Deceiving Her Prince

And obvious. So terribly, blatantly obvious it might as well have been a scream in the dark. She felt Rodolfo turn to stone beneath her palms.

Then he angled his head, took the kiss deeper and wilder and everything went mad.

Rodolfo simply...took her over. He kissed her like he was already a great king and she but one more subject to his rule. His inimitable will. He kissed her as if there had never been any doubt that she was his, in every possible way. His mouth was demanding and hot, intense and carnal, and her whole body thrilled to it. Her hands were fists, gripping his jacket as if she couldn’t bear to let go of him, and he only took the kiss deeper, wilder.

She arched against him as he plundered her mouth, taking and taking and taking even more as he bent her over his arm, as if he could never get enough—

Then he stopped, abruptly, muttering a curse against her lips. It seemed to pain him to release her, but he did it, stepping back and maneuvering so he stood between Natalie and what it took her far too long to realize was another group of guests making use of the wide terrace some distance away.

But she couldn’t bring herself to care about them. She raised a hand to her lips, aware that her fingers trembled. And far more aware that he was watching her too closely as she did it.

“Why do you look at me as if it is two hundred years ago and I have just stolen your virtue?” he asked softly, his dark eyes searching hers. “Or led you to your ruin with a mere kiss?”

Natalie didn’t know what look she wore on her face, but she felt...altered. There was no pretending otherwise. Rodolfo was looking at her the way any man might gaze at the woman he was marrying in less than two months, after kissing her very nearly senseless on the terrace of a romantic Roman villa.

But that was the trouble. No matter what fairy tale she’d been spinning out in her head, Natalie wasn’t that woman.

She was ruined, all right. All the way through.

“I’m not looking at you like that.” Her voice hardly sounded like hers. She took a step away from him, coming up against the stone railing. She glanced down at the two glasses of sparkling wine that sat there and considered tossing them back, one after the next, because that might dull the sharp thing that felt a little too much like pain, poking inside of her. Only the fact that it might dull her a little too much kept her from it. Things were already bad enough. “I’m not looking at you like anything, I’m sure.”

Rodolfo watched her, his eyes too dark to read. “You are looking at me as if you have never been kissed before. Much as that might pander to my ego, which I believe we’ve agreed is egregiously large already, we both know that isn’t true.” His mouth curved. “And tell the truth, Valentina. It was not so bad, was it?”

That name slammed into her like a sucker punch. Natalie could hardly breathe through it. She had to grit her teeth to keep from falling over where she stood. How did she keep forgetting?

Because you want to forget, a caustic voice inside her supplied at once.

“I’m not who you think I am,” she blurted out then, and surely she wasn’t the only one who could hear how ragged she sounded. How distraught.

But Rodolfo only laughed. “You are exactly who I think you are.”

“I assure you, I am not. At all.”

“It is an odd moment for a philosophical turn, princess,” he drawled, and there was something harder about him then. Something more dangerous. Natalie could feel it dance over her skin. “Are any of us who others think we are? Take me, for example. I am certain that every single person at this gala tonight would line up to tell you exactly who I am, and they would be wrong. I am not the tabloid stories they craft about me, pimped out to the highest bidder. My wildest dream is not surviving an adventure or planning a new one, it’s taking my rightful place in my father’s kingdom. That’s all.” His admission, stark and raw, hung between them like smoke. She had the strangest notion that he hadn’t meant to say anything like that. But in the next instant he looked fierce. Almost forbidding. “We are none of us the roles we play, I am sure.”

“Are you claiming you have a secret inner life devoted to your sense of duty? That you are merely misunderstood?” she asked, incredulous.

“Do you take everything at face value, princess?” She told herself she was imagining that almost hurt look on his face. And it was gone when he angled his head toward her. “You cannot really believe you are the only one with an internal life.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

But, of course, she couldn’t tell him what she meant. She couldn’t explain that she hadn’t been feeling the least bit philosophical. Or that she wasn’t actually Princess Valentina at all. She certainly couldn’t tell this man that she was Natalie Monette—a completely different person.

Though it occurred to her for the first time that even if she came clean right here and now, the likelihood was that he wouldn’t believe her. Because who could believe something so fantastical? Would she have believed it herself if it wasn’t happening to her right now—if she wasn’t standing in the middle of another woman’s life?

And messing it up beyond recognition, that same interior voice sniped at her. Believe that, if nothing else.

“Do you plan to tell me what, then, you meant?” Rodolfo asked, dark and low and maybe with a hint of asperity. Maybe with more than just a hint. “Or would you prefer it if I guessed?”

The truth hit Natalie then, with enough force that she felt it shake all the way through her. There was only one reason that she wanted to tell him the truth, and it wasn’t because she’d suddenly come over all honest and upstanding. She’d switched places with another person—lying about who she was came with the territory. It allowed her to sit there at those excruciatingly proper dinners and try to read into King Geoffrey’s facial expressions and his every word without him knowing it, still trying to figure out if she really thought he was her father. And what it would mean to her if he was. Something that would never happen if she’d identified herself. If he’d been on the defensive when he met her.

She didn’t want to tell Rodolfo the truth because she had a burning desire for him to know who she was. Or she did want that, of course, but it wasn’t first and foremost.

It made her stomach twist to admit it, but it was true: what she wanted was him. This. She wanted what was happening between them to be real and then, when it was, she wanted to keep him.

He is another woman’s fiancé, she threw at herself in some kind of despair.

Natalie thought she’d never hated herself more than she did at that moment, because she simply couldn’t seem to govern herself accordingly.

“I need to leave,” she told him, and she didn’t care if she sounded rude. Harsh and abrupt. She needed to remove herself from him—from all that temptation he wore entirely too easily, like another bespoke suit—before she made this all worse. Much, much worse. In ways she could imagine all too vividly. “Now.”

“Princess, please. Do not run off into the night. I will only have to chase you.” He moved toward her and Natalie didn’t have the will to step away. To ward him off. To do what she should. And she compounded it by doing absolutely nothing when he fit his hand to her cheek and held it there. His dark eyes gleamed. “Tell me.”

He was so big it made her heart hurt. The dark Roman night did nothing to obscure how beautiful he was, and she could taste him now. A kind of rich, addicting honey on her tongue. She thought that alone might make her shatter into pieces. This breath, or the next. She thought it might be the end of her.

“I need to go,” she whispered, aware that her hands were in useless, desperate fists at her sides.

She wanted to punch him, she told herself, but Natalie knew that was a lie. The sad truth here was she was looking for any excuse to put her hands on him again. And she knew exactly what kind of person that made her.

And even so, she found herself leaning into that palm at her cheek.

“I never wanted what our parents had,” Rodolfo told her then, his voice low and commanding, somehow, against the mild night air. “A dance in front of the cameras and nothing but duty and gritted teeth in private. I promised myself that I would marry for the right reasons. But then it seemed that what I would get instead was a cold shoulder and a polite smile. I told myself it was more than some people in my position could claim. I thought I had made my peace with it.”

Natalie found she couldn’t speak. As if there was a hand around her throat, gripping her much too tight.

Rodolfo didn’t move any closer, though it was as if he shut out the rest of the world. There was nothing but that near-smile on his face, that hint of light in his gaze. There was nothing but the two of them and the lie of who she was tonight, but the longer he looked at her like that, the harder it was to remember that he wasn’t really hers. That he could never be hers. That none of the things he was saying to her were truly for her at all.

“Rodolfo...” she managed to say. Confession or capitulation, she couldn’t tell.

“I like my name in your mouth, princess,” he told her, sending heat dancing all over her, until it pooled low and hot in her belly. “And I like this. There is no reason at all we cannot take some pleasure in our solemn duty to our countries. Think of all the dreadfully tedious affairs we will enjoy a great deal more when there is this to brighten up the monotony.”

His head lowered to hers again, and she wanted nothing more than to lose herself in him. In the pleasure he spoke of. In his devastating kiss, all over again.

But somehow, Natalie managed to recollect herself in the instant before his lips touched hers. She yanked herself out of his grip and stepped away from him, the night feeling cool around her now that she wasn’t so close to the heat that seemed to come off him in waves.

“I’m sorry.” She couldn’t seem to help herself. But she kept her gaze trained on the ground, because looking at him was fraught with peril. Natalie was terribly afraid it would end only one way. “I shouldn’t have...” She trailed off, helplessly. “I need to go back to my hotel.”

“And do what?” he asked, and something in his voice made her stand straighter. Some kind of foreboding, perhaps. When she looked up at him, Rodolfo’s gaze had gone dark again, his mouth stern and hard. “Switch personalities yet again?”

Valentina jerked as if he’d slapped her, and if he’d been a little more in control of himself, Rodolfo might have felt guilty about that.

Maybe he already did, if he was entirely honest, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He couldn’t reach out and put his hands on her the way he wanted to do. He couldn’t do a goddamned thing when she refused to tell him what was going on.

The princess looked genuinely distraught at the thought of kissing him again. At the thought that this marriage they’d been ordered into for the good of their kingdoms could be anything but a necessary, dutiful undertaking to be suffered through for the rest of their lives.

Rodolfo didn’t understand any of this. Didn’t she realize that this crazy chemistry that had blazed to life out of nowhere was a blessing? The saving grace of what was otherwise nothing more than a royal chore dressed up as a photo opportunity?

Clearly she did not, because she was staring at him with something he couldn’t quite read making her green eyes dark. Her lovely cheeks looked pale. She looked shaken—though that made no sense.

“What do you mean by that?” she demanded, though her voice sounded as thrown as the rest of her looked. “I have the one personality, that’s all. This might come as a shock to you, I realize, but many women actually have layers. Many humans, in fact.”

Rodolfo wanted to be soothing. He did. He prided himself on never giving in to his temper. On maintaining his cool under any and all extreme circumstances. There was no reason he couldn’t calm this maddening woman, whether he understood what was going on here or not.

“Are you unwell?” he asked instead. And not particularly nicely.

“I am feeling more unwell by the moment,” she threw back at him, stiff and cool. “As I told you, I need to leave.”

He reached over and hooked a hand around her elbow when she made as if to turn, holding her there where she stood. Keeping her with him. And the caveman in him didn’t care whether she liked it or not.

“Let go of me,” she snapped at him. But she didn’t pull her elbow from his grasp.

Rodolfo smiled. It was a lazy, edgy sort of smile, and he watched the color rush back into her face.

“No.”

She stiffened, but she still didn’t pull away. “What do you mean, no?”

“I mean that I have no intention of releasing you until you tell me why you blow so hot and cold, princess. And I do not much care if it takes all night. It is almost as if you are two women—”

Her green eyes flashed. “That or I find you largely unappealing.”

“Until, of course, you do not find me unappealing in the least. Then you melt all over me.”

Her cheeks pinkened further. “I find it as confusing as you do. Best not to encourage it, I think.”

He savored the feel of her silky skin beneath his palm. “Ah, but you see, I am not confused in the least.”

“If you do not let go of me, right now, I will scream,” she told him.

He only smiled at her. “Go ahead. You have my blessing.” He waited, and cocked an eyebrow when she only glared at him. “I thought you were about to scream down the villa, were you not? Or was that another metaphor?”

She took what looked like a shaky breath, but she didn’t say anything. And she still didn’t pull her elbow away. Rodolfo moved a little closer, so he could bend and get his face near hers.

“Tell me what game this is,” he murmured, close to her ear. She jumped, and he expected her to pull free of him, but she didn’t. She settled where she stood. He could feel her breathe. He could feel the way her pulse pounded through her. He could smell her excitement in the heated space between them, and he could feel the tension in her, too. “I am more than adept at games, I promise you. Just tell me what we’re playing.”

“This is no game.” But her voice sounded a little broken. Just a little, but it was enough.

“When I met you, there was none of this fire,” he reminded her, as impossible as that was to imagine now. “We sat through that extraordinarily painful meal—”

She tipped her head back so she could look him dead in the eye. “I loved every moment of it.”

“You did not. You sat like a statue and smiled with the deepest insincerity. And then afterward, I thought you might have nodded off during my proposal.”

“I was riveted.” She waved the hand that wasn’t trapped between them. “Your Royal Highness is all that is charming and so on. It was the high point of my life, etcetera, etcetera.”

“You thanked me in your usual efficient manner, yes. But riveted?” He slid his hand down her forearm, abandoning his grip on her elbow so he could take her hand in his. Then he played with the great stone she wore on her finger that had once belonged to his grandmother and a host of Tisselian queens before her. He tugged it this way, then that. “You were anything but that, princess. You used to look through me when I spoke to you, as if I was a ghost. I could not tell if I was or you were. I imagined that I would beget my heirs on a phantom.”

Something moved through her then, some electrical current that made that vulnerable mouth of hers tremble again, and she tugged her hand from his as if she’d suddenly been scalded. And yet Rodolfo felt as if he might have been, too.

“I’m not sure what the appropriate response is when a man one has agreed to marry actually sits there and explains his commitment to ongoing infidelity, as if his daily exploits in the papers were not enough of a clue. Perhaps you should count yourself lucky that all I did was look through you.”

“Imagine my surprise that you noticed what I did, when you barely appeared to notice me.”

“Is that what you need, Rodolfo?” she demanded, and this time, when she stepped back and completely away from him, he let her go. It seemed to startle her, and she pulled in a sharp breath as if to steady herself. “To be noticed? It may shock you to learn that the entire world already knows that, after having witnessed all your attention-seeking theatrics and escapades. That is not actually an announcement you need to make.”

Rodolfo didn’t exactly thrill to the way she said that, veering a bit too close to the sorts of things his father was known to hurl at him. But he admired the spirit in her while she said it. He ordered himself to concentrate on that.

“And now you are once again this Valentina,” he replied, his voice low. “The one who dares say things to my face others would be afraid to whisper behind my back. Bold. Alluring. Who are you and what have you done with my dutiful ghost?”

She all but flinched at that and then she let out a breath that sounded a little too much like a sob. But before he could question that, she clearly swallowed it down. She lifted her chin and glared at him with nothing but sheer challenge in her eyes, and he thought he must have imagined the vulnerability in that sound she’d made. The utter loneliness.

“This Valentina will disappear soon enough, never fear,” she assured him, a strange note in her voice. “We can practice that right now. I’m leaving.”

But Rodolfo had no intention of letting her go. This time when she turned on her heel and walked away from him, he followed.

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