Читать книгу The Mills & Boon Ultimate Christmas Collection - Мишель Смарт, Kate Hardy - Страница 108
ОглавлениеIT TURNED OUT that Andres’s definition of taming her actually meant attempting to smother her in yards of silk and tulle.
She did not feel tame in the least. Instead, she felt slightly indignant and more than a little bit irritated. Though that had been her state of being since he threw her out of his bedchamber last night.
Just thinking about it sent a hot flush over her skin, exacerbated by the cool slide of the silk that was currently being fitted to her form. She assumed the rash of heat was brought about by anger. She was angry. The way he had plucked her out of the bath, holding her against him, as though he had every right to touch her, as though she belonged to him in some way, was nothing less than enraging.
Except it didn’t feel like any rage she had ever experienced before. But then, she was in a palace unlike any she’d ever been in before, wearing clothes the likes of which she had never even dreamed up before, so she imagined that was in keeping with the theme.
“Keep your shoulders straight,” the seamstress said, her tone stiff, as stiff as Zara’s shoulders were starting to feel.
“You heard her,” Andres’s voice came from beyond the screen she was standing behind. “Keep still, or it will take longer.”
“I am not a child,” she said, addressing both of them. “I don’t need to be spoken to like one.”
“Then do not fidget like one,” the woman said.
Zara fought the urge to fidget just to cause trouble.
This was very strange, being the focus like this. The closest experience she had in her memory was when she had come to live at the encampment. She had been a curiosity then, but they had also been careful with her. She was a little girl who had lost her family, who was traumatized, steeped in grief.
Resources there were limited, and no one had ever procured her a new wardrobe. She’d had clothing crudely fitted to her before. Hand-me-downs that she’d acquired within the camp.
In her life before the revolution, she was certain she had experienced things like this, but there was a veil drawn over those years, memories she found difficult to access. Everything was reduced down to feelings. Still pictures in her mind. Smells, tastes.
She’d only been six when she was taken away. So much more of her life spent away from the palace than in it.
She was trying to hate it, but in truth it was difficult. The dress she was wearing at the moment was irresistible. She had never imagined she would find a dress irresistible, but she definitely had strong feelings about this one.
The bodice was fitted, soft with iridescent pink vines stitched over the silk. The skirt billowed around her like a pink cloud. And in truth, she would love to hate it for its impracticality. But it was just too pretty.
Though, even if she was having a hard time resenting the dress, she could still easily resent Andres.
“Would you like to see this one, Your Highness?” The woman spoke to Andres as though Zara weren’t standing right there.
“Why not?” He sounded bored, which she found insulting. Though, had he sounded eager, she probably would have been similarly offended. He could not win with her. She had decided.
She would not allow him to. She would not marry him. She would find another way.
Though it has been said you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. And you need his help.
She ignored that thought. Yes, it was true she needed him in some capacity. But she would not be pouring out the kind of honey a man like him wanted. Andres had not been ambiguous about his intent for her. He’d told her last night that if she didn’t leave he was going to...
She felt her skin growing hot again, just as the seamstress moved the screen to the side, removing the buffer that stood between herself and the rather imposing prince.
She drew in a deep breath, her breasts pushing against the tight, structured bodice. She was very conscious of the fact that his eyes were very much focused on said part of her body. He was doing it to make her uncomfortable. There was no other reason. Men did not waste time staring at her chest. Men did not waste time staring at any part of her.
Yes, she had been well protected, prior to being kidnapped and returned to the palace to be used as a political pawn, but it had not seemed to be a particular challenge for the leader of their clan to keep men away from her.
Quite the opposite, Zara felt sometimes as if she repelled people when she walked through a crowd.
The heat in his eyes was certainly not real. Which made it all the more offensive, even if it should have made it less offensive. Things with Andres simply weren’t going to make sense, she had accepted that already.
“Well?” she asked, the word coming out as a command.
He put his hand on his chin as though he were considering. “You certainly look more like a princess than you did yesterday.”
“I suppose it depends on your cultural point of view,” she said, raising an eyebrow.
“Indeed?”
“Yes. Among my people the gold makeup is considered the mark of royalty. A mark of beauty. The robe I wore yesterday, the purple with gold thread signified that, as well. This is just a pretty dress.”
“This is couture,” the seamstress said, speaking out of turn, her tone harsh.
“Will you allow her to speak to me like that?” Zara asked.
“Yes. You were offensive,” Andres said.
“My apologies,” she said, not feeling particularly apologetic. It was difficult when she still felt maneuvered. Forced. Imprisoned. “I am tired.” She lifted up the heavy, voluminous skirts and turned, sitting on the edge of the bed, the fabric billowing around her.
“Yes. I imagine trying on gowns all day is incredibly taxing,” he said, his tone dry.
“Is it perhaps as taxing as sitting there watching someone else do it?”
“Probably not as taxing as measuring a fidgeting, surly girl.” He leaned against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest, his expression laconic. “Elena,” he said, addressing the seamstress, “I’m sure you could use a break. The princess and I can handle things from here.”
“Yes, Your Highness.” The woman was clearly unhappy with being dismissed, leaving her dresses behind for someone other than her to handle. But she obeyed.
Zara didn’t think she would ever get used to that. The fact that ultimately Andres would have to be deferred to, and beyond him Kairos. She fell somewhere beneath the two of them.
It isn’t as though you had any power back in the encampment. People put you on a pedestal, but you had no choices.
She ignored herself again, focusing instead on the growing sense of dread she felt as Elena walked out of the room, leaving her alone with Andres.
“So?” She lifted her hands, then brought them back down, gripping the fabric of the gown. “Am I suitably altered into your preferred image?”
“You have a ways to go yet,” he said, his tone dry. “You still look a bit wild.”
“Perhaps because I am a bit wild. Have you ever thought that no amount of work will change that? No matter how sleek you make me look, it will not change what’s inside?”
“As far as I’m concerned, outward appearance is the best place to start. Changing who you are on the inside is a much more difficult task.”
“Speaking from experience?”
One side of his mouth curved upward. “Experience at not managing to change it, certainly.”
“If you haven’t managed to change after all your years of living in this palace, what makes you think you will manage to change me and in only a couple of months?”
“I don’t have to change you, not really. I only have to make it look as though you have changed. And that, I have ample experience with.”
“I thought the ultimate goal was taming.”
The other corner of his mouth turned up, and he was smiling now. Yet she didn’t get the sense that there was any humor in it. “Let me ask you this. Do you think I am tame?”
She looked him over, at the perfectly tailored lines of his suit, the aristocratic cut of his features. He could have been carved, rather than made. A Greek statue with life breathed into it, rather than a man born of a woman.
He was beautiful. She found nothing feminine about the descriptor. She would call the forest, the mountains back in Tirimia beautiful, while they were, at the same time, uncompromising and dangerous. She had a feeling Andres was both of those things in addition to being beautiful. His brother, Kairos, exuded danger, authority. With Andres it was less immediately apparent.
But she could see it. She could sense it.
Possibly that was due more to the fact that he had pulled her out of the bathtub yesterday and thrown her onto his bed, than any kind of sixth sense on her part.
Still, she was confident in her answer to his question.
“No. You aren’t,” she said.
“But I appear to be. Or rather, I appear to be when it suits me.”
“Is that what you are suggesting I do? Behave the part of princess in public?”
“I should like for you to be a little bit more tame than you already are, as I have no interest in being bitten.” Something changed in his eyes as he said the words. Anger morphing into something else entirely. To a molten heat she could swear radiated from him. Something she couldn’t quite sort out. There was a lot of that between them.
“I have never bitten anyone in my life. Your concerns are unfounded.”
He arched an eyebrow. “Are they?” He took a step toward her, his dark eyes boring into hers. “If I were to grab you now and throw you down on that bed, you wouldn’t bite me?”
Her heart was fluttering so fast she could scarcely catch her breath. “Why would you do that?”
“Do not tell me you are so naive that you are unaware of what a man wants from a woman,” he said, something hard, dangerous in his tone.
“Of course not,” she said, her throat feeling tight, her face hot.
“You know what a husband wants from his wife, then,” he said.
It felt as if a fire had broken out over her body, burning her in the most intimate places. She should strangle him with his own tie for daring to speak to her in such a manner. She should certainly not be overheating. “But I am not your wife.”
He reached out, taking her chin between his thumb and forefinger, his hold firm, his eyes locked with hers. She should move away from him. She should kick him. She did neither.
“You will be my wife. In every sense of the word. I do like that dress,” he said, his gaze roaming over her body. “I do wonder, though, if I would like it better on the floor.” He leaned in closer, and her breath caught. “I wonder, if I stripped it from your body, if I were to try and claim you, would you try to bite me then?”
“Try it,” she said, her voice trembling, “try it and see, you bastard.”
“Dirty talk. I like it. If you think that’s going to push me away, I hate to disappoint you.” He moved closer then, his lips a whisper away from hers. And she found that rather than wanting to draw away, perversely she wanted to lean in closer to him. She could feel a connection forming between them, physical, real, tangible. She wanted to solidify it. She didn’t want to break it. How long had it been since she felt connected to anyone? How long had it been since anyone touched her? “Sadly, for you, disappointing people is what I do best.”
Then he moved away. She felt his withdrawal like a gale-force wind. Making her feel disheveled, cold.
“I resisted the urge to eviscerate you with my teeth,” she said, trying to keep her tone stiff. “Perhaps I am not as uncivilized as you seem to think I am.”
“Perhaps I’m not as civilized as you think I am.”
“If you’re trying to frighten me into submitting to your marriage plan, I’m afraid I must deliver the disappointing news that it will not work.” She swallowed hard, calling on all her strength to form the next sentence, to meet his gaze while she spoke the words.
He laughed, a dark, humorless sound. “Silly woman. I don’t need your submission. I need your cooperation.”
“Is there any way I can help you without marrying you?”
“No. There isn’t.”
She gritted her teeth. “That’s very inflexible of you.”
“I am inflexible. In this instance largely because my brother is. I owe him. I disappointed him once, and I cannot do it again. This is my atonement. You are my penance.”
“I suppose in that case lowering yourself onto my body will be much like crawling over broken glass.”
He chuckled, which angered her because those words had cost her. Because she was dealing in subject matter she was not well versed in, trying to play that she was sophisticated. As if the things he said were unremarkable. And when she reached for a comment she thought might shock him, he didn’t even have the decency to look fazed. “To the contrary, I imagine lowering myself onto your body—as you so eloquently put it—will be the most enjoyable portion of our enforced union.”
“Why marriage?” she asked, feeling desperate. “Why not... I suppose I don’t understand what else I could do, because I’m not entirely certain why it is you need me.”
“I must marry you because Kairos gave the order for me to do so. Kairos asked me to do so to improve relations between Petras and Tirimia. Presumably there are more detailed explanations available, but he didn’t give them, and I didn’t ask. The reasoning was irrelevant.”
“And yet you do not seem like a man who would normally feel that way. I can’t imagine that you’re docilely lying down and engaging in something against your will, simply because it’s the right thing to do. There is something else to this. There has to be.”
She had no idea how she was so certain of this, only that she was. Nothing about Andres was docile. She was right, he wasn’t tame. Not in the least. And yet he was allowing himself to be collared and muzzled by his older brother. It made no sense.
“I told you already I spent a great many years doing nothing less than exactly what I wanted. In fact, I was doing that only last week. I have made mistakes,” he said, his tone uncompromising. “Mistakes I had hoped were healed by time, and circumstance that had nothing to do with conciliatory actions on my part. It turns out I was wrong.”
“Be specific,” she said. “Where I come from we don’t deal in this kind of circular conversation. Either we tell someone what we are thinking, or we don’t. There is no alluding to events and talking around the most important element of the truth.”
It was true, though she was rarely included in important conversations back in her homeland. Still, the exclusion was not ambiguous.
“You want to know what I did? Is that it?”
“If it answers the question of why you’re doing this, then yes. I feel like I have a right to know.”
“So be it, then.”
* * *
Andres felt strangely reluctant to tell Zara the truth. It was an oddity that she didn’t know already. Everyone in his country did. Anyone abroad who read tabloids while standing in line at the grocery store knew the sordid details of his past, and what had become of Kairos’s first engagement.
And it was that fact that made him so reluctant to speak of it.
She didn’t look at him and see the playboy prince. Didn’t look at him and see the black sheep. She didn’t like him, but that was based entirely on the interactions they’d had, not on any rumor or headline.
Strange that he found that refreshing, but he did.
Strange that he should care at all what she thought. But he did. He had made a practice of shedding outside opinion from an early age. When he’d first come back from the shadows and into the public eye as a teenager.
“I get the feeling you don’t read a lot of gossip news.”
“No,” she said.
He sat down in the chair opposite her, affecting a casual posture. He was a professional at pretending not to care, particularly at moments when he cared quite a bit. “Then you won’t have read about my escapades. They’re legendary. There isn’t a woman I can’t seduce. No supermodel with sex on her mind I’ve ever refused. I always leave them wanting more, as I rarely stay with a woman for more than one night. I have no shame. No morals to speak of whatsoever.”
He watched as the color in her cheeks rose, turning a dark pink that matched the embroidery on her dress. “Is that so?” Her voice was husky, her eyes focused somewhere on the wall behind him. He couldn’t work her out. Was she simply uncomfortable in his presence, angry and biding her time, or did she feel the insistent tug of attraction just as he did?
He had been with a great many women. And while he wasn’t particularly proud of that behavior when he stood back and took stock of it, it could not be denied. With his vast experience it made no sense that he would be tempted by this woman. She was not sophisticated. She was beautiful, but a great many women were beautiful. Beautiful without being too sharp, too fearsome and too wild.
She was like the wind, bottled up and stitched into a gown. He had to wonder if she had allowed for herself to be harnessed and was simply waiting for the right moment to free herself again.
“Yes. The media always said I had no shame. I imagine that I must have some, though I have not felt any in quite some time. It’s very liberating,” he said, not sure why he was adding this to the conversation, “to feel no embarrassment. To feel no compunction about simply acting on your impulses because you have accepted that you are capable of nothing else. Still, I didn’t imagine that I was absent of shame entirely. That isn’t true of anyone except for sociopaths. And I never thought that I was a sociopath. Then my brother and I, and his fiancée, Francesca, flew to Monte Carlo for a bit of fun and games. Kairos, being Kairos, was having fun in a very dignified manner. Largely he was meeting with world leaders in a more casual environment. I was there to have real fun. And so, it turned out, was Francesca. While Kairos was out I threw a party in my suite. I invited every beautiful woman I could find, every man interested in engaging in a bit of gambling and debauchery. There was a lot of alcohol, as there invariably is at these things. It turns out, the right amount of alcohol is all it takes for me to lose my last vestiges of shame. It was at this party that I proved the media right.”
“What did you do?” Her question, confused, mystified, enhanced by those wide dark eyes, shamed him in a way nothing else ever had. She truly couldn’t guess. Couldn’t even fathom the betrayal he was about to uncover for her.
Yes, if she was going to be his wife, it was best she understood now. Just who he was. Just what he was.
What your parents always knew you were.
“I screwed my brother’s fiancée. I wouldn’t even have remembered if it had not been for videos of the event. Not only did I humiliate my brother, but I made both Francesca and myself porn stars. That did not go over well with her family, if you were wondering. Nor did it go over well with mine.”
Those wide eyes now registered shock, horror. He was torn between the disappointment of watching her understand, of seeing her accept the reality of what he was, and a strange fascination that he could still shock someone. That she hadn’t somehow sensed upon their first meeting that he was flawed in a very real and insurmountable way. In a way he had fully embraced. He was not a man capable of doing things by halves. And since he could not be good, then he had purposed to be debauched to his very core.
He had a feeling that if he tried to explain that to Zara she would look at him as though he had grown another head. He was struck just then at how different their lives had been. He lived in a different world. The moment he’d gained control of his life, he’d made it exactly what he’d wanted. One filled with parties, as much human contact as he wanted. A different woman every night, helping to fill the void that might have been tempted to widen inside him if he allowed it.
She had lived a much more solitary existence. While his had been cluttered with noise. As much as he could possibly surround himself with.
They might as well have been from other planets entirely.
“Now,” he said, not seeing the point in continuing the discussion. “You will tell me something about yourself.”
She tilted her chin up, her expression proud. “The fact that I witnessed my family’s death isn’t enough information for you?”
Something uncomfortable, heavy, shifted in his chest. “You don’t want to marry me,” he said.
“Of course not.”
“Why not?”
“Aside from the fact that you’re a stranger, you just confessed to me that you betrayed your brother. You... You just told me you were the most faithless man on the planet, and now you’re seriously asking me why I don’t want to marry you?”
“You said yourself you had no plans to marry. Don’t tell me now that you had fantasies of a white picket fence and a husband who only had eyes for you. Our marriage could be whatever you want it to be, but you haven’t even asked me what my designs on you are. You haven’t asked me what my goal is for our union, haven’t given any input on how you would like things to be conducted. You simply don’t want to marry me. Which makes me think you must have a goal apart from me.”
She looked away, her jaw set, stubborn.
“Answer me, feral creature, or I will make good on my earlier threat.”
“Listen to you,” she said, her head whipping around, her lip contorted into a sneer, “the man who just professed to being able to seduce any woman is threatening me with his body.”
“You would be seduced soon enough.” He ground his teeth together. “And I might even find I don’t mind being bitten.”
“I don’t wish to get my mouth dirty.”
He laughed, though he felt no amusement. “I will remember that. Now, tell me. I grow impatient.”
“I too am impatient, and yet no one seems concerned about that. I have been held captive for the past two months, before my ownership was transferred to you. Yes, I find I am quite impatient. I’ve never had any say in my life. I was born into royalty, in a position more vulnerable than I could ever have imagined when surrounded by the stone walls of the palace. Then I lost everyone and was taken away to the middle of the forest. Then I was taken captive. And now I have been delivered to you, to be your wife, and I have no choice, yet again. Who am I? What am I to be? The pawn of whoever holds me in their hand at any given time? I must be more than that, Andres. I should like a chance to find out.”
Her words touched something in him. Strange, because nothing about her should resonate. They were different. From different worlds, as he had only just been thinking. Somehow he recognized these words as though they had originated in his own head.
“You will,” he said. “That is another promise I make to you. Our marriage does not have to be traditional in any sense. Not if you don’t wish it. In truth, I am not suited to forsaking all others. It is simply not in me. If I have a certain measure of freedom, then you will too.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“After you have our children you will be free to pursue lovers as you see fit. Or to pursue different hobbies and interests. Education if you wish.”
“Interesting that you prioritize lovers over education.”
“I would certainly choose lovers over education. But it is your choice.”
She frowned. “Why?”
“Why what? Why am I offering you a choice? It does not benefit me to act as your prison guard. Neither do I have any desire to. I told you already, I don’t particularly want a wife. But I owe Kairos. You understand now, clearly, I should think. All he requires is that we produce a child who can take the throne should he and his wife be unable to fulfill the task.”
“I see. You only need my womb. As if that isn’t an extremely large thing to ask.”
“It would be a family. Blood. How long has it been since you’ve been a part of that?” He hated himself for using this against her. Still, he was a man with no shame, and he was hardly going to grow any on the spot.
She looked away.
“A long time,” he answered for her. “Do not fight against me. Neither of us has a choice. We do not need it to be any more difficult than it already is.”
He stood, getting ready to go.
“Can you call the seamstress back?”
It was not what he expected her to say. But then, he found he could not predict Zara. She didn’t fall neatly into a category the way the women he often associated with did. “What do you need?”
“I’m not going to be able to get myself out of this,” she said, indicating her gown.
“I am more than willing to help you with that, Princess,” he said.
Heat formed a ball in his gut, a knot he could barely breathe past. Here he was, talking to her about taking other lovers once they took their vows, and yet he was getting aroused by the thought of unzipping her dress. He’d helped countless women out of couture gowns; there should be nothing exceptional about this moment. Nothing particularly interesting about this desire. And yet there was.
“No, you cannot.” Her voice was stiff, her obvious distress indicating that she was not immune to him either.
“You would rather call Elena back in here just to unzip you? Seems a bit much. Do I frighten you so intensely?”
Something flared in her dark eyes. “Nothing frightens me. I already told you once. How quickly you forget.”
“Then turn around.”
She obeyed, and he knew it was out of sheer stubbornness more than anything else. He reached out, gripping the tab on the dress, drawing it down slowly, ignoring the slight tremble in his fingers. There was no reason for him to tremble. He was unveiling nothing more than the elegant length of her spine. Beautiful, certainly, as everything about her was, but unremarkable.
One of many naked female backs he had seen.
She looked over her shoulder, and lust hit him square and hard in the stomach. Her eyes were like no one else’s.
And it didn’t matter how many women he had undressed in the past, because they hadn’t been her. Because it wasn’t now.
Dammit, he had to get a grip.
When he had the zipper lowered all the way he took a step back, forcing his hands down at his side so he wouldn’t grip the sides of the bodice and pull it down, past her hips, to pool on the floor. So that he didn’t lose hold of his very tenuous control and do exactly what he had threatened to do earlier.
“Go now,” she said, the words quivering.
“As you wish, Princess. But there will come a time when I don’t leave once your clothes come off.” He didn’t know why he felt the need to add that. Didn’t know why he always felt the need to get in one more hit. Perhaps because he was powerless, as was the situation in many ways. She was too. Which was perhaps why she felt the need to lash out at him.
It was why he kept striking out at her.
“Not a day sooner than necessary,” she said.
“Get your sleep. Tomorrow you have yet more manners to learn.”
“Will you make your best effort at getting me to bite you again?”
“No. Tomorrow I’m going to teach you to dance.”
