Loe raamatut: «Crowned For The Drakon Legacy»

CHAPTER ONE

A BANKER NAMED Melissa from LA...

A concierge named Chloe in a swanky country club in Manhattan...

A cocktail waitress...

Mia Rodriguez scrolled down her cell phone screen, bile rising in her throat.

The list of her dead husband’s affairs was endless.

The throaty purr of the fiery red exclusive sports car was like a faint echo as it put distance between her and the hungry horde of reporters.

In the blink of an eye, the press conference to announce her retirement from soccer had turned into a circus with Brian’s infidelities taking center stage. A year since his death and he was still haunting her.

Fingers shaking, she pressed the little flickering triangle on a video.

Brian was voracious when it came to sex...

Every time we met, he wore me out...

His wife, Mia, probably only had time for soccer, and it’s obvious Brian turned to me for what he didn’t get from her...

“Turn it off.”

She squeezed her eyes closed. Tears would have been a relief; tears would have meant that she could vent the tumult building up inside. Tears would mean that she felt something, anything for the man she’d married.

The anchor’s voice etched into her mind as the clip played again and again.

Mia Rodriguez was not woman enough for her husband—

“Turn that blasted thing off.”

The shuddering halt of the powerful engine pitched Mia toward the dashboard. She gasped at the tight pull of the seat belt against her chest. Her heart catapulted into her throat. Large, unfamiliar hands grabbed her cell phone and tossed it onto the backseat.

Mia followed the motion like a doll, the flickering screen sliding against the buttery leather.

“Mia...look at me.”

She raised her confused gaze from the fingers on her chin at the commanding tone.

Intense blue eyes collided with hers, driving the breath out of her lungs. A strong, aquiline nose; a wide, languid, laughing mouth; a face that made women over the world swoon and sigh. Such a man and so close...

Not just any man. A prince. Lethal masculinity and pulse-pounding charm.

Nikandros Drakos.

Daredevil Prince of Drakon, second in line to the throne, extreme adventure sport enthusiast and sexy as sin...

Intending to push him away, she wrapped her fingers around his wrist. Hair-roughened skin scraped the pads of her fingers, rough and tantalizing, so wholly alien to her own... A jolt of lightning jump-started every neuron, wakened every cell from a deep, slumbering haze.

Her gaze moved to the long fingers gripping the steering wheel. From there, she followed the veins on the back of his hands to his wrists.

A Patek Philippe watch sat on his right wrist, its big dial winking at her in the low light. A sportsman’s watch. She’d been given one too, when their team had won the world championship four years ago. When Nikandros had still owned the team.

Her gaze crawled up until it reached the breadth of his shoulders, the angle of his jaw, the slightly long, dark hair curling at his collar...

“Stop listening to those horrid little interviews.”

She blinked and looked away.

He seemed huge, overwhelmingly male and far too close in the dark confines of the car. He’d been Brian’s close friend. A man she’d come to loathe, for her reckless husband had worshipped him as if he were truly his liege.

A man who had always made his opinion, that Mia wasn’t good enough for Brian, crystal clear. A man who was addicted to the thrill that came from taunting death in the face. A man with no control over his thrill-seeking impulses.

Everything Mia abhorred in a man.

The fiery resentment spurred her out of her choking self-pity.

But nothing could dim her awareness of the man waiting, far too close for comfort, and watching her from those intense blue eyes.

The silence took on a tangible quality, a jeering voice betraying her body’s near-violent reaction to him. God, she’d die if he guessed it. Even this humiliation in front of the entire world, this mockery she was being made of by the media, would still be less painful than seeing the cool, contemptuous dismissal of those ice-blue eyes.

The thought snapped her spine into place.

This awareness was a reaction to shock, a basic human need for touch in the face of adversity.

It had been months, no, three years, since a man had even touched her.

Accepting that piece of truth pumped courage into her veins.

She stared through the windshield, only now taking in their surroundings.

They had left downtown Miami behind and had reached a swanky, luxury neighborhood. The high-rise apartment complex visible from the car made this whole situation even more surreal.

She barely met his gaze, and then turned, faking interest in the surroundings. “Sorry, I should’ve given you directions. It’s going back for you but I’d appreciate it if you’d drop me at my apartment.” Good, she sounded steady, polite.

“I believe your mother and sister live in Houston, yes?”

Startled that he knew that much, she nodded. It seemed a live current pulsed to life every time their eyes met. Mia had never thought antipathy could become so tangible between two people.

“I can have the pilot fuel the jet and drop you off.”

If Brian and she had been minor celebrities with soccer fans, this man was royalty himself. He owned private jets, soccer teams and Extreme Adventure Clubs, and this was when the tabloids didn’t count the wealth he’d inherited as the scion of the powerful royal house of Drakon.

The Prince who had thrown away his legacy...

“That’s not necessary,” she managed to say. Every time he spoke, that deep voice jolted places inside of her Mia had forgotten even existed. “You’ve done far too much already.”

“You speak as if I were one of those jackals back at the press meet, as if I were the enemy too.” A hint of impatience and something else peeked through in his voice. As if something more than years-old animosity existed between them.

He was a prince—privileged in every way possible, handsome, reckless, charming, without an ounce of substance.

She—everything she had in life she’d worked damned hard for. She didn’t know when the last time she’d done anything that had amounted to fun had been. The career she’d worked toward for her whole life was over at twenty-six.

They had nothing in common.

This whole line of conversation was far too personal for her comfort. “I don’t know you enough for you to engender such strong emotion.”

“Mia Rodriguez Morgan does not show emotion, does she? I forget your reputation.”

“You know nothing of me except for the persona created by the media, Your Highness. Your friendship with Brian tells you nothing about me.”

“You’re right. I do not know you.” There was that note of annoyance in his tone again. “Tell me, should I call the pilot then?”

“Thanks for the offer. But I’ll just call a cab.” She reached between their seats and stretched her hand to grab her cell. “If you can wait till the cab gets here, I’d appreciate it. I don’t want to wait on this stretch alone.”

“I would appreciate if you would do me the courtesy of looking at me when I speak to you, Mia. We’ve known each other for a decade.”

“And we’ve disliked each other for the whole damned decade, so please, let’s not pretend otherwise.”

A stillness filled the car at Mia’s outburst.

He was right. She’d met him before she’d even met Brian. She’d been seventeen, playing for the junior team when she’d met the young European Prince of Drakon.

Like everybody else, she’d been infatuated with the charming Prince. Tales had been told of his fight with his royal family, of his escapades with women from all over the world, the reckless car races and high-adrenaline sports he engaged in. She’d always been shy when it came to men, wary and reserved of slick charmers like him.

Didn’t mean she hadn’t mooned over him from a distance. The raw, pulse-pounding energy, the sheer masculinity of him had always made Nikandros irresistible.

Surrounded by A-list actresses and svelte models, he’d barely noticed her. There had been a freedom in being beneath his notice that had left her to indulge in girlish fantasies about him. Once Brian had asked her out—solid, reliable Brian—she’d given the unreachable Prince no more thought.

The reliable, hardworking man she’d fallen in love with had almost instantly disappeared the moment his soccer career had taken off. With each new contract, big endorsements and friendships with jet-setters like Nikandros, the Brian she had married had gone away, never to return.

And yet, Nikandros had always been present, like a specter in the background, always with a new woman on his arm, a new investment venture in hand.

His friendship with Brian had been the stuff of legends but she’d never made it into his exclusive circle. And the more death-defying stunts he’d taken on, the more Brian had wanted to be Nikandros, without success.

Whether genetics or blood or whatever the hell it was that made him, Mia had known no other man could be even remotely like Nikandros Drakos. A fact, when she’d pointed it out, Brian had resented like hell.

Through the years, through it all, it seemed Nikandros’s and her mutual resentment had only thrived.

Slowly, she turned toward him. “I have had a long day, in my defense.”

He considered her warily. Given that she had been thrown under the bus by the media, he looked like the one who’d received the biggest, most humiliating news of his life.

Was Brian’s betrayal truly that much of a shock to him?

“You should not be alone over the next few days. Brian would want—”

“Brian apparently wanted a lot of things I couldn’t provide, Your Highness.”

His usually languid mouth tightened. “Do not refer to me as such.”

“But that is the correct way to address the scion of the ruling family of Drakon, yes? Now I understand the fits your aide was having when I got into your car. The last thing you need is for me to drag you into this media circus.”

“Someone should look after you—”

“I’ve been looking after myself for a long time.”

“Would your family not welcome you because of these...disgusting stories that the media has concocted?”

“Stories?” She tasted the bitterness in her mouth like it was a tangible thing. “If only I could borrow some of that delusion, I’d be able to sleep tonight.”

Mouth flat, he leveled a dark look at her. “You could give Brian...his memory...a moment’s benefit of doubt. You owe him that much. At least now.”

“At least now...” she repeated blankly. Slowly, the meaning of his accusation filtered in. “At least now when I didn’t bother when he was alive, you mean?” Emotion balled up in her tummy and rose, finding a target for her fury. “Explain yourself, Your Highness,” she said, encasing herself in steel.

Something glinted in those ice-blue eyes before that cool, icy reserve slid into place again. “Not the place or the time.”

“Since I don’t foresee a time or place when I want to see you again or have this conversation, please, indulge me with your summation of my marriage. The whole world’s doing it. You may as well put in your verdict too. Especially because your friend’s not here to defend himself.”

He didn’t look like the smooth, charming Prince that had longer relationships with his cars than his girlfriends, a man who was supposed to not give a fig about his family, or the fallout with his aging father, or his duty to his country—a man who only reveled in devilish pursuits of pleasure and sport.

The tight cast of his jawline, the way he gripped the steering wheel—she sensed that same swirling emotion in him that was within her too. “You’re angry and hurt. And this is a conversation that I never meant to have.”

For three years, she’d seen her marriage wither away inch by inch, mere months after tying the knot. For a year, she had battled the guilt of Brian’s death. And today, just when she had begun to pick up the pieces of her life, it was all back in pieces at her feet. “You should have never implied that you did.”

He turned toward her then, and the impact of his attention hit Mia like a punch. White shirt contrasting against the dark tone of his skin, he looked like a pagan god in the dark interior. A virile, pagan god, no less.

“I’m not offering excuses for what Brian did, if this is all true.”

“Blind loyalty to your fellow macho man and blame for the woman—how pedestrian you are for all your blue blood, Your Highness.”

A flare of anger in his blue eyes. “All I know is that he...he was crazy about you. He drove himself nuts wanting to fix your marriage but you froze him out. He was not the one who wanted to walk away from the marriage. Does that count for nothing?”

So he’d known that she’d asked Brian for a divorce. She hated how defensive she sounded yet she couldn’t stop the words. “Words of love, promises of devotion are cheap. Actions speak much louder.

“From the moment his career took off, he changed. From the moment he entered your exalted circle, the moment he chose to emulate you and your death-defying stunts...he was lost to me.”

The confusion she felt reflected in her voice. For three years, in the trenches of training and being uncontracted and poor, Brian had chased her with promises of forever and words of such deep affection, only to disappear the moment success had come calling.

“He chose to alienate me. He chose to get behind the wheel of that blasted car of yours and drive even though he was drunk.”

“Mia, I’m—”

“And you...you’ve never even had a girlfriend. You change models and actresses on your arm as if they were an accessory. How dare you judge me for wanting to give up on a toxic relationship. I’ve had enough of you and your stinking opinions.”

“Mia—”

She grappled for the handle of the door, the fierce knot of emotion rising from her chest to her throat. Damned man and his damned car! She felt the warmth of him caress her skin before she realized he had leaned over her to reach for the handle. Pure lean muscle grazed her heaving chest.

Her eyes closed; the whispers of her breath were like a drumbeat in her ears. Her lower belly felt molten, her entire body thrumming with tension. She willed her body to quiet down, to lose this painful awareness of his breath and breadth, of his compelling masculinity. Frustration to guilt to such deep want that it buckled her knees, she seesawed on emotions.

Finally, the handle clicked and she almost fell out.

There was a part of her that told her she was being irrational, that she couldn’t just walk away from him in the dead of night. That his opinion, far from what she’d claimed, was mattering too much. But she couldn’t grasp control over herself.

Had Brian told Nikandros everything? How Mia had stopped wanting to be near Brian, about how hard she’d found it to be touched by him once she’d learned of his first indiscretion?

Her trembling legs barely straightened when she heard him join her out on the dark road. Broad shoulders covered her. “You’re being ridiculous, Mia.”

The handle of the car pressed into her spine as she tried to melt into the door. Anything to avoid the scent of him from entrenching deep inside her. Anything to stifle the overriding need to fall apart in his arms. “Go away.”

He stretched his arms wide, jet-black hair falling forward onto his forehead. “I should not have spoken of Brian. Not tonight. Not when you’re dealing with—”

She poked him in the chest, vibrating from the force of her fury. “You’ve no right to talk about our relationship, now or ever. And if that was an apology, then it stinks.”

He caught hold of her wrist and crouched closer, his tall, lean body her entire world. Her belly dipped as he clasped her jaw, raising her chin to meet his gaze. “I’ve never apologized to a woman in my life. Except my maman.”

He said maman with a French accent, a lilt to it. Like caramel over dark chocolate. “Then I’m shocked at the number of women willing to put up with you, Your Highness.”

“Get back into the car. You can spend the entire night telling me how much I stink.”

“Why are you being kind to me all of a sudden?”

He blanched, as if he hadn’t realized it himself. The gleam of his blue eyes was mesmerizing in the moonlight. “I’m not an unkind man usually. I stayed back after that debacle at the press conference because I thought you...might need a friend.” He pushed a hand through his hair, a rough exhale leaving his mouth. “But like every other time... I lost track of what I intended.” His languid mouth curved in self-deprecation that made shock swirl through Mia. “Stay at my penthouse until this furor about Brian calms.”

“No.” Under the same roof with this man, and her emotions in a riot... A shiver snaked up her spine. “Thanks for the offer, but I... I need peace and quiet. Not Mr. Judgy looking down his nose at me when he knows zilch about relationships.”

“You know a lot about my relationships. Or the lack of.”

Her skin heated up, and she desperately prayed he couldn’t see it. “You’re not exactly known for your distance with the media. No wonder your poor aide looked like he had the worst job in the world.” She ran a hand over her nape, exhaustion slowly creeping in. “I just want to go home.”

“The press will be swarming there. My apartment has twenty-four-hour security and is a fortress against the media. You will be safe there.”

The thought of the media shoving their cameras in her face, those salacious details of Brian’s affairs—Mia sank back against the cold metal.

Hiding away in the Daredevil Prince’s lair seemed like salvation.

“Admit it, you’re tempted. This is not a situation either of us wants, but it was clear that I couldn’t leave you there.”

“Why were you at the press conference in the first place?”

After almost a year, her agent had convinced Mia that her fans needed closure, that she should announce her retirement from soccer publicly. Any contractual ties she’d had with Nik’s team had been severed months ago when she’d learned that the third injury she’d sustained would damage her knee irrevocably if she continued to play.

At least, her everyday life hadn’t been affected.

With that devastating blow and Brian’s accident, her life had been on a downward spiral. The announcement at the press conference—it was to be a new start. Only she’d been ambushed by the press about Brian’s affairs.

And Nikandros had been there.

Sweat beaded her brow. That nauseous feeling returned with a vengeance. “Did you know the news about Brian’s affairs? Why didn’t you warn me?” Her fingers bunched in his shirt, renewed betrayal coursing through her. “Or did you decide I deserved to be humiliated and turned into a spectacle for my alleged sins against Brian?”

His fingers clamped over her arms, the warmth from his body teasing her awake in more ways than one. “I did not know what was going to come out. Mia, I did not know what he...was doing with all those women. I... If nothing else, I would have told him he had a problem.”

“Somehow I doubt that the vows of marriage would mean anything to a serial womanizer like you.”

His chin drew back. “Who is drawing conclusions now?”

His eyes were hard, flat, his fingers tightening over her arms. He tensed, and then slowly the breath he’d been holding pushed out. She’d hurt him?

It was the most nonsensical thought on the most bizarre night of her life.

But then, the man she’d thought him to be would have never offered help tonight. He wouldn’t have even looked at her twice, especially since it was obvious that he’d made up his mind that she had driven Brian away.

But Nikandros had never pretended a friendship or even an acquaintance. Among Brian’s friends, he’d always maintained a polite, even wary, distance from her. As if she’d contaminate his pedigree if he got too close.

“Then why were you there? You sold the women’s team, I know. They said you were leaving Florida. Maybe even the States. You dumped your latest girlfriend.” She rattled off everything she had gathered about him from social media, a habit she hadn’t quite kicked from when he’d first appeared on the scene.

“You had to know... Don’t lie to me, Nikandros. God, please, no more lies.”

Mia closed her eyes. It made her face the one thing she’d been trying to deny—that something inside her had sparked into life tonight, inside the car. Because of the Daredevil Prince.

The sense of him around her amplified a thousand times. The scent of him—dark and delicious and so fundamentally different from her own, clung to her nostrils.

So when he spoke, when his breath feathered over her skin, when his hands descended on her shoulders and pulled her into his body, when the strength and heat of him teased her into a desperate, deep longing, she drowned in the sensations.

She felt his powerful body shudder around her, felt his sharp inhale as he buried his nose in her hair, felt the raw, shameful urge to press her body into his, vibrating through her like a quake.

“I came because I needed to say goodbye.”

A brittle laugh escaped her. “I don’t believe you. You’ve never even considered me a friend. You couldn’t stomach the idea of Brian marrying me. You—”

He pushed her away from him with a contained sort of violence that was far more terrifying than the way Brian used to lash out at her. Roughly, he pushed his hair back, his mouth curled into that familiar curve. “I couldn’t stomach the idea of him with you because... I wanted you for myself.

“From that first moment when you came onto that field like a streak of lightning all those years ago, your joy on the field, your love of the game... I wanted all of that for myself.”

Falling back a step, Mia stared. “What?”

The debacle of her marriage, the horrible truth of Brian’s affairs, diluted as he spoke with a glittering challenge. “When he married you, I thought it would be done. That this infatuation with you...would die. All these years, I hated you for freezing him out, told myself I was lucky.

“Nothing helped.

“I came tonight because...even now, even after he’s gone, I can’t seem to stop.

“Stop thinking about you. Stop wanting you.” Gripping her arms, he pulled her toward him until their faces were mere inches from each other. The gleam of his blue eyes—Mia had never seen anything so beautiful. “I came because I needed to say goodbye to a decade-old obsession. To this madness.

“Is that honest enough for you, Mia?”