LITMIR.BIZ

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could start right now.” He nodded at his feet, though his gaze burned. “Right here.”

      And for a helpless moment, she imagined doing exactly that, as if he’d conjured the image inside her head. Of her simply dropping to her knees before him, then pulling that sheet away and doing what he was clearly suggesting she do… . Adriana felt herself heat, then tremble deep inside, and he smiled. He knew.

      God help her, but he knew.

      When she heard one of his bedmates call his name from behind him, Adriana jumped on it as if it was a lifeline—and told herself she didn’t care that he knew exactly how much he’d got to her. Or that the curve in his wicked mouth mocked her.

      “It looks like you’re needed,” Adriana said, pure adrenaline keeping her voice as calm and unbothered as it should have been. She knew she couldn’t show him any fear, or any hint that she might waver. He was like some kind of wild animal who would pounce at the slightest hint of either—she knew that with a deep certainty she had no interest at all in testing.

      “I often am,” he said, a world of sensual promise in his voice, and that calm light of too much experience in his gaze. “Shall I demonstrate why?”

      She eyed the pouty redhead, who was finally sitting up in the bed, apparently as unconcerned with her nudity as Pato was.

      Adriana hated him. She hated this. She didn’t know or want to know why he’d succeeded in getting to her—she wanted to do her job and then return to happily loathing him from afar.

      “I suggest you get rid of them, put some clothes on and meet me in your private parlor,” she said in a clipped voice. “We need to discuss how this is going to go.”

      “Oh, we will,” Pato agreed huskily, a dark gleam in his gaze and a certain cast to his mouth that made something deep inside her quiver. “We can start with how little I like being told what to do.”

      “You can talk all you want,” Adriana replied, that same kick of adrenaline making her bold. Or maybe it was something else—something more to do with that odd hunger that made her feel edgy and needy, and pulsed in her as he looked at her that way. “I’ll listen. I might even nod supportively. But then, one way or another, you’ll behave.”

      Pato rid himself of his companions with as little fuss as possible, showered, and then called his brother.

      “All these years I thought it was true love,” he said sardonically when Lenz answered. “The descendant of the kingdom’s most famous traitor and the besotted future king in a doomed romance. Isn’t that what they whisper in the corners of the palace? The gossip blogs?”

      There was a brief silence, which he knew was Lenz clearing whatever room he was in. Pato was happy to wait. He didn’t know why he felt so raw inside, as if he was angry. When he was never angry. When he had often been accused of being incapable of achieving the state of anger, so offensively blasé was he.

      And yet. He thought of Adriana Righetti and her dark brown eyes, the way she’d spoken to him. He pressed one hand against the center of his chest. Hard.

      “What are you talking about?” Lenz asked, after a muttered conversation and the sound of a door closing.

      “Your latest discard,” Pato said. He stood there for a moment in his dressing room, scowling at his own wardrobe. What the hell was the matter with him? He felt…tight. Restless. As if this wasn’t all part of the plan. He hadn’t expected her to be…her. “Thank you for the warning that this was happening today.”

      “Do you require warnings now?” Lenz sounded amused. “Has the Playboy Prince lost his magic touch?”

      “I’m merely considering how best to proceed,” Pato said, that raw thing in him seeming to tie itself into a knot, because he knew how he’d like to proceed. It was hot and raw inside him. Emphatic. “Yet all I find myself thinking about are those Righetti royal mistresses. She looks just like them. Tell me, brother, what other gifts has she inherited? Please tell me they’re kinky.”

      “Stop!” Lenz bit out the sharp command, something Pato very rarely heard directed at him. “Have some respect. Adriana isn’t like that. She never…”

      But he didn’t finish. And Pato blinked, everything in him going still. Too still. As if this mattered.

      “Does that mean what I think that means?” he asked. It couldn’t. He shouldn’t care—but there was that raw thing in him, and he had to know. “Is it possible? Was Adriana Righetti, in fact, no more than your personal assistant?”

      Lenz muttered a curse. “Is that so difficult to believe?”

      “It defies all reason,” Pato retorted. But he smiled, a deep satisfaction moving through him, and he thought of the way Adriana had looked at him, determination and awareness in her dark eyes. He felt it kick in him. Hard. “You kept her for three whole years. What exactly were you doing?”

      “Working,” Lenz said drily. “She happens to be a great deal more than a pretty face.” He cleared his throat. “Speaking of which, the papers are having a grand time attempting to uncover the identity of your mystery woman.”

      “Which one?” Pato asked, still smiling.

      Lenz sighed. “And still the public adores you. I can’t think why.”

      “We all have our roles to play.” He heard the restlessness in his voice then, the darkness. It was harder and harder to keep it at bay.

      His older brother let out another sigh, this one tinged with bitterness, and Pato felt his own rise to the surface. Not that it was ever far away. Especially not now.

      “I thought it would feel different at this point,” Lenz said quietly. “I thought I would feel triumphant. Victorious. Something. Instead, I am nothing but an imposter.”

      Pato pulled on a pair of trousers and a shirt and roamed out of his dressing room, then around the great bedchamber, hardly seeing any of it. There was too much history, too much water under the bridge, and only some of it theirs. Chess pieces put in place and manipulated across the years. Choices and vows made and then kept. They were in the final stages of a very long game, with far too much at stake. Far too much to lose.

      “Don’t lose faith now,” he said, his voice gruff. “It’s almost done.”

      Lenz’s laugh was harsh. “What does faith have to do with it? It’s all lies and misdirection. Callous manipulation.”

      “If you don’t have faith in this course of ours, Lenz,” Pato said fiercely, the rawness in his brother’s voice scraping inside him, “then all of this has been in vain. All of it, for all these years. And then what will we do?”

      There was a muffled noise that suggested one of Lenz’s aides had poked a head in.

      “I must go,” his brother said after another low conversation. “And this is about sacrifice, Pato, though never mine. Don’t think it doesn’t keep me awake, wondering at my own vanity. If I was a good man, a good brother…”

      He didn’t finish. What would be the point? Pato rubbed a hand over his eyes.

      “It’s done,” he said. “The choice is made. We are who are and there’s no going back.”

      There was a long pause, and Pato knew exactly which demons danced there between them, taunting his brother, dark and vicious. They were his, too.

      “Be as kind to Adriana as you can,” Lenz said abruptly. “I like her.”

      “We are all of us pawns, brother,” Pato reminded him softly.

      “Be nice to her anyway.”

      “Is that a command?” The raw thing in him was growing, hot and hungry. And Lenz had never touched her.

      “If it has to be.” Lenz snorted. “Will it work?”

      Pato

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