Royal Chase (10 page)

“Who told you that?” He smiled in response, and I wanted to guess he’d heard it from Kat, but seriously, anyone who had ever stepped foot in my room would have been able to tell him. It made me uncomfortable that he was talking with other people about me.

He pulled his comforter into place. It wasn’t very neat looking, but I had to give him props for making the bed himself and not relying on the palace staff to do it. He sat down on his bed and faced me. I found an armchair across the room and settled into it.

“So . . . things with Salvatore are . . .”

I should have known he’d bring it up. I just wanted to forget. “Over.” I don’t know why he asked. He had been with me when I caught Salvatore having sex with a woman behind the nightclub. When, yet again, I had chosen a man who cheated on me the first chance he got.

“He didn’t deserve you.”

“Probably not. But you can’t really help who you’re attracted to, can you?”

“No, you can’t help that.” I knew he was talking about me, and I suddenly found my shoes fascinating. “I just wanted to see how you were doing.” He looked so concerned.

“I’m fine. Keeping busy. Is that the only reason you asked me to meet you?” I wanted to sound calm, even if my insides were all churned up.

“No. I wanted to ask you for a favor.”

“Sure. What?”

He smiled. “No, a favor. When knights used to joust, ladies would give them their favor. Some kind of token, like a ribbon or scarf, that was usually the colors of the lady’s house. Knights would put it on their lance; I want to put your favor on my mallet.”

That was a weird thing to ask for. “My house doesn’t have colors.”

“Maybe your favorite color then?”

“Okay. Give me a second.” I went back to my room. I never wore ribbons, because I wasn’t six, and I had never been all that into scarves. But I needed something small that could fit around a handle.

I literally had nothing that would work. My shirt was too big. I didn’t have red socks. My lipstick wouldn’t work. The only thing I had was . . . I picked up a pair of red lace underwear from my drawer.

I wasn’t naïve enough to believe that if I took these back with me nothing would happen. I knew if I handed these over to Dante, that he would definitely think it meant something.

And I couldn’t say it didn’t. I was feeling depressed and bad about myself and the world in general. Not because I’d had any feelings for Salvatore, but because of what he represented. Another cheating man. Who wanted someone other than me.

I wanted to feel wanted. Dante wanted me. We had already kissed once, and I knew he would kiss me again.

He was very tempting. Like in an Eve-introducing-Adam-to-apples kind of way. Gorgeous, masculine, charming, smart—all the things I loved in a man. It would be fun.

Maybe it was wrong to use him that way. It was another bad habit of mine—some loser would cheat on me, and I’d find some random guy to take my mind off of it for a few hours. After which I would feel sick and gross for treating myself so badly, and always promised that I would change. That next time I would do better.

But this time I wouldn’t let things go very far. I would keep it casual and under control. A few kisses never hurt anybody, right?

I decided to ignore the fact that it made no sense that I had dated Salvatore to stay away from Dante and now I would use Dante to feel better about myself. I never claimed to be totally logical. Or sensible. As I was about to prove.

I came back into his room and shut the door behind me. He looked up at me expectantly, and I walked over to where he sat on the bed, pulling the underwear out of my pocket and handing them to him.

He quickly realized what I had done, and said, “I don’t think I understand.”

“Don’t you?” I stepped closer to him so that my legs were positioned in between his, and I rested my hands on his shoulders. I liked the way my heart went into a free fall whenever I was this close to him. How my whole body seemed to hum with anticipation.

He put both of his hands on my waist, and I let out a little gasp. My pulse slowed and thudded loudly.

Being near him was like that moment before you stepped out on stage, waiting in the wings for your cue, nervous and excited and giddy, adrenaline pumping through your veins, your nerves crackling with excitement. Kissing him before had been like doing the best routine of your life in front of a packed theater, with everyone standing and applauding you.

I wanted to feel that again. Putting my no-kissing-guys-first rule aside, I started to lean in and he stayed put, waiting for me to come to him. “There’s no one here to get jealous over this kiss,” he said in a low voice.

“I don’t need an audience,” I whispered back.

I moved in slowly, inching my way closer to him, letting the anticipation grow.

Chapter 10

Have I ever mentioned that red is definitely my favorite color now?

But just before I kissed him, he said, “
Limone
, wait.”

Wait? What? I straightened back up.

“I understand that you have issues with men.”

“Right now I do!” What was his deal? I mean, other girls kissed toads to find a prince. I kissed a prince and he started acting like a toad.

“I don’t want you to feel like you’re making a mistake.”

That did it. I let go of him and felt sadness well up inside me over my constant poor decision-making. I plopped myself down on the bed next to him. “You’re right. I always get into these meaningless hookups with guys who say everything I want to hear but then never call me again. They think love is a four-letter word, and I’m dumb enough to pretend that getting physical means they’ll magically change. I’m getting too old for it. I like myself too much.”

“I like yourself too much, too.”

I let out a laugh that was edged with unshed tears. “There’s something to be said for respecting yourself and waiting until you think it’s right. Kat’s never had to feel this way, and I envy her that. Passion just gets you into trouble. I think I’d rather have a man who treats me well than a passionate physical relationship.”

He cupped my cheek with his hand and turned me toward him. “There’s no reason you can’t have both.”

Yeah, right. I wanted to laugh or maybe cry again. That hadn’t been my experience, ever. “You were right, though. I don’t want to use you just to make myself feel better.”

“I have no problem whatsoever with being used in any fashion you see fit.”

If he didn’t stop, I was going to start sobbing when this laughter became a hundred percent tears. I couldn’t keep it at bay for much longer.

His hand moved to the back of my head, and his gaze was focused on my mouth. “Now that we have decided that I won’t feel used and you shouldn’t feel bad, it seems to me that when a man and a woman are alone together, in his room, on his bed, that there’s only one logical outcome.”

“It is possible for a man and a woman to be alone together and not kiss.” My breathing had quickened, and I could hear his rapid, short breaths too.

“That may be true for some people, but we’re attractive.”

I closed my eyes, loving the funny and indescribable things his touch did to my insides.

“I’ve actually been wondering if that first kiss was a fluke. It registered on a magical scale.”

That made me open my eyes, where his heated, intense gaze caught me and made me willing to do whatever he wanted. Like if he wanted to club me over the head to take me back to his cave, I would have let him. “Magical?”

“If I’d been a frog . . .”

“You would have turned into a prince?”

Then his mouth was finally, finally on mine. Gently claiming, promising. I had that tantalizing, floaty sensation mixed up with my adrenaline and endorphin cocktail. If I could have bottled that feeling, I would have been a millionaire.

He was tentative and soft, and usually a kiss like that just seemed sweet and nice, but there was nothing sweet or nice about his kisses. They were hot and—what word had he used?—magical. Definitely magical. He gave me every opportunity to pull away.

Instead I wrapped my arms around him and deepened the kiss. Which he had no problems with as he responded in kind.

There was a mindless need, and I felt and knew nothing but his kiss and his touch. His kisses grew deeper and firmer, and then needier. My heart beat faster than a hot knife cutting through butter, every sensation heightened, every touch explosive. It seemed like we had been kissing for hours, but it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. He finally let me breathe, and I was glad my lungs remembered how to work, even if all I could manage was short, shallow breaths.

He lowered me back onto his bed, and I went willingly, loving the feeling of his weight against me. He moved his lips along the column of my throat, giving me chills at every spot where he stopped to plant a kiss, stroking the other side of my neck with his hand. I felt his hand move from my neck to the top button of my shirt.

And despite my decision earlier to keep things casual and under control, they were very serious and very out-of-control, and I wanted them that way.

I dragged him back up to my lips, not able to have him away from me for even a second longer.

“Why is everybody kissing all the time now?”

We broke apart and sat straight up to see his seven-year-old sister, Serafina, standing in the doorway. She had her hands on her hips and looked disgusted. I felt mortified. If she had walked in only a few minutes later, she would have found something very different and probably traumatizing.

“Serafina!” I said. My mind was not currently capable of any other words, but her presence was like a bucket of ice water being dropped on top of me. My mind cleared, and I realized how quickly things had escalated, and what exactly I had been doing.

And who I had been doing it with.

“Kat asked me and Chiara to find you, so that she could ride over with you to the match. I’m going with Mamma and Papa.”

She walked back out of the room, leaving the door wide open.

Dante rested his forehead on my temple. “I’d say that qualified for a worst-timing-ever award.” The he captured the bottom of my earlobe with his mouth, and a series of fireworks exploded up and down my spine.

Somehow I managed to pull myself clear. It wasn’t easy.

He went still. “What is it?”

“We can’t do this. I can’t kiss you and . . .” And not have it lead to more. I liked him too much as a person and a friend. Even if he said I could use him, he meant more to me than that.

I couldn’t tell him that. He’d insist I was being ridiculous and that we were just having fun. That I shouldn’t take things so seriously. I’d probably let him talk me into picking up where we’d left off.

But how would I ever change if I kept making the same stupid mistakes over and over again?

“I’m sorry.” It was the only pathetic thing I could say before I left.

My eyes darted over to the crew who silently filmed us. “What kind of favor?” I somehow mustered up the courage to ask. I hoped he didn’t take any detours down memory lane like I had.

He had to whisper in my ear so that the mikes didn’t pick up our voices. I told the shivers running across my skin to stop. “Meet me at midnight out in the gazebo. I want to talk to you about what you’ve discovered about the other girls.”

It had started off romantic and ended up some place practical.
Which is good
, I reminded myself. The crew finally let us go home, and Dante kissed me good-night on the cheek, and it felt like he had branded me. I had to consciously refrain from touching where he had kissed me. I thanked him and headed upstairs.

Half of the remaining girls waited in my room. “So? How did it go?” Genesis asked.

“It went fine. We had a nice time,” I told them as I kicked off my shoes. I started to unzip my dress and realized that everyone had gone silent and was staring at me. “What?”

“Are you really not going to kiss and tell?” Jessica R. asked.

“There was no kissing and so no telling.” Their expressions looked like a cross between disappointment and relief. “Look, Genesis and I already have an arrangement, and maybe we should make one as a group. If somebody does kiss him, nobody talks about it. It will just hurt everyone’s feelings.”

Several of the girls nodded. I said it like I was concerned about the group’s feelings, which I was, but the honest truth was that I didn’t want to hear about somebody else making out with Dante. I knew what he was capable of, and I didn’t want to imagine him doing all of that with someone else. I decided not to consider the reasons why too closely.

I wished Abigail was in the room, but it probably wouldn’t have made a difference. She couldn’t wait to tell us about what she’d done with Dante. Which reminded me that I needed to ask him about it when I saw him later.

Yawning, I told everyone I needed to turn in. I took off my makeup, got into some yoga pants and a T-shirt, and climbed into my bed. Someone in one of the production rooms turned off the overhead lights, plunging the room into darkness. Just a couple of hours until I had to sneak out.

Normally I would have been worried about falling asleep, especially since today had felt emotionally exhausting. But I was so afraid that I would fall asleep that I was wired and ready to go. The party girls downstairs were doing their nightly falling-down-drunk routine, and I had already decided to head to the first-floor bathroom and climb out the window instead of trying to get past them.

But by midnight, most of them had fallen asleep on the couches and floor. One girl was even lying on the kitchen island. I didn’t want to risk anything, so I followed my bathroom escape plan. It was a low window, making it easy to get out.

I had a blanket wrapped around me, although I didn’t need it. It wasn’t cold. It would have been back in Colorado.

Dante was in the gazebo, lying on a blanket and propped up by a bunch of pillows. He had something in his hand that looked like paper. He stood up when he saw me coming and smiled, making my heart thud uncontrollably.

I am engaged, I am engaged, I am engaged.

Right when I got to him, I accidentally stepped on the edge of my blanket, propelling myself forward. He caught me, thanks to his athletic reflexes. And nicely formed biceps. And . . .

“Are you clumsy because you’re finally starting to fall for me?”

I straightened up, ignoring the jolt that made my pulse go haywire. As far as he knew, I had zero feelings for him. So presumptuous. A little bit right, but presumptuous. “As if. I am not clumsy—and how long have you been waiting to use that line?”

“A while now. You’d be surprised by how few opportunities I’ve had to use it.” He always managed to make me laugh, even when he irritated me.

“I got these photos for us to go through,” he said. He was holding a head shot of each remaining contestant. “It took some convincing, and based on the look I got, I don’t want to know what the PA thought I needed them for.”

He sat back down, and I took a spot across from him. Sitting next to him was just asking for trouble.

“First one. Jessica.”

“Jessica R.,” I corrected him. “She wants to be a model, and she’s on the show because she thinks it’ll make her famous. Even though it almost never, ever does. Every time somebody thinks they’re the excep
tion I want to be like,
Here’s a lance, there’s a windmill, have at it
.”

“Literary humor,” he said. “I like it. So, not here for the ‘right reasons.’”

“Definitely not.”

The next picture was of the emotional Jen L. “Hair extensions. So fake.”

“If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle blonde.”

I hit him with one of the pillows while he laughed, fending me off. “I may color my hair, but it is all mine. It is totally different.”

“Oh, obviously,” he agreed.

“Next picture.” I ground the words out, ignoring his fading laugh. He held one up.

“Ashley S. She’s meaner than a skilletful of rattlesnakes. She keeps trying to insult me, but I don’t respond. I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed woman. There’s no sport in it.”

He looked puzzled. “But she always seems so nice.”

“I’m sure she does. She’s not.”

“And there’s the other Ashley.” I pulled her picture out of the group. “She giggles at all of your jokes, and we both know there has to be something wrong if someone laughs at
your
jokes.”

“You laugh at my jokes!”

Yes, and there was something very wrong with me because I was getting married in a few weeks and I was here at midnight with another man in a gazebo thinking impure thoughts, and having more fun and feeling more alive than I had any right to.

“Tiffany.” He held the picture up so I could see it.

“Let’s just say science isn’t her forte. Like Grandma Lemon would say, cute as a button, and nearly as smart as one.”

“You’re saying she’s dumb?”