Chapter Three
IT HAD BEEN a stupid idea to watch the damned video before coming face to face with Javier Diamandi again because Henrik had been right.
At the time, Astrid had felt she was dancing with him as though he were any other man, carefully muting any physical response, being professional and regal, just as she was supposed to be.
But watching the video she couldn’t help but hold her breath, aware of how their eyes barely looked away, how they seemed to look as though they were in their own world.
She saw how his hand moved over her spine, more than she’d been aware of that the time.
Each touch was intimate and familiar, hinting at something more than the truth.
It was a masterclass in chemistry and heat. It was everything she needed to run away from, everything she most feared, because it had been real and raw and she didn’t do ‘real’. Not any more. Not again.
Her gaze strayed to the ancient clock, suspended in the middle of the wall across the room.
The fire beneath it was blazing, warming the room, in contrast to the outside, which was snowy and bleak.
A moment later, the heavy oak door creaked open, and her secretary Anja was there.
Astrid barely noticed her though, nor the way she curtseyed.
Her attention was immediately, catastrophically and completely, captured by Javier Diamandi.
He stood just a foot or so away from Anja and every bit as powerfully disruptive and compelling as Astrid remembered.
Anja said something that Astrid barely heard and then Javier was striding into the room with raw, masculine power evident in even those steps. He stopped a few feet away from her, far enough to make her insides revolt at the distance.
‘Do I curtsey, too?’
Despite the thickening in the air, the tension, it brought a smile to her face.
‘A bow would be more appropriate,’ she replied. Only, she didn’t want him to bow to her. She liked that he didn’t. ‘And unnecessary.’
She tried to regain control, to pretend he was any other political visitor she was required to spend time with. ‘Please, have a seat.’
He looked at the formal lounge furniture with a small grimace. ‘In that?’
She laughed. She couldn’t help it. His scepticism was not misplaced. The furniture was from the eighteenth century and the thought of his bulky frame occupying one of the delicately carved armchairs seemed quite ridiculous.
‘You’re right. Shall we go for a walk instead?’
He arched a brow.
‘The palace is very old. I’m sure you’d find it quite interesting.’
‘You’re offering me a private tour?’
She couldn’t say how, but he managed to infuse the words ‘private tour’ with a hint of something elicit. Something that set her pulse racing.
She nodded, not sure what she was agreeing to but sensing it was somehow inevitable.
‘In that case, how can I refuse?’
‘You can’t. You’re already running a close line to being charged with treason, remember.’
‘You’d like to lock me up?’ he teased, another unmistakably sensual promise in the words.
She blinked away quickly. She’d never known anyone like him.
‘If your behaviour warranted it.’
‘Then we might as well cut to the chase. I’m definitely more bad than good.’
‘Are you?’ The words were breathy, a reflection of how hard she was finding it to inflate her lungs.
‘I should have thought my reputation preceded me.’
Her heart fluttered. Everything twisted.
‘Speaking of reputations,’ she said, trying to wrestle things back into control, and moving towards the door. ‘I’m sorry about the video.’
‘You warned me.’
‘Still, even I didn’t expect—’
She stopped walking then, angling her face back only to find that he was right behind her. A moment later he lifted a finger and pressed it to her lips. The touch was so intimate and familiar. Innocent, yet also scoldingly hot.
‘I watched the video,’ he said.
Her eyes clung to his, her heart in her throat.
‘I did, too,’ she replied.
His finger stayed where it was. When she spoke, she imagined her warm breath against his flesh and goosebumps danced across her own skin.
‘Is it a problem?’
‘My prime minister is already planning our wedding,’ she said, not able to offer a laugh to show she was joking.
‘I suspected as much.’
‘You’re apparently quite a catch.’
He quirked a dark brow. ‘And yet we both know a marriage between us wouldn’t work.’ He moved his hand then, cupping her cheek, the gesture completely at odds with his words. ‘You want someone like my brother.’
No.
She wanted to reject that proposition outright. She wanted to immediately dispel the idea of marriage to someone like Otto from her mind altogether. But he was the far more sensible choice. The kind of man she should marry. Steady, stable, dull.
‘And you?’
‘Have no interest in becoming king,’ he said, in a way that was light-hearted but somehow insulting, too. As though he saw no appeal to her life and lifestyle.
‘In a way, that would make you a very good husband,’ she said, thoughtfully. ‘You’re not power hungry.’
‘I like my freedom.’
‘You think I’m not free?’
‘You danced with me last night and now it’s front-page news all across Europe.’
She blanched at that.
‘That, Your Majesty, is not freedom.’
‘No,’ she said softly. ‘I know.’
His thumb stroked her cheek then, so her body lit with all those same flames and fuses as the night before.
‘It must have made it difficult for you to date.’
She swallowed, her throat suddenly constricted.
‘I mean, you must have seen men, of course, behind closed doors—’
Her cheeks flushed with warmth.
‘There is no such thing in the palace. Even here, staff gossip.’
‘Your secretary?’
‘No,’ a smile softened her response. ‘Anja I trust completely.’
‘So with Anja’s help, you’ve dated?’
He was like a dog with a bone and, yet, she wasn’t sure she minded.
‘Well, yes, I suppose… I mean, I’ve spent time with men, seeing if they were suitable,’ she said, her stomach somersaulting.
He’d probably run a mile. Javier Diamandi did not seem like the kind of man who’d waste his time on inexperienced, twenty-five-year-olds.
Only she was wrong. A second later, his other hand lifted to her hip, held her there, before pulling her closer towards him, so finally their bodies connected as she’d wanted them to the night before.
Everything exploded. The hand at her cheek moved slightly, so his thumb could brush across her lower lip.
‘You’ve been kissed, I presume.’
She closed her eyes against the awful memory of her first and only kiss—at a trusted friend’s birthday party, when she’d had a few too many champagnes and one of her friend’s cousins had taken advantage of the situation.
She was fortunate it had only been a kiss.
Luckily her security detail had been there to swoop in and separate them.
‘Yes.’
‘And sex?’
Her eyes widened. ‘That’s incredibly rude.’
‘You’re right. And sex, Your Majesty?’ he amended, wilfully misunderstanding her response.
Her lips parted. His thumb swiped over them again, then pressed in lightly brushing over her tongue. Her knees felt weak.
‘I barely know you.’
‘That’s not an answer.’
Panic surged through her, but why lie? Already, she knew this man was someone she could trust. Not with her heart, or her future, but with the truth. He was not going to go and spread anything she told him to the press. That was completely beneath someone like Javier.
‘As you pointed out, my every move is watched. To sleep with someone would be to date them for real and to invite the kind of speculation I don’t welcome.
Even now, I know I must marry, but I’m doing so carefully.
Screening potential husbands in a public setting, to avoid this sort of thing.
’ She gestured haphazardly towards the newspapers, that were now on the occasional table in the parlour.
Instead of returning her hand to her own side, she found it landed on his hip, mirroring his touch. Power swirled through her veins and her fingertips tingled with the euphoria of that connection.
‘I suppose that’s very different to your own life. Your own experience.’
His eyes met hers with a hint of amusement. ‘I’m not a virgin.’
It was so absurd she laughed, the gesture dislodging his contact with her face. She closed her eyes against the wave of disappointment. Where was her icy reserve, the cool barrier she’d built to defend her heart from hurt?
Only this was nothing about her heart. This, right here, was all driven by other, insatiable parts of her body, wanting something she’d never thought to need before. Ice wasn’t required. She was safe because Javier would never marry her, even if she wanted him to.
‘You don’t have to date someone to have sex with them.’ He moved closer, dropping his head slightly. ‘Nor do you have to marry them.’
‘Perhaps in the normal sense of things, but my life is far from normal.’
‘And the expectations of you likewise.’
Her heart tripped at the way he seemed to innately understand her and her life.
‘I have no interest in making your life more difficult, Your Majesty. But I am very interested in you.’
Her lips parted softly. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means I’m interested in getting to know you better. It means I’m interested in this—’ He dropped his head then, slowly, giving her time to read his intentions and reject them, if she wanted to. His eyes holding hers the whole time. Giving her time to tell him to stop.
She didn’t, even when she knew she should. Even when she could zoom out of this scene, see it from above and recognise how out of character this was, she couldn’t step away.
When he kissed her, it redefined everything she thought she knew about being kissed, about everything.
It obliterated the ice she stored inside of her and threw her into a fiery furnace of need.
She groaned as his tongue duelled with hers and heat spread to the tips of her fingers and down to her toes.