Royal Date (6 page)

Nico did not take my arm this time, but kept his hands clasped behind his back. I didn’t know if that was his natural stance, or if he was avoiding touching me.

He took me down to the main part of the castle, showing me the Great Hall, the ballroom, a banquet hall. There was the White Drawing Room and the Green Drawing Room and the Blue Drawing Room. Each room was more luxurious and bigger than the last. Nico kept up a steady stream of information about everything he showed me. But I’d seen one drawing room. I didn’t really need to see all of them.

“How many rooms does the palace have?”

“Including bathrooms and staterooms, over eight hundred.”

Eight hundred rooms? I stopped. He realized I was no longer standing next to him and turned to see what I was doing. “We’re not going to look at all eight hundred rooms, are we?”

He smiled. “I’ll show you one last place that I like, and then I’ll take you to the garden.”

On our way, Nico continued to point out rooms and their names, like some kind of hot, determined tour guide. He nodded toward the library. I was torn between asking him to stop so that I could see it and wanting to hurry this up so the evening could end. I decided to go back and check out the library when I had a chance. Alone. We passed by a conservatory and a lounge.

“I feel like I’m in a real-life version of Clue.”

“Don’t worry. Nobody’s been killed here in decades.” I heard the teasing in his voice, but I immediately wanted to know who had been killed in the palace and why. Before I could ask, he held open another door and led me into a quiet, long room that had floor-to-ceiling paintings.

“This is the gallery. Every member of the royal family has a portrait here.” Some of the portraits looked newer, but many of them looked really old.

“Every time that I am feeling unsure of myself, I come here. All of this history, all of these people, my ancestors, remind me that I can do what needs to be done.” Nico looked lost in his own thoughts, as he moved down the room’s length.

It was the most personal thing he had ever said to me. He seemed so polished, so perfect. Like nothing bothered him. And here he was announcing that he had self-doubts. Actual chinks in his armor. And he had sounded . . . lonely. The wall around my heart lost a few bricks.

“I can’t even imagine what it must be like to be in a room full of pictures of your family,” I told him as we came to stop in front of a massive tapestry that contained his family tree. I saw the latest embroidered entry of Serafina Maria Theresa Aria and ran my fingers over her name. “To have your whole family tree laid out like this. To know who you are and where you come from.”

“You don’t?” He stopped to look at me.

“What little I do know is not fun. Not all of us come from a long line of kings and queens.” I waved my hand up at the wall. “I personally am the proud offspring of a bunch of addicts and alcoholics.”

Nico didn’t say anything, just cocked his head to the side.

I let out a little laugh. “Pretty sure if you put my family tree up on your wall there would be a car wrapped around the trunk.”

“These are not all nice people,
bella
,” he said. “You think we’re without our share of addicts and alcoholics? I assure you, we are not. There would be too many here to count. And we have worse. Here, look at this one.”

He took me by the hand, and I loved the way our hands fit together, how it felt . . . natural. Right. So right that I forgot to freak out. We stopped in front of an old painting of a woman with black hair and an evil-looking smirk.

“This is Queen Isabella. She was a Spanish princess who married the Monterran king. She decided she would make a better monarch, so she poisoned her husband and her four oldest sons. The nobles had to band together to kidnap her youngest son to protect him from her. That prince grew up to overthrow his mother. And here.”

We moved farther down the line. “This is King Stefan. He used to accuse his wives of witchcraft so that he could put them to death and obtain newer and younger models. My family comes from his fourth wife, who managed to have one son before he had her killed.”

He sighed. “Assassinations, murders, coups, we have them all.” He flashed me a grin. “But look at how well the final product turned out.”

I wanted to roll my eyes. Yes, we all got it. He was gorgeous. I settled for shaking my head.

He tugged on my hand. “The garden is this way.”

He didn’t let go of my hand, and to my surprise, I didn’t let go of his. We walked in silence, only for the first time it wasn’t an awkward one. It was strange to feel this way. To feel comfortable with a man who seemed like he was attracted to me. To think that I might even let him . . . I mean if he tried . . . obviously, I was being presumptuous because he might not have even thought of me that way . . . but if he did . . . would I?

“Here we are.” He led me into an extremely large greenhouse that had completely clear paneling so that you could see everything outside. The palace must have sat high on a hill as I could see nothing but snow and twinkling lights from valley floors in every direction.

“Beautiful,” I sighed.

Nico looked at me and said, “I was thinking the same thing.”

My heart beat painfully, but I ignored his implication and instead looked at the full moon that hung high in the sky above us, lighting up the entire garden. I heard running water, and Nico led me down a cobblestone path that was highlighted by little paper lanterns with tea candles burning inside them. We went to a sheltered, padded bench that sat situated on a little island in the middle of a large pond where koi fish swam, darting in and out of crimson-colored water lilies. We sat down and I tried to take it all in. In addition to the fantastic view outside, everything here was lush and green and warm. Bright yellow, white, pink, and purple flowers surrounded us. “What is that scent?”

“Casablanca lilies. Did you know that every flower in here only blooms at night?”

“Really?”

He looked up and reached for a white flower above us. “It’s a moonflower. It actually closes up whenever sunlight touches the petals.”

“Cool.”

He reached over, tucking the flower into my hair, just above my ear. I didn’t realize that I was holding my breath until he moved his hand away. He rested his arm across the top of the bench behind me. “My mother has always loved gardens. She created this one not long after . . .” He trailed off, taking a deep breath. “She made it because she wanted us to remember that even beautiful things could grow in darkness.”

I wondered if that could be true for me as well. Could something beautiful grow here and now despite my darkness? I wanted to believe.

Nico stood up, removing his suit jacket. He put it on the bench’s arm, and as he sat back down he was undoing the cuffs of his sleeves and rolling them back. He loosened his tie and undid his top button. He let out a sigh of relaxation.

I wondered briefly what he’d look like in regular clothes. The closest thing to normal I’d seen him in was back at the ski lodge. That memory sparked a question that escaped my mouth before I could stop it. “Why did you come up to me at the lodge?”

Did everything I say amuse him? “Do you mean besides the fact that you are a beautiful woman?”

I made a face at him. We both knew that wasn’t true. “Yeah, besides that.”

“You were reading Shakespeare.” Had he moved closer to me, or was that my imagination? “Every other woman in the lobby was preening and made up with fake hair and fake”—he stopped and looked at me before continuing—“other body parts and there you sat, uncaring if anyone even noticed you. You were fresh, natural, and obviously intelligent, and I wanted to talk to you.”

“Bet you’d never been shot down before, huh?” I could at least take some pride in that.

Not my imagination. He was definitely closer. “But you didn’t ‘shoot me down.’ We’re here, aren’t we?”

Oh frak, he was right. He had me on a date. He took me to dinner. I’d been tricked. I should have been indignant. Outraged, even. Instead, my lips twitched and I forced myself not to smile. Because it was funny to have gone from that to this.

Now his fingers were playing with the few tendrils that had escaped my bun. I went still and forgot to breathe. “There is something I’ve wondered since the moment I met you.”

“What?” My voice sounded breathy and weird.

“What this would be like.”

He was going to kiss me, and I was going to let him. My heart started trying to pound its way out of my chest.

I should have stopped him. I should have been afraid. But I wasn’t.

His kiss was feathery light, barely touching me. His lips were warm, soft, and strong. If I’d realized earlier they’d feel like this against my own, I probably would have spent a lot more time studying them. My eyes drifted shut as my stomach went completely hollow, and a warm thickness started spreading through all of my limbs. He kissed me again, gentle and persuasive.

“Relax,
bella
,” he murmured against my lips, running his fingers along my jawbone. I realized that I was clenching his shirtfront with my fists. I loosened my grip. He continued to plant sweet and soft kisses on my lips. “This works better if you kiss me back,” he said with a smile as he leaned back slightly to look at me, his eyes glittery and intense. He ran his thumb along my lower lip, which made all sorts of unmentionable things happen to my insides.

Leave it to me to mess something up as basic as kissing. Fortunately, I wasn’t a total idiot. I could do what he was doing. Scared as I was, I managed to give myself a pep talk. I was twenty-four years old. I was the oldest person on the planet who had never been kissed. I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect setting, or a more perfect man. So gathering up every bit of courage I possessed, I leaned in to kiss him. Just a small peck. A little smooch. It was all I could manage.

I pulled back to see a delighted and appreciative look in his eyes.

“That wasn’t as bad as I expected.”

“Not as bad as you expected? Katerina, I can do much better than ‘not as bad as you expected.’”

I hadn’t meant to issue a challenge, but he accepted it anyway. I thought I heard him growl before he pressed our lips together more firmly, his hands framing and holding my head in place as he kissed me over and over. It was all I could do to keep up. Electricity exploded everywhere he touched and kissed me.

Was it possible to die from a kiss?

My hands moved from his shirt to his wrists, and I felt like I was clinging on for dear life. His kisses started to escalate in intensity until he suddenly stopped. He leaned his forehead against mine, and we were both breathing fast.

“I think . . . I think it’s time for me to return you to your room.”

I nodded, unable to think.

He could have said, “I think it’s time for us to get on a spaceship and fly to the moon,” and I would have agreed to that, too.

He pulled me up with one hand, and as we rushed from the moonlight garden, I realized that he had left his coat behind. I was going to mention it, but when I looked back all I could think of was us on that bench and that kiss. I touched my lips with my fingers, still able to feel the phantom pressure there.

Lemon was going to pee her pants with excitement.

I must have been in some kind of Nico-induced trance, because next thing I knew we were standing in front of my room. I had been so caught up in my own head that I hadn’t paid any attention to where we had been going. I opened my door and saw that my bed had been made.

I turned back to Nico, suddenly very nervous and unsure of what to say. I didn’t think, “Hey, thanks for my first kiss! That was awesome!” would be appropriate. Should I high-five him or something?

He held both of my hands in his, and released them to run his hands up my arms, onto my shoulders, settling one on the side of my neck, the other at the back of my head. He was going to kiss me again.

He kissed me once, softly and briefly. He murmured, “Good night,
bella
,” against my cheek. He let go and began to walk away.

Wait. What? “Good night?”

He turned to face me. “Unless you’d like to invite me into your room?”

It was like he’d poured a bucket of ice water on top of me. Reality came crashing down, hard. “Uh, no.”

He smiled like he knew something I didn’t. “Then, good night.”

I hurried inside my room and slammed the door shut before he changed his mind. Because if he pushed, I didn’t think I was currently strong enough to resist.

I stuck my head out of the door to make certain that Nico had left. The hallway was empty. I ran next door to Lemon’s room and knocked frantically. No response. No way was she asleep already. I opened the door and switched on the light. “Lemon?” I looked around for a minute, but it was obvious she wasn’t there. Had she gone off with her duke somewhere?

Closing her door, I headed back to my own room. I didn’t want to be my only company right now, but I didn’t have much of a choice.

I changed into my pajamas and absentmindedly brushed my teeth. I climbed into the world’s best bed and turned on my side, curled up in a fetal position.