Page 15 of Forbidden Royal Vows

Not because he had asked for such a manipulation, because he hadn’t. He wouldn’t. But because the hostess thought she was doing Her Majesty the great favor of bestowing Caius’s much-sought-after company upon her. He was the prize at these gatherings.

Accordingly, he beamed at Mila and smiled lazily as she committed acts of restrained violence against each and every course that was brought before her.

“We already have a tourism board.” She stabbed a succulent shrimp with the tines of her fork. Hard. “And I was unaware that you had ever worked for a living. Or at all.”

“You can be sure, Your Majesty, that I’m very good at...” He waited for her gaze to find his, clearly against her will. He let his smile get even lazier and tinged with wickedness. “Working.”

He should not have taken so much pleasure in making her react. But he did. There was something about watching the hint of color bloom in her cheeks. About tracking the precise tautness of her lips. Because Caius liked that he could see beneath her mask when no one else seemed aware it was there.

Having seen beneath it, how could he keep himself from trying to pry it off?

Or pretending he might pry it off, anyway. Out here in public, where anyone can see—something he was certain she sat up nights worrying about.

Just so long as you think of me, he’d said when she’d said something like that, though in a way that suggested her worry was cool and rational. Not hot and bothered and yearning at four a.m., the way he often was.

“How curious,” she said now, in that cool, repressive tone that he could feel directly in his sex. It made him grin. “I was under the impression that you were nothing but a dilettante. Flitting about Europe like an intoxicated butterfly.”

“I have also spent rather a lot of time on the West Coast of America,” he said, grinning wider at that faint narrowing of her gaze that was as loud as shout to him. “It’s the most interesting place. A very rugged sort of beauty. Not nearly as manicured as the Continent can be.” He let his smile go guileless. “Have you been? On a state visit, perhaps?”

She did not dignify that with either a glare or a reply. She turned to the person on her other side instead, engaging the older woman in what sounded like a very dull discussion of economic programs that had failed to achieve their stated goals.

When the next course came, she returned her attention to Caius with a baleful sort of glare. Because, he knew, she would have continued to ignore him all night but that would elicit as much comment—maybe more. She was expected to divide the favor of her notice equally and Mila was scrupulous when it came to managing the expectations put upon her.

He would have made a terrible queen, he had often thought.

“How long do you intend to grace the kingdom with your presence?” she asked.

“I had originally thought to stay only a day or so.” He leaned back in his chair so he could lounge at her, boneless and unfazed by her regal consequence, which was not strictly polite. But then again, he was already the darling of society here, and everywhere. He was allowed leeway and what was the point of such allowances if he couldn’t take advantage of it. “I am looking into buying some property here.”

“Whatever for?”

“Surely your kingdom’s charms advertise themselves, Your Majesty.”

“I have always found the charms of the kingdom profound. It is the kind of place that becomes a part of a person’s soul.” That smile of hers flashed then, and he saw how easily she could make it a weapon. She aimed it straight at him. Then held it to his throat. “Are you in possession of one of those?”

Caius should not have found himself disarmed. So easily.

But he was.

Later, maybe, he would piece together what happened just then. That flash of the girl he remembered there in that gleaming gaze of hers, for only him to see. And the joy of it, that unexpected attack.

She’d enjoyed it, and so he had, too.

“I doubt I have ever known the touch of a soul,” he answered honestly. And quite without meaning to. “Yet somehow I muddle along.”

“Pretending, is that it?” Mila was no longer stabbing at her food. And though he knew better than to indulge this in public, he could feel the current between them then, blocking out everything else. When that was nothing but dangerous. “Just preening in the dead center of whatever stage you can find? Playing whatever role will get you whatever it is you want in that moment?”

He forgot himself entirely. “I thought that was your role. Your entire objective is to disappear until you become your own statue, is it not?”

And they were both lucky, he thought, that the hostess chose that precise moment to surge to her feet and start making proclamations in the form of a deferential speech, so that no one heard him.

But Mila did.

There were cheers all around, applause and toasts, but their gazes seemed tangled together with too many ghosts in between.

Until she tore her gaze away and cooled back into her preferred state of flesh become stone, the perfect queen.

The next morning, he woke before dawn, as was his custom. Though he went to great lengths not to let that sort of thing get out. It would ruin his reputation as a debauched hedonist entirely.

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