Читать книгу Bride By Royal Decree - CAITLIN CREWS - Страница 3

“I’ll return to my original question,” Maggy said. Not politely. “Who the hell are you, and why do you care if some barista in a photograph looks like an old, dead queen?”

Reza drew himself up to his full height. He looked down at her with all the authority and consequence that had been pounded into every inch of him all his life—even when his own father had failed to live up to the crown he now wore himself.

“I am Leopoldo Maximillian Otto, King of the Constantines,” he informed her. “But you may call me by my private family nickname, Reza.”

She let out a sharp, hard sound that was not quite a laugh and thrust his mobile back at him. “I don’t want to call you anything.”

“That will be awkward, then.”

Reza took possession of his mobile, studying the way she deliberately kept her fingers from so much as brushing his, as if he was poisonous. He was a king, not a snake. The way this creature dared to treat him—him—with such disrespect baffled him, but did nothing to assuage that damnable need that still worked inside him. She confounded him, and he didn’t like it.

But that didn’t change the facts. Much less what would be gained by presenting his people with the lost Santa Domini princess as his bride.

He met her gaze then. And held it. “Because one way or another, you are to be my wife.”