The Billionaire's Secret Princess. CAITLIN CREWS

the power of titles. She had many of her own. And her life was marked by those who used the different versions of her titles, not to mention the few who actually called her by her first name.

      “I cannot tolerate this behavior,” he said, but it wasn’t in that same infuriated tone he’d used earlier. If anything, he sounded almost...indulgent. But surely that was impossible. “It borders on open rebellion, and I cannot have that. This is not a democracy, I’m afraid. This is a dictatorship. If I want your opinion, I’ll tell you what it is.”

      There was no reason her heart should have been kicking at her like that, her pulse so loud in her ears she was sure he must be able to hear it himself.

      “What an interesting way to foster employee loyalty,” she murmured. “Really more of a scorch-the-earth approach. Do you find it gets you the results you want?”

      “I do not need to breed employee loyalty,” Achilles told her, sounding even lazier than before, those dark eyes of his on hers. “People are loyal to me or they are fired. You seem to have forgotten reality today, Natalie. Allow me to remind you that I pay you so much money that I own your loyalty, just as I own everything else.”

      “Perhaps,” and her voice was a little too rough then. A little too shaky, when what could this possibly have to do with her? She was a visitor. Natalie’s loyalty was no concern of hers. “I have no wish to be owned. Does anyone? I think you’ll find that they do not.”

      Achilles shrugged. “Whether you wish it or do not, that is how it is.”

      “That is why I was considering quitting,” she heard herself say. And she was no longer looking at him. That was still far too dangerous, too disconcerting. She found herself staring down at her hands, folded in her lap. She could feel that she was frowning, when she learned a long, long time ago never to show her feelings in public. “It’s all very well and good for you, of course. I imagine it’s quite pleasant to have minions. But for me, there’s more to life than blind loyalty. There’s more to life than work.” She blinked back a strange heat. “I may not have experienced it myself, but I know there must be.”

      “And what do you think is out there?” He shifted in the seat beside her, but Valentina still refused to look back at him, no matter how she seemed almost physically compelled to do just that. “What do you think you’re missing? Is it worth what you are throwing away here today, with this aggressive attitude and the childish pretense that you don’t know your own job?”

      “It’s only those who are bored of the world, or jaded, who are so certain no one else could possibly wish to see it.”

      “No one is keeping you from roaming about the planet at will,” he told her in a low voice. Too low. So low it danced along her skin and seemed to insinuate itself beneath her flesh. “But you seem to wish to burn down the world you know in order to see the one you don’t. That is not what I would call wise. Would you?”

      Valentina didn’t understand why his words seemed to beat beneath her own skin. But she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. And her eyes seemed entirely too full, almost scratchy, with an emotion she couldn’t begin to name.

      She was aware of too many things. Of the car as it slid through the Manhattan streets. Of Achilles himself, too big and too masculine in the seat beside her, and much too close besides. And most of all, that oddly weighted thing within her, rolling around and around until she couldn’t tell the difference between sensation and reaction.

      And him right there in the middle of it, confusing her all the more.

       CHAPTER THREE

      ACHILLES DIDN’T SAY another word, and that was worse. It left Valentina to sit there with her own thoughts in a whirl and nothing to temper them. It left no barrier between that compelling, intent look in his curiously dark eyes and her.

      Valentina had no experience with men. Her father had insisted that she grow up as sheltered as possible from public life, so that she could enjoy what little privacy was afforded to a European princess before she turned eighteen. She’d attended carefully selected boarding schools run strictly and deliberately, but that hadn’t prevented her classmates from involving themselves in all kinds of dramatic situations. Even then, Valentina had kept herself apart.

      Your mother’s defection was a stain on the throne, her father always told her. It is upon us to render it clean and whole again.

      Valentina had been far too terrified of staining Murin any further to risk a scandal. She’d concentrated on her studies and her friends and left the teenage rebellions to others. And once out of school, she’d been thrust unceremoniously into the spotlight. She’d been an ambassador for her kingdom wherever she went, and more than that, she’d always known that she was promised to the Crown Prince of Tissely. Any scandals she embroiled herself in would haunt two kingdoms.

      She’d never seen the point.

      And along the way she’d started to take a certain pride in the fact that she was saving herself for her predetermined marriage. It was the one thing that was hers to give on her wedding night that had nothing to do with her father or her kingdom.

      Is it pride that’s kept you chaste—or is it control? a little voice inside her asked then, and the way it kicked in her, Valentina suspected she wouldn’t care for the answer. She ignored it.

      But the point was, she had no idea how to handle men. Not on any kind of intimate level. These past few hours, in fact, were the longest she’d ever spent alone in the company of a man. It simply didn’t happen when she was herself. There were always attendants and aides swarming around Princess Valentina. Always.

      She told herself that was why she was having such trouble catching her breath. It was the novelty—that was all. It certainly wasn’t him.

      Still, it was almost a relief when the car pulled up in front of a quietly elegant building on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, perched there with a commanding view of Central Park, and came to a stop.

      The late-afternoon breeze washed over her when she stepped from the car, smelling improbably of flowers in the urban sprawl of New York City. But Valentina decided to take it as a blessing.

      Achilles remained silent as he escorted her into the building. He only raised his chin in the barest of responses to the greeting that came his way from the doormen in the shiny, obviously upscale lobby, and then he led her into a private elevator located toward the back and behind another set of security guards. It was a gleaming, shining thing that he operated with a key. And it was blessedly without any mirrors.

      Valentina wasn’t entirely sure whom she’d see if she looked at her own reflection just then.

      There were too many things she didn’t understand churning inside her, and she hadn’t the slightest idea what she was doing here. What on earth she hoped to gain from this odd little lark across the planet, literally in another woman’s shoes.

      A break, she reminded herself sternly. A vacation. A little holiday away from all the duties and responsibilities of Princess Valentina, which was more important now than ever. She would give herself over to her single-greatest responsibility in a matter of weeks. She would marry Prince Rodolfo and make both of their fathers and all of their subjects very, very happy.

      And a brief escape had sounded like bliss for that split second back there in London—and it still did, when she thought about what waited for her. The terribly appropriate royal marriage. The endlessly public yet circumspect life of a modern queen. The glare of all that attention that she and any children she bore could expect no matter where they went or what they did, yet she could never comment upon lest she seem ungrateful or entitled.

      Hers was to wave and smile—that was all. She was marrying a man she hardly knew who would expect the marital version of the same. This was a little breather before the reality of all that. This was a tiny bit of space between her circumscribed life at her father’s side and more of the same at her husband’s.