the while,” growled another, setting off the predictable calls for the end of the reign of the Montaignes, once and for all.
