A Christmas Vow of Seduction Read online

  “So you’re saddling me with a woman who seems to be here against her will?”

  “You knew you would have to marry someday. This is no surprise to you.”

  “I figured I might have some involvement in the selection of my bride.”

  Kairos pounded his hand down hard on the desk. “Men like us never do. You have lived a life sheltered from the responsibility that faces us. I have not had that luxury. I know the reality of it. You marry appropriately. You do not marry for love. Yes, I suppose I should be thankful you spared me the scandal of having to divorce Francesca. But I selected Tabitha in haste and...it is entirely possible we are facing a larger problem than an issue of marital happiness.”

  “Are you unhappy?”

  “I never expected to be happy. Neither do I require happiness.” Kairos rubbed his temples. “What I require is an heir. It may have escaped your notice that I don’t seem to possess one.”

  “I assumed you were trying for one.”

  Kairos curled his fingers into a fist. “We have never used birth control. Five years, and we have never tried to prevent pregnancy. Possibly more information than you would like, but now you know where things stand.”

  “What is it you are leading up to here, Kairos? I’ve never been accused of being the smart one. You have to spell things out.”

  “You may very well be responsible for producing the next in line to the throne. That means you need to marry. You need to marry royalty. Princess Zara is, in fact, royalty.”

  “You expect me to exit bachelorhood and start producing babies on such short notice?”

  Kairos waved a hand. “Don’t be so dramatic about it. Just because you marry doesn’t mean you have to change your behavior entirely. Certainly you will have to be more discreet.”

  His brother suggesting something as shocking as carrying on extramarital affairs was surprising, and was almost as shocking as the fact that Kairos was essentially marrying him off. “Are you unfaithful to your wife?”

  A muscle in Kairos’s jaw jumped. “No. I’m simply telling you that things don’t have to change all that much. Obviously your marriage will be one of convenience, and as long as you treat her with respect, I don’t see why you should have to pledge your fidelity to her.”

  “I have no practice with fidelity. I would hardly stake my life on it.”

  “You knew the day would come when you would have to take some responsibility for the nation. That day is now. It’s this. Father may have expected you to amount to nothing, but I certainly expect you to carry your weight.”

  “I had no idea that as the spare, I was required to carry any weight unless you died.”

  “Unhappily for you, that is not the case. I need you for political reasons, and practical reasons.”

  Andres looked down at his brother’s dark, furious eyes. “If things are so terrible with Tabitha, why don’t you divorce her and find a woman who can give you the children you need?”

  Kairos laughed, a hollow, bitter sound. “There are certainly some things you will have to learn if you’re to be a husband. I can no more cast off my wife because she can’t produce children than give a speech in front of foreign dignitaries without clothes on. I would be crucified by the press. I made vows to her, and I intend to keep them.” He didn’t sound happy about it, and certainly his devotion to her had nothing to do with love. That much was clear. “It’s time to atone for your sins, little brother.”

  Andres was usually quite content in his sins, with no desire to atone for them at all. Except for Francesca. That he would take back a hundred times over if he could. Particularly now, with the stark reality of Kairos’s marriage to Tabitha laid out in front of him, he could hardly defend those actions.

  “You’re overlooking a very important piece of the equation,” Andres said.

  “And that is?”

  “She does not want to marry me. That much was clear when I encountered her in my bedroom. We’re holding a kidnapped woman.”

  “She has very few alternatives,” Kairos said. “I get the sense that if she goes back to Tirimia she’ll be in danger. For all that their government is playing nicely with us now, things are far too tentative for me to stake her life on presumed decency. She is safest here.”

  “She’s feral. What do you expect me to do with her?”

  “You’re a legendary playboy. The last thing you need from me is advice on how to deal with women.”

  “She is not a woman. She’s a creature.”

  He thought of that wild dark hair, her glittering, angry eyes. Somehow they were supposed to make a royal couple? He would need a woman twice as tame as Tabitha to convince the public of a change in him.

  A woman such as her wouldn’t make his reinvention easy.

  Kairos laughed, an even rarer occurrence than a smile. “I’m a married man, but even I noticed there was enough to recommend her. She’s beautiful, though, I confess not overly sophisticated.”

  “I was too busy being surprised by her presence in my bedroom to notice her beauty.” A lie. He was not blind to her curves, her full, sensual lips. Despite the fact that, for all he knew, she might attack him if he approached her, she was a lush little package.

  “My word is law,” Kairos said, his tone uncompromising. “And you owe me, brother. You will obey me on this. Tame her, train her, seduce her, I don’t really care, but by God you will marry her.”

  Andres clenched his teeth together. He would find the moment more surreal if he hadn’t long suspected that it was coming. That someday he would stand before his brother and be informed of his fate. He was a prince, the second born to an old royal family. He had never imagined he would escape marriage, children. It had always only been a matter of time. And his time, it seemed, was up.

  “Anything else, Your Highness?” Andres asked, his tone dry.

  “Don’t take too long.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  PRINCESS ZARA STOICA, heiress to no throne at all, was tired of waiting on the whims of men. It was because of men that she had been uprooted from the palace as a child, sent out to live in the deep, dark woods with the nomadic people who inhabited them, kept safe thanks to centuries-old traditions of honor and hospitality. It was men who had stolen her from her safe haven fifteen years later, and elected to use her as a pawn to further political unions with neighboring nations. Of course, it had also been a man sitting on the throne here in Petras who had decided it was perfectly acceptable to keep her and pawn her off on his brother as a sort of postwar bride.

  As a result, it was not a terrible surprise that it was a man who clearly owned this room, and who had burst in close to an hour ago, nearly terrifying the life out of her.

  It occurred to her that it was entirely possible she had been installed in Prince Andres’s room. The man she was supposed to marry. The very idea made her shiver down to her bones.

  Worse than fear was the restlessness starting to run through her veins. She was growing bored, closed up here in the bedroom.

  There was a view of the city from a small window by the bed. She found no comfort in such a view. Houses clustered together tightly, high-rise buildings beyond that. Cars cluttering up the roads like a line of dizzy ants desperately seeking food. She preferred the crisp, clean air of the mountains. The silence held close around her by thick evergreens.

  She had a difficult time marking passing hours while shut up in vast castles with nothing but man-made architecture sprawled out before her.

  She flopped backward onto the bed, sinking deeply into the down-filled blankets and soft mattress.

  It was shocking, being exposed to such comfort.

  Her years spent living in caravans with her caregivers had been cozy, and not uncomfortable, but it had certainly been nothing like this. And when the new political leaders of Tirimia had brought her back to the old palace, they certainly hadn’t installed her in anything half as luxurious.

  She looked up at the ceiling, at the ornate molding, the large chand
elier that hung from the center of the room. She could not recall ever having been in a bedchamber with a chandelier. Tirimia was a much more modest economy than Petras, even before the revolution.

  A sense of unease washed over her and she scrambled off of the bed. She did not want that man, whether or not he was Prince Andres, coming in and finding her like that again. It was unsettling. She paced the length of the room—and it was a fairly impressive length—before retracing her steps, pausing at a door that was firmly closed. She wrapped her fingers around the ornate knob and pushed it open, finding a vast bathroom on the other side. It was much more modern than the rest of the room.

  There was a large shower in the corner of the room, glass panels closing it off from the rest of the space. There was also a large, sunken tub that nearly made her groan with longing. The very thought of submerging in warm water sent an intense craving through her that rivaled any she’d ever had for a dessert. A long, hot bath was something that was simply impossible out in the middle of the forest, and something that hadn’t been afforded her when she was brought back to the palace as a glorified prisoner.

  It was a temptation, but if she thought being discovered in a bed that was not her own was humiliating, certainly being discovered in the bath would be worse.

  She walked slowly across the room, moving to a large vanity and mirror mounted at the back wall. There were small bottles displayed on the clean marble surface. She wondered what a man did with so many bottles of lotions and scents. She reached out and took hold of one, unscrewing the lid and lifting it to her nose, sniffing cautiously. It was a cologne, smelling of sandalwood and other spices. She tried to remember if the man she had encountered earlier smelled of those things. She could not.

  She set the bottle back down, picking up the next one. This one contained lotion, and it was a temptation too far for her. She tipped it cautiously, squirting a small amount onto her hands, before putting the bottle back in its place. She smoothed the thick cream over her hands, luxuriating in the feel. Her skin had grown rough from so many years of hard labor and living outdoors. A sign of strength, she often thought, and she had never regretted it. Still, it didn’t mean she couldn’t indulge in one small moment of softness.

  “What are you doing?”

  She turned sharply, backing herself up against the edge of the vanity, knocking several of the bottles over as she did. “I was bored,” she said, looking up to see the same man she had encountered earlier standing in the doorway glaring fiercely at her.

  The impact of him was beyond that of a physical blow. She was accustomed to large men, men with a commanding presence that pushed you back, held you at a distance.

  Some might call the people she had been raised with Gypsies, based on their simple, nomadic lifestyle, but they weren’t, not in blood heritage. They were part of a small, mostly destroyed minority group in Tirimia who still clung to the old ways. Not a warrior culture in the traditional sense, but fiercely protective of the camp and of anyone they felt to be under their care.

  However, the gruff exterior of the men she had been raised around could not have been more different from the suave, confronting aura given off by this man. One would think that a man in a suit would not be half as intimidating as one in old jeans. This man should have appeared to be vastly more civilized, and yet it was that veneer of civility that she found frightening. Because she sensed so much beneath it. A hidden depth and strength, buried so deep she had no way of assessing it.

  She didn’t like this at all. Didn’t like the fact that she was in the dark about so many things. At home, things had been so much simpler. She had been protected. She had been certain of her surroundings. The world had been small, containing the forest, her caravan, the cooking fires and people she had known for most of her life.

  There were rules. And she had been certain in them.

  Now she was here. In a strange land, confronted by a stranger.

  A large, broad-chested stranger in a well-cut suit. With short black hair, a square jaw and strong, dark eyebrows. He was beautiful in the same way a predator was. Lethal, and difficult to look away from. She had never, in all her life, been held captive by a man in such a way. So far the men she encountered could easily be divided into two categories. Those she had grown up with and seen nearly every day of her life, and those she considered an enemy.

  This man was neither, and that made him unique.

  She might yet decide he was an enemy, but for now, she would hold off on that assessment. He might well be dangerous, but he could also very well be her only ally. She had realized two months ago, when she was kidnapped from the encampment, that she had only a spare few options. If she tried to escape her captors and go back to the clan, they would be punished. A poor repayment for shared food, clothing and shelter of the past fifteen years.

  Escaping and staying in Petras was no more of a possibility.

  She had no money, no form of identification. She didn’t know the layout of the city, or of the country beyond. She couldn’t drive, and she had no friends.

  She would have to make one.

  Zara eyed the man standing in the doorway of the bathroom. She wondered if she could make a friend of him. Well, not a friend. Not in the true sense.

  But it would do no good to battle him all the way. She would need to be compliant, to a degree. To watch for the right moment to make her move. Whatever it might be.

  “You were bored?” he asked, repeating her words back to her.

  “Yes, I don’t know how long I’ve been in here, but it has been quite a while.”

  “Perhaps we should start over,” he said. “I am Prince Andres. It appears we are to be married.”

  Unease, followed by a rash of unexplainable heat coursed through her veins. “Is that so?”

  His words confirmed her suspicions. That he was the owner of this room. That he was now the owner of her.

  “I am informed.” He arched one dark eyebrow. “Perhaps you would like to continue this discussion in a more comfortable setting?”

  She nodded slowly and began to walk toward him. Then her stomach growled, the sound echoing in the space. “I’m hungry,” she said. She realized then that she hadn’t eaten since very early this morning.

  “Then I will arrange for you to be fed.”

  It didn’t take long for Andres to procure the promised food. He had a tray of meats, cheeses, fruits and breads sent up to the bedroom, which was how Zara found herself sitting on the bed again, her legs covered with a blanket, eating the spread that had been placed before her.

  She could feel his watchful gaze on her as she ate in near silence. He hadn’t interrupted her yet, but she could see that he wanted to. For the first time in a very long while she felt she might have the upper hand. A very slight upper hand, to be sure, but he seemed nearly as confused and put off by the entire situation as she was. Which was, in her estimation, why he was being so watchful. And why he was letting her eat undisturbed. He was circling her, as though she were a potentially dangerous creature and he was concerned about being bitten.

  The thought sent a pleasurable rush of power through her, joining the sated sensation in the pit of her stomach brought about by the cheese. Her needs had always been simple. At least, they had become simple once she was sent to live with the nomads at just six years old. They had been simple by necessity. But lately, her needs had shrunk down even further. Warmth, food, shelter. If she had those things, she knew she could keep on going.

  Good food and soft blankets were several notches more extravagant than she’d had in the past couple of months. And a bit of power? Very heady icing on top of this unexpected cake.

  So she continued to eat in silence, sensing his growing impatience, allowing it to feed her small, mean satisfaction.

  “How long has it been since you were fed?”

  His question surprised her. “Since this morning.”

  “You are too skinny,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact. His words offended h
er, and she couldn’t quite figure out why. She had never given much thought to her appearance. The men who had taken her captive had assigned a woman to make her beautiful for presentation to the king, but Zara couldn’t say it had mattered much to her. They had put too much makeup on her, the gold around her eyes her own addition, a nod to the culture she had adopted as her own. Her beauty had never been a topic of discussion among the nomads. She had been under the protection of the leader, Raz, and he had forbidden any man from touching her, or even looking at her in a disrespectful manner.

  And now this man was telling her she was too skinny. And she was angry.

  “I will say that my captors did not overly concern themselves with the quality of my food.”

  “You are a captive?” he asked, his tone fierce.

  “I’m surprised you care. Your brother did not appear to be similarly concerned. He was quick to accept me as though I were a...a fruit basket.”

  He looked her over. “You are most certainly not a fruit basket, that much is evident.”

  “I have been passed around like one.” She sniffed, allowing herself a moment to fully revel in the indignity of it all. At one time, she had been a princess. A member of the royal family in Tirimia. Being in a palace such as this would have been her right. Before she had been wrenched away from the only home she’d ever known, robbed of her family. Her birthright. “I suppose I can only be grateful no one has plucked at any of my grapes and taken small samples, so to speak.”

  She looked up and caught his dark gaze, the sharp shock of heat piercing her straight to her stomach. She felt her face warm and she looked away. “Indeed, that would have been a shame. I’m glad your grapes remain...unsampled.”

  A muscle beneath her eye twitched. “Remarkable under the circumstances, I should think.” She had spent a great many years being protected, but that did not mean she was ignorant of the ways of men.

  “You were the princess in Tirimia,” he said, his tone vaguely accusatory.

  “I am the princess. I have been replaced. Not by another princess, but by a farcical government who pretends to care about the freedom of the people, when, in truth, they only care about their own power.”