Princes of Castaldini: The Once and Future Prince. Olivia Gates

was on one of his bitterness binges and needed to paint Phoebe as dark a shade of exploitative as possible. What he’d spent years needing to believe didn’t mesh with reality. Reality said Julia had it all, and Phoebe, the strong one, the capable, nurturing one, had ended up living in her shadow, everything in her life a reflection of what filled Julia’s.

      He’d met Julia twice. On both occasions, he’d bristled with animosity. He hadn’t known why until he’d realized he’d been in the presence of tyranny of the weak in a wraithlike, female form.

      And they were two corridors away from said monster’s lair.

      Phoebe felt so taut she might snap. Maledizione, was she so deeply conditioned to put her sister’s so-called needs ahead of her own that she dreaded leaving Julia even for a short time…?

      Short time. Did she think it would be that? Did she want it to be? Did he? How could he, when he’d never get enough…? Never?

      Never. But…what about closure? Closure…

      The word churned in his mind, sickened him. And he had to face it. He didn’t want closure. He never had. All he wanted was a continuation. And he was no longer putting a definition or form to that continuation. Something as elemental as what they shared abided by no rules but its own. But that was how he felt. What about her?

      What if this tension wasn’t all about her mother complex over her sister? What if there was still an element of coercion here? What if being with him was what she wanted, but also what she’d rather not do? What if she felt cornered by both her need to help his kingdom, and her need for him? He couldn’t bear that he might be contributing to her turmoil.

      He reached for her, pulled her through the nearest doorway.

      The couple going about their business in their own quarters looked as if they’d been caught trespassing, started babbling apologies. He winced as he requested the kindness of the use of their quarters for a few minutes. They streaked out.

      The moment the door closed behind them, he took Phoebe by the shoulders. She stared up at him, her eyes alarmed, confused.

      He groaned. “I take back my condition. And my promise. I’ll stay in Castaldini and draw on your opinions and guidance in coming to a decision. We’ll work out a way to collaborate while we’re on opposite ends of the island.”

      The deluge of emotion that flooded her eyes inundated him. She seemed to stop breathing. She seemed…hurt? More…stricken?

      His lungs burned as he waited for her to put her reaction into words. They finally came from her lips, but felt like a trembling caress in his mind. “You don’t want me…to come with you anymore?”

      The barked laugh gashed something on its way out. “If I wanted you more, we’d have a medical emergency on our hands.”

      Her lower lip trembled. His whole body rioted. “Then why are you taking your invitation back?”

      “Because I didn’t exactly make it an invitation.”

      Her eyes—those eyes that dominated his fantasies—bombarded him with so much emotion, everything in him tensed. His thoughts and heart and guts and loins. Then she upped the ante. Comprehension, followed by delight, turned her face from the sum of his desires to the end of life as he knew it.

      She slowly, so slowly, imprinted her body on his, slid up against him, her lips open on pleasure-laden breaths until she whispered into his mouth, “Then make it one.”

      He was a super hero. He didn’t devour her. Or maybe he couldn’t. Because he was dying here. Not that rigor mortis would stop him from obeying her. He groaned.

      “Will you come with me, Phoebe? Unconnected with anything but what we both want? Will you bestow on me the pleasure of you?”

      “Yes.” The S lingered as she pressed all that reason-annihilating femininity against him. The world faded as the sound did, as she nestled her face into his open shirt. His heart did its best to tear open his ribs for a direct rub. “Now promise me again.”

      Was this survivable? He frankly didn’t care. “I’ll let you come to me. But I’ll keep showing you how much I want you to, how mind-blowingly better than ever it will be when you do.”

      Her giggle was a cocktail of distress, mirth and yearning. “This I have to experience to believe.”

      He still kept his hands to himself. Somehow. “You will. Experience. And believe. When you make up your mind.”

      She trembled as she leaned on him. He swayed. As they said in his hometown, sandadet ala haita mayla—she sought support from a collapsing wall.

      “Oh, my mind’s made up. It took you a whopping twenty-four hours to make it up for me. I need longer than that to follow conviction with action.”

      “Your pace this time. I might not have given you reason to believe that, but my stamina is legendary.” He paused, groaned. “And that sounded like so many famous last words.”

      Her laugh shook him. It contained something he’d never heard, not from her. Carefree cheerfulness. Its power was total. “Oh, you gave me every reason, in that sense. As for the one you meant now, I hope my stamina lasts long enough to give yours a workout.”

      “And I’m at once hoping it lasts as long as it takes for you to feel right about coming to me, and hoping it will crumble within the next three minutes so we can cut to just living this.”

      “Forty-eight hours ago I wouldn’t have believed it. But I’ve been hearing it with my own ears nonstop, so I have to sanction the verdict. You talk good. Too good. As I’m sure you know.”

      His lips twisted. “You’d be surprised what I don’t know.”

      “I don’t know…” she ran a finger of fire down his sternum and marked him for life yet again “…about you, but I want to get goodbyes out of the way. I’m dying to…see your home.”

      “And I’m dying—probably literally—to see you in it.”

      She hooked her arm through his. “Then come on.”

      Feeling like he could indeed sprout wings if he clucked hard enough, as she’d once said, or that he’d already sprouted them, he shared unfettered smiles with her as they hurried to her sister’s apartment. The sister he no longer felt like strangling.

      Until he laid eyes on her.

      The tinier—and in his eyes, off-putting—loosely-based-on-Phoebe variation was sitting in her wheelchair like a queen bee surrounded by her workers. Paolo, her doting idiot of a husband, the brood of children she’d shackled him with—and from the shape of her belly, she wasn’t done smothering him, not by a long shot—and an assortment of nannies and maids all flitted around her.

      As soon as they entered the sunset-drenched family room of the apartment that occupied a hefty part of the palace’s left wing, the two girls and the two boys, all dark-haired and healthy-looking, hurtled toward their aunt, yelping at her like excited puppies. Paolo targeted him with a smile.

      A tall, slender man with an eternally boyish face, Paolo looked younger than his thirty-one years. Until you looked into his eyes. There you could see the toll of being a father four times over, with the fifth—or only Julia knew how many more—on the way.

      Paolo had kept in touch with Leandro over the years. Not that they’d been close before, but he’d become a better friend after the breach than before it. Leandro had appreciated that. Even if he didn’t appreciate Paolo’s choice of wife. When that choice had led to Leandro’s meeting Phoebe, he couldn’t have endorsed it enough. Not anymore.

      “Leandro! So good to see you back in Castaldini.” Leandro let himself be pulled into Paolo’s hug and kissed on both cheeks. Paolo pulled back but kept both hands on his arms as he beamed at him. “I hope this time you’re here to stay.”

      Leandro smiled as he extracted