Princes of Castaldini: The Once and Future Prince

Four

The moment Leandro took her hand, Phoebe felt as if he’d taken her will away, infused his own inside her. She wrestled with his hypnotic gaze before snatching her hand away as if from a hot grill, pretended interest in her surroundings.

They sure warranted it, and then some. As he’d said, damn his insight, all this was one colossal ego tickle. He might have easy access to it, but that he’d put this much thought and planning into setting the scene was at once disconcerting and exciting as hell. And there was no doubt what kind of scene it was.

A seduction scene.

Oh, she’d tried to rationalize that this was the done thing, that businessmen flaunted their status and power by conducting negotiations over extravagant meals among backdrops of affluence and exclusivity, that as a businessman in a class of his own, he’d naturally gone beyond what others would.

Those rationalizations lasted for the three seconds it took her to get a load of the place.

With the eyes of experience, she could see this place as it might be on a normal business night, when its three-level interior would provide space to those who craved it, and privacy to those who preferred it. There would be partitions separating the top-level dining area from the mid-level bar and the lower-level lounge. Each would be bustling with its own clientele, feature its own menu, table and bottle service and resident DJ. Tonight the place seemed to have been designed to provide a single couple with expansive, atmospheric surroundings for an unforgettable encounter.

The décor was at once dignified and decadent, bridging borders with a dip into Latin heat in its daring, in the originality of bold yet harmonizing colors and designs. All in all this place had the ambiance of a dimension a few realities removed from the one she belonged to, one that swirled with ultra-modernism, Machiavellian suggestions and a touch of the arcane. The realm of a fallen angel where mortals suffered sensual enslavement and carnal excess. Very appropriate.

And she’d walked willingly into the Prince of Dark Temptation’s web. She’d stood at its threshold, caught in a spotlight, feeling like the subject of an experiment in human response conducted by some higher being.

Said being was sitting there, watching her, overshadowing their surroundings in a suit and shirt, sans tie, that had been sculpted around his magnificence, their darkness and textures deepening the spell that hung around him.

And he’d just invited her to get to work. On him.

The moment the parade of beautiful people dressed in red and black satin finished spreading their table with ingeniously prepared and arranged appetizers and filled their crystal glasses before leaving the bottle of Moët & Chandon in ice, Leandro leaned back in his chair, making his appraisal even more invasive.

“So, have you decided yet what you’ll do with your second shot at convincing me, Phoebe?”

She took a sip from her glass. And inhaled most of it.

After she redirected the fluid down her throat, she managed a strangled, “I’ll start with holding my tongue. How’s that?”

He mirrored her actions, bypassing the coughing-his-lungs-out bit, lids heavy as he licked the taste from his lips, making her feel as if he’d tasted hers. “Is that within your range of abilities?”

She took another sip, bent on proving that she could still manage basic stuff like swallowing. “It used to be. I was renowned for it.”

“Quella è la verità—isn’t that the truth. You had such rare reticence. Only when it came to talking, grazie a Dio. It was a trait I valued beyond measure.”

“Yeah, a woman who’s unrestrained in bed and keeps her mouth shut out of it must be every man’s dream.”

His eyes flickered. Surprised? That she’d put his innuendo into plain English? “I’m not every man, Phoebe. It wasn’t because I was interested only in bedding you that I valued your quietness.”

She plopped one of the hollandaise-covered, crab-stuffed mushrooms on her plate, cut into it. “No? Could’ve fooled me.”

He narrowed his eyes. “You’re implying you were quiet because my attitude discouraged you from talking?”

She took a bite. Tasted nothing. “Not really. There was nothing to say. But with all you had going on then, I did get the feeling that you wouldn’t have appreciated it if there was.”

“Nothing to say, eh? Strange how there can be two entirely different perspectives on the same situation. I thought you didn’t talk much because you had this innate…understanding of me and of our situation that transcended the need for verbal expression. I thought we didn’t use words because we were on the same wavelength without them. Seems that’s another thing I was wrong about.”

She concentrated. Hard. Swallowing now could end in a real emergency. The implication of what he was saying…

Could be anything really. From the poignant and profound to the meaningless and superficial.

She’d take something toward the end of the spectrum of the second interpretation. This was the man who’d let her walk out of his life and hadn’t even tried to call her again in eight years. She doubted he’d had one poignant or profound thought where she was concerned.

It seemed he was waiting for her to respond. When she didn’t, he sighed. “So you can still call on your tongue-holding talents. I really hope you won’t hold out for long. I find myself valuing your new intensity and contentiousness far more than I ever did your tranquility and acquiescence.”

“That must be maturity. The ‘me against the world until I take it over and no one better oppose-me’ young man has become a ‘the world is mine and I’m dying for a new challenge’ man.”

He threw his head back and let out another of those intoxicating peals of unadulterated maleness. “Ah, Phoebe, siete una sincera, genuina, autentica shaitana rajeema and I sperare ardentemente that you don’t hold your tongue ever again.”

Resigned that she’d live with constant arrhythmia with him around, she picked up what turned out to be a maple-bourbon-glazed chicken wing and nibbled on it. “So although you’ve outgrown some traits, you still make a salad of Italian, English and Moorish.”

His chuckles intensified as he watched her, and she imagined him nibbling on her lips, her neck, lower…“Only when one language doesn’t provide accurate enough words.”

“You couldn’t say I’m an honest-to-goodness wicked devil in English?”

“You understood!” His eyes sparked with wonder and approval. She felt like a child fluttering at her hero’s praise. Stupid. “And no, I couldn’t. The English words—and your translation is as perfect as can be—don’t have the exact nuances I wanted. Sperare ardentmente is more accurate than ‘I pray to God,’ too. Your idiomatic Italian is impressive. Most people who learn it as adults never learn its subtleties. But what made you learn Moorish? Almost no one in the Castaldinian cities uses it anymore.”

Phoebe reached for her glass. The lump in her throat suddenly felt much larger.

Should she tell him she’d wanted to understand what he’d crooned to her at the heights of ecstasy? What, in her reluctance to make any demands of him, she’d let go unexplained?

After she’d resumed breathing again, she decided to tell him part of the truth. “I was intrigued every time you used it. It sounded so…primal and passionate, so different from Italian and any other language I’ve ever heard. And though it’s not prevalent anymore, it—and the people who still speak it—is an integral part of the cultures that weave Castaldini. I felt I should know as much as I can of it. I’m not good by a long shot, but I get the general picture. My pronunciation stinks, though.”

He seemed to weigh her answer. Then he picked up her hand, encased its sweaty coldness in the warmth and torment of his long, beautiful fingers. “Say something…”

“Shai’,” she blurted out.

Another boom of virile amusement rocked her. “And I was going to say don’t take me literally and say shai’.”

“How about I say nothing? La shai’?”

He laughed again as he gave her hand a squeeze that could have left burn marks on her flesh before rocking back in his chair and throwing his hands in the air. “I take it back. Say anything.”

“Ai shai’.”

He leaned across the table, two fingers sealing her lips, his eyes radiating amusement…and arousal. “Ai shai’ out of those lips should be banned as a lethal weapon. But in Moorish it becomes one of mass destruction. Your accent doesn’t stink, it scorches.”

“I basically said one word,” she mumbled against his fingers, wondering what it would do to the course of the evening—and of her life—if she sucked them into her watering mouth.

Good thing he saved her from finding out. He brushed her lips with the backs of his fingers for one heart-bursting moment before withdrawing the temptation. “It was enough to tell me that I need some serious preparation before I hear a full sentence.”

She plopped back in her chair, hopefully out of reach of more will-destroying touches. “So now we know why I speak Moorish. Why do you? None of the younger generation D’Agostinos I know do.”

“Alas, I’m no longer one of the ‘younger generation.’ Everyone from my generation was required to learn it at school.”

“But no one speaks it, apart from smatterings that have made their way into mainstream Castaldinian Italian.”

“There is a section of the population who cling to it as Castaldini’s original language. To the rest it rusted from misuse like any second language learned in school. I had more incentive to learn it. My maternal grandmother was a full-blooded Moor.”

“So that’s where the overriding raider in you comes from!”

He put his glass down, stood, took two steps to her side, and without warning, bent and pulled her up and against him, breast to chest. “This seating arrangement was my worst idea yet.”

Before she could blink, he urged her over to an ensconced corner of the upper level. He half carried her down onto a red leather couch, missing coming on top of her by an inch.

She almost reached out and made him obliterate that inch. This train was hitting her. Why not get it over with?

The knowledge that the impact wouldn’t be the end of the devastation made her freeze as the staff zoomed around them, spreading the square quartz table in front of the couch with hot plates simmering over gentle flames.

As soon as they disappeared, Leandro picked up a shrimp, bit off a piece and leaned over to put the rest to her lips. She again wondered about the damage potential of nibbling on those fingers along with the offered morsel.

Holding his eyes, she bit, hard. Into the shrimp. A harsh intake of breath accompanied the blaze in his eyes. He fed her until only his finger remained, probing her moistness with a to-and-fro motion that kept reversing the polarity of the current zapping through her core until she whimpered, glared at him. She was not licking it. Even if her heart might burst from holding back.

He at last withdrew his hand, slumped back with a shuddering exhalation, threw his head against the couch’s headrest and squeezed his eyes shut. At least she wasn’t the only one having a sensual meltdown. The weapon he was using on her was double-edged.

He opened his eyes, turned his head to her. She realized she was slumped in the same position. Their breathing synchronized as they pored over each other’s faces as if studying for a drawing-from-memory test. Suddenly he feathered one fingertip over the features he’d examined so thoroughly. “You and Ernesto seem to belong to a secret mutual-admiration society.”

Her lips twitched with mirth and heartache. “You didn’t take it up with him? Feared a rap on your knuckles, huh? And you’re now trying to get details out of the easier-to-interrogate party?”

His lips spread to a new level of seduction. “Ernesto does pack one mean knuckle-rap. But where is that party who’s easier to interrogate? You? I’m braving a scratched-out eye here.”

“So you’d rather lose an eye than get a bruised knuckle. What kind of a businessman are you, anyway?”

He bit his lip. “What can I say? The…harder it is, the more I like it. Risky confrontations are the only things worth my while.”

She tsked, ignoring the escalating pounding between her legs. “Not the mentality of a man suitable for any kind of office, let alone that of king. Certainly not ruler of a kingdom that has avoided risks and confrontations throughout its history. The way you make it sound, you’d provoke a war to revel in the ensuing conflict.”

He ran his finger along her jaw. “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. But I’d give my enemies—and my allies—a few scares here, a few sleepless nights there. Keeps them on their toes, makes them more interesting to have in either status.”

She sighed as she melted further into the couch. And into his power. “And you wonder why you were at such explosive cross-purposes with King Benedetto and the Council? They want everything to be steady, to avoid upheaval at all costs.”

One eyebrow quirked in challenge. “And ‘all costs’ include freedom of speech and a few human rights here and there, right?”

She tsked again. “You make it sound like a dictatorship instead of a peaceful kingdom.”

“Where everyone lives happily ever after? Are you sure you’re not talking about a kingdom from one of the bedtime stories you read to your five-and seven-year-old nieces?”

She vaguely wondered that he knew their ages. “Oh, I’m sure, since I read Alba and Gemma stories about girls who save the day and ride into the sunset in search of the next quest.”

“No knight in shining armor or Prince Charming?”

He pretended shock so well she had to snicker. “Not even if he was Knight of Burning Ardor or Prince Overwhelming.”

The expansion of his pupils, the flare of his nostrils hit her before she realized what she’d said. She struggled up, reached for a plate and started piling it haphazardly with food as she felt him move, felt each pull of muscle, each flicker of desire to take her back into that cocoon of intimacy. Then he exhaled.

“Tell me what the king and the Council really want with me.”

She put the plate down before she spilled it into her lap. “Don’t tell me you refused an offer you didn’t fully hear!”

“Oh, I heard it, all right. Go back, receive a full pardon and reinstatement of my titles and add a couple more while we’re at it—crown prince and regent were thrown into the package. Future king was dangled, too, provided I live longer than King B.”

“King B…!” A laugh burst out of her. “Oh, God…King B. I wonder what he’d do if you called him that to his face.”

His grin widened. “I’ll make sure you’re around when I do, and you can have a front-row seat to his reaction.”

She resisted the urge to explore those dimples with everything she had. “You’ve really loosened up, haven’t you?”

He gave a pout of such mock hurt that she started hurting in earnest. “You mean I was a tight-assed bore before, don’t you?”

She remembered the view she’d gotten last night of that certain part of his anatomy, and the comment that he was even more tight-assed now almost escaped.

When she opened her mouth, what came out was, “I don’t know. I was too much of an awestruck idiot to notice.”

Not much better. Judging by the heated look on his face, not better at all.

Before she could beg him to just…do anything, he seemed to make a decision to leave her hanging. “So—they’re still not offering an apology, but a ‘pardon,’ right?” She nodded, not liking where this was going. “They can’t bring themselves to admit even partial responsibility, want us all to pretend I’m the supplicant here. Ajab…incredible. And in return for their clemency what are they offering? Beside something I don’t want anymore?”

“Wanting it or not isn’t an issue here. You are needed.”

“Am I? And am I needed beyond what my massive wealth and power can provide? Are my views—which got me exiled in the first place—suddenly necessary? Or should I leave those behind?”

“I am sure we can achieve a satisfying middle ground.”

“If that’s all they authorized you to offer me, let me tell you what ‘middle ground’ translates to with them: ‘Our way, or the highway.’ They keep saying ‘make a commitment and we’ll work it out.’ But what they really want is for me to uphold the very policies I disagreed with so strongly that I paid the highest price for the chance of changing them. I thought ceasing to be a Castaldinian would be worth it if my punishment started a movement to support my views, instigated a climate to incubate change. But they made sure my side of the matter was never heard. And they want me to be king of this stuck-in-time land? Who do they think they’re kidding?”

She exhaled. “I really think the time for kidding is past.”

“No kidding, pun oh so intended. Say—I gather King B didn’t tell you that his need of me isn’t as desperate as he makes it out to be. He forgot to mention that tiny matter of two more men who are equally capable of taking on the role as I am, didn’t he?”

The way he said King B…! Her lips twitched. “In fact, he did mention them.”

His eyebrows rose, genuine surprise tingeing his expression. “He told you about Durante and Ferruccio?”

“He didn’t mention names. Just that there have always been three candidates for the crown, with you topping the list.”

His face settled back into that knowing expression. “Did he tell you why I topped the list?”

“Just that you, as impossible as it sounds, are less problematic, that you hate him and Castaldini less.”

He shook his head in a mixture of irony and something that looked like grudging admiration, even fondness. “That old fox. Always telling enough truth to make his logic irrefutable, hiding enough to make himself too noble to be denied. So he kept his accounts in the present, didn’t say why only I was considered worthy. Until I blew it big time, that is.”

She sat up. “My conspiracy theory centers are all ears.”

He laughed, lay back on the couch. She didn’t follow, somehow. “It’s not a conspiracy, it’s worse. It’s something far more petty. And far more damaging. You know it well. It goes by many names. Tradition, conservatism, ancestry, bloodlines. All I have on those two men is an accident of birth that made me eligible and eliminated them from the running.”

Suddenly something clicked. “Durante? As in Durante D’Agostino, King Benedetto’s estranged eldest son?”

He nodded.

“Whoa. The current king’s son. The cardinal no-no.”

He gave a vicious snort. “And even in their hour of need, the old farts can’t bring themselves to overlook the letter of a law that should have expired when the need for it did.”

“In their defense, that law has made Castaldini one of the most stable kingdoms in the world.”

“And the most stagnant.”

“And you took advantage of that law yourself,” she retorted. “Seems you always thought Durante—your best friend—as good a candidate as you, yet you didn’t make a peep about changing the law to give him an equal playing field.”

He sat up again, his eyes spitting emerald fire. “And I’m ashamed that I didn’t. I’m even more ashamed that I saw the error of my ways only when I had no choice anymore. But now that I have the choice again, I’m making up for being a party to such a backward practice. I’m daring them to really let the best man win.”

“I do believe that’s who they believe you are.”

“I’m only the best man because I’ll be more acceptable to the masses, who’ve been indoctrinated to accept only the old laws.”

“Isn’t that a huge factor to consider? Don’t you factor in popularity and acceptability when assigning your CEOs?”

“If I ever take the crown, it would be to move Castaldini to the point where laws that no longer suit the times are phased out. I would start by seeing to it that the people come to decide who’s best for Castaldini without ticking off a list of criteria topped by an outdated, demeaning and just plain prejudiced birth requirement.”

She gaped at him as everything he’d said slotted in place.And she exclaimed, “You’re a social reformer and a modernizer!”

“You say this with the same revulsion you’d say ‘a womanizer.’”

“It’s not revulsion. It’s realization. I’m shocked. I was led to believe you were revolutionary, but not in that sense.”

“In what sense, then?”

“In the establishment-destroying, eco-depleting sense.”

“And you believed that?”

“Why not? You’re ruthless in your takeovers and your enterprises are sprouting mega-size urban developments.”

“So? My conquests are prospering. Go check with my longest-term ones and ask if they’d change a thing. As for developments, I build those where it suits the social and ecological climate, and after careful consideration of all ramifications. I don’t go around haphazardly overdeveloping land and exhausting resources.”

She somehow believed every word, no need to check. She should have let it rest, but she found herself adding, “And why should your being a womanizer revolt me? It’s none of my business.”

One formidable eyebrow shot up. “Really? Interesting.” Then both eyebrows dipped into an ominous line. “And I’m not.”

“Not what?”

“A womanizer. I have too many handicaps to be one.”

“Handicaps?”

“Fastidiousness, wariness, allergies to pointless pursuits…”

“Don’t men consider physical gratification the point?”

“Do you always go around dispensing general condescension on all men, or am I just blessed? And then, you’re counter-asserting that women don’t consider physical gratification of importance? The old paradigm that women want emotion while men want sex?”

“That paradigm has stood the test of time and the approval of the majority. That’s not to say it applies to everyone.”

“It sure doesn’t apply to me.And physical gratification comes with a womanful of traits, whims, demands and trouble.”

“In other words, it comes attached to a sentient being.” His eyes remained steady, as if he was trying to read her mind. She let out a shaky breath. “Phew. The one way to avoid such nuisances is to…rent a companion. And I can’t see you doing that.”

His eyes turned lethal. “You always had perfect sight.”

“Then how do you find any women who fulfill your criteria of being a non-imposition? And you think Castaldinians are unreasonable?”

“My criteria aren’t affecting present and future generations, I can make them as unreasonable as I like. I don’t need to make concessions, either, since feminine wiles no longer work on me.”

“You mean they once did?”

“Oh, yes, all the way.”

Her heart did its best to explode from her ribs.

He’d—he’d been…in love? All the way? Before or after her? And he was telling her all this…why? Warning her off while pulling her in? Was that what her tormentor was trying to do to her?

Suddenly he sat forward, thrust a hand into her hair. He let a thick lock sift through his fingers before he groaned, “Not that it doesn’t suit you, it does, even more than your natural hair color did, but what made you dye your hair black?”

Leandro groaned again. He’d swerved from the vulnerabilities he was exposing, groped for the diversion of something that gnawed at his curiosity. And she looked as if he’d slapped her.

“Don’t you mean why did I stop dyeing my hair blond?”

He gaped at her. “You’re a natural brunette?”