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And that was it, then. That was too much. He took her shoulders in his hands and dragged her before him, up on her toes and directly in his face.
“I am Rodolfo of Tissely,” he growled at her. “The accidental, throwaway prince. I was calledthe sparewhen I was born, always expected to live in my brother’s shadow and never, ever expected to take Felipe’s place. Then the spare became the heir—but only in name. Because I have always been the bad seed. I have always been unworthy.”
“That’s not true.”
He ignored her, his fingers gripping her and keeping her there before him. “Nothing I touch has ever lasted. No one I love has ever loved me back, or if they did, it was only as long as there were two sons instead of the one. Or they disappeared into the wilds of Bavaria, pretending to be ill. Or they died of bloody sepsis in the middle of a castle filled with royal doctors and every possible medication under the sun.”
She whispered his name as if she loved him, and that hurt him worse than all the rest. Because more than all the rest, he wanted that to be true—and he knew exactly how much of a fool that made him.
“What is one more princess who must clearly hate the very idea of me, the same as all the rest?” And what did it matter that he’d imagined that she might be the saving of him, of the crown he’d never wanted and the future he wasn’t prepared for? “None of this matters. You should have saved your energy. This will all end as it was planned. The only difference is that now, I know exactly how deceitful you are. I know the depths of the games you will play. And I promise you this, princess. You will not fool me again.”
“You don’t understand,” she said, more tears falling from her darkened green eyes as she spoke and wetting her pale cheeks. “I wanted this to be real, Rodolfo. I lost myself in that.”
He told himself to let go of her. To take his hand off her shoulders and step away. But he didn’t do it. If anything, he held her tighter. Closer.
As if he’d wanted it to be real, too. As if some part of him still did.
“You have to believe me,” she whispered. “I never meant it to go that far.”
“It was only sex,” he told her, his voice a thing of granite. He remembered what she’d called herself as she’d spun out her fantastical little tale. “But no need to worry,Natalie.” She flinched, and he was bastard enough to like that. Because he wanted her to hurt, too—and no matter that he hated himself for that thought. Hating himself didn’t change a thing. It never had. “I will be certain to make you scream while we make the requisite heirs. I am nothing if not dependable in that area, if nowhere else. Feel free to ask around for references.”
He let her go then, not particularly happy with how hard it was to do, and headed for the elevator. He needed to clear his head. He needed to wash all of this away. He needed to find a very dark hole and fall into it for a while, until the self-loathing receded enough that he could function again. Assuming it ever would.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” she said from behind him.
But Rodolfo turned to face her only when he’d stepped into the elevator. She stood where he’d left her, her hands tangled in front of her again and something broken in her gaze.
Eventually, she would have as little power over him as she’d had when they’d met. Eventually, he would not want to go to her when she looked at him like that, as if she was small and wounded and only he could heal her.Eventually.All he had to do was survive long enough to get there, like anything else.
“It can only be this way,” he told her then, and he hardly recognized his own voice. He sounded like a broken man—but of course, that wasn’t entirely true. He had never been whole to begin with. “The sooner you resign yourself to it, the better. I am very much afraid this is who we are.”
* * *
Natalie didn’t move for a long, long time after Rodolfo left. If she could have turned into a pillar of stone, she would have. It would have felt better, she was sure.
The elevator doors shut and she heard the car move, taking Rodolfo away, but she still stood right where he’d left her as if her feet were nailed to the floor. Her cheeks were wet and her dress caught at her since she’d pulled it back into place in such a panicked hurry, and her fingers ached from where she’d threaded them together and held them still. Her breathing had gone funny because her throat was so tight.
And for a long while, it seemed that the only thing she could do about any of those things was stay completely still. As if the slightest movement would make it all worse—though it was hard to imagine how.
Eventually, her fingers began to cramp, and she unclasped them, then shook them out. After that it was easier to move the rest of her. She walked on stiff, protesting legs down the long penthouse hallway into her bedroom, where she stood for a moment in the shambles of her evening, blind to the luxury all around her. But that could only last so long. She went to kick off her shoes and realized she’d lost them somewhere, but she didn’t want to go back out to the living room and look. She was sure Rodolfo’s contempt was still clinging to every gleaming surface out there and she couldn’t bring herself to face it.
She padded across the grandly appointed space to the adjoining bathroom suite and stepped in to find the bath itself was filled and waiting for her, steam rising off the top of the huge, curved, freestanding tub like an invitation. That simple kindness made her eyes fill all over again. She wiped the blurriness away, but it didn’t help, and the tears were flowing freely again by the time she got herself out of her dress and threw it over a chair in the bedroom. She didn’t cry. She almost never cried. But tonight she couldn’t seem to stop.
Natalie returned to the bathroom to pull all the pins out of her hair. She piled the mess of it on her head and knotted it into place, ignoring all the places she felt stiff or sore. Then she walked across the marble floor and climbed into the tub at last, sinking into the warm, soothing embrace of the bath’s hot water and the salts that some kind member of the staff had thought to add.
She closed her eyes and let herself drift—but then there was no more hiding from the events of the night. The dance. That kiss out on the terrace of the villa. And then what had happened right here in this hotel. His mouth against her skin. His wickedly clever hands. The bold, deep surge of his possession and how she’d fallen to pieces so easily. The smile on Rodolfo’s face when he’d turned her around to face him afterward, and how quickly it had toppled from view. And that shuttered, haunted look she’d put in his eyes later, that had been there when he’d left.
As if that was all that remained of what had swelled and shimmered between them tonight. As if that was all it had ever been.
Whatever else came of these stolen days here in Valentina’s life, whatever happened, Natalie knew she would never forgive herself for that. For believing in a fairy tale when she knew better and hurting Rodolfo—to say nothing of herself—in the process.
She sat in the tub until her skin was shriveled and the water had cooled. She played the night all the way through, again and again, one vivid image after the next. And when she sat up and pulled the plug to let the water swirl down the drain, she felt clean, yes. But her body didn’t feel like hers. She could still feel Rodolfo’s touch all over, as if he’d branded her with his passion as surely as he’d condemned her with his disbelief.
Too bad,she told herself, sounding brisk and hard like her mother would have.This is what you get for doing what you knew full well you shouldn’t have.
Natalie climbed out of the tub then and wrapped herself in towels so light and airy they could have been clouds, but she hardly noticed. She stood in the still-fogged-up bathroom and brushed out her hair, letting the copper strands fall all around her like a curtain and then braiding the heavy mess of it to one side, so she could toss it over one shoulder and forget it.
When she walked back into the bedroom, her dress was gone from the chair where she’d thrown it and in its place was the sort of silky thing Valentina apparently liked to sleep in. Natalie had always preferred a simple T-shirt, but over the past couple of weeks she’d grown to like the sensuous feel of the fine silk against her bare skin.
