He still didn’t know the answer to that.
His long-term head of security, Ricardo, who’d suggested this tabloid sensation of a woman in the first place, had a lot to answer for. But here, now, Cairo had to navigate what he’d expected to be a very straightforward business conversation despite the fact he felt so...unsettled.
“Have you lured me back to your hotel suite to show me your etchings, Your Usually Far More Naked Grace?” Brittany’s voice was so dry it swept over him like a brush fire, igniting a longing in him he’d never imagined he’d feel for anyone or anything aside from his lost kingdom and its people. He didn’t understand what this was—what was happening to him, when he’d felt absolutely nothing since the day he’d lost his family and had understood what waited for him if he wasn’t careful. What General Estes, the self-appointed Grand Regent of Santa Domini, had made clear was Cairo’s destiny if he ever so much as glanced longingly at the throne that should have been his. “What a dream come true. I’ve always wanted to join such a vast and well-populated parade of royal paramours.”
That the girl was perfect for his purposes wasn’t in doubt, dry tone or not.
Cairo had known it the moment Ricardo had handed him her picture. Even before Ricardo had told him anything about the pretty redhead who wore so little and stared into the camera with so much distance and mystery in her dark eyes. He’d felt something scratch at him, and he’d told himself that was reason enough to conceal himself and sneak into one of her scandalous performances in Paris. He’d been far more intrigued than he should have been as he’d watched her command the stage, challenging the audience with every sinuous move of her famously lithe and supple figure.
He’d sent one of his aides with his invitation and he’d continued interviewing the other candidates for his very special position, but his heart wasn’t in it once he’d seen Brittany. And that was before he’d read all the unsavory details of her life story, which, of course, rendered her an utterly appalling if not outright ruinous choice for a man some people still dreamed would be king one day. General Estes might have routed Cairo’s father from the throne of Santa Domini when Cairo was still a small child, but the passing of time only ever seemed to make the loyalists more shrill and focused. And that made no one safe—neither Cairo nor the Santa Dominian people, who didn’t deserve another bloody coup in a thirty-year span, much less the empty-headed playboy prince Cairo played for the papers as its figurehead.
Besides, Cairo knew what the loyalists refused to see—there was nothing good in him. He’d seen to that. There was only shame and darkness and more of the same. Play a role long enough and it ate a man alive. The desperate American stripper who’d made an international game out of her shameless gold digging was an inspired choice to make certain that even if no one listened to Cairo about who he’d become, no coup could ever happen and his people would be spared a broken, damaged king.
And then she’d walked up to him in a dress of spun gold and pretended not to know him, and he’d forgotten he’d ever so much as considered another woman for this role at all.
“Was it a lure?” he asked now. He turned to see her rolling her glass of wine between her palms, an action he shouldn’t have found even remotely erotic. And yet... “I asked you to accompany me to my hotel suite and you agreed. A lure is rather less straightforward.”
“If you say so, Your Semantic Highness.”
Cairo had expected to find her attractive. He’d expected a hint of the usual fire deep within him and the lick of it in his sex, because he was a man, after all. Despite what he needed to do here. He’d been less prepared for the sheer wallop of her. Of how the sight of her made his breath a complication in his chest.
And he certainly hadn’t imagined she’d be...entertaining.
The pictures and even the stage hadn’t done her any justice at all, and the tidy little marriage of convenience he’d imagined shifted and re-formed in his head the longer he looked at her. Cairo knew he should call it off. The last thing he needed in his life was one more situation he couldn’t control, and the blazing thing raging inside of him now was the very definition of uncontrollable.
And she was something more than a gorgeous redhead who’d looked edible in a down-market burlesque ensemble, or even a former American television star in a shiny dress that made her look far more sophisticated than she should have been. Brittany Hollis should have been little more than a jumped-up tart. Laughable in the midst of so much old-world splendor here in Monaco.
But instead, she was fascinating.
Cairo was finding it exceedingly difficult to keep his cool, which had never happened to him before in all the years since he’d lost his family. He hardly knew whether to give in to the sensation, unleashing God knew what manner of hell upon himself, or view it as an assault. Both, perhaps.
“Is this the part where we stare at each other for ages?” Brittany asked from her position on the crisp white sofa where she perched with all the boneless elegance of a pampered cat. “I had no idea royal intrigue was so tedious.”
It was time to handle this. To handle himself, for God’s sake. This wasn’t about him, after all, or whatever odd need he felt licking at him, tempting him to forget the dark truths about himself in earnest for the first time in some twenty years.
“Of course it’s tedious,” he said, drawing himself up to his full height. He brushed a nonexistent speck of lint from one sleeve. “That’s why kings are forced to start wars or institute terror regimes and inquisitions, you understand. To relieve the boredom.”
“And your family was drummed out of your country. I can’t think why.”
Cairo had long since ceased to allow himself to feel anything at all when it came to his lost kingdom and the often vicious comments people made about it to his face. He’d made an art out of seeming not to care about his birthright, his blood, his people. He’d locked it all up and shoved it deep inside, where none of it could slip out and torture him any longer, much less trip him up in the glare of the public eye.
No stray memories of graceful white walls cluttered with priceless art, the dizzy blue sky outside his window in that particular bright shade he’d never seen replicated anywhere else, the murmur of the mountain winds against the fortified walls of his childhood bedroom in the castle heights. No recollections of the night they’d all been spirited away in the dark before General Estes could get his butcher’s hands on them, hidden in the back of a loyalist’s truck across the sharp spine of the snowcapped mountains that ringed the capital city, never to return.
He didn’t let himself think of his father’s roar of laughter or his mother’s soft hands, lost forever. He never permitted himself any stray thoughts about his younger sister, Magdalena, a bright and gleaming little girl snatched away so easily and so unfairly.
He didn’t have the slightest idea why the usual barbed comments from yet another stranger should lodge in him tonight like a mortal blow, as if the fact this woman had surprised him meant she could slip beneath his defenses, too. No one could do that. Not if he didn’t let them.
And he was well aware that even if he’d wanted someone close to him, to that tarnished thing inside of him he called his soul, he couldn’t allow it to happen. He couldn’t let anyone close to him or they’d be rendered so much more collateral damage. One more weapon the general would find a way to use against Cairo and then destroy.
Why was Brittany Hollis making him consider such things?
He studied her. Her coppery hair was caught up in a complicated twist, catching the light as she moved. Her neck was long and elegant, and made him long for a taste of her. More than a taste. Her skin looked as if it was dusted a fainter gold than the dress she wore, which on any other woman might have been a trick of cosmetics, but on this one, he thought, was actually her. She was far prettier than her photographs and infinitely more captivating than her coarse ap
pearances on that stupid show. She was all impossibly long legs, those lovely curves shimmering beneath the expert cling of the gown and that enticing intelligence simmering there in her dark eyes.
That same thing scratched at him, the way it had in Paris when Ricardo had given him her picture, and he knew better than to let it. This was already a mess. A problem, and he had enough of those already. He needed a clear path and a solution, or what was the point of this game? He might as well hand himself over to the general for the execution that had already been meted out to the rest of his bloodline and call it a day.
Some part of him—a part that grew larger all the time—wished he’d done just that, years ago. Some part of him wished he’d been in that car with the rest of his family when it had been run off the road. Some part of him wished he’d never lived long enough to make these choices.
But that was nothing but craven self-pity. The least of his sins, but a sin nonetheless.
“You are very pretty,” he told her now. Sternly.
“I would thank you, but somehow I doubt it was a compliment.”
“It is surprising. I expected you to be attractive, of course, in the way all women of your particular profession are.” He waved a hand.
She smiled, managing to convey an icy disdain that would do a royal proud. “My profession?”
Cairo shrugged. “Dancer. Television personality. Expensive trophy wife, ever open to the appropriate upgrades. Whatever you call yourself.”
Her smile took on that edge that fascinated him, but she didn’t look away.
“I do like an upgrade.” She fingered the rim of her glass and he remembered the feel of her skin under his hand, hot and soft at once. Touching her had been a serious miscalculation, he was aware. One that pounded in him still, kicking up dark yearnings and desperate longings he knew he needed to ignore. “Are you going to tell me why I’m here?”
“No insulting version of my title this time? I’m wounded.”
“I find my creativity wanes along with my interest.” She leaned forward and set her glass down on the table before her with a decisive click. “Monte Carlo is wasted on me, I’m afraid, as I’m not much of a gambler.” Her smile didn’t reach her eyes. “I prefer the comfort of a sure thing. And I loathe being bored.”
“Is this what boredom looks like on you? My mistake. I rather thought you looked a bit...flushed.”
“I find myself ever so slightly nauseated.” He knew she was lying. The glitter in her bright eyes told him so, if he’d had the slightest doubt. “I can’t think why.”
He thrust his hands into the pockets of his trousers. “Perhaps you dislike penthouses with extraordinary views.” He smiled. “The coast or me. Take your pick. Both views, and I say this with no false modesty at all, are stunning.”
“Maybe I dislike spoiled rich men who waste my time and think far too highly of their overexposed charms.” The edge to her smile and that glittering thing in her gaze grew harder. Hotter. “I’ve seen it all in the pages of every tabloid magazine every week for the last twenty years. It’s about as thrilling as oatmeal.”
“I must have misheard you. I thought you compared me to a revoltingly warm and cloying breakfast cereal.”
“The similarities are striking.”
“A man with less confidence than I have—and no access to a mirror—might find that hurtful, Ms. Hollis.”
“I feel certain you find whatever you need in all the reflective surfaces available to you.” She eyed him. “I suppose that almost qualifies as a skill. But while that confirms my opinion of your conceit, it doesn’t tell me what I’m doing here.”
Cairo hadn’t decided precisely how he would do this. Somewhere in his murky, battered soul he’d imagined this might prove a rare opportunity to be honest. Or as near enough to honest as he was capable of being, anyway. He’d imagined that might make purchasing a wife to ward off a revolution a little less seedy and sad, no matter his reasons. A little self-deprecating humor and a few hard truths, he’d imagined, and the whole thing would be easily sorted.
But he hadn’t expected to want her this badly.
“I have a proposition for you,” he forced himself to say, before he made the unfortunate decision to simply seduce her instead and see what happened. He already knew what would happen—didn’t he?—and the pleasures of the moment couldn’t outweigh the realities of the future bearing down on him. He knew that.
He couldn’t believe he was even considering it.
“I’d say I’m flattered,” Brittany was saying coolly, “but I’m not. I’m not interested in being any man’s mistress. And not to put too fine a point on it, but your charms are a bit...” She raised her brows. “Overused.”
He blinked, and took his time with it. “I beg your pardon. Did you just call me a whore?”
“I’d never use that word,” Brittany demurred, and though her voice was smooth he was sure there was something edgy and sharp lurking just beneath it. “But the phrase rode hard and put away wet comes to mind.” She waved a hand at him. “It’s all a bit boring, if I’m honest.”
“Do not kid yourself, Ms. Hollis,” Cairo advised her quietly. “I’ve had a lot of sex with a great many partners, it’s true.”
“That’s a bit like the ocean confessing it’s slightly damp.”
He smiled. “The media coverage of my sex life might indeed be boring. I wouldn’t know as I make a point never to follow it. But the act itself? Never.”
“You’d be the last to know, of course. Even a man as conceited as you are must realize that.”
“I suppose the first hundred or so could simply be interested in my dramatic personal history,” Cairo said, as if considering her point, though he kept his gaze trained on the increasing color high up on her cheeks. Interesting. “And the second two hundred could be in it for my personal wealth. But all of them? The law of averages suggests not all of them would come apart like that, screaming and wailing and crying beneath me. The same reasoning applies if you suggest they were faking it. Some, I imagine, because there are always some. But all?”
“I’m sure you saw whatever it is you wanted to see.” He could have sworn there was a huskiness in her voice and a deeper shade to the red of her cheeks, and he didn’t care what she said. He knew passion when he saw it. She was as affected as he was. “Ninety times a day, or whatever the horrifying number is. The mind boggles.”
Cairo was no saint, by design or inclination. But he was also not quite the epic sinner he’d played all his life. And in all the years he’d performed his role in the circus that was his life, he’d never felt the slightest urge to tell a woman that. What the hell was happening to him tonight?
“I’m only good at one thing,” he told her, the way he’d have told anyone else. He pretended he couldn’t hear the intensity in his own voice. He pretended he had no idea how little in control of himself he was just then. “And as it happens, I’m very, very good at it.”
She swallowed, which he shouldn’t have found even remotely fascinating, no matter how elegant her neck. “Is that your proposition? My answer is an emphatic no, as I said. But also, your pitch needs some work.”
“That I’m an excellent lover is a fact, not a pitch,” Cairo said with a small shrug. He found he was enjoying himself, which was almost as unusual as the claws of need that still raked through him. “The proposition is far less exciting, I’m afraid. I’m not in the market for a mistress, Ms. Hollis. Why would I bother with such a confining arrangement? I rarely meet a woman who wouldn’t do anything I ask for free, no need to provide room, board or baubles on demand.”
“I’m overcome by the romance of it all.”
“Then this will delight you.” Cairo eyed her, a column of gold tipped in all that sweet copper he wanted to bury his hands in, and he found his blood was pumping much too hard through his body
then, as if he was out on a long, hard run in a harsh winter. He ignored it. “I find myself in need of a wife. I’ve been considering a number of candidates for the position, but you are far and away my first choice.”
He expected her to say something scathing. Perhaps let out a scandalized laugh. He even braced himself for the lash of it, and damned if he didn’t enjoy the anticipation of that, too. But she only considered him for a moment, her dark hazel gaze unreadable, and he found he had no idea what she might say.
That, like everything else with this woman, was a new experience. He told himself he hated it. Because he should have. He needed an employee of sorts, at minimum. A partner if at all possible. What he did not need was any more trouble, and Brittany Hollis had that stamped deep on every inch of her lovely skin.
God knew he had enough trouble. It lived inside him. It was his world.
“Who’s your second choice?” she asked when the silence had drawn out almost too long.
“My second choice?”
Brittany didn’t quite roll her eyes. “I can hardly determine whether to be insulted or complimented if I don’t know the field, can I?”
Cairo named a famously orphaned Italian socialite, primarily well-known for her bouts of sulky nudity on board the superyachts of her questionable Russian oligarch boyfriends.
Brittany sighed. “Insulted it is.”
“She’s a far second, if that helps. Far too much work for too little return.”
This surprising American, who he’d expected would fall at his feet in an instant and who cared if that was as much about his credit line and his title as the charms she’d called overused to his face, only gazed at him a moment, her dark eyes narrow. He thought he could see her thinking and he didn’t understand why or how he could find that the sexiest thing he’d seen in years. It was that glint in her hazel gaze. It was moving through him like something alcoholic.
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