The Illegitimate King / Friday Night Mistress

She gave up trying to rein in her responses, gave in, admitted her acrimony. “Enjoyment would be a mild term if such an event came to pass. It would be—how did you put it—such a delight.”

She heard the fervent venom in her voice, knew he’d heard it, too. Everything stilled as he stared at her, probably unable to believe that anyone dared talk to him that way, princess or not.

Then suddenly, he threw his head back and guffawed.

It was her turn to stare, feeling as if one move now would snap the last tatters of tension holding her up.

She’d never seen him laugh. She hadn’t known he was capable of such a human indulgence. She should have known he’d do it like he did everything else. Overridingly.

The sight and sound of his unbearably male amusement hit her between her eyes and forked a downward path through her heart and gut to lodge in her loins. The semiarousal that burned inside her just because he existed roared higher. Along with the blaze of her anger.

He was goading her into even more catastrophic antagonism, into giving him enough incriminating evidence to report back to her father and the Council that their newest addition was a disgrace to the body of power she represented and should be banned from public service forever.

And she didn’t give a damn. Not anymore. He’d won. Six years of dangling himself before her, of pricking and prodding her periodically until she was inflamed and perpetually on the verge of an explosion, had taken their toll. She thought she’d been far from the breaking point. She was clearly way past it.

Ferruccio still chuckled, rich, dark reverberations from deep in his chest, annihilating what remained of her restraint. “Wouldn’t your conscience prick you if you felt ‘such a delight’ in my downfall? Now that you know I’m a newfound family member?”

Clarissa rolled her eyes. “Don’t remind me.”

He hooted on another surge of amusement. “Si. There she is. I always knew that beneath all that impassive decorum you had the temper of a lioness. I kept wondering what could rile you enough to get you to unsheath your claws and slash away.”

She harumphed, disgusted at her pathetic excuse for self-control, at his ability to peel it away. “Congratulations. You’ve succeeded in finding out. I hope you’re enjoying your success.”

“I’ve never enjoyed anything more. Ever.”

“‘Never’ got the point across. Don’t be redundant.”

He laughed again. “What a cruel cousin you are.”

“A very distant cousin.”

His eyes seemed to turn to molten steel. “Si. In every way.”

He was referring to her keeping him at an arm’s to a continent’s length all those years. As if he’d really cared.

“But you’re not distant now, at least not in one sense.” He took a step closer, his thigh almost touching her hip. She stumbled backward two steps. He lowered his gaze for a moment—as if debating closing the gap again—before raising his eyes. This time he almost did knock her off her feet. And that was before he added, deeply, smoothly, “See how easy it turned out to be?”

“What did? Being flown in to you like a package? One that you had dropped on your doorstep, to be left untended and unacknowledged until you stirred from your beauty sleep and puttered down to reluctantly receive it? Yeah, that sure didn’t involve any effort on my part.”

“You think there was any reluctance involved in my…receiving you? After I’ve gone to the trouble of insulting all the senior Council members by refusing to negotiate with anyone but you?”

“That’s my proof that you welcomed my arrival? Try another one, Signore Selvaggio. The only insult you hurled was at me. The others must be thinking you asked for me because I’m the only Council member who’s a young woman, the demographic where you reign supreme, and you think me the pushover who’ll promise you rights to every Castaldinian citizen’s immortal soul in return for your acceptance.”

He snorted. “Now those are rights that might be worth my while to investigate acquiring.” Before she gave in to the urge to smack him, he added, “But if anyone thinks you a pushover, they need to be declared mentally incompetent. Whatever else you think of me, you know my mental faculties aren’t among my dodgy areas.”

She huffed. “Then they’ll think something even worse. That you’re exploiting the situation for a personal purpose, which must again have something to do with my being a woman, devaluating my position within the Council even more.”

As the word “position” left her mouth, his gaze traveled down her body. Her throat closed at what she saw there, in her own mind’s eye. His gaze finally burned a path back up to her eyes, the hewn planes of his face simmering as they had that first night. When she thought she’d imagined it. She wasn’t imagining it now.

“Your…position is quite safe, I assure you. You should know by now that no matter what the textbooks they stuffed your mind with in business school said, in the real world, the personal factor is what ends up making or breaking business deals. If the Council thinks I’m being personal about you being a woman, they’ll think it only natural, even logical. After all, what kind of a businessman would I be if I didn’t maximize on my opportunities? If I didn’t use my stones to hit as many birds as possible?”

“I should have known you wouldn’t even bother to deny it.”

He gave her an enigmatic look. “I’m not admitting it, either. So it’s all open to interpretation. And here’s a third one: That I asked for you because I want to talk to someone close to my own age, rather than with men my absentee father’s age or older.”

Her chest suddenly felt as if it had caved in. It was that distress again, the one thing that had always stopped her from despising him completely. The knowledge that he’d grown up without a father, or any parents at all.

How many times had she imagined him as a young boy desperately in need of the firm and loving guidance and protection of a father figure, and knowing he’d never have that? How many times had she woken up with tears in her eyes imagining the fear and loneliness he must have suffered until he’d grown that impenetrable shell of capability and ruthlessness that had seen him through his meteoric rise? How hard had she struggled to separate her empathy with the tormented child he’d been from her antipathy toward the man he’d become?

When she made no answer, his lips twisted. “Here’s a fourth one. That you’re the easiest Council member on my eyes…on all my senses.”

She was glad to hook onto something to drag her out of her turmoil. “Now that I can buy. Considering the alternatives.”

His eyebrows rose in astonishment. She could swear it was genuine. “You think the I’d only pick you when the alternatives are sour-faced older men and their feminine counterparts?”

She bit her tongue to stop herself from blurting out that she didn’t think it, she knew it. Hadn’t he just said what amounted to that? Even if he hadn’t, she knew that when there’d been more glamorous options, she hadn’t featured as one at all. She’d made sure of that.

Pathetic wretch that she was, she’d sought Luci’s version of what had happened that night, hoping she’d misinterpreted what she’d witnessed. Luci had only confirmed her worst suspicions.

Ferruccio had come on hot and heavy, expressed interest in both Luci and Stella. At the same time. Luci had said he’d been so overpowering that she’d found herself wondering whether she could share a man, and with the dreaded Stella, of all women, too. She’d said she thought Stella herself had been tempted. That was, for the fleeting moments before he suddenly moved on without a look back.

Throughout the years, Clarissa had seen him acting as if he’d never said a word in private to either woman, let alone propositioned them so outrageously. That had reaffirmed her belief that he went through life making sure all women were his for the taking, but not actually taking up with anyone whose connections might cause him trouble. Her only lure had been that she was the king’s daughter, and later on that she was the only woman who’d told him no. And if she thought she’d seen something in his eyes every time he caught her gaze—something that told her what he’d do with her if he ever got her alone—she reminded herself of the facts, concluded that she’d been superimposing her fantasies on his expression. As she must be now.

“No more contentiousness, Principessa? Hmm, I think I know why.” His gaze dropped to her lips, clung, until she felt his mouth was there, drawing hard on her flesh until it swelled, ached, until she ached for him to do it for real. “You’re…hungry.”

Alarm erupted, followed by a flood of mortification. He knew. Or was he guessing, based on universal female response to him?

Before she could say anything, he took her elbow in a phantom grip. “Come. Let me feed you, get you back in fighting form.”

Food. He’d meant hungry for food.

She was so relieved she let him guide her without a word.

She lost all sense of direction as he led her through his mansion, until they reached another huge oak door. She followed him through it, her every movement feeling controlled by his will.

Minutes later, they came to an elevated, open-air deck overlooking a stunning, symmetrical landscaped scene. Its centerpiece was a gigantic rectangular pool with a semicircular protrusion at its near end, glittering pure aquamarine in the declining sun. Its lava stone and mosaic periphery segued at its far end into a cleared passage between olive groves that continued until it melted into the vegetation-covered mountain in the distance. To the left, the groves gave way to dunes of pure gold, leading down to the serpentine shore and the azure and emerald waters.

She stopped, paralyzed by the magnificence of the sight.

She’d been raised on this island, but she never knew it still had such pristine natural places. The contrast with such lavish human design was breathtaking. But it was the seclusion that intensified that otherworldly feel. She’d never been anywhere so totally devoid of people. It felt as if they were the only man and woman on Earth.

The side of her face felt as if it were burning. She tore her eyes away from the scene, blinked up at him. She found him brooding down at her, his eyes heavy with so much emotion she didn’t understand. Didn’t want to understand.

He reached out a hand as if he was going to cup her cheek. At the last moment, he swept a lock of her long hair from her flaming face, tucked it with extreme care behind her ear. “You like?”

She swallowed, her heart spiraling in a nosedive like a shot-down plane. “I’m alive, am I not? I have to like.”

His lips twitched. His eyes didn’t change expression, seemed bent on liquefying her. Then he reached for her hand.

She felt as if he’d electrocuted her as he strode ahead, had her almost running behind him. She gurgled something about his legs being longer than hers. He turned as he slowed down, his smile riddling her vision in spots of blindness.

He had them circumventing the pool before taking one of the passageways that ran parallel to the groves and ended up at the edge of the beach. He suddenly stopped.

She rocked on her heels as he dropped to his haunches. Before she could process his action, he took her hands, placed them on his shoulders. She gaped as he lifted her right foot off the ground. Breath deserted her as he so slowly, so gently slid off her high-heeled sandal strap. The sandal fell off her suddenly stinging foot into his hand. Her toes curled, a gasp tearing from her. He looked up, noted her distress. Then he closed his hand over her foot, raised it, his lips parting, filling with sensuality.

He was going to…to…She couldn’t let him or she’d…she’d…

She lost her balance, forced him to let her regain her footing. She leaned heavily on his shoulders so she wouldn’t keel over him, electricity roaring from where her fingertips clutched their daunting power to zap incapacitation throughout her nervous system. He pressed her hands harder to his shoulders before repeating the de-sandaling ritual on her other foot.

When she was sure she would faint, he let her foot down, rose, bent and took his own sneakers off, placed them at the sand’s edge with her sandals and spread his arm, inviting her to walk on.

She stumbled forward a few steps before she gasped, stopped.

The feeling of the powdered gold beneath her feet, its warmth and complex texture, its gritty softness, its resilient malleability heightened her sensory tumult.

He turned her toward him, his gaze solicitous. “Did you step on something? Are you hurt?”

Before she could answer he swooped down again, inspected one foot then the other, feeling for injuries or foreign bodies.

An uproar swept through her at his action, at the sight of his eyebrows drawn and his head bent in such concentration, the severely trimmed raven luxury of his mane gleaming copper in the sun as his perfectly formed fingers traced over her soles.

She was about to cry out that she was fine, when he heaved up to his feet, and in the same movement swept her up in his arms.

She went limp with shock.

He’d never touched her before. She hadn’t even let him shake her hand. She thought she knew how dangerous it would be to have any physical contact with him. She’d known nothing. Feeling his flesh pressed on hers, his heat and scent invading her senses…it was too much.

She choked out, “Put me down—I’m OK.”

He frowned. “Then why did you jerk to a stop like that? Why did you look so…distressed?”

“I was just…surprised. I—I’ve never felt anything like this.”

His eyes narrowed. “You’ve never felt sand beneath your feet?”

She gulped, shook her head. “I…no.”

“You’ve lived most of your life on a Mediterranean island legendary for its sea and shores. How is it possible you never ran barefoot on the beach? Never swam in the sea?”

“I…uh…just didn’t. The sea hasn’t been part of my life.”

“How was it even avoidable? Going to the beach is part of most people’s childhoods, especially in seaside countries.”

Her discomfort rose with every word. She wanted this conversation, and what it made her think of, what it could reveal, to be over. “I’m not ‘most people.’”

“You mean because you’re royal? That doesn’t make sense. Durante and Paolo have both told me they spent much of their childhoods soaking in the sea and baking in the sun. And on Castaldini, royals aren’t pursued and encroached on as they are in other countries. Even if you had been, your father could have provided a private beach for your use.”

“I—I sunburn easily. I spent most of my childhood inside the palace. I’m almost always indoors, even now.”

His gaze sluiced over her like silky, warm water, lingering on each inch of visible skin, making her want to moan with the pleasure of his visual caress. “Your skin is the finest and softest that I’ve ever seen. Or touched.” His lids grew heavier as he smoothed the expanse of skin where her jacket and the form-fitting top beneath it had ridden up at her back. She stiffened with the blow of sensation. He gathered her more securely to him. “But it isn’t the type prone to sunburning. In fact, I think you’d tan spectacularly.”

His compliment went straight to her every hunger and vulnerability. Confusion over his motivation gave way to intense pleasure and self-consciousness. “I probably got badly burned once, when I was too young to remember. That and an over-protective mother kept me indoors from then on.”

He gave her a long look, eloquent with disbelief. Out loud he said, “And you just agreed? You didn’t want to rebel, seek all the freedoms and pleasures the sea has to offer? Doesn’t sound like the Clarissa D’Agostino I know.”

“Uh…you have a very rosy picture of the life of a princess.”

“You mean I can’t appreciate the impositions you had, and still have to put up with, as part and parcel of your status?” She braced herself for the frustration his next words would provoke. Everyone, especially men, had always said they understood how it had been for her, had tried to…console her for being such a poor, oppressed royal girl. His next words sent her preconceptions scattering. “No, I can’t. I can only imagine some of them. But, since I never thought running on the beach and swimming in the sea were among the things you had to forgo, I must have imagined quite wrong. Even if I didn’t, only you can speak of your experience.”

She blinked back hot tears. He had understood. Something she’d never thought she’d ever feel toward him spread its balmy coolness inside her chest: thankfulness.

She bit her lip, nodded. “Whatever the reason, I never developed any fascination for the sea.”

“You’re fascinated now.”

She tore her gaze away from his all-knowing one, cast it wide.

He was right. She’d never felt this thrill at witnessing what had always been there since she’d been born. She felt she was experiencing it all with new senses. With a few word of soulsearing insight, he’d made her realize the deprivation she’d suffered, of something so rich with pleasures, so available to anyone. Just being so close to him, his hands hugging her behind her knees and back, her palm still resting over his heart feeling it pumping steadily, as if he hadn’t covered half a mile of beach with her in his arms, had made her…Dio, she was still in his arms!

She couldn’t take one more second of this. She began to wriggle to free herself and he suddenly stopped, whispered, “Watch.”

She jerked toward the point his eyes were fixed on. They were at the top of a dune where the shore extended to her vision’s limit. She held her breath, felt him holding his as the red sun seemed to accelerate toward the darkening azure waters. Then they touched, seemed to melt into one another, and he exhaled, molded her closer, as if to echo the celestial embrace.

A long moment passed as they shared the evocative display of sheer beauty, before she at last insisted he put her down.

He tightened his hold. “You’re sure you’re not uncomfortable walking barefoot on the sand?”

“It really was just a shock how good it felt.”

A strange watchfulness descended on his face. Then he slowly released her, his eyes clinging to her face as if he wanted to record her reaction, memorize every nuance passing through her.

For the first time, she didn’t want to hide her responses from him. She felt he had a right to witness them, in return for this gift he’d given her.

She moaned in pleasure as she again felt the sand flow between her toes, tickling her skin and massaging her soles.

The feeling was incredible, energizing. She gave in to it, to the unadulterated freedom and vitality it imbued her with.

She whooped, giggled, ran.

With every bound on the magical medium she’d lived her life looking at and never seeing, never experiencing, a burst of speed poured into her limbs. She heard his deep chuckles pursuing her. Unfettered laughter escaped her in response. And if a voice told her she must have plummeted into a parallel universe, to be running on a beach with Ferruccio Selvaggio chasing after her, it was silenced as soon as it spoke up. So what, if it felt this good?

Then she cleared another dune and saw it by the gently frothing waves. A huge circle of torch-topped, polished brass poles with a table set for two in its middle.

She turned to him in excitement, then sped ahead, the setup’s details coming into focus. A lavender silk tablecloth draped the table, undulated like something alive in the gentle breeze. Gleaming black plates contrasted with its dreamy hue, while glittering silver utensils and crystal glasses added flashes of splendor. A buffet was set to the side.

She arrived at the table, swung around and grinned at him as he caught up with her, her breathing and heartbeat accelerating under the effect of his approach rather than from exertion.

His breathing was a bit quicker, but even, easy, his eyes gleaming silver with exhilaration. “Not only do you run like a lioness in that constrictive skirt, but you beat me, too. How fast would you be in something suitable?”

More heat rushed to her head, her cheeks. “It isn’t that constrictive. And you weren’t trying to outrun me.”

He huffed a chuckle. “I gave it a good shot, believe me. I’m pretty fast. But you’re much faster.”

Her grin widened with pleasure at the ease with which he admitted she’d beaten him, his obvious enjoyment of the fact even. “I’ll tell you my secret so you won’t feel bad about it. I held my university’s record in the indoor pentathlon for three consecutive years, and the regional one for two of those.”

He looked genuinely impressed. Even though she got the feeling he already knew that. “And it’s clear you’ve kept in shape ever since.” His eyes again detailed how much said “shape” pleased them. “And now you’ll add outdoor events to your repertoire. Including swimming in the sea. With me.” She opened her mouth, closed it, the images his words had playing in her mind’s eye turning her mute. Suddenly his smile’s wattage spiked. “I bet you’ve crossed from hungry to starving after the unexpected exercise.”

He tugged her to the buffet, exposed hot and cold serving plates, piled her plate with mouthwatering delicacies. She didn’t protest. After going without more than a cup of tea since seeing her father yesterday, she was famished.

What followed was something she’d only dreamed of.

Even in fantasy, it had never been so easy, so natural. So unbelievable. They ate and exchanged anecdotes about their lives, opinions about almost everything, agreed, teased, laughed, and she found herself with the man she’d seen that first time—the one she’d felt connected to. Before everything had crashed around her ears and remained there in ruins for the past six years.

Now it was as if the years hadn’t passed in tension and avoidance, as if this was the natural progression of that moment she’d thought so enchanted. And it did feel enchanted, yet more real than anything she’d ever experienced. He felt real. His real self, not the persona he projected when he moved through the ultra-formal settings where she’d made sure they always met with the buffer of her family around. Now that he was away from it all, he showed her sides of him she hadn’t suspected existed, every glimpse enthralling her, embroiling her in the exhilaration of tangling with his wickedness and wit.

Sunset had morphed into the most breathtaking twilight she’d ever witnessed. The impossibly clear, totally unpolluted skies became a sweeping canvas of hues jeweled by strokes and patterns of clouds that had seemed to materialize just to reflect and prism the lingering light into ephemeral paintings that stunned the senses. Then it all gradually faded under the dominion of darkness until moonless, star-blazing night had taken over. She was dazzled by the spell of the ambiance, but more so by her companion.

He’d just served her fresh watermelon, grown on the land everyone had given up as irreclaimable, among many vital crops of which she’d seen oranges, tangerines, olives and grapes. As he sat down she commented on that before resuming her comments on one of his latest takeovers, and he leaned back in his chair, grinning.

“I always let my opponents fight me until they’re exhausted, all the while showing them how sweet surrender would be. Then, when I judge they’ve had enough, I move in, and at that point they’re ecstatic for me to take over.”

Air escaped her lungs in a rush. She couldn’t draw it back.

That could describe what he’d been doing to her.

It could, because it did.

Dio, what a fool she was. She should have known, when it had all felt too good to be true, when he’d started lavishing praise and understanding on her.

He had done so to make her putty in his hands. And he’d succeeded. He’d made her forget what he was, the danger he posed to her, the reason she was here. He hadn’t just overcome her antipathy and turned its tide into acceptance and eagerness, he’d negated reason and memory, silenced every caution. And he’d done it imperceptibly.