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CHAPTER FOUR

Damien

I SHOW A shaken Juliet to the bathroom, and she locks herself in. I press my palms to the door, my head falling against the heavy wood, and I hear the shower start.

“Fuck. What the hell have I done?”

I’ve most likely ruined the future queen of Nightgardin. I haven’t set her up for banishment. I’ve put her on the path to execution.

Somehow I make my way to the edge of the bed where I sit, head in hands. Two women. I’ve only been with two women like this, and I’ve likely now sent both to their graves.

I hear the click of the bathroom door, but I don’t dare move. How can I look her in the eye?

“Damien,” she says softly, resting her warm palms on my bare thighs. “Damien, look at me. Please.”

I lift my head, realizing the emotion that overwhelmed me when I was inside her was not merely from sex. Because at this moment I realize I’d do just about anything for this woman—this stranger whose life is forever changed because of me.

I expect her cheeks to be tear-soaked, the whites of her eyes to be bloodshot. Instead, I find a crystal-clear gaze coming from a woman I almost don’t recognize.

“Juliet?” I ask like a fool. Of course it’s her.

“Everything will be okay,” she says with a sureness that makes my chest ache. Because she could not be more wrong.

She’s wrapped in a plush white hotel towel, her rich brown locks dripping onto her shoulders.

“I fucked up,” I say, cradling her cheeks in my hands. “Don’t you see? This is who I am. I ruin anyone and anything I care about.”

She grins and strokes my hair from my forehead.

“Are you saying you care about me, Damien Lorentz?” Then she lets the towel fall.

“What the hell are you doing?” I ask as her gaze falls to my cock, hard as a rock, my body betraying me.

“I am not fertile,” she says. “At least, not right now. My governess taught me to chart my fertility the day I first bled. Orders from the king and queen. They wanted to be sure that as soon as I turned twenty-one and they handed me off to Nightgardin’s next king that he would plant his heir in me on his first try.” She grabs my cock, squeezes my shaft in her now-expert grip. “Of course I have not tested the method’s effectiveness before tonight.” She bats her long lashes at me.

My eyes widen. I’ve never heard of such a method, yet I’ve never given a shit what a woman did since what I did in the bedroom never put me in danger of getting a woman pregnant. How is she not afraid? How is she not beating her fists against my chest, berating me for ruining her?

“I’m free of disease, if that’s something you’re worried about,” I say, aiming to reassure her when the truth is that she doesn’t seem the least bit nervous, and I wonder if it’s not my own apprehension I’m trying to assuage. “I’ve always been safe with—” Saying it aloud now seems too boorish.

“With the countless other women you’ve taken from behind?”

Juliet finishes the thought, my bold little princess.

I nod. “Why is it different with you?” The question is more to myself, but something in me wants her to know that the second I buried myself inside her, everything changed.

“I don’t know,” she answers. “I sought you out for what I thought you could do for me physically.” She kisses my forehead, her taut nipples brushing against my chest. My cock pulses in reaction. “But you were kind and caring the second you approached me outside the club.”

“You were hurt,” I say, curtly.

“And you could have left me to fend for myself. But you didn’t.”

She strokes my hair, her gaze unblinking and fixed on mine. Then kisses the tip of my scar at the side of my jaw, and my chest tightens. I’ve survived for years on the rush of fast cars and the types of encounters with women that allowed my heart to remain numb.

I rest my hands on her hips, my fingertips kneading her soft skin.

“I wasn’t supposed to feel,” I admit, realizing I’m treading on very thin ice. Because feeling something for this woman is not an option.

“Do you want to know what I feel, Damien?” But she doesn’t wait for me to respond. “I feel trust.” She lifts my palm to her chest, my fingertips tracing the arrow of birthmarks, placing it over her heart—and her beautiful bare breast. “Right in here. And I feel safe.”

I let out a bitter laugh. “You’re deluding yourself, Princess. No one is safe with me.” Of this I am certain.

She climbs over me, balancing so the tip of my cock teases her opening.

“If you could keep from hurting me, would you?”

“Yes,” I admit with zero hesitation. “But we both know that isn’t an option.”

“This is, though,” she says, sinking over me like a custom-made racing glove.

She gasps, and I growl.

“Juliet... Jesus... Do you not...understand...what just happened?” I can barely speak because I am inside her with no barrier, her rich, tight warmth driving me out of my goddamn mind. “If your little chart doesn’t work, I could have put you at more risk than you ever anticipated.”

She pushes my shoulders, urging me onto my back.

“I understand three things,” she says. “The first is that it will take days for anyone to find me, as my governess believes I’m spending the weekend cloistered at the royal church praying and thanking God for the good fortune of my match.”

This makes me grin. “You really are an evil genius in disguise. Do you know that?”

She raises a brow. “The second is that I’m not ready to give you up for my duties after only one night. Not yet.”

I grip her hips tight and pulse inside her.

She writhes.

“And the third...” She pauses, and I watch that now-familiar flush creep up her chest, to her neck, and finally to her cheeks.

“Just say it, Princess. It can’t be worse than asking me if we were going to procreate.”

She lets out a nervous laugh, then leans down, pressing her breasts to my chest, her lips a breath away from my ear.

“The third is that when I do go home and marry Rupert, I’ll have the memory of my short time with you—the closest I will ever get to being passionately, ass over elbow, in love.”

I flip her over and kiss her with the hunger of a man starved of food, of water, of air, of anything and everything essential to the most basic survival.

Because she is all of these things and so much more. And so, for the next two days, I eat, drink and breathe nothing other than Juliet. I worship her body, and she nourishes my soul. She has unlocked a gate I thought no longer had a key, and hell if I know how the hell I’ll ever close it back up.

On the morning of the third day, we languish atop my plush duvet. I pepper her skin with soft kisses from her ankles to her lush pink lips, then back down again. I pause mid journey for a quick taste of her tangy sweetness.

She gasps.

“I could survive on this alone,” I say.

She laughs, pushing up on her elbows to look down at me. “You’d starve eventually.”

“It would be worth it,” I tell her, then give her one long, slow lick.

She fists the duvet, then collapses onto her back as she writhes against my lips.

“We’re never leaving this room,” she says.

“As you wish, Princess.” And slip one finger inside her, then two, as I suck her swollen clit between my lips.

She bucks and thrashes, and I have no choice but to drive her the rest of the way home, taking immense pleasure in doing so.

“Damien!” she calls out as I do, and I realize there is no sound better than my name tearing from her lips.

I slide my hand free and crawl over her limp yet satiated frame, admiring the blissful smile spread across her face.

I put that there.

I lean down to kiss her, but before my lips reach hers, the bedroom door bursts open, wood splintering as six men rush into the room.

The Nightgardin Royal Guard, better known as the Black Watch.

Juliet screams as two of the men haul her from the bed. It takes the other four to restrain me. Even then, they’re barely able to do it. My fight-or-flight reaction takes hold, and all I know is I will fight for this woman.

“Damien!” she screams, and I seethe as I watch her naked form being dragged toward the elevator.

“You fucking bastards,” I hiss at my captors, but they say nothing. “Juliet!” I call after her, our eyes meeting as another waiting guard wraps her in a throw from the sofa. “I will come for you!”

She opens her mouth to respond, but one of the guards covers it with a less-than-gentle hand. She struggles against his grip. When the guard swears and snatches his hand away, I grin.

She’s bitten him.

But my joy is short-lived, because they are in the elevator now, the doors already closing.

“Damien!” she cries one last time.

“I swear it, Juliet! I’ll find you!” I yell just as the doors seal and she slips from view, and I know now that I was wrong. My name tearing from her lips in abject terror will haunt me for the rest of my life.

One of my captors punches me in the face before I can completely register that she’s gone.

Then the truth of it all sinks in. They aren’t just here to take Juliet to the king and queen of Nightgardin.

They’re here to kill me, and there’s not a goddamned thing I can do about it, not that there would be any point. I’ve committed an act of treason, one I knew was punishable by death. Yet I was fool enough to think that whatever connection Juliet and I forged would be stronger than the law.

Two of the guards pin my arms behind my back, but I no longer struggle as the two men before me trade punches in quick succession. A rib breaks. Maybe two or three. One of my eyes swells shut, and a fist to the jaw makes me bite through my tongue.

My mouth fills with blood. None of the guards say a word as they continue what they were sent here to do. All the while I replay Juliet’s screams in my head, the promise I made to come for her already broken.

Finally, my arms are freed, and I collapse to my knees. I cough, and blood sprays the floor.

One of the guards raises a rifle and aims the butt of it at my head.

“You better fucking kill me,” I say, my voice thick and wet. “Otherwise I will be back, and I’ll make every single one of you pay for what you did to your very own princess.”

The guard with the gun laughs in my ruined face and whispers something in my ear. Then the entire world goes dark.

Juliet

Two months later

“Well, well, well,” I mutter to myself. “Out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

Outside the window, the towers and parapets of Edenvale Palace come into view. Across the blue moat rise huge statues of heroes and kings, marbled memories of past glories.

“Sorry, miss. I didn’t catch that.” The driver I hired at the border glances in the rearview mirror, tugging one side of his long, walrus-like mustache. I can tell he recognizes me but that he doesn’t know from where. I have hidden my chocolate-brown waves under an Hermès scarf tied in a jaunty bow at my chin. My beige trench coat is expensive camel hair but unremarkable other than its elegant cut.

“I said, Goodness. Here we are.” I set my hand on the small suitcase on the seat beside me. “Is the servants’ entrance close?”

“Right around the corner, miss,” he says before giving me another searching look. “Who is it you are going to visit again?”

“My cousin Dora,” I lie. “She’s been a maid at the royal court for five years.”

“A Nightgardin maid? Working at the court?” he says, incredulous.

Blast! My accent has betrayed me in ways my hair never would.

I think fast. “Theodora, or Dora as we like to call her, was born in Rosegate.” Rosegate is the disputed city between our two long-feuding kingdoms. “Right next door to me, in fact.”

“Hmm, you’re from Rosegate too, eh?” The driver clicks his tongue. But he hasn’t called me out on the lie. He can’t, because people from both of our kingdoms reside in that ancient town. “Well, miss. I do hope you enjoy your stay at the royal palace. Folks say it’s gone a bit peculiar of late.”

“Oh?” I try to sound interested, but not enough to attract attention. In reality, I am starving for any scrap of information about—

“Damien,” the man says, finishing my thought. “The black sheep prince has returned from his years banished into the wilderness. Everyone is being quite tight-lipped about it. But my sister, Jenny, works in the kitchen, and she says that he has gone mad. I don’t like speaking ill of the Lorentz family, God keep His Majesty, but that youngest boy was born as bad as they come.”

Memories wash over me. Damien’s confident yet gentle hands claiming my body, making me burn, making me his. In our stolen days together, it was as if we were placed in France’s Large Hadron Collider, two particle beams thrust together at the speed of light. Of course the results were volatile. I was naive to have expected anything else. I see that now.

Damien was removed by Nightgardin guards as I was dragged away to my parents.

But...he said he would come for me. Swore it, even. Those were his last words as I was taken away.

He never came.

Perhaps the challenge seemed too great.

Perhaps I wasn’t worth the effort to him.

The king and queen could have hanged me. Instead they hastened plans for the wedding—to tomorrow. So naturally, I ran away. Again. But this time I did not bother with any sort of lie. It wouldn’t have mattered. I’ve been under lock and key ever since that weekend, every meal taken either with the king and queen or alone in my chamber. Each night my governess watched me place a sleeping tablet on my tongue—and each night when she left me, I retrieved the tablet from under my tongue and sent it down the toilet.

Last night when Elsie, the serving girl, brought my teapot, I asked that she join me. And because a servant cannot refuse a royal, Elsie drank a cup, but not before I distracted her and poured in two crushed sleeping tablets.

Soon after, I escaped out the window. No handsome prince climbed my tower and saved me. I did it myself.

My hand settles over my belly, still flat. No sign of the secret inside.

Maybe I fell fast and hard for a prince who fed me nothing but pretty lies full of tenderness and wonder, but now there is no choice. Our time together resulted in unexpected consequences. Ones he needs to answer for. Ones he needs to protect.

“Ah, here we are,” the driver says, pulling up at the guard tower. “They’ll fix you right up and give you palace security clearance.”

“Thanks very much,” I say, and slide out, tugging my suitcase with me.

Once I had a kingdom. Now I own two dresses, four pairs of underwear and a toothbrush.

But I’m free.

At the guard tower, the royal officer barely looks up from his newspaper. “State your business.”

I untie the scarf from my hair and shake out my long locks. “I am Juliet de Estel, Princess of Nightgardin. And I demand an immediate audience with the Edenvale royal family.”

The man’s jaw nearly hits his ample belly. He clears his throat twice, his lips flapping soundlessly before managing to rasp “one moment, ma’am. I mean, miss. I mean, Your Eminence.”

He doesn’t pick up the phone beside him. Instead, he hits a red button on the wall.

“Yes?” A deep masculine voice says in a crisp accent.

“Mister X, sir, you’re going to want to come to the servants’ entrance, right away. There’s a...diplomatic situation unfolding here at the post.”

Two minutes later a dark-haired man in a black suit appears, his eyes hidden by a pair of aviator sunglasses. He doesn’t give me more than a passing glance before walking into the guard booth.

“The heir to the Nightgardin throne is at your post,” he says.

“That’s what I was trying to say. But more subtle-like,” the guard replies.

The man removes his sunglasses and regards me with a look of cool appraisal. “Subtle indeed, Bartholomew. This is most unusual protocol for a state visit,” he says.

“I’m a most unusual woman,” I snap, refusing to be intimidated by his hooded gaze.

That earns me a ghost of a smile.

“Indeed.”

“And since you know me, might I have the pleasure of an introduction?”

“I’m called X, Your Highness. Head of Edenvale’s Royal Secret Service.”

“X?” I chuckle. “X what?”

The guard Bartholomew joins in my humor. “That’s what I always say. We have a running bet on what his real name might be.”

“And it pains me to give you nothing but disappointment,” X says wryly before reaching out to take my bag. “Will this be all?”

I nod.

“I need to speak with all members of the royal family... Prince Damien especially.”

Something flickers in his enigmatic eyes. I get the sense that this is a man who has seen it all and then some. I am the daughter of his kingdom’s worst enemies, and he barely batted an eyelid. And yet when I say Damien’s name I get a reaction that I’d almost be tempted to describe as sympathy.

“You’re acquainted with Prince Damien?”

The strange way he says the prince’s name sends a chill down my spine. I remember the driver’s words. What has happened to Damien? The last I saw of him he was screaming that he’d find me–that he’d stop at nothing. Then two months of radio silence.

“He made me promises and broke them all,” I announce. “And for my impetuousness, my mother ensured that I was broken in ways few can imagine. I didn’t escape to rekindle a failed romance. I did it because a mother lets nothing—nothing—not solitary confinement, not interrogation, not hunger—stop her from protecting her child.”

X’s gaze follows my hand as again I lay a palm over my abdomen, as if the small gesture can protect the tiny spark inside. My now-solitary reason for existence, for having the courage, for risking everything.

“I see.” And I can tell that in some strange way, this odd man does see. Relief sweeps through me as I feel protected for the first time since being ripped from that hotel room two months ago.

“Now take me to see him at once,” I snap, recovering the royal imperiousness I wear as a second skin.

X gives a curt nod. “Follow me, Your Highness. I’ll assemble the royal family in the west wing.”