His Undercover Princess (Tempt Me) (3 page)

Chapter Four

Everything after Dom’s announcement was a blur. A numbness, the same that had trapped her for her first year in America, weighed down her limbs and clouded her brain. It was one thing to know—it was another thing to hear
the words she’d feared spoken out loud.

They mean to kill you.
The words were stuck on repeat in her head as he ushered her into the huge log cabin–style château and past the butler who looked like he could bench-press a Humvee. The incongruity of the MMA-fighter body tucked inside a formal black suit and white gloves, the same style the servants wore in Elskov Castle, jarred something inside her and revved up her survival-at-any-cost motor to burning-rubber speed.

“We need to talk.” She used the imperial at-court voice her father had always affected when someone had displeased him greatly. “Immediately.”

Dom didn’t ask why. He didn’t stop in confusion. He took her by the elbow and made a sharp right turn through the first available door. It was the kitchen. Once inside he dropped his hand and stole away the one bit of warmth from her while cold panic tried to break free. Needing time to get it under control, she clasped her hands together and inspected her surroundings.

The space was rustic meets modern. At one end of the large kitchen, a grouping of overstuffed chairs and a leather love seat in shocking hot pink sat facing a stone fireplace that took up half the wall. There was a spit in the hearth big enough to roast a medium-size pig. At the other end of the room, a gourmet stainless steel oven was nestled inside a stone wall, as were the oven’s matching appliances. Everything was high-end, beautiful, and utterly impersonal. It was like looking at a magazine spread of what a chichi cabin in the woods should look like. If the coup had never happened, she probably would vacation in a château like this, with servants who doubled as security guards and sycophants who pretended to be her friends. She might not have friends now, but at least the few work friend–type relationships she had were on her terms and they were genuine. The last thing she needed was to go back to her old life, even if she could. There was nothing for her in Elskov besides memories of her father bleeding out on the palace steps and the realization that any sense of security was an illusion.

Her gaze landed on Dom, and a frisson of attraction sizzled across her skin. The bastard had kidnapped her, and she couldn’t sever that vibrating line of want connecting them. The kiss outside had been a mistake. Dom wasn’t like the men she took home after a night out. There was something harder, more dangerous about him. She could see it now when she looked beyond the generically Nordic features of cold blue eyes, light blond hair, and imposing size, a holdout from their Viking ancestors. Even in a mountain hideaway that was no doubt guarded like a fortress, and facing a woman he’d called princess and bowed down to outside, he couldn’t hide the aggressive stance that was as much a part of him as it was of all the people in Elskov. Their home was a tiny island situated strategically between Norway and Scotland that had repelled invaders for centuries. The Elskovians never learned to fight. They learned to win, whatever the personal cost.

That’s exactly what she’d do, but her final prize wasn’t the crown of a country she hated—it was her own freedom. But first she had to survive, and to do that she needed Dom, at least for the time being.

“Tell me about the Fjende,” she demanded as she circled the oversize granite island.

Dom arched an eyebrow, not missing the barrier she put between them. Then his gaze shot to the side, as if he’d remembered who he was and even more, who she was.

“They’re a secret society behind the coup.” He reached for a crystal decanter on the sofa table behind the love seat and poured two small glasses of champagne-yellow liquid. “Their reach is legendary. They orchestrated the attack on your father and then managed to convince the world that your father had a heart attack and died peacefully in his sleep, and that you agreed to let your cousin Alton act as your designee while in mourning.”

“It’s been ten years,” she said. “How have they managed that?”

He strode across the room, the two glasses fitting easily in one of his large hands, and held them out to her. She took one and lifted it to her nose. The sweet and spicy, slightly peppery scent of caraway wafted up from the shot glass.Akvavit. She hadn’t had the distinctly Elskovian spirit since the Christmas before her father died. He’d given her a sip of his, and it had burned its way down her throat like liquid fire, and he’d congratulated her on being strong enough to take it, just like he knew she always would be. The memory made her throat tighten with emotion.

“You don’t keep up on the news at all.” Dom shook his head and sipped his akvavit, not even flinching as he swallowed.

“I have my reasons.” Like the fact that she hated her small island homeland, from its sheep farms to its rocky fjords. A man in a black raincoat might have shot her father, but she blamed the whole country for letting it happen, for not fighting back, for not seeing through the lies, and for abandoning her on a foreign shore.

Unlike the way she’d been taught, she shot back the akvavit in one gulp. It scorched her throat and made her eyes water, but she refused to react to the pain by gasping or wincing. She would remain impervious to it, as she was to all things Elskov. Once she was sure her hands wouldn’t shake, she turned the shot glass upside down and placed it on the island.

Dom lifted his still mostly full glass in toast and took another small sip. “They had a princess impersonator. A few well-timed appearances over the years have kept the questions to whispers.”

Good for them, the bastards.

“So why come after me at all? Surely they’ve realized by now that I have no interest in ever being Princess Eloise again.” For all she cared, the island could sink to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean.

“Because the Kronig coronation celebrating your official acceptance of your royal duties is less than a week away, and two days ago your impersonator died from an overdose.”

Karma’s a real bitch that way.
Rounding the island, she swiped her glass and then made her way to the decanter and poured herself another shot.

“So they bury her and the sniveling Alton takes over.” Ugh. That man had always been slimy and duplicitous. The fact that he’d work with the people who’d killed his own wife didn’t shock her in the least.

“That’s not how the line of succession works.” Annoyance crept into his tone; it gave his already deep voice an inflexible cord that wrapped around her. “How do you not know this?”

The steel thread in his voice snapped her control in half.

“Because my father was forty-seven when the bastards murdered him, and it wasn’t something I thought I’d have to think about for a long fucking time.” She tossed back the akvavit like it really was the water of life its name translated to.

She welcomed the alcohol blaze as it slid down her throat and settled in her belly. It dulled the memories fighting to the surface—the wet, gurgling sounds her father made as he fought for breath, the dark burgundy of the blood gushing from his stomach. The way she didn’t even fight the hand wrapped around her wrist, the one that stopped her from running to his side to comfort him in his last moments. She blamed Elskov for her father’s death, but the guilt for letting him die alone was all hers. The silence screamed in her ears, and she concentrated to feel the last tinges of heat from the strong alcohol.

“Your Royal Highness, please forgive me,” Dom said, executing another deep bow. “I shouldn’t have said what I did.”

“I’m not Princess Eloise. It seems she died of a drug overdose.” She flipped the shot glass over and set it next to the decanter. “I’m Elle Olsen.”

He drained the last of his akvavit and placed his glass next to hers. “We both know that’s not true.”

“It doesn’t matter, because America is my home now. You want to play your spy-versus-spy games with the Resistance? Be my guest, but I won’t be part of it.”

“Princess, you don’t have a choice.” There was that unforgiving tone again, the one that allowed no disagreement.

Looked like someone was about to be a very disappointed Mr. Hard Body. She raised her chin and narrowed her eyes at him. “I told you before, I always have a choice.”

Dom closed his eyes and took in a deep breath. When he opened them again, he pinned her to the floor with a look of icy determination.

“Five days from now, the Kronig will take place,” he said. “It can only take place with you in attendance. If you are not there to accept your royal duties, the crown must go to the next person in line for succession. That cannot be Alton, because he is married into the royal family. There is no one else, because the Fjende were thorough in their bloodletting. If you are not at the Kronig, the country will be thrown into chaos and the Fjende would not be guaranteed to have someone they control on the throne. They need you to take your place during the Kronig and marry you off to Alton so you can produce an heir that they can control.”

That sounded perfectly unpleasant. “And after that, what is it? A shiv between the ribs?”

“For the past few years, they’ve let it be known that Princess Eloise is in precarious health—nothing specific, just enough to cover up the impersonator’s increasingly limited appearances. Our theory is that they’ll kill you and blame your long-standing but never named illness.”

The bastards were thorough. She considered a third shot but knew that would knock her on her ass, and she needed to stay focused if she was going to figure out a way out of this shit storm she found herself in. And how exactly had she become embroiled in this? She’d been more than careful. She’d dyed her white-blond hair to the same strawberry blond as her favorite fictional teenage detective. Gone were her dark blue eyes, thanks to brown-colored contacts. She never stood out. She never spoke up. She’d been discovered anyway.

“Why won’t the Fjende get another impersonator?” That would make things so much easier for everyone. They could have their little fiefdom, and she could go on living her quiet life of imposed solitude.

“The timeline is rather tight for that.”

Frustration ballooned inside her, eliminating any space for fear or regrets or so-called royal duty. “So leave Elskov to find its own new leader.”

“That would mean bloody civil war.” He didn’t yell. He didn’t have to; the censure in his voice was enough. “There is no parliament, no legislative branch to take over if the monarchy dies suddenly. Thousands would die. Do you really want their blood on your hands because you didn’t feel like doing your duty and wearing a crown?”

“That crown killed my father,” she yelled in a harsh whisper to not draw undue attention. “That country let it happen. They deserve what they get.”

“You can’t mean that.”

“Why, because it’s my duty to sacrifice everything at the altar of Elskov?”

Blood beat against her eardrums, and heat pulsed in her cheeks as she glowered at Dom. How dare he try to drag her back into all this, back to the country that destroyed everyone she loved.

“No, because it’s what your father expects. He bled for Elskov. Are you really willing to let his sacrifice be in vain?” This time Dom reached for the crystal decanter, poured a second shot, and downed it. “We need you to make a surprise appearance at the Kronig, because the Fjende can’t make a move against you in public. A perfectly timed simultaneous surgical strike by the Resistance will destroy their leadership and cut off the head of the snake. Then you will take your rightful place on the throne.”

“And then I become the Resistance’s puppet?”

“No.” He looked at her straight in the eye. “Then you become queen.”

Queen. The role she’d been raised to assume. After her mother died, her father channeled his grief by telling his five-year-old daughter all about the great queens of Elskov. They’d been warriors, strategists, leaders—everything she was not. She was a stylist with a one-bedroom apartment in a sketchy neighborhood in Harbor City without close friends and who only had one-night stands because relationships were impossible when you were hiding who you really were. The realization of just how far she’d missed the mark her father had set blew through her like a hot wind down the main street of a ghost town, scattering emotional debris and leaving her empty and exhausted.

Dom reached out for her but stopped when his large hands were still inches away from touching her. He fisted his hands and brought them back to his sides. “All I’m asking for right now is that you don’t say no.”

Too weary to continue, she conceded this battle, knowing the war was far from over. “I have a feeling you wouldn’t accept it anyway.”

“Elskovians never surrender.” He poured a third shot for each of them. The Russians and their vodka had nothing on the Elskovians and their akvavit. He handed her the glass, and their fingers brushed, and just like that the air around them again crackled with sexual tension. “They fight until they win.”

“No matter the cost.” On autopilot, she repeated the rest of the words emblazoned on the Elskovian state seal and tried to ignore her awareness of him.

He clicked his glass against hers in toast. “No matter the cost.”

The alcohol barely singed this time as she sipped, watching him over the rim of her glass. She didn’t know what this man was willing to sacrifice to get his way, but judging by the stony resolve reflected in his blue eyes, she imagined he’d give everything. It was both comforting and frightening.

Chapter Five

Night had turned the sky inky black hours ago, not that Dom had noticed. His eyes were glued to the woman shown on the small monitor in the mountain compound’s security office.

He shouldn’t be watching her. It was invasive. It was wrong. It was creepy. Yes to all of the above, but he kept
his eyes glued to the monitor anyway, because he was an asshole. As long as he remembered that little fact, maybe he’d stop thinking about how five hours earlier he’d dry humped the future queen like a drunk college freshman behind the dorms. He would have done more—in fact, his balls still ached to do more—but the feedback from his comm device brought him back to reality lightning fast.

Ignoring the way blood rushed to his cock just from the memory of her pink lips and the way she’d felt pushed up against him, he focused on the bay of monitors in the security room.

There were surveillance cameras throughout the house’s public areas. The monitor that had captured his attention showed the library tucked between Princess Eloise’s bedroom and his. The door to the hallway remained shut, and to a newcomer that entry point seemed like the only way in. But there were secret doors to each of their bedrooms hidden behind bookshelves that were activated by hidden levers. On the bedroom side of things, the doors were hidden from the unobservant just as well, but she’d found hers. He couldn’t help but admire her for that. The woman was more than a pretty face; her mind worked fast to connect the dots that left others wondering. If she hadn’t already, she’d soon discover the small armory secreted behind a false wall in the back of her walk-in closet. He wouldn’t expect any less from her. She hadn’t made it through the past ten years on her own without any outside resources or support because she was an airheaded wimp.

He pressed a few buttons on the control pad, and the monitor showing the library went blank. “Let her have some privacy,” Dom said. “It’s been a rough day.”

“Yes, sir,” said Major Bendtsen as he sat in front of the console, never taking his eyes from the twenty monitors that played a rotating series of shots from strategic locations around the mountain compound.

“Status report.”

“Everyone is on high alert but will remain as hidden as possible from view, as you ordered. Resistance One has been updated to her arrival. Our people in Harbor City and Elskov continue to monitor the Fjende operatives, but it doesn’t seem they’re aware the princess has been removed from her daily life.”

“It won’t stay that way for long, so don’t lose focus.” Not like he did every time he was near the woman. “Did you tell His Roy—” Dom stopped himself before he said the words that couldn’t be spoken aloud, not even in this trusted space. “Did you tell Resistance One that she doesn’t want to assume her duties?”

“No, sir.”

He didn’t blame the major. The messenger who delivered that news was bound to end up bearing the brunt of Resistance One’s fury—or his own. Ten years’ worth of strategizing to restore the monarchy to power and finally have his revenge on the Fjende who’d killed his family lay in the hands of a woman who didn’t want anything to do with the plan. He had five days to persuade her to do her duty; if he didn’t, the country went to shit, the Fjende would win, and his parents would remain unavenged.

That wasn’t going to happen.

“Carry on.” He slipped out of the security room, exiting through the door that from the other side looked like a working indoor waterfall.

The water feature at the end of the greenhouse had been set up so that the liquid was diverted any time the door opened from the inside and with the downward push on a garden gnome’s red hat from the outside. He didn’t know what kind of paranoid person had designed the château with its hidden passages and secret rooms, but it made it the perfect location for the Resistance’s headquarters, and it had been his first purchase when he’d made his hundredth million eight years ago.

The air was hot and sticky inside the double-paned, bulletproof glass walls, and he slipped off his suit jacket as he crossed the clay-colored Spanish tile floor with its embedded sensors that detected changes in pressure—one of his little additions that added to the hidden appeal of the château. Emerging into the sitting room on the south end of the main building, he checked for the discreet surveillance hidden in the mounted taxidermy so cleverly—one of the stag’s black eyes was a camera. It was the same with the heat-sensitive motion detectors in the oak-lined hallway, the weight-activated alarms on the stairs, and the concealed visual spying devices throughout the château. If he relaxed his guard here in the mountains, it was because it was the one place in the world he could.

He paused for a moment outside the library door to give himself enough time to suck in a deep breath and then entered the room.

“I was wondering where you’d run off to.” She flicked on one of the Tiffany table lamps. The soft light created a dim halo around her body, outlining every delectable curve. “For a large house, there sure aren’t a lot of people around.” She paused and arched an eyebrow. “Or are there?”

So that’s how they were going to play this, huh? The challenge in her voice did something to him. Made him want to push her right back, see how she reacted, and find out if he could get her to lose some of that cool control on display.
Let the games begin.

“You know there are.” He shut the door behind him and leaned against it, another nonverbal reminder that she might be royalty, but here in this château he was the one in charge.

“How many?” she asked, her tone light, but he wasn’t fooled.

“Enough.” No one knew
all
the specifics of security except for him, not even Major Bendtsen, who acted as his second in command. Some would call it paranoia. He preferred to think of it as the ultimate safety measure.

She sauntered over to the bookshelves and let her slim fingers slide across the books’ spines as she made her way to the hidden door that led to her bedroom. Stopping at just the right spot, she pulled out a first edition of
Huck Finn
. The shelf swung open on silent hinges, revealing her room.

“And the
Scooby-Doo
haunted house doors?” she asked.

He would not look at the king-size bed visible through the opening. Imagining her naked on that bed was the last thing his big or little head needed at the moment. “They came with the house, Your Royal—”

She held up a hand. “Elle.” Her voice was hard, imperial. “That’s who I am now.”

So stubborn.

“As you command…Elle.” The name tasted sweet on his tongue, like a secret dipped in honey.

“What happens if I walk out the front door?”

As if he’d let that happen. “The Fjende will find you and, eventually, kill you.”

Pondering this bit of information, she twisted a long strand of silky reddish hair around her finger as she stared at him. It was as if she could see something inside him that he didn’t know was there. The idea was touchy-feely, weird, and completely unshakable. He didn’t like it one bit.

Elle crossed over to him, stopping well out of arm’s reach before walking a half circle around him and putting him on the spot. She inspected him from top to bottom, her gaze lingering for a couple of beats on his pants, where his cock lay against his thigh. Blood rushed to it in response, but he refused to move or adjust his stance. She knew what she did to him. She’d felt it as he’d slid against her firm, high ass outside, a moment of blissful agony he’d no doubt jerk off to soon. But he knew the score. She was trying to exert control over the situation by making him hard with just a look. Well, she wasn’t going to get it. Control was his. Always.

With deliberate care, she scraped her teeth across her plump bottom lip, sending a shot of hunger through him that took his breath away. “What happens if I stay?”

“I’ll keep you safe.” He would. No matter the cost.

“Why?” she asked, a huskiness invading her tone.

“It’s what I do.” It’s how he’d get his revenge. Finally.

She stepped closer, her breath warm against his ear. “Who are you?”

“Dominick Rasmussen.” The lie came out smooth and soft, despite the way his body had hardened because of her nearness and the line of questioning.

“Bullshit.” Her laugh teased his skin, and then she was gone, striding across the library to her phone lying on the seat of an oversize leather chair. She bent over, giving him a heart attack–inducing view of her ass encased in that tight green skirt of hers, and picked up her phone. Turning, she scrolled through whatever was on the tiny screen. “I still get cell coverage up here in the snowy boonies of these mountains. Eight years ago you appeared out of nowhere, one of the wealthiest men in the Western Hemisphere, with a mysterious past and a never-ending supply of cash.”

“Everyone comes from somewhere.” For him it was a place he’d never see again because it no longer existed, not the way he remembered. Pain pinched his lungs as the memories flooded. The blood. The severed limbs. The blank stares of the dead.

She flung her cell back onto the chair. “Tell me.”

This needed to stop—the questioning, the wanting, the hunger that nearly dropped him to his knees. Stalking across the sixteenth-century Turkish rug, he trapped her between himself and the chair. “It has no bearing on today or what we’re going to accomplish in the days ahead.”

He let his frustration boil close enough to the top that she should have wilted in the heat. She didn’t. He was beginning to realize that she burned just as hot as he did. Underneath the expensive clothes and their arctic Elskovian exteriors, a blue flame flickered in them both. If he wasn’t careful, that heat might end up turning a decades-long dream to ash.

Her gaze grew hooded, and a pink flush ate its way up her ample cleavage, but her questioning continued. “You live in London, but you don’t have an English accent. Instead, you have the slightest hint of Brooklyn and something that”—she narrowed her eyes—“sounds a lot like home.”

“I thought you were a woman without a country.”

“I am,” she whispered.

The loneliness in her voice tore a hole through him. The Resistance had watched, but always from a distance. What kind of life had that been for her? He’d spent the last ten years surrounded by fighters readying for battle. She’d lived those years alone; it was all there in her file on his hard drive.

She lifted her small hand to his chest, setting it over his fast-beating heart and sending shock waves through him. With the barest pressure, she pushed him back as far as her arm would go. He allowed it even though every instinct in him was screaming for him to wrap her up and tell her she would never be alone again.

“What will it take to convince you you’re wrong, that you have a country, a home?”

The lost look in her brown eyes gave way to a wary determination. “A good place to start would be the truth.”

Now, that way lay trouble. “About what?”

“You.” She brushed past him, putting half of the rug between them, as if that would minimize the awareness he had for her. “According to the internet, you’re a total player with the Midas touch when it comes to business deals. According to you, your only mission in life is to get my ass on the Elskov throne. So which is it?”

They stared at each other as the silence stretched between them, holding them in place. Talking about his past had been forbidden for so long, he wasn’t sure he could speak the words out loud. He took a deep breath, the smell of tear gas and the echoes of horrified screams escaping from some dark place in his memory. She didn’t know. How could she? The Fjende had covered their tracks too well. The international community had accepted the state-sanctioned stories of the king’s sudden heart attack and a grieving nation temporarily broken apart by rival factions as an explanation for the riots, the murders, and the chaos following the coup.

Telling her everything wasn’t an option. Success depended on her never finding out the truth about her father, but the rest? That he could give her.

“Do you remember what the week leading up to the coup was like?” He shoved his fingers through his hair as if he could wipe the memory from his brain. “I was twenty-two and home on holiday from university. I thought I was about to take over the world—then everything crumbled.”

The reports in the beginning had been sporadic rumors, but they could only be contained for so long. Elskov was a small country, and on their island word traveled fast.

The heated pink in Elle’s cheeks drained until only a ashy pallor was left. She clutched her hands together in front of her. “My father tried to hide it from me as long as possible, but everything was so tense there really wasn’t any way. There were paid protestors outside the castle gate. Someone had to taste my food before I could eat it. In the last few days, I wasn’t allowed to leave the castle, even in the armored SUV.”

In those last few days, the country was obsessed with sightings of royalty, false or not. “The Fjende claimed your lack of visibility was proof your family had abandoned the country.”

“My father would never have done that.” She shook with indignation as disgust wound its way into words. “He bled for Elskov, for all the good it did. The coup won anyway.”

Her words slapped him in the face, and he nearly flinched. “The war isn’t over yet.”

“What war?” She spun around to face him, her eyes blazing with fury. “No one in the international community cares about Elskov. They gladly eat up the bullshit that I’m alive and sorta well, that no coup ever took place, and that my father died of a heart attack and everything is business as usual.”

“We can change that.” The frustration of being so close to what he’d worked so hard for and discovering there was yet another hurdle to climb ripped a hole into him. Moving forward could be done without her cooperation. He’d committed to doing what needed to be done, no matter the cost. “
You
can change that.”

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Instead, she let out a deep sigh, closed her eyes, and the fight went out of her. For a moment she stood there, her shoulders slumped, before opening her eyes and hitting him with a question he’d skated around answering for years. “You don’t need this. Why do you want it so fucking badly?”