Royal Games (The Royals of Monterra) (20 page)

I told him I couldn’t imagine my life without him in it. That he made me the happiest I had ever been. That he was everything I was looking for, and that I loved him in spite of, and not because of, his title. I wrote that I hoped he felt the same.

Sliding the letter inside an envelope, I made a plan to sneak up to his room. I was not a rule breaker, but this was important. I cracked the door open and peeked my head out. The hallway was empty.

At the landing to the third staircase, I paused again, listening. The only sound was my nervous heartbeat. I didn’t know what the punishment for this transgression would be on this show, but I was worried it might entail getting sent home.

Still silent. I climbed over the stupid rope they kept there, like it was an actual deflector shield that would make the stairs inaccessible. Creeping up the steps carefully, I continued to listen for sounds. Something that would let me know I’d been discovered. I didn’t hear anything.

Carefully opening his door, I snuck inside and gently closed it shut. This room was enormous. It took up the entire top floor, and the view from his windows was amazing. I was sure that during the daytime you could see all the way to the ocean. Part of me wanted to explore, thinking that if I investigated a little I might learn more about him. But the other part wanted me to leave my letter and get out before I got caught.

I had just put it on his pillow when a door opened up. But it wasn’t the door I had used.

It was the door from the bathroom.

And a bare-chested, wet-haired Rafe walked into the room, towel-drying his hair.

“Holy Shatner,” I whispered. And despite my protests when we watched that movie together, I suddenly completely understood why couples jumped from A to Z. Waves of lust pulsed through me, stealing my breath and making it hard to stay steady. I leaned out to hold on to the bedpost.

“Genesis?”

I gulped in response, unable to speak. He was beyond beautiful. Total perfection. I’d seen him in the pool before, but this was different. I didn’t know why. The intimacy of the setting? The fact that I was standing next to his bed? That I was doing something I wasn’t supposed to? That we were alone, and not surrounded by twenty other people?

“What are you doing here?” He tossed the towel into a basket.

I regained the gift of speech and shook my head, like I could clear it of the lust-induced haze. “I was going to leave you a note.”

It sounded so pathetic. What had seemed like an excellent idea just two minutes ago now seemed stupid and embarrassing.

A smile shadowed his lips. “A note?”

“I thought you were gone. I thought you were with someone else.” I tried to keep the hurt out of my voice, but from the way his smile faded, I knew he’d caught it.

“I’m not gone. I’m not with anyone else.” Each slow step brought him closer and closer, and it made my pulse increase in intensity until I worried my veins might actually explode.

“I can see that,” I said. What I didn’t say was how relieved I felt, like something washed through me, carrying away all my fears, insecurities, and worries.

There was only me and this incredibly gorgeous half-naked man whom I loved desperately. “I heard noises downstairs.”

“The crew can get loud.” He walked toward me slowly, leisurely, like the way a wolf would stalk a very stupid sheep who had left her pen and waltzed into his lair.

“I thought you would invite me. I’ve been waiting all night.”

“I hadn’t planned on giving you an invitation.”

And just like that, all the fears, insecurities, and worries came back, bringing along some brand-new ones I’d never considered.

His ghost smile returned, as if he could read me like an open book and knew how I was internally struggling with his words. And as if he knew about the other struggle I was currently experiencing to keep my eyes away from his torso. “I know what your standards are. I didn’t want anyone else to judge you. And I didn’t want to ask you and have you think that I expected something to happen.”

That something made my insides quiver. “Yes.” I swallowed back the intense longing. “Because that would be, um . . .” What was that word again? Oh, right. “Bad.” Definitely bad. Very, very bad.

“What does your note say?”

I couldn’t let him see it now. “Nothing.” He was here. He wasn’t with anyone else. He was with me, which made my heart sing. But my desperate confession of my feelings suddenly felt beyond lame, and I couldn’t let him read it.

“It can’t say nothing if you broke the rules and came up here to leave it for me.”

Then he was so close we were almost touching. One deep exhale would have had me pressed against him. My blood thickened and heated, which apparently rendered me stupid, because I put the note behind my back. Like he was two years old and would suddenly forget about it if he couldn’t see it.

I would have been better off if I’d just eaten the stupid thing.

He got a mischievous glint in his eye. Uh-oh.

I should have turned around and run, but I didn’t.

Because part of me fiercely wanted what happened next.

Chapter 20

“Is your letter addressed to me?”

“Yes.” What did that have to do with anything? Did he not know that I was distracted by the sprinkling of dark hair across the top of his chest, wondering if it was coarse or soft? That I was busy watching the clever way his muscles flexed in his shoulders and abdomen every time he shifted? Or how I wanted to stare into his intense, beautiful eyes? Or what a firm, fantastic mouth he had? How I just wanted to watch it move, remembering what it had felt like on my shivering, goosebumpy skin?

“Then it belongs to me.” He reached both of his arms around me, grabbing for the note. I twisted and turned to keep it away from him. He laughed as I managed to just keep it out of his hands, which in turn made me laugh.

Right up until the moment when it stopped being funny. When awareness struck us both, our hearts pounding against each other as I stood flush to him, our quick breaths intermingling because our faces were too close.

The laughter died in my throat a moment before he kissed me. His lips brushed mine so lightly, feather-softly, like a shadow. A promising beginning, but it was over before it had even started. His face looked like he hadn’t even intended to do that much.

It wasn’t enough.

“We’re almost to the end.” I watched his mouth form words, mesmerized. Heat and fire burned in his eyes, which made my heart beat too fast, and my entire body throbbed in time with it. “And there’s something I need to say.”

It could have been the formula to cure cancer. Didn’t care. Couldn’t have heard it even if I wanted to. I only wanted to be kissed. A lot.

So I did what any rational, reasonable woman would do in similar circumstances. I threw myself at him.

He was caught off guard only for a second before he thoroughly, deeply kissed me back. The mint from his toothpaste tingled against my mouth, making me sigh.

I knotted my fingers in his hair, pulling him to me, feeling him shudder against me as I ran my fingertips across his scalp.

And like the rom-com characters I had condemned, I understood how a kiss might lead to much more, as we were pawing at each other, trying to get closer. There was a frantic passion that obliterated thought, that made me run my eager fingers over all his exposed bumps and edges and revel in the way his warm skin felt under my fingertips. It was like a summer storm had started building up inside me, with thunder reverberating through my body and lightning electrifying his every touch.

Our kisses started out tender and gentle and quickly escalated. Probably faster than they should have. But there was no long warming up period here. It was just all savage, hungry desperation and longing that blasted us into Warp 8.

Like we were the subjects of a
National Geographic
special about the mating habits of the virginal redhead and the hot-blooded prince.

It all made me a bit delirious as everything inside me heated up and swirled into clouds of desire, causing me to forget who I was and what I’d said I wanted. I felt his bed against the back of my knees. We both sat at the same time. Whether by design or accident I didn’t know, and I didn’t care.

I wanted him, wanted more of this, and all my other principles ceased to exist. I cried out in protest when he suddenly stopped. My lips felt fabulously raw, my jaw wondrously sore.

“Genesis, wait.” His words were breathy and disconcerting. Mouths had much better uses than speaking.

And I didn’t want to waste his or mine on talking. I put my hands on the back of his neck, pulling him against me, reveling in the feeling of his hot, passionate lips responding. Several minutes passed before he stopped again. He actually moved back, like he didn’t trust himself to stay close to me. “There’s something I have to tell you first.”

“I don’t care,” I told him, as I closed the gap, kissing that pulsing point in the hollow of his neck. With a growl he dragged me up to meet his lips, giving me more of the delicious and intoxicating feelings only he had ever managed to invoke.

Molten lava traveled along my nervous system, burning everything in its path. Like I’d swallowed a bucket of burning coals. I had stopped breathing at some point, but while he devoured me like this, it didn’t matter.

His hands on me and his mouth on mine were the only things that mattered.

I wanted to feast on him. Turned out I had a real problem with gluttony. Until his hands started inching toward some seriously dangerous territory.

Should you be doing this?
some little worried voice asked, restoring some of my sanity.

I moved his hand away, and he left it where I’d moved it. He started to lean back, and I instinctively stopped him. That was too much. I wouldn’t lie down with him. I had to keep some boundaries, and I knew if I did what he wanted, we wouldn’t stop. And even though I didn’t want this to end, even though it felt like everything was building to some inevitable conclusion that I didn’t want to frustrate, I had to stop him. Stop this from going further. Even if he might be the right man, this wasn’t the right time.

Just a few more minutes of this ecstasy and I would stop.

I would.

“Genesis,” he said in a low voice against my lips, short-circuiting my higher reasoning. And then everything else faded away into oblivion, leaving only fire and want in its wake.

Then I heard a sound that seemed very far away. It was like a voice coming from the bottom of a well, echoing and indecipherable. It sounded like, “Dante, I wanted to tell you . . .”

We abruptly stopped kissing. My eyes tried to focus. Lemon was here. Why was Lemon in Rafe’s room?

It took me a moment to understand what was happening.

She threw a vase at Rafe, just missing him. I gasped. She’d kept saying she didn’t have feelings for him. Why was she reacting this way? Why would she care what we were doing?

They started to argue. She called him names, and he tried to figure out what she wanted. I was in total shock. Then she got angry at me, which upset me. I thought of how it must have looked to her. If she was in love with him too, it must have devastated her. It would have destroyed me. Which made me angry and disappointed at myself and at Rafe. Why did this happen with us? Why did I always respond to his touch and his kisses like that? I saw the camera crew behind her, recording everything. I raised a hand to my flushed cheek. Had they seen anything? Filmed anything that had happened between me and Rafe? It didn’t even matter. All of America would jump to the same conclusion Lemon had when they saw me in his room, on his bed, and him without a shirt.

Lemon finally stormed out, and Rafe roughly ran his fingers through his hair. “This is the worst possible—” he said, stopping when he saw me, as if he’d forgotten I was in the room. I did not like how that felt at all.

“I have to fix this. Stay here, please. I will explain everything to you.” His tone was all desperation and pleading.

Before I could respond, he chased after another woman.

There was only so much humiliation I could stand in one night. Holding my head high, I walked past the crew without even a glance, heading back to my room. From his actions, it was obvious he liked Lemon more. Normally I might have cried, but I was still in shock at what had just occurred. I wondered if I could leave the show. There was no point in staying here now.

At some point Taylor, the field producer, came by to talk to me. I only caught every other word that she said. Like I was underwater and everything was distorted by shimmering, moving waves.

“Can I leave?”

“The show?” Taylor looked totally panicked, her voice high and anxious. “No. You can’t leave the show. You’ll be in violation of your contract and there will be monetary fines if you do that.”

I found out later that Lemon had walked out, going back home, but she had the money to pay whatever the penalty was.

I didn’t.

The ache in my heart was incredible, unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. I had been head over heels in love, and he wanted someone else. And I was stuck in my room like some kind of prisoner, refusing to speak to any of the producers who filed in and out, asking me with fake concern if I wanted to talk about what had just happened.

My whole body was numb. Where there had been fire, now there was only ice.

And regret.

Then emptiness set in. I’d been used. He had used me. Taken advantage of me and of my naïveté. Like I was some stupid country bumpkin who was about to become the punch line in the monologues of late-night talk show hosts.

Taylor came back in at some point. She sat on the bed across from me talking. I mostly tuned her out. I knew she wanted a reaction. Then something she said caught my ear.

“Identical twins?” I repeated.

She nodded. “Yes. Dante and Rafe are identical twins. You have been spending time with Rafe, and Lemon has spent all of her time with Dante. We didn’t want any of you to know that there were two men and not just one.”

“But why? Why would you do that?”

She cocked her head to the side, the way Laddie did when he was listening to me. “Why else? Ratings.”

She’d torn my heart out of my chest for ratings. To make rich producers and show owners even richer. She’d made me a laughingstock and stomped all over my broken heart to entertain.

“So Lemon was angry because she thought you were kissing Dante, but it’s totally fine because you were kissing Rafe.”

“How does that matter?” I ask. What she told me made things worse. Despite my fears that Rafe wanted Lemon, which might still be an issue, the bigger problem was that he had lied.

Lied, and lied, and then lied some more. He wasn’t who he said he was. Yes, he’d told me his real name, but he had insinuated that it was a nickname and made me feel special that I was the only one who got to use it.

I got into my bed, pulling the covers up over my head like I used to when I was little and I had pretended my blanket was a force field that could protect me from nightmares or ghosts or cult leaders.

Taylor kept talking, and tears started to roll down the side of my nose, falling onto the sheet. Eventually she gave up, leaving me alone in a darkened room.

I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to. I wanted to black out and forget this had happened. He lied. Even after I told him how important it was for him to always be honest. The only sound was my harsh, angry breathing.

A knock at my door. It was Rafe. Even if I couldn’t see him, I knew who it was.

The door slowly opened. “Genesis?”

“Go. Away.”

He came in, closed the door, and sat on the other bed.

After several silent minutes, he said, “I would have come sooner, but Dante and I had some things we had to work out with the executive producer. And I wanted us to be able to talk alone.”

Without a camera crew to document every excruciating moment. “I know English isn’t your first language, but what you’re doing is the opposite of going away. Leave me alone.”

He sighed, but I didn’t move. I lay there, completely covered up.

“I found your note.”

That sent a jolt of sadness through me. I didn’t want him to read it. I didn’t want him to know how I felt about him. Or, how I used to feel about him.

“Did you mean what you said?” His voice had a rough, jagged quality to it.

I sat up as indignation made my stomach burn. I was torches-and-pitchforks-storming-the-castle mad. There was enough moonlight for me to see him. He was wearing glasses. Something he’d never done before. “You lied to me. You didn’t tell me from the beginning that you were a prince, so that was a lie. You didn’t tell me you had an identical twin brother. You pretended to be him, and you made me believe that you had feelings . . .” I trailed off as my throat squeezed, not willing to go there. “Was this some kind of game? A joke?”

“Never. What I feel for you is very real. And I had to lie. I owe Dante. When I was younger and dumber—”

I held up my hand. “I don’t want to hear your excuses. I don’t know how you could have lied to me after I opened up to you about John-Paul. And Richard. About how important it was to me that the man I loved be totally honest with me. And this entire time, every minute of every day, you’ve lied. Everything about us was a lie. Every time you kissed me and touched me. Lies.”

“The only thing I’ve lied about was that Dante and I were the same person. Everything else was me. I was always myself with you.”

“But very careful not to share too many personal details,” I pointed out, as my heart clenched in agony. “You’ve always kept me at arm’s length because you knew what you were doing was wrong. And you knew how much it would upset me.”

My voice wobbled, and I knew I was going to cry. Not just falling tears, but deep, painful, chest-wrenching sobs. “Get out. I don’t want to see you or talk to you ever again.”

“But I need to explain.”

“No!” I screamed. “Get out!” I slammed my fists against the bed. “Out! Now!”

He looked heartbroken, but I didn’t care. My icy, furious heart had no room for sympathy or compassion.

But he went.

And I spent the rest of the night crying until I had no more tears left.