Page 8 of Reclaiming His Ruined Princess

He had not anticipated thepullof her, like some kind of magnet. It had never crossed his mind that it would be like this. Not now, on the other side of half a decade.

When he would have said he’d long since moved on. He rarely came to Cap Morat. He had so many other properties, scattered across the globe, that one little island off the coast of Spain—the country that had tried to kill him and had nearly succeeded, way back when he was a kid—hardly appealed. He’d been so busy these intervening years, acquiring things. More money. More businesses. More line items for his various portfolios.

His own fortress that could never be torn down.

Still, when her reservation had come in, flagged because she had both security concerns and was clearly using a false name, he’d figured out who she was. And he’d known instantly how he would handle it.

Even though all this time had passed. Even though, if asked, he would have said that what he remembered from that summer here was the slight she’d administered. The cruelty she’d dealt him at the end, not because it had taken him out at the knees—though it had—but because he was not a man who took insults lying down. He had built an empire on that. For years he’d promised himself that should the opportunity arise, he would happily take revenge on this woman. The same way he made certain to take his pound of flesh from anyone who dared cross him.

It was part of what made him so formidable and so justly feared.

Her apology could not change that.

No matter how she tasted.

“I’m afraid I cannot accept your apology,” he told her, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his trousers. The moment he did, he felt somehow more like himself. And less like that unhinged, lust-addled creature he became around her. Only her. He lounged there against the wall and regarded her coolly. “I do not believe you mean it.”

“You are mistaken,” Amalia said, but in that same way. As if nothing that happened here could possibly affect her, so offensively placid was she.

“I am very rarely mistaken.” He bit off the words as if they were curses. “Though when it comes to you, I will confess, I am forever imagining you to be something other than what you are.”

Her brows rose slightly. Only slightly. “Why am I certain that is not meant to be flattering?”

Joaquin could not remember her being quite so dry, back then. But then, his memories were so physical. He remembered the cries she made when he thrust within her. How greedily she’d taken him. How wildly she’d come apart beneath his hands.

She’d been a princess then, but she had acted unlike any haughty noble he had ever encountered before. Maybe that was what struck him today. There was no hint of that heedless girl, reckless with wonder. There was only the Princess she’d become.

What a shame to have put in all that work and be cast out all the same, he thought.

Not with any sympathy.

“If all this is a precursor to you telling me that you will not permit me to stay at one of your properties, I understand,” she told him, as if she was doing him a favor. “Though I’m not sure why you felt you needed to deliver that information with a kiss, instead of the customary email.”

Neither was he, but he did not intend to share that with her.

“You can stay,” Joaquin growled. “It is only that there are conditions.”

Her blue eyes gleamed, as she drifted toward him, looking every inch the elegant blue blood she wasn’t. Not really. That chignon, just so. The cashmere wrapped around her. The quietly elegant dress and understated heels he knew at a glance were Italian and likely made for her, personally.

“Let me guess, you intend to humble me in some way,” she said, in that conversational manner she had, though her face gave nothing away.

He recognized it as a disarming tactic. Powerful women used it to charm and beguile—and he needed to remember that she had trained her whole life to be a queen. She knew all kinds of tricks. He forgot her power at his peril—and Joaquin had made a career out of knowing exactly who he was up against. It was only that he’d never wanted that to be different before.

Amalia was smiling again, that easy curve of her lips that did not match her steady blue gaze. “Your vast, incomparable male ego was bruised, and so you would take it out on me now. But you failed to consider a very important point, Joaquin.”

“Unlikely.”

Her smile deepened. “I have already been humbled. Everything I thought I was has been taken away from me. How do you think you can add to that?” She laughed, though it bore no resemblance to the laughter he recalled from their summer, all that sweet, spun gold. Cascading all over him like her hands on his skin or the brush of her hair over his body. “I’ve already been brought to my knees. Surely your little revenge fantasies are overkill to that.”

“Not at all,” he said softly. With intent. “My revenge fantasies are not metaphors, Princess. I want you on your actual knees.”

She let out the sort of breath that might have been a gasp from a woman less in control of herself. In Amalia’s case, her lips barely parted. It was hardly noticeable.

Unless, of course, a man happened to be paying as close attention as Joaquin was.

“You want me to kneel down in front of you? Right here?”

He really did. “For a start.”