King's Ransom

by Amelia Autin

  Andre’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “What do you mean by that?”

  “King’s Ransom. A love story for the ages,” she said flippantly. “A fairy tale. As if any man, then or now, ever loved a woman that much.” She tried for a carefree laugh, but couldn’t prevent a tinge of bitterness from creeping in. Couldn’t prevent her own life’s experiences from coloring her perspective. “As if any man in that day and age would take a woman back who had shamed him in the eyes of the known world. Not to mention a king who could easily have the marriage annulled and have his pick of women. Chaste women.”

  She faltered at the icy expression in his eyes and the danger that radiated from him, so palpable she could feel it. She stared up at him, remembering Andre telling her the love story behind King’s Ransom, the story of the founder of the House of Marianescu, the first king of Zakhar. Remembering how she’d hung on every word. Remembering how she’d believed in the immortal love the story represented—once upon a time.

  Remembering, too, how she’d yearned to be a woman like Eleonora, who had inspired that kind of love in her husband, the first Andre Alexei. How she’d dreamed of someday making her Andre love her that way. My Andre? she told herself with redoubled cynicism. He was never my Andre. What a fool I was. As if I ever meant anything to him other than another conquest.

  The frightening look in Andre’s eyes faded. Then he smiled faintly as he slowly, deliberately looked her over from head to toe, and she knew he was aware she was naked beneath her dress. Something flickered in his eyes. Possessiveness. Desire. The sleeping wolf awakening at the sight of a helpless fawn. “Throughout history men have taken women for a variety of reasons.” His gaze held hers prisoner. “Love is only one of them.”

  A frisson of fear ran down Juliana’s spine, and in that instant she knew Andre wanted her. More than that, he was determined to have her. In a different century he would have just taken her—droit de seigneur—whether or not she wanted him, whether or not she already belonged to another man.

  But that can’t happen today...can it? she reasoned with herself, but the sudden pounding of her heart refused to be calmed. Zakhar was one of the last absolute monarchies left in the world, and the man standing in front of her was its king. If she just disappeared...who would know what had happened to her? Who would dare to question the king?

  Her eyes widened and her breath quickened as her body automatically shifted into full panic mode—muscles tightening in a fight-or-flight reflex that told her to...run, damn it! Run! Her fear must have communicated itself to him, because his smile faded, and a tinge of some other emotion entered his gaze, something she couldn’t decipher. It almost looked like...pain. But that didn’t make sense...did it?

  “Do not run, Juliana,” he said softly, reassuringly. “You have nothing to fear from me. You never did.” It wasn’t that easy, of course. She couldn’t just turn off the panic at a word from him. Especially since his words didn’t stop there. “When I make love to you,” he said, his eyes suddenly blazing, his deep voice curling inside her, making her knees weak, “you will come to me of your own free will. You will come to me because you want me the same way I want you.” Naked and trembling. He didn’t say the words, but his vivid green eyes told her he remembered.

  A memory flashed into her mind, a memory she’d resolutely suppressed until now. And suddenly she was seeing Andre as she’d seen him all those years ago, his green eyes in a shaft of moonlight, glowing with what she’d fooled herself into believing was love. She was hearing his voice, that deep, throbbing voice she still heard in her dreams, whispering in Zakharan, “Now it begins.”

  “Never,” she whispered from a throat gone suddenly dry, fighting the sensual web he was weaving. Fighting herself. “Never again.”

  His faint smile returned and his voice dropped a notch. “You will want me again, Juliana. That is a promise, not a threat. And when I take you, you will understand why.” With that parting shot Andre turned on his heels and strode away.

  Arrogant. Breath hissed out of Juliana as she watched him mingle with his other guests, so suave, so debonair, so much the gentleman king. But he hadn’t been a gentleman with her. He’d been an arrogant savage, albeit with a kingly mask cloaking his wolfish intentions. She downed the glass of champagne in her hand, needing something to cool her parched throat. But that was a mistake. She’d had nothing to eat all day and the alcohol went right to her head, making her dizzy. Maybe it’s not the alcohol, she thought wildly. Maybe it’s him.

  He turned just then, his eyes staring at her from across the vast room. Even though she couldn’t see the color of his eyes at that distance, she felt those green orbs stripping her dress off until she shivered. And trembled. The power in him was incredible. It pulled at her, drawing her under his spell the way it had always done. He was a man, first and foremost. The king was secondary. But that was just as frightening as the idea that he might kidnap her and hold her captive until he was ready to let her go.

  If he ever let her go.

  Movement out of the corner of her eye made Juliana tear her gaze away from Andre, and she sighed gratefully as she saw Dirk and Sabrina nearing. Sabrina was wearing a sequined sky blue tunic belted over a long silver skirt, with the delicate filigree sapphire necklace and earrings that suited her. Juliana knew Dirk had given them to her as a pledge of his love years ago from the money he’d earned in his first starring role, and she wore them often. Like Juliana, she had “matched her eyes” with her dress, and from a distance she looked as lovely as she always did. But close up her smile looked forced, and there were two tiny lines of pain bracketing her mouth.

  “Bree, are you okay? You look—”

  Sabrina’s smile widened, but it was an effort. “It’s nothing, just a twinge, that’s all.” She turned in the direction where Juliana had been staring when she walked up. “That is a dangerous man,” she said softly, and Juliana couldn’t hide her sharp intake of breath. “He’s why you didn’t want to return to Zakhar.” The eyes of the two women met, and Sabrina’s were knowing, sympathetic.

  Dirk spoke for the first time. “So that’s the king of Zakhar. I’ve seen the portrait of the first king in the portrait gallery, and I must say there’s an amazingly strong resemblance. You’d think after five centuries the genes would be diluted to the point where the resemblance would be nonexistent, but no.” He reached over and rubbed the backs of his fingers comfortingly against Juliana’s cheek. “He wants you, babe,” he added casually. “And he looks like the kind of man who always gets what he wants.”

  “Dirk!” Sabrina’s tone chided her husband, and he gently patted her arm.

  “Don’t worry, Bree. I’m not telling Juliana anything she doesn’t already know.” He glanced back at Juliana. “Am I.” It wasn’t a question.

  “No.” Her voice was husky. “But he’s not going to have me.” Not ever again.

  “Want me to pound him into the ground for you?” he teased.

  She laughed as he had intended her to do, although a little shakily. “I’ll fight my own battles, thank you very much.” She glanced from Dirk to Andre across the room, and back to Dirk again. Both men were close in age, of a similar height and weight, and in superb physical shape. But still... “If I were you,” she drawled, teasing him back, “I wouldn’t be too quick to take him on. He’s a fighter. He trained with the Zakharian National Forces, and he doesn’t look as if he’s lost his edge.”

  Dirk spluttered with laughter and looked down at his wife. “Did you hear that, Bree? I think she just insulted my manhood.”

  Now it was Bree who patted his arm. “That’s okay. You’re man enough for me, honey, and that’s all that counts.” Husband and wife stared into each other’s eyes, private smiles forming as they retreated to their own little world, and a pang of pain darted through Juliana when she saw the unshadowed love for each other in their faces.

  * * *

  Andre watched Juliana from afar, watched as she spoke with the man he recognize
d as Dirk DeWinter, the actor who would be portraying his legendary ancestor in King’s Ransom opposite Juliana. His gaze sharpened into something cold and deadly when the man caressed Juliana’s cheek in a comforting fashion. Juliana’s name had never been linked romantically with DeWinter’s. Nevertheless, Andre didn’t want him touching Juliana, not for comfort or anything else. If anyone was going to comfort her, it would be him.

  His bodyguard tonight, Captain Lukas Branko, stood two feet away, alert to any sudden betraying shift in the crowd, his eyes constantly on the move. Andre forcibly relaxed his tense muscles and tried to distract himself by thinking of something—anything—else, and his bodyguards’ warnings came to mind.

  This kind of duty in a large, diverse crowd of people was a nightmare for any bodyguard, Lukas and Damon had told him more than once, much less anyone as fanatically devoted to their assignment as they were. It wasn’t just the devotion of subjects for their king, Andre knew. It wasn’t just the devotion to duty of men for whom duty was honor. Lukas and Damon were not without ambition, but their ambitions for the past three years had all centered around one object—keeping King Andre Alexei IV alive. Alive and ruling over Zakhar for many years to come. No matter what they had to do. No matter if they died trying.

  It was the “die trying” part neither Lukas nor Damon cared for, Andre also knew. Even more than his other bodyguards, die trying was an excuse to them, an excuse for which they had no patience and no forgiveness. They would keep their king safe, no matter who else had to die. Even if it meant taking the law into their own hands. Even if it meant disregarding a direct order from the very king whose word was law to them.

  Their stance on the subject had amused Andre at times, so much so he’d even discussed that contradiction in terms with his cousin Zax in one of their private meetings. But Zax hadn’t been amused, Andre remembered now. And he wondered why that memory had suddenly occurred to him tonight of all nights.

  He searched the throng of people for his cousin’s face. Maybe Zax can help me keep my mind off Juliana. But he couldn’t spot him in the overcrowded room. Then—despite ordering himself not to—Andre’s gaze wandered inevitably back to Juliana, still standing with her friends where he’d left her.

  He stared at her across the distance that separated them, wanting nothing more than to sweep her into his arms and carry her from the noisy, glittering crowd into the quiet sanctuary of his bedroom, the way he’d longed to do since the first moment she’d appeared at the top of the Grand Staircase tonight. Wanting nothing more than to make Juliana see what she was to him, what she had always been. Wanting to erase that hard, bitter edge he didn’t understand but that he knew had to be an act, revealing the genuine, loving woman he remembered.

  But she had to come to him. He could not force her. He could not make her. He had done everything humanly possible to get her this far, but that was as far as he could go. Now it was up to her. He could only do whatever lay in his power to convince her she belonged here in Zakhar. With him.

  Her career was a stumbling block. She was at the height of her beauty, the height of her talent and power. It seemed as if there was nothing she couldn’t accomplish in her career. No role she couldn’t play.

  On the other hand, there was no man in her life now, and had not been for several years. He was sure of it. But he had not relied on the tabloids for that information. She’d been under the covert protection...and surveillance...of his agents ever since he’d ascended the throne. Ever since he’d acknowledged that the unbroken line of Marianescus ruling Zakhar for over five hundred years would be broken, unless...

  The Privy Council was again pressuring him to marry and beget heirs. Delicately, to be sure, and some members more than others, but pressuring nevertheless. He’d managed to maintain his composure in the face of the subtle and not so subtle hints thrown out by the Privy Council regarding the topic of his marriage. He’d never succumbed to the intense pressure his father had placed on him—he wasn’t succumbing to the Privy Council’s pressure now.

  Since women couldn’t sit on the Zakharian throne, Andre’s heir wasn’t his sister, Mara. That was his cousin Zax, the oldest son of his deceased uncle Evander—and a year older than he was. Andre had never worried overmuch about the succession when he’d served in the Zakharian National Forces, not even when his unit was deployed to Afghanistan. He knew Zakhar would be in good hands with Zax at the helm, although it would have meant breaking the unbroken father-to-son direct line. But in the years since then, he’d recognized the supreme importance of that unbroken line—not to himself or his yet-to-be-born son, but to the people of Zakhar.

  The Zakharians firmly believed the good fortune and prosperity their country had experienced throughout the centuries was somehow tied in with the House of Marianescu and the monarchy’s father-to-son direct descent, from the first Andre Alexei to his oldest son, Raoul, right up to the present day. Superstition? No question. But the average Zakharian citizen vehemently opposed tempting fate by breaking with the time-honored tradition. So Andre had every intention of acceding to the Privy Council’s fervent wishes in the near future. Just not the way they expected.

  Andre knew there were eyes all around them, watching, speculating, as if his life and Juliana’s were just food for gossip, grist for the tabloid mill. He tore his gaze away from Juliana and smiled easily at the little group of men and women around him, joining in the inane conversation. No matter what, he had to shield Juliana from the tabloids if he could, the same way he’d shielded his sister, Mara, until her husband had come along to assume that responsibility. Perhaps that was an outdated attitude in this day and age, but he was Zakharian right down to his fingernails, and like his famous ancestor he would change for no man.

  Just because he wasn’t looking at Juliana didn’t mean he couldn’t see her, however. That heart-shaped face; those violet eyes fringed with long, natural, sooty lashes; those lips that looked so passionate yet somehow unkissable until a man saw the way the hesitant curve of her smile betrayed her vulnerability; the long, silky, ebony tresses that wreathed her face like a dark wavy halo and cascaded down her back.

  She was perfection itself now, but that wasn’t why he loved her. He remembered her as a coltish teenager, unsure of herself, unsure of the changes her body was going through as she metamorphosed from a girl into a woman. He had first loved her when she was sixteen and he was twenty, had loved her when only her violet eyes had conveyed a hint of the beautiful woman she would someday become.

  But he had not touched her.

  He had not touched her when she turned seventeen and began blossoming into a diminutive beauty standing just as high as his heart, not even when she practiced her newly discovered feminine wiles on him. He had teased her gently, turning aside her natural curiosity about men and women, deflecting her innocent desire for him, keeping her at a physical distance in a way that wouldn’t seem like rejection to her sensitive soul.

  Even the summer she turned eighteen he had not touched her, though by then her beauty made heads turn on the street, made men openly lust after her with their eyes. His body burned to possess hers that summer. He knew he could have her—Juliana’s expressive eyes betrayed she ached for him the way he ached for her. Desire made him toss and turn in his bed so that he took to riding his stallion through the countryside late at night until they were both exhausted, then camping out in the rustic hillside cottage he’d made his own. Far away from the palace. Far away from the sleeping streets of Drago. Far away from temptation.

  And he had not touched her.

  She had tested his willpower to the breaking point, but it had held. Until the night before she left for college. Until the night she came to him like a silken dream...

  As usual when Andre thought of Juliana, his body responded with a fierce surge of desire. He’d had a wealth of experience controlling that desire, and he tried to do so now. But it wasn’t working. Not this time. Because Juliana was right there...just across the room. For
the first time in eleven years he’d spoken with her, watched up close as those violet eyes changed hue with her emotions, saw the sudden fear ripple through her body, making her tremble and her nipples tighten under the violet silk sheath that caressed her body the way he longed to do. The gown she’d worn with nothing beneath it, knowing the effect it would have on him and every man who saw her. And then...knew she was remembering, as he did, one perfect night.

  Do not think of that, he warned himself. Not here. Not now. Not with the eyes of the world fastened upon you like vultures on a carcass.

  When he’d ascended the throne and had Zax assign men to protect Juliana, his cousin had asked in his blunt way if it wasn’t possible Andre had built his love for Juliana into something more than it really was. That if he saw her again in person he might be able to get her out of his system.

  Well, he’d seen Juliana in person. Finally. And Zax was wrong. He would never be free of the hold she had on him—heart, mind, body and soul. She was in his blood. In his DNA. Not that he’d spent the past eleven years doing nothing—he’d built a life of purpose without the woman he loved and had accomplished great things in the few short years of his reign. But as he’d told his sister, Mara, without Juliana he would be forever incomplete. Come to me, Juliana, he prayed silently. Come to me.

  Chapter 3

  “Change of plans,” the man said, sipping from a wineglass and gazing in Juliana’s direction. “That may well be your first target instead. Before anything else.”

  “Juliana Richardson?” the Russian standing with him asked dubiously, instantly recognizing the famous face. “How does removing her achieve your goal?”

  “Let me worry about that,” the first man replied, his eyes hardening. “Trust me, I have a very good reason. You just prepare to do what you are told...should it become necessary.”

  The Russian laughed, a short bark of laughter that held no humor. “It is your money.” His eyes were cold, with no redeeming touch of humanity in them, not even when he laughed. “A target is a target.” He shrugged. “A pity she made an enemy of you.” His gaze displayed a hint of curiosity, but no hesitation. “Security?”