My Royal Temptation / Ruined

He nods. “Of course. Never again, Miss Winter. You have my word.”

I sigh. I know he’s soon to be my king, that my job is to find him a queen, but right now I don’t believe his word for one tiny second. And that impish grin on his face tells me that neither does he.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Nikolai

“MY, MY, ISN’T His Highness in quite the chipper mood?” My wicked stepmother, Queen Adele, sizes me up from across the mahogany table. Even when it is just she, my father and I in residence at the palace, she insists on using the formal dining room that can accommodate up to fifty guests. Overhead hang three large crystal chandeliers, and lining the wood-paneled room are suits of armor interspersed with the images of frowning black-haired men, my ancestors, the kings of old.

From the looks of their faces, dark and brooding is a family tradition.

“As a matter of fact, Majesty, I am in good spirits.” I wipe my lips with a linen napkin before crooking them into a smile as fake as her own. The queen’s gaze narrows as she tries to see through my mocking mask.

Lots of luck, love.

My father cuts his roast, oblivious as always to the private war that I carry out with the hag. “I understand you met with the matchmaker this afternoon. She seems a competent woman.” He spears the beef with his fork. “Most enthusiastic.”

“Quite.” An image of Kate Winter flashes, one where she is on her knees, hair wet and wild, sucking my cock like some sort of mythic water goddess, and I suppress a satisfied grin.

“Rather common, if you ask me.” My stepmother gives an audible sniff.

“Good thing no one did,” I growl, my mouth flat-lining.

She ignores the warning in my voice. “I do admit to having second thoughts on Miss Winter. After all, how can a commoner have the proper breeding necessary to discern fine taste? Edenvale is the second-oldest throne in all of Europe. The realm expects certain standards.”

White-hot fury builds behind my eyes. This snobby shrew isn’t fit to lick the sole of one of Kate’s heels, let alone dare to speak her name with such disdain. True, my favorite matchmaker isn’t blue-blooded, but she has more natural grace and elegance in one of her little fingers than Adele has in her entire Botoxed body.

Who knows what prompted Father to marry her? I barely remember my real mother, but from all accounts, it was a love match. Queen Cordelia remains well-beloved by her people to this day, no thanks to Adele, who likes to pretend she never existed.

I study the fine lines that groove my stepmother’s frown. She has always been a sourpuss, but since her only daughter Victoria’s death she’s turned downright wicked.

The last vestiges of my good mood vanish. When Adele married my lonely father the only bright spot to the arrangement came in the form of her beautiful and vivacious nineteen-year-old daughter, my stepsister and first love. I was a foolish twenty-three-year-old boy determined to make Victoria my queen. While Father disapproved of the relationship, Adele could not hide her ambition. She might not have liked the idea of me making love to her daughter but persuaded Father to allow the engagement to proceed because it would make Victoria a queen. She even argued that it would strengthen Edenvale’s royal ties to have not one but two generations of our royal bloodlines matched. Their aristocratic family has always been one of the wealthiest and most influential in our kingdom. But they’ve always had a reputation for being ambitious.

Too ambitious for my liking.

Over the years, whenever I indulged in a whiskey too many and allowed my thoughts to wander, it had seemed conceivable that Adele might have masterminded the whole affair, put her only child in my path, advising her on how to best seduce her way into a lonely prince’s heart. If Victoria had survived the accident, perhaps she’d have grown to be as calculating and bloodless as the woman sneering down her aristocratic nose at me. The question, though, will never be answered. My youngest brother, Damien, saw to that, ending her life with his usual recklessness, earning his banishment and my everlasting hatred.

“Well, do try to retain your good mood for Saturday evening,” Adele says, dipping her spoon into the lobster bisque.

“What’s Saturday?” I crook my finger, signaling the butler to bring me more wine. I am tempted to grab the whole damn bottle, get too drunk to dream. I don’t want nightmares of Victoria disturbing my sleep tonight.

“Didn’t Miss Winter tell you?” My stepmother’s lifeless smile is stiff and doesn’t reach her cruel eyes. “She has arranged your first date.”

Kate

“No,” I say, when I open my apartment door to find X standing there. “Absolutely not.” Before I can close the door in the man’s face—and I would feel horrid doing so, but this crosses the line—Maddie sidles up behind me.

“Who’s your friend?” she asks, though I’m sure she can tell by his immaculate suit that he is not one who dwells on Market Street. I glance at my own attire, a freaking Fall Out Boy T-shirt and skinny jeans. I look like an American teenager.

“Maddie, this is X. He works for the royal family.”

My sister pulls the door the rest of the way open. She, of course, is in a perfectly beautiful sundress, because she has a date. Which is fine because I was very much looking forward to Netflix, and ice cream, and not thinking about the strange events that have transpired this week. But no, the prince has to butt into my plans, my thoughts, my whatever—simply because he can.

X offers my sister a slight bow, and she backhands me on the shoulder.

“This is the prince’s driver—the guy who picked you up the other morning? You didn’t say he was a silver fox!” she whisper-shouts, but the man is standing right in front of us.

X’s brows rise, the slightest hint of his amusement. “Miss Kate,” he says. “His Highness says it is part of your professional obligation.”

I roll my eyes.

“What obligation?” Maddie asks.

“Tell him no,” I say to X, ignoring my sister.

He pulls a phone from the inside pocket of his suit jacket and glances at the screen.

“Miss Kate declines your invitation,” he says, and my stomach drops. The prince has been listening to our entire interaction.

When I hear his voice, my body tingles in response, and I silently curse Nikolai Lorentz.

“Kate,” he says. X points the phone toward me and my sister. “I’m going to be late for the date that you set up if you don’t get down here in the next three minutes.”

I huff out a breath and try to ignore my sister’s wide eyes and mouth open in a surprised O.

“Your Highness—” I start, but he clears his throat, interrupting me.

“Nikolai,” he corrects me, and I repress an exasperated scream.

“Nikolai. I think you are confused. This is your date. I set it up, but believe me when I say that both you and the Countess of Wynberry will be most put out by me joining you for dinner.”

Maddie backhands me again, this time harder, but she still says nothing.

Nikolai’s raucous laugh rings out from the phone in X’s hand.

“You won’t actually join us,” he says. “You’ll be in the car with X. Beatrice has prepared a veritable feast for you to dine on while you wait for my cue.”

My fists clench at my sides, and I don’t bother stifling my groan.

“You have some nerve,” I say.

“I need a wingman.”

“No.”

“I need to be called to an urgent meeting, an out if things go south. Because if the countess doesn’t go for my proposed arrangement, I promise things will go—southerly,” he adds, his words laced with amusement.

“No,” I maintain.

There is silence for a few long beats, and I hold my breath until he speaks again.

“If I behave badly,” he says, slowly drawing out each word, “which I’ve been known to do, I could scare off a potential prospect. But if someone is there to give me a more respectable exit should I need one, well, then, we all win. Don’t we?” He pauses to let his words sink in before he puts the final nail in the coffin that is my fate for this evening. “You don’t want to chance me not making it to the altar. Do you, Kate?”

White-hot fury pulses through me. Does he know the king and queen will refuse my fee—no matter how tireless I work—if he does not marry? How dare he use such leverage against me? But because I cannot let Maddie carry our grandmother’s financial burden alone, I say what I need to say to shut him up before he reveals too much.

“Fine,” I relent through gritted teeth. “I’ll be right down.”

X sighs and ends the call as I spin into my apartment. My sister follows.

“You’re accompanying the prince on his date. Oh. My. God, Katie. Why didn’t I get this freaking job?”

I grab my bag from the foot of my bed and sling it over my shoulder. “Right now, Maddie, I wish you had.”

I don’t even bother looking in the mirror. I storm toward the door where X waits patiently.

“You’re not even going to change?” my sister asks from behind me, and I shake my head, answering her over my shoulder.

“You heard the man. He’s going to be late, and I sure as hell don’t want to keep the prince and the countess waiting.”

“Have fun!” she calls, unable to mask her own giddy excitement.

Not likely.

“You too!” I offer, sincerely hoping her night goes better than mine is about to.

“If you succeed then we will have clients pouring in.”

I fake a smile. “Yay!” My enthusiasm rings false, but my sister doesn’t notice. She is too good to speak the language of sarcasm.

Maddie deserves all the happiness and success. She built our little company from nothing, and when my life fell apart two years ago, she gave me a place to stay and a job to dive into so I wouldn’t waste away in my grief.

This is why, despite his behavior, I head downstairs and out to the Rolls-Royce parked at the curb. I’m doing this for her. For years I’ve depended on my sister, and now more than ever she’s depending on me. I won’t mess this up. She deserves for her business to succeed, and that means lessening the burden of paying for Gran’s mounting medical bills. Every day it seems a new one arrives. She tries to hide her worry from me, but I see the dark shadows under her eyes.

X opens the door for me, and I slide into the seat opposite Nikolai. I cross my arms and try to level him with my glare.

“You look—” he starts, but I cut him off.

“Don’t, Nikolai. Just don’t.”

He raises his brows. “I was only going to say beautiful. You look beautiful, Kate.”

Don’t, I tell myself in silence. Don’t let his words have any effect on you.

“X,” he says when the man appears behind the wheel. When did he even get there? I swear he just shut my door. “Do you know what a Fall Out Boy is?”

I snort. “Tell me you’re joking.” Then I see it again, the ghost of a smile on X’s face. We’re silently sharing a joke at Nikolai’s expense.

Nikolai shrugs. “I’m assuming it is some sort of popular rock band. The music I listen to does not come with a T-shirt.”

I laugh again and thrust my phone through the open partition to X.

“It’s my top playlist,” I say. “Can you put it on?”

The man nods, and seconds later my phone is hooked up to the car’s speaker system.

The tightness in my throat loosens as “Immortals” wafts from the speakers, and I’m shocked once again when Nikolai’s shoulders relax, and he cocks his head to the side and smiles.

“It’s no Amadeus,” he says, “but I quite like it. I suppose I’m learning I like a lot of new things these days, Miss Winter.”

A chill runs along my spine, but I will it away.

Do not for one second think that he is charming. You know full well that Prince Charming he is not.

But as the anger subsides I see him clearly, his jet-black hair slicked back from his face, charcoal gray suit to match his eyes, and a royal blue tie for a pop of color. He looks so—princely. And gorgeous. And when his smile reaches his eyes, I have to push away the surge of emotion that rises to the surface because I’ve suddenly lost my grip on the anger.

I shake my head and remind myself why I’m here—to make sure this date goes smoothly. To ensure that Prince Nikolai Lorentz is one step closer to marriage—and becoming my king.

“Thank you for coming,” he says softly, and I force a smile.

“Of course,” I say, regaining my composure. “Nikolai?”

“Kate?”

“Have you read the entire contract between Happy Endings and your family?”

He laughs. “What’s to read? You were hired to find me a wife. You’re finding me a wife. I’m not interested in the fine print.”

I let out a breath. So he doesn’t know the consequences for me—for my family—if I fail. My anger ebbs completely as I realize Nikolai’s behavior this evening is simply him being Nikolai.

“Well, then,” I say. “Tell me what I need to do to make this date a success.”

At this, X pulls away from the curb, and we set off for Nikolai to meet his first potential match.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Nikolai

I MUST GIVE credit to Kate’s skillful matchmaker profiling. The Countess of Wynberry fits my usual physical type to a T. Platinum blond hair, come-hither bedroom eyes and ripe breasts that she proudly displays in a low-cut black silk dress offset by a necklace of glittering rubies. Hell, I don’t know a guy who wouldn’t describe the countess as his type. She could be a sister to that American actress Scarlett Johansson.

We meet in my private room at La Coeur, a three-star Michelin restaurant set in an eighteenth-century manor. The view of the Alps through the wide windows is unparalleled, and the gorgeous woman lounging across the table looks like she’d rather take a bite out of me than the raspberry-and-chocolate confection on her gilded plate. Yet I feel nothing but faint boredom.

Dinner went well enough. The filet was perfectly cooked and the cabernet an excellent vintage. She chattered on and on about her family’s approval of our union and then of all the filthy things she planned on doing to me once we left the restaurant. I should have been hard just from her depraved words. Instead all I want is to be in my Rolls beside an auburn-haired woman in jeans who makes me feel like something I haven’t felt in years.

Myself.

“You don’t talk much, do you?” the countess purrs, taking her time licking her spoon clean. Her bare foot caresses my shin under the table, and I curse my unresponsive cock. The countess could douse the fire inside, the embers burning for a woman who arranged this date, but she’d fail at snuffing out the blaze.

“I do if I have something to say,” I answer blandly. Her dessert does look delightful. Too bad I ordered nothing to eat for our final course, just a scotch neat. She needs to stop playing seductive games and enjoy it. But then, I’ve made my decision, which means she won’t have time to finish, so perhaps it is for the best.

She looks curious, missing the warning in my voice. “And do you have something to say?” she asks.

Enough time wasting. “I do.” I crumple my napkin on my lap and get down to business.

I say what I must in short, clipped sentences. Her eyes grow slowly wider until the whites are perfectly visible around her nearly violet irises.

Within a minute she throws a glass of champagne in my face. She has more restraint than I credited her with. I expected her to last thirty seconds max.

“You are as they say.” She gathers her fur stole and rises in a huff. “A twisted monster of a man.”

I blow her a kiss, and she squeals with outrage before storming for the exit.

Kate arrives in less than a minute, exactly as I expected, disheveled from sprinting to my table.

“What happened?” She gasps for air. “I thought I was here to help you to not cause a scene!”

I wave my hand in the air. “Trust me when I tell you that what just transpired was not a scene. You have read the tabloids, yes? I’m capable of so much worse. Don’t you think?”

She must have run the whole way and not bothered using the restaurant’s elevator. Her cheeks are flushed to a rosy red, and her chest rises and falls, heaving her breasts against the thin cotton of her T-shirt. The sight captivates me more than all the silk in Spain.

“The countess left in a rage,” Kate continues. “She threatened to kick X in the parking lot if he didn’t get out of her way. I’m pretty sure that counts as a scene.”

I chuckle at the thought of anyone accosting X. I’ve seen him pin a paparazzo against a wall with one hand while dismantling his camera with the other, the action as simple as flossing his teeth. I have no idea who the hell X was before he came to the palace, but one thing is for certain: he’s survived worse than the Countess of Wynberry.

“We weren’t a good fit,” I say lazily, sitting back in my chair. “And because no photographers are allowed inside—”

Kate lets out a breathy laugh. “Oh, there were photographers outside. I can attest to that.” She shakes her head. “I have to admit my surprise... On paper you and the countess were a perfect match.” Her tone is disappointed even as the relief is plain on her face. Strange how I am in tune to the subtleties of her emotion when we’ve barely been acquainted for the span of a week.

“She had a hard time hearing key truths,” I say.

“Truths?” She crosses her arms and lowers her chin. A wayward auburn strand falls across her forehead. “Nikolai, what on earth did you tell that poor woman?”

Poor woman? Perhaps that was the perfect term for her. While the countess was rich in material wealth, she lacked human qualities like warmth, companionship and kindness, characteristics I can usually dismiss. But for some reason, tonight I cannot.

“Take a seat, Kate.” I gesture to the chair opposite me. “I’ll tell you exactly what I said if you allow me to feed you bite by bite.”

Kate

I cross my arms. “I’m quite stuffed,” I say, not daring to glance at the dessert on the table. Even out of the corner of my eye it looks heavenly. “Beatrice fed me well with yet another back-seat feast, and I will under no circumstances let you be seen in public feeding a palace employee.” Never mind that we are in a private room.

He reaches over and takes a bite of the rich-looking confection, his tongue slowly stroking the spoon, and I swallow. Then I narrow my eyes at him.

“Oh, fine,” he says. “Have it your way. I simply told her what we both already know, that whoever my bride will be, it will be nothing more than a business arrangement. There will be no physical obligation other than her providing me with my own heir—however long that may take. And I will be free to satisfy my needs with whomever suits my fancy. Oh, I may have also mentioned that she will under no circumstances have any say in how I rule this country.”

I throw my hand over my mouth, but it doesn’t stifle my gasp. “Nikolai!” I shout, not caring that his private room is not exactly soundproof.

He shrugs. “Oh, come now,” he says. “I explained she’d want for nothing—that she’d be free to dally with anyone she pleased, so long as she was discreet.”

I clench my teeth. “I know you don’t plan on taking your marriage seriously, but no woman deserves to be spoken to like that. You could have been more—more delicate, and you know it. But you care nothing for anyone other than yourself, so you did it the Nikolai way. I should have known this job would be impossible. That you’d be impossible. You didn’t want me here to help. Did you? You wanted me here so I’d have a front-row seat to the Nikolai Lorentz show.”

My cheeks burn as I bunch my fists at my sides. One minute I’m taken aback by how beautiful he is—how he can level me with his gaze. The next I am reminded all too clearly of who he is. He is my prince—and soon, my king. He has the power to behave as he does, and I am nothing more than a subject.

I push back my chair. “I’ll call for a taxi,” I say, trying to keep my voice even. Anger will get me nowhere. It won’t get the countess the respect he should have paid her, and it certainly won’t earn any for me. He owes me nothing.

He lets me get as far as the door before he speaks.

“Kate,” he says, all pretense gone from his voice. “Wait.” Then I hear him let out a breath. “Please.”

I turn to face him, and he’s standing, too. But I don’t dare move any closer. Even across the table he feels too near now. Because if there’s one word I never expected to hear directed at me from him, it is that last one. Please.

“What?” I ask, the fight draining from me as he holds me with his steely, intent stare.

He runs a hand through his perfectly styled hair, loosening it so he looks more as he did on the bridge—or after he’d dived into the river to save me.

“You’re right,” he says. “About most of it, but you’re missing one important detail.”

I cross my arms and raise my brows but say nothing.

“Of course I didn’t need any help,” he says, palms resting on his chair. “I care nothing for my reputation. I leave that to my father, my stepmother, to all those paid to give a fuck. I suppose I’ll have to clean up my act a bit once I’m king, though.”

He flashes that irresistible grin, but I don’t let myself fall prey to it, not this time.

“I know you don’t care what others think of you,” I say. “But you put my reputation on the line tonight, too, Your Highness.” He winces, and the sight is something so wholly unexpected, my heart tugs involuntarily. “You may have nothing to lose, but I do. My sister does. Her business supports our family. We have responsibilities. This whole marriage thing that you see as a joke is how we put a roof over our heads. It’s how we—”

He steps around from the chair and nearer to where I stand, the movement stealing the words from my mouth. I suck in a breath as he takes a step closer and then hold it as he rests a palm on my cheek.

“I’m an ass,” he says, and I nod. “One royal prick,” he adds, and I don’t disagree. “Perhaps I could have been more civil to the countess. But where I truly fucked up was that I wasn’t thinking of how this would affect you.”

I clear my throat. “Wh-what important detail?” I stammer. His brows pull together. “Before, you said I was missing one important detail.” I can smell the sweet scotch in the warmth of his breath. I bite my lip to keep from reacting.

He rests his forehead against mine, the gesture far too intimate, and my breath hitches.

“I asked you to come tonight, Kate, because in the span of six days, I seem to have gone from wanting nothing to do with you and what you’ve been hired for to not wanting you out of my sight.”

He braces a palm against the door behind me, and I take a step back so I’m flush against it.

“Nikolai,” I whisper. “We can’t.” My insistence is different than the other day at the bridge. I could take his teasing—could even pretend that we might continue our encounters and leave it at just sex. But now? What he is suggesting now is beyond possibility.

“What if there was a way?” he asks, his lips dangerously close to my own. “What if I could make you truly mine?”

My throat tightens at the thought. “But I was hired to—”

“I know,” he says. “And I will continue to see the women with whom you match me. I will even be civil. But I make you this promise. I’ll marry none of them.”

As much as the idea of him touching another woman, let alone marrying one, already hurts in a way it should not be able to, I need him to do it because my family depends on it. Irony, you’re a cruel bitch.

“When do you need to be married by?” I’m playing with him because I already know. Maybe if I smile the pain will ebb. One can always hope.

“My twenty-ninth birthday.”

“Which is...” As if the heir’s birthday isn’t a national holiday.

His lids narrow as he tries to figure out what game I’m playing. “Ninety days from now.”

I close my eyes and take in a long breath. Then I press my palm to his chest. “I’ll make you a wager.”