Page 37 of Shock Heir for the Crown Prince

Eight p.m. came and Rudolpho left. When the clock struck eleven, Casimir knew himself for whipped. Pushing too hard. Trying to cover every angle of his upcoming speech to the nation when all he had to do was say what he had to say and follow through on it.

Easy.

He made his way to his bedroom, stripped down to skin and headed for the pool. Ritual or hedonism, he didn’t care. He needed this.

He sank into the water of the main pool tonight and made his way to the far end, where the waterfall flowed when the pump was on. When the pump wasn’t on and the sheet of water not falling, the area boasted a wide lip, just beneath water level, where a person might rest their arms while pillowing their head on the edge of the pool. He leaned back, stretched out, closed his eyes and tried to will the tension from his body.

He hadn’t really expected Ana to be waiting for him. She’d shared his bed last night, refused his marriage proposal this morning, and made him splinter into a thousand pieces up on the mountain, with her telling a story she’d never told before.

Because Casimir spoke Russian now. Not fluently, not without an accent, but he’d understood every word she’d uttered in the language, and he knew now what she wanted from life. What she was really holding out for.

Love.

Above all, she wanted someone to love her and cherish her as she should be cherished.

The main problem, as he saw it, being that he didn’t know how to love anyone. He who’d spent so long keeping people out of his heart and his head that he no longer knew how to let anyone in. A man apart. A man alone. A man who ruled.

The boy who was born to be king.

CHAPTER SEVEN

ANA COULDN’T SLEEP. She’d risen from her bed, slipped the wrap someone had left in the bathroom around her nakedness and stargazed from the darkness of her balcony until her memories of hot flesh and ravenous lovemaking had dimmed. She stayed out there, drawing patterns between the stars, until her flesh grew cold and clammy but still her mind was full of Casimir.

Casimir the man, not Casimir the king.

She couldn’t get the butterfly from lunchtime and Cas’s reaction to it and his conversations with Sophia out of her head. It was as if he’d wanted to connect with her but didn’t quite know how. Given his upbringing, he probably didn’t know how to be part of a family unit, but she couldn’t fault the man for trying.

He’d made more of an impact on his daughter than he knew. He was no longer ‘that man’ or ‘the prince’ or ‘the king’ as far as Sophia was concerned. He was Cas who liked owls but didn’t like butterflies. At some point he would stop being Cas and become Papa and then it would be My father said… and My father gave me… A puppy, a pony, a castle.

Tutors, for mother and daughter both. Heaven help her.

She couldn’t get his stupid marriage proposal out of her head. There was a time when she would have joyfully said yes. She could still say yes. Bury all her doubt and uncertainty and craving for love beneath an avalanche of practicality. Embrace life as a royal consort. Remain wholly in her daughter’s life. Trust the man to know what he was doing when he’d made his offer of marriage in the first place.

Two weeks, he’d said when he came for them. A mere two weeks of your time. We can negotiate… Now he was offering her a place at his side and a marriage that would decidedly not be in name only. Forget about her old life. Learn how to be what he needed her to be—mother to a duchess and consort to a king—and maybe one day she’d feel more at home and less utterly out of her depth. Forget those wild dreams of Casimir loving her with all his heart. Instead be content with what he was offering.

Compromise.

The air on the walkway was too crisp. The view was too superb. This walkway was the jewel in the fortress crown, loading her senses until they were raw. The shy moon and the shadows, the lick of air on already cold skin. She thought of Casimir, the man who’d haunted her dreams for years and who’d taken her again last night with a hunger she’d been powerless to resist. When it came to pure passion he would always win.

Whether he offered love or not, she wanted him.

When darkness fell and the world disappeared, she always wanted him.

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