Temporarily His Princess. Olivia Gates

nights—deluged his lungs. He had to get more, leave no breath unmingled with it.

      He buried his face in her neck, inhaled her, absorbing her shudder into his. “I don’t want you in my bed. I need you there. I’ve craved you there for six long years.”

      The body that had gone limp at contact with his stiffened, pushing away only enough to look confusedly up at him.

      Feeling he’d said too much, he let her go before he swept her up and carried her to bed here and now.

      Her face was a canvas of every turbulent emotion there was, so intense he felt almost dizzy at their onslaught.

      And he found himself adding, “Passion was the one real thing we shared. You were the best I’ve ever had. I only ended it with you because you—” he barely caught back an accusation “—seemed to expect more than was on offer.” He injected his voice with nonchalance. “But now you know what is on offer. You have every choice in becoming my lover, but none in being my princess.”

      Her gaze dropped to the dossier in her hand, which regulated their temporary relationship’s boundaries and how it would end with a cold precision he was already starting to question.

      Then she raised her eyes, the azure now dull and distant. “Only for a year.”

      Or longer. As long as we both want, he almost blurted out.

      Catching back the impetuousness with all he had, he nodded. “Only for a year.”

      Three

      “How long?”

      Glory winced at her best friend’s shrill stupefaction.

      She was already regretting telling Amelia anything. But Glory had felt her head and heart might explode if she didn’t tell someone. And it couldn’t have been her mother. Glenda Monaghan would have a breakdown if she knew what her husband and son had been up to. Or what they were in danger of if Glory didn’t go through with Vincenzo’s “deal.” The “take it or I send your family up the river for life” deal.

      Glory smirked at her best friend’s flabbergasted expression. “Don’t you think you’re going about this in reverse? You keep asking me a question right after I answer it.”

      Amelia rolled her long-lashed golden eyes. “Excuse me, Ms. Monaghan. We’ll see how you’ll fare when I come to you saying I was once on mouth-to-mouth-and-way-more terms with a prince of freaking Castaldini, who happens to be the foremost scientist and businessman in the clean-energy field, and that he now wants to marry me.”

      “Only for a year,” Glory added, her heart twisting again.

      Amelia threw her hands, palms up, at her. “There. You’ve said it again. So don’t get prissy with me while I’m in shock. I mean … Vincenzo D’Agostino? Whoa!”

      Glory emptied her lungs on a dejected sigh. “Yeah.”

      Amelia sagged down on the couch beside her. “Man. I’m trying to compose this picture of you with Prince Vastly Devastating himself, and I’m failing miserably.”

      Glory’s exhalation was laced with mockery this time. “Thanks, Amie, so kind of you.”

      “It’s not that I don’t think you’re on his level!” Amelia exclaimed. “Any man on any level would be lucky to have you look his way. But you haven’t been making any XY chromosome carriers lucky since the Ice Age. You’ve been such a cold fish….” She winced then smiled sheepishly. “You know how you are with men. You radiate this ‘do not approach or else’ vibe. It’s impossible to imagine you in the throes of passion with any man. But now I’m realizing your standards are just much higher than us mere mortal women. It’s either someone of Vincenzo’s caliber or nothing. Or—” realization seemed to hit Amelia, making her eyes drain of lightheartedness, then fill with wariness “—is it because it’s Vincenzo or nothing? Is he the one who spoiled you for other men?”

      Glory stared at her. She’d never thought of it this way.

      After the brutal way Vincenzo had ended their affair, she’d been devastated, emotionally and psychologically. For the next year, she hadn’t thought beyond stopping being miserable. After that, she’d poured all of her time and energy into changing her direction in life.

      It had taken Vincenzo’s kicking her out of his life, and out of her job, to make her realize the fatal flaw in her unwavering quest for security and stability. She’d known then that there could be neither, emotional or financial. If the man she’d thought to be her soul mate could destroy both with a few words, she wouldn’t count on anything again. She’d decided to give her heart and skills to the world and hope they’d do it more good than they’d done her.

      The more she’d achieved, the more in demand she’d been. For the past five years, she’d been constantly on the go, living out of a suitcase, setting up and streamlining multiple humanitarian operations across the globe. If she’d wanted intimacies, they would have had to be passing encounters. And those just weren’t for her.

      But now, after Amelia’s questions, she had to pause and wonder. Had one of the major attractions of that whole lifestyle been the legitimate and continuous way of escaping intimacies?

      Glory loved her job, couldn’t ask for anything more fulfilling on a personal or professional level. But it had given her no respite, no time or energy for self-reflection or reassessment. Had she unconsciously sought that flat-out pace to make herself too unavailable? Too consumed to even sense anything missing? So she didn’t have to face that she’d always be a one-man woman? That for her, it was Vincenzo or nothing?

      Amelia must have read the answer in Glory’s silent stare, for she, too, exhaled. “Did he break your heart?”

      “No. He … smashed it.”

      Amelia frowned, expression darkening. “Okay, now I hate the guy. I saw him a few times on TV, and I don’t know how I didn’t peg him for a slimeball! I thought he sounded like a pretty decent guy, no airs, and even with his reputation, I remember wondering how he demolished the stereotype of the royal playboy. I thought being a scientist saved him from being a narcissistic monster. But I stand corrected.”

      The ridiculous urge to defend him overpowered Glory. “He isn’t … wasn’t like that. He’s—he’s just … I don’t know.” She shook her head in confusion. “It’s like he’s two—no, three people. The man I fell in love with was like you describe him—honorable, sincere and grounded in his public life, focused, driven and brilliant in his working one, and sensitive, caring and passionate in person. Then there was the man who ended things with me, cold and callous, even vicious. And finally there’s the man I met today. Relentless and dominating, yet nothing like the man who took everything seriously, or the man who relished humiliating me.”

      “Humiliating you?” The edge to Amelia’s rising fury was a blade against Glory’s inflamed nerves. “And now he’s asking you to marry him to fix his reputation? And don’t say ‘only for a year’ again or I may have to break something. I can’t believe I was excited at first! Tell him to take his short-term-lease-marriage offer and go to hell.”

      Glory had always thought Amelia as magnificent as a golden lioness. She now looked like one defending her cub. Her reaction warmed Glory even through the ice of her despondency. “You mean you wouldn’t have told me to tell him that anyway?”

      “No, I wouldn’t have. I mean, you’re not in the market for a regular marriage anyway, then comes Prince Very Delicious offering you a year in a fairy tale with a ten million dollar cash bonus. If he wasn’t a scumbag who seems to have crippled you emotionally for life, I would have thought it a super deal for you. Now what I want to know is how dare he approach you of all people with his offer?”

      Glory hadn’t shared Vincenzo’s reason for picking her. As the one “convenient”—not to mention compromised—enough for his needs. Again. She exhaled and escaped