A Royal Without Rules by Caitlin Crews

Author:Caitlin Crews
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-08-18T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

ADRIANA WALKED INTO the palace the following morning on shaky legs, trying with all her might to feel completely unaffected by what had happened the night before. And if she couldn’t quite feel it, to appear as if she did. Cool. Calm. Professional. Not riddled with anxiety, her body still humming with leftover desire.

“I wanted to know how you tasted,” she could hear him say, as if he whispered it into her ear. Her skin prickled at the memory.

Nothing had changed, she assured herself, save her understanding of her own weakness and her ability to tell herself lies. And nothing would change, because this was Pato. Careless, promiscuous, thoughtless, undependable for the whole of his adult life, and proud of it besides. No depth, she reminded herself. No conscience and no shame. Those hints she’d seen of another man—that ruthless power, that dark focus, that devastating gentleness—weren’t him.

They couldn’t be him.

And the things he’d said, which she could still feel running through her like something electric...well. She’d lost herself in a sensual storm. She’d never experienced anything like it before and she’d decided it was entirely possible she’d made it all seem much more intense than it had been. Pato had made her sob and writhe and fall to pieces. He’d made her body sing for him as if she were no more than an instrument—and well he should. Passion, he’d called it, and he would know. Sex was his occupation, his art. He was a master.

He’d mastered her without even trying very hard.

It was no wonder she’d concocted some fantasy around that, she told herself as she made her way down the gleaming marble hall that led to Pato’s office. He did things like this—like her—all the time. The number of women who fantasized about him was no doubt astronomical, and none of them hung about the palace, clinging to his ankles. Nor would she.

She would be perfectly serene, she chanted to herself as she let herself into his office. Efficient and competent. And she wouldn’t verbally spar with him anymore, as he obviously viewed it as a form of flirtation, and she found it far too easy to slip into, putting herself at risk. Last night was a mistake, never to be repeated. No conversation was necessary, no embarrassing postmortem. It was done. She marched around the quietly opulent office, turning on lights and arranging the papers he wouldn’t read on his desk. The two of them would simply...move forward.

Or so Adriana told herself, over and over, as she waited for him to appear.

He didn’t come. She waited, she lectured herself more sternly, and still he failed to saunter in, disheveled and lazy and wearing something that violated every possible palace protocol, the way he usually did. When Adriana realized he was going to miss his engagement with the Kitzinian Red Cross—after what she’d gone through to get him back into the country, specifically to meet with them—she braced herself, smoothed her hands over the very conservative

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