Page 1 of Twelve Nights In The Prince's Bed

CHAPTER ONE

THISWASTHEIRtenth shared birthday party, their tenth year as best friends, and despite what she’d lost in life Poppy Henderson looked out at the room filled with guests and felt grateful. What would her life have been like without Her Royal Highness Princess Eleanor Aetos and the whole Aetos family in it?

After her parents had died, she’d thought she’d never know this kind of contentment again. She’d thought she’d never know the love of family, the sense of belonging, but her parents’ best friends, who just so happened to be the King and Queen of Stomland, had wrapped their arms around Poppy despite their own heavy sense of grief after the death of their oldest son, and never let go. They’d treated her like a daughter from the beginning, and their love had helped Poppy to heal. She was so grateful to them, there was nothing she wouldn’t do for the King and Queen.

As for the royal children, Eleanor had become a sister to Poppy instantly and Eleanor’s brother Adrastos...well, that relationship was a little harder to define. Up until she was twenty-one she would have described him as a brother of sorts, albeit five years older and a little serious and cool. But he’d been kind as well, and had never once acted as though he minded Poppy’s intrusion into their family.

Of their own volition, her eyes drifted across the room, finding him easily as they always did, and her heart kicked up a gear, her stomach tightening uncomfortably at just the sight of him. They’d barely spoken since that night, Ellie’s and Poppy’s twenty-first birthdays. Had it really been three years ago? Her skin flushed with memories she tried not to think about, the confusion of having someone she’d regarded almost as a brother draw her into his arms and kiss her until she was intimately aware of him as a man, a man she desired very, very much...

The memory she tried desperately to forget, because it was so incendiary and confusing she couldn’t make sense of it. The way his hands had pulled her close that night, held her against his hard, taut body, his eyes challenging her for a moment before he’d dropped his head and his lips had met hers. Sparks of desire had ignited in Poppy’s bloodstream and she’d finallyunderstoodwhat lust was. She’d lost herself in those moments, moments that had seemed to stretch and take over all of time for Poppy. He’d kissed her and she’d almost forgotten who and where she was, until a noise had broken through the spell and they’d pulled apart, each as shocked as the other, eyes locked as they’d tried to make sense of the madness that had overtaken them.

‘That shouldn’t have happened. I’m sorry.’

His apology had surprised her, because Adrastos wasn’t the kind of man who made mistakes. He was never in the wrong—even the media had said as much: the papers were constantly running stories celebrating Adrastos’s victories. Had the kiss been wrong? Reality had sliced through Poppy quickly enough and she’d remembered the truth of their situation, her loyalty to his parents, the fact they’d been raised since her parents’ deaths almost as siblings. Butnotsiblings, she hastily comforted herself.

Poppy stared at Adrastos now as if she were a starving person led to a banquet, while Adrastos was distracted enough for her to be able to take full advantage.

Where Eleanor had inherited her mother’s blonde hair and slight figure, Adrastos was a throwback to his ancient ancestors, warriors shaped in the cradle of civilisation, with those broad shoulders and muscular arms honed by his pursuit of all sports, but particularly car racing and rowing—she remembered him waking early and taking to the Mediterranean, training with his crew until he was covered in perspiration. He would return to the palace smelling of sea salt and power.

Days after their kiss, it had been abundantly clear Adrastos had put it completely from his mind. He had been back to his usual tricks, pictured in the nation’s papers with a beautiful actress from Germany. A week after that, it had been a Spanish model. Six weeks later, a world-famous Swiss athlete. Adrastos—a renowned bachelor—had simply got on with his life, just as it had been before The Kiss. So why couldn’t Poppy get him out of her head even then? Why couldn’t she date another guy? Try to find that same spark she’d felt when Adrastos had kissed her?

Locked in conversation with one of his cousins, Adrastos shifted slightly, his eyes moving quickly and landing directly on Poppy, almost as if he knew where she was standing, almost as if...

She put a stop to that thought, too. There was no way he’d been watching her.

Their eyes met and the same sparks that had ignited her bloodstream three years earlier were back, fierce and out of control.

On the night of her twenty-first birthday, quite out of nowhere, Poppy had been awakened with feelings she hadn’t known existed. And she’d liked it. But ever since, that side of her had been dormant, unexplored, unknown. Her virginity was something she couldn’t understand. It hadn’t been a conscious choice. Before the kiss, she’d been busy at university, working very hard to live up to her parents’ academic successes, and to make the royal couple proud. And afterwards? The thought of any other man turned her body to ice. It had been easy not to date, not to flirt, not to desire. But now, at twenty-four, in the same room as Adrastos, her body was charged with a billion tiny sparks, more energy than all the stars in the universe.

Perhaps it was the last disastrous date she’d attempted. A month earlier, she’d let Eleanor set her up with a friend of a friend. A man she’d liked. Enjoyed the company of. But when he’d tried to kiss her goodnight, she’d felt nausea rising in her chest and had known that if his lips touched hers, she’d have vomited over their shoes. Mortified, she’d recoiled, made an excuse and bolted inside her townhouse, feeling broken and stupid and wondering what the hell was wrong with her.

Like a sinkhole, Adrastos drew her attention back, and there it was: fizzing in her veins, a sense of certainty and need, a reckless desire to understand what had happened between them all those years ago, to understand why he had been able to flood her with desire where no one else had.Was she simply not a sexual person? Had she mistaken her reactions to Adrastos that night? Or would she feel the same way now, if they were to kiss once more...?

Swiping another champagne from a passing tray, she took three generous sips before clutching the glass a little too tightly in her hands and sashaying across the room, her pulse racing as she drew closer to Adrastos, her heart thumping so hard it jumped out of its usual position in her chest and lodged somewhere in the vicinity of her throat.

But surely this was too late? Three years? How many women had he been with since? Would he even remember?

And just as that question struck her in the face, Adrastos turned once more, their eyes locked, and the world stopped spinning. Poppy’s mouth went dry and nothing else mattered. Spurred on by the fact it was her birthday, by just the right amount of champagne, and by the fact that earlier today she’d accepted a job in the Netherlands that would see her moving from Stomland and starting afresh, she inched forward, ever so slightly.

She had to know, to understand...to feel alive again... Her breath caught in the very back of her throat and when she spoke, the words tumbled out almost too fast.

‘Do you have a moment, Your Highness?’ The title might have seemed strange but even though they’d spent so much time together, certain formalities still tended to be observed, particularly when they were around others.

Adrastos’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, and Poppy’s nerves were frayed, the possibility that he might say ‘no’ was real and suddenly very scary. But a moment later, he dipped his head, a curt expression on his face but agreement conveyed by the subtle gesture.

‘What is it?’ He took a small step away from the group he’d been standing with.

Poppy again squeezed the glass in her hand, surprised in the back of her mind that it didn’t shatter completely. He was so handsome. So familiar and so completely strange all at once. Adrenalin made her aware of every vertebra in her back.

‘Can we speak somewhere more private?’

His Adam’s apple shifted but otherwise his face didn’t move, didn’t betray a single response to that question. After a beat, he nodded. ‘There’s a balcony. Do you have a coat?’

Poppy looked over her shoulder, waved indistinctly towards the makeshift cloakroom, over on the other side of the penthouse, with dozens of revellers in between.

‘You may use mine,’ he said, so Poppy’s eyes skittered to his and she had to dig her fingernails into her palms to hold her resolve firm.

‘I’m fine. This won’t take long.’ But even as she said it, she felt a little throb of excitement, the creaking open of a door to a world of possibilities she’d never before contemplated. She was being silly. Egged on by champagne and curiosity, by the fantasies that kiss had spawned when he’d taken a perfectly content yet inexperienced twenty-one-year-old and shown her just a glimpse of what her body was capable of feeling.

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