King's Ransom. Amelia Autin

king whose word was law to them.

      Their stance on the subject had amused Andre at times, so much so he’d even discussed that contradiction in terms with his cousin Zax in one of their private meetings. But Zax hadn’t been amused, Andre remembered now. And he wondered why that memory had suddenly occurred to him tonight of all nights.

      He searched the throng of people for his cousin’s face. Maybe Zax can help me keep my mind off Juliana. But he couldn’t spot him in the overcrowded room. Then—despite ordering himself not to—Andre’s gaze wandered inevitably back to Juliana, still standing with her friends where he’d left her.

      He stared at her across the distance that separated them, wanting nothing more than to sweep her into his arms and carry her from the noisy, glittering crowd into the quiet sanctuary of his bedroom, the way he’d longed to do since the first moment she’d appeared at the top of the Grand Staircase tonight. Wanting nothing more than to make Juliana see what she was to him, what she had always been. Wanting to erase that hard, bitter edge he didn’t understand but that he knew had to be an act, revealing the genuine, loving woman he remembered.

      But she had to come to him. He could not force her. He could not make her. He had done everything humanly possible to get her this far, but that was as far as he could go. Now it was up to her. He could only do whatever lay in his power to convince her she belonged here in Zakhar. With him.

      Her career was a stumbling block. She was at the height of her beauty, the height of her talent and power. It seemed as if there was nothing she couldn’t accomplish in her career. No role she couldn’t play.

      On the other hand, there was no man in her life now, and had not been for several years. He was sure of it. But he had not relied on the tabloids for that information. She’d been under the covert protection...and surveillance...of his agents ever since he’d ascended the throne. Ever since he’d acknowledged that the unbroken line of Marianescus ruling Zakhar for over five hundred years would be broken, unless...

      The Privy Council was again pressuring him to marry and beget heirs. Delicately, to be sure, and some members more than others, but pressuring nevertheless. He’d managed to maintain his composure in the face of the subtle and not so subtle hints thrown out by the Privy Council regarding the topic of his marriage. He’d never succumbed to the intense pressure his father had placed on him—he wasn’t succumbing to the Privy Council’s pressure now.

      Since women couldn’t sit on the Zakharian throne, Andre’s heir wasn’t his sister, Mara. That was his cousin Zax, the oldest son of his deceased uncle Evander—and a year older than he was. Andre had never worried overmuch about the succession when he’d served in the Zakharian National Forces, not even when his unit was deployed to Afghanistan. He knew Zakhar would be in good hands with Zax at the helm, although it would have meant breaking the unbroken father-to-son direct line. But in the years since then, he’d recognized the supreme importance of that unbroken line—not to himself or his yet-to-be-born son, but to the people of Zakhar.

      The Zakharians firmly believed the good fortune and prosperity their country had experienced throughout the centuries was somehow tied in with the House of Marianescu and the monarchy’s father-to-son direct descent, from the first Andre Alexei to his oldest son, Raoul, right up to the present day. Superstition? No question. But the average Zakharian citizen vehemently opposed tempting fate by breaking with the time-honored tradition. So Andre had every intention of acceding to the Privy Council’s fervent wishes in the near future. Just not the way they expected.

      Andre knew there were eyes all around them, watching, speculating, as if his life and Juliana’s were just food for gossip, grist for the tabloid mill. He tore his gaze away from Juliana and smiled easily at the little group of men and women around him, joining in the inane conversation. No matter what, he had to shield Juliana from the tabloids if he could, the same way he’d shielded his sister, Mara, until her husband had come along to assume that responsibility. Perhaps that was an outdated attitude in this day and age, but he was Zakharian right down to his fingernails, and like his famous ancestor he would change for no man.

      Just because he wasn’t looking at Juliana didn’t mean he couldn’t see her, however. That heart-shaped face; those violet eyes fringed with long, natural, sooty lashes; those lips that looked so passionate yet somehow unkissable until a man saw the way the hesitant curve of her smile betrayed her vulnerability; the long, silky, ebony tresses that wreathed her face like a dark wavy halo and cascaded down her back.

      She was perfection itself now, but that wasn’t why he loved her. He remembered her as a coltish teenager, unsure of herself, unsure of the changes her body was going through as she metamorphosed from a girl into a woman. He had first loved her when she was sixteen and he was twenty, had loved her when only her violet eyes had conveyed a hint of the beautiful woman she would someday become.

      But he had not touched her.

      He had not touched her when she turned seventeen and began blossoming into a diminutive beauty standing just as high as his heart, not even when she practiced her newly discovered feminine wiles on him. He had teased her gently, turning aside her natural curiosity about men and women, deflecting her innocent desire for him, keeping her at a physical distance in a way that wouldn’t seem like rejection to her sensitive soul.

      Even the summer she turned eighteen he had not touched her, though by then her beauty made heads turn on the street, made men openly lust after her with their eyes. His body burned to possess hers that summer. He knew he could have her—Juliana’s expressive eyes betrayed she ached for him the way he ached for her. Desire made him toss and turn in his bed so that he took to riding his stallion through the countryside late at night until they were both exhausted, then camping out in the rustic hillside cottage he’d made his own. Far away from the palace. Far away from the sleeping streets of Drago. Far away from temptation.

      And he had not touched her.

      She had tested his willpower to the breaking point, but it had held. Until the night before she left for college. Until the night she came to him like a silken dream...

      As usual when Andre thought of Juliana, his body responded with a fierce surge of desire. He’d had a wealth of experience controlling that desire, and he tried to do so now. But it wasn’t working. Not this time. Because Juliana was right there...just across the room. For the first time in eleven years he’d spoken with her, watched up close as those violet eyes changed hue with her emotions, saw the sudden fear ripple through her body, making her tremble and her nipples tighten under the violet silk sheath that caressed her body the way he longed to do. The gown she’d worn with nothing beneath it, knowing the effect it would have on him and every man who saw her. And then...knew she was remembering, as he did, one perfect night.

      Do not think of that, he warned himself. Not here. Not now. Not with the eyes of the world fastened upon you like vultures on a carcass.

      When he’d ascended the throne and had Zax assign men to protect Juliana, his cousin had asked in his blunt way if it wasn’t possible Andre had built his love for Juliana into something more than it really was. That if he saw her again in person he might be able to get her out of his system.

      Well, he’d seen Juliana in person. Finally. And Zax was wrong. He would never be free of the hold she had on him—heart, mind, body and soul. She was in his blood. In his DNA. Not that he’d spent the past eleven years doing nothing—he’d built a life of purpose without the woman he loved and had accomplished great things in the few short years of his reign. But as he’d told his sister, Mara, without Juliana he would be forever incomplete. Come to me, Juliana, he prayed silently. Come to me.

Chapter 3

      “Change of plans,” the man said, sipping from a wineglass and gazing in Juliana’s direction. “That may well be your first target instead. Before anything else.”

      “Juliana Richardson?” the Russian standing with him asked dubiously, instantly recognizing the famous face. “How does removing her achieve your goal?”