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CHAPTER FOUR
RODOLFOHADLONGceased recognizing himself. And yet he kept talking.
“It will be difficult to maintain the fiction that you are a saint if your lovers are paraded through the tabloids of Europe every week,” he pointed out, as if he didn’t care one way or the other.
Somehow, he had the sense that the confounding woman who sat close enough to tempt him near to madness knew better. He could see it in the way her green eyes gleamed as she watched him. She was lounging in the settee as if it was a makeshift throne and she was already queen. And now she waved a languid hand, calling attention to her fine bones and the elegant fingers Rodolfo wanted all over his body. Rather desperately.
“It is you who prefer to ignore discretion,” she said lightly enough. “I assume you get something out of the spotlight you shine so determinedly into your bedroom. I must congratulate you, as it is not every man who would be able to consistently perform with such an audience, so many years past his prime.”
“I beg your pardon. Did you just question my...performance?”
“No need to rile yourself, Your Highness. The entire world has seen more than enough of your prowess. I’m sure you are marvelously endowed with the—ah—necessary tools.”
It took Rodolfo a stunned moment to register that the sensation moving in him then was nothing short of sheer astonishment. Somewhere between temper and laughter and yet neither at once.
“Let me make sure I am following this extraordinary line of thought,” he began, trying to keep himself under control somehow—something that he could not recall ever being much of an issue before. Not with Princess Valentina, certainly. Not with any other woman he’d ever met.
“Whether or not it is extraordinary is between you and your revolving selection of aspiring hyphenates, I would think.” When he could only stare blankly at her, she carried on almost merrily. “Model slash actress slash waitress slash air hostess, whatever the case may be. You exchange one for another so quickly, it’s hard to keep track.”
“I feel as if I’ve toppled off the side of the planet into an alternate reality,” Rodolfo said then, after a moment spent attempting to digest what she’d said. What she’d actually dared say directly to his face. “Wherein Princess Valentina of Murin is sitting in my presence issuing veiled insults about my sexual performance and, indeed, my manhood itself.”
“In this reality, we do not use the wordmanhoodwhen we mean penis,” Princess Valentina said with the same serene smile she’d always worn, back when he’d imagined she was boring. He couldn’t understand how he’d misread her so completely. “It’s a bit missish, isn’t it?”
“What I cannot figure out is what you hope to gain from poking at me, Valentina,” he said softly. “I am not given to displays of temper, if that is what you hoped. Perhaps you forgot that I subject myself to extreme stress often. For fun. It is very, very difficult to get under my skin.”
She smiled with entirely too much satisfaction for his comfort. “Says the man who had a rather strong reaction to the idea that what he feels constitutes reasonable behavior for him might also be equally appropriate for his fiancée.”
“I assume you already recognize that there is no stopping the train we’re on,” he continued in the same quiet way, because it was that or give in to the simmering thing that was rumbling around inside of him, making him feel more precarious than he had in a long, long time. “The only way to avoid this marriage is to willfully cause a crisis in two kingdoms, and to what end? To make a point about free will? That is a lovely sentiment, I am sure, but it is not for you or me. We are not free. We belong to our countries and the people we serve. I would expect a woman whose very name is synonymous with her duty to understand that.”
“That is a curious statement indeed from the only heir to an ancient throne who spends the bulk of his leisure time courting his own death.” She let that land, that curve to her lips but nothing like a smile in her direct green stare. And she wasn’t done. “Very much as if he was under the impression he did, in fact, owe nothing to his country at all.”
Rodolfo’s jaw felt like granite. “I can only assume that you are a jealous little thing, desperate to hide what you really want behind all these halfhearted feints and childish games.”
The princess laughed. It was a smoky sound that felt entirely too much like a caress. “Why am I not surprised that so conceited a man would achieve that conclusion so quickly? Alas, I am hiding nothing, Your Highness.”
He felt his lips curl in something much too fierce to be polite. “If you want to know whether or not I am marvelously endowed, princess, you need only ask for a demonstration.”
She rolled her eyes, and perhaps that was what did it. Rodolfo was not used to being dismissed by beautiful women. Quite the contrary, they trailed around after him, begging for the scraps of his attention. He’d become adept at handling them before he’d left his teens. The ones who pretended to dislike him to get his attention, the ones who propositioned him straight out, the ones who acted as if they were shy, the ones so overcome and starstruck they stammered or wept or could only stare in silence. He’d seen it all.
But he had no way to process what was happening here with this woman he’d dismissed as uninteresting and uninterested within moments of their meeting as adults last fall. He had no idea what to do with a woman who set him on fire from across a room, and then treated him like a somewhat sad and boring joke.
He could handle just about anything, he realized, save indifference.
Rodolfo simply reached over and picked the princess up from the settee, hauling her through the air and setting her across his lap.
It was not a smart move. At best it was a test of that indifference she was flinging around the palace so casually, but it still wasn’t smart.
But Rodolfo found he didn’t give a damn.
The princess’s porcelain cheeks flushed red and hot. She was a soft, slight weight against him, but his entire body exulted in the feel of her. Her scent was something so prosaic it hit him as almost shockingly exotic—soap. That was all. Her hands came up to brace against his chest, her copper hair was a silky shower over his arm and she was breathing hard and fast, making her exactly as much of a liar as he’d imagined she was.
She was many things, his hidden gem of a princess bride, but she was notindifferentto him.It felt like a victory.
“Do you think I cannot read women?” he asked her, his face temptingly, deliciously close to hers.
Her gaze was defiant. “There has long been debate about whether or not you can read anything else.”
“I know you want me, princess. I can see it. I can feel it. The pulse in your throat, the look in your eyes. The way you tremble against me.”
