My Royal Temptation / Ruined. Riley Pine
his impassive gaze give away that he knew Nikolai had planned to seduce me. But when I look inside the car and see my scones and fruit replaced by a small platter of croissants, I can’t help but burst into a fit of laughter.
Nikolai’s brows pull together, and it takes every ounce of control for me to simply motion toward the open door and say, “Look.”
He does, and as soon as he sees the pastries, he’s laughing too, and I am surprised the way my heart surges to hear such a sound—a genuine emotion from Prince Nikolai, and I get to bear witness.
X clears his throat and raises a brow.
“Your Highness. Miss Winter—I thought you might have worked up an appetite.”
I decide not to deny it because damn—I am starving. So I reach inside the car and grab a chocolate croissant, tearing off a piece and shoving it into a surprised Nikolai’s mouth before tearing into the rest of it with my teeth.
“You’re right,” I say, mouth full, hair tangled and probably full of sand, clothes still wet and plastered to my body. “I’m famished.”
X nods. “Your Highness, I take it there are supplies to collect from the bridge?”
Nikolai swallows his bite of croissant. “Yes, thank you. One fishing pole, the bucket of bait and Miss Winter’s dossier. You can throw the trout I caught back into the river.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” he says, not questioning why we are short one fishing pole.
Once X is out of earshot, I point at Nikolai with my half-eaten croissant.
“Hey, I thought you said tonight’s royal meal depended on what I caught on our little fishing expedition.”
He shrugs and gives me a sheepish grin, another expression I don’t expect, and it disarms me completely.
“I despise seafood, actually,” he says. “But I was hoping to enjoy putting you through the wringer.”
I open my mouth at an attempt to unleash my fury on him, but he silences me with a kiss, and I’m caught so off guard that I simply melt into it.
“How about a truce?” he says against me, and I squeak out my answer, the momentary fury dissolving into dust.
“Okay,” I whisper.
“Okay,” he says.
“But this cannot happen again, Your Highness. We have—I mean I have a job to do.”
He nods. “Of course. Never again, Miss Winter. You have my word.”
I sigh. I know he’s soon to be my king, that my job is to find him a queen, but right now I don’t believe his word for one tiny second. And that impish grin on his face tells me that neither does he.
Nikolai
“MY, MY, ISN’T His Highness in quite the chipper mood?” My wicked stepmother, Queen Adele, sizes me up from across the mahogany table. Even when it is just she, my father and I in residence at the palace, she insists on using the formal dining room that can accommodate up to fifty guests. Overhead hang three large crystal chandeliers, and lining the wood-paneled room are suits of armor interspersed with the images of frowning black-haired men, my ancestors, the kings of old.
From the looks of their faces, dark and brooding is a family tradition.
“As a matter of fact, Majesty, I am in good spirits.” I wipe my lips with a linen napkin before crooking them into a smile as fake as her own. The queen’s gaze narrows as she tries to see through my mocking mask.
Lots of luck, love.
My father cuts his roast, oblivious as always to the private war that I carry out with the hag. “I understand you met with the matchmaker this afternoon. She seems a competent woman.” He spears the beef with his fork. “Most enthusiastic.”
“Quite.” An image of Kate Winter flashes, one where she is on her knees, hair wet and wild, sucking my cock like some sort of mythic water goddess, and I suppress a satisfied grin.
“Rather common, if you ask me.” My stepmother gives an audible sniff.
“Good thing no one did,” I growl, my mouth flat-lining.
She ignores the warning in my voice. “I do admit to having second thoughts on Miss Winter. After all, how can a commoner have the proper breeding necessary to discern fine taste? Edenvale is the second-oldest throne in all of Europe. The realm expects certain standards.”
White-hot fury builds behind my eyes. This snobby shrew isn’t fit to lick the sole of one of Kate’s heels, let alone dare to speak her name with such disdain. True, my favorite matchmaker isn’t blue-blooded, but she has more natural grace and elegance in one of her little fingers than Adele has in her entire Botoxed body.
Who knows what prompted Father to marry her? I barely remember my real mother, but from all accounts, it was a love match. Queen Cordelia remains well-beloved by her people to this day, no thanks to Adele, who likes to pretend she never existed.
I study the fine lines that groove my stepmother’s frown. She has always been a sourpuss, but since her only daughter Victoria’s death she’s turned downright wicked.
The last vestiges of my good mood vanish. When Adele married my lonely father the only bright spot to the arrangement came in the form of her beautiful and vivacious nineteen-year-old daughter, my stepsister and first love. I was a foolish twenty-three-year-old boy determined to make Victoria my queen. While Father disapproved of the relationship, Adele could not hide her ambition. She might not have liked the idea of me making love to her daughter but persuaded Father to allow the engagement to proceed because it would make Victoria a queen. She even argued that it would strengthen Edenvale’s royal ties to have not one but two generations of our royal bloodlines matched. Their aristocratic family has always been one of the wealthiest and most influential in our kingdom. But they’ve always had a reputation for being ambitious.
Too ambitious for my liking.
Over the years, whenever I indulged in a whiskey too many and allowed my thoughts to wander, it had seemed conceivable that Adele might have masterminded the whole affair, put her only child in my path, advising her on how to best seduce her way into a lonely prince’s heart. If Victoria had survived the accident, perhaps she’d have grown to be as calculating and bloodless as the woman sneering down her aristocratic nose at me. The question, though, will never be answered. My youngest brother, Damien, saw to that, ending her life with his usual recklessness, earning his banishment and my everlasting hatred.
“Well, do try to retain your good mood for Saturday evening,” Adele says, dipping her spoon into the lobster bisque.
“What’s Saturday?” I crook my finger, signaling the butler to bring me more wine. I am tempted to grab the whole damn bottle, get too drunk to dream. I don’t want nightmares of Victoria disturbing my sleep tonight.
“Didn’t Miss Winter tell you?” My stepmother’s lifeless smile is stiff and doesn’t reach her cruel eyes. “She has arranged your first date.”
Kate
“No,” I say, when I open my apartment door to find X standing there. “Absolutely not.” Before I can close the door in the man’s face—and I would feel horrid doing so, but this crosses the line—Maddie sidles up behind me.
“Who’s your friend?” she asks, though I’m sure she can tell by his immaculate suit that he is not one who dwells on Market Street. I glance at my own attire, a freaking Fall Out Boy T-shirt and skinny jeans. I look like an American teenager.
“Maddie, this is X. He works for the royal family.”
My sister pulls the door the rest of the way open. She, of course, is in a perfectly beautiful