CHAPTER ONE
‘You will marrythe man I have chosen for you. It is your duty as a princess of Galicos. And as my daughter.’
Princess Freya Camille Gelacois swallowed her anger, and her hurt, and gave her father, Prince Andreas, the obedient smile he expected of her. ‘Yes, Father, it’s just… I don’t know Monsieur Caras, that’s why I’m reluctant to commit to…’
‘Stop being melodramatic, you’ve met Caras several times.’
And both times there had been not one single spark between her and Alexander Caras. The man her father had insisted she marry because the Greek shipping tycoon wanted to buy property in the principality, and her father had decreed that any land in Galicos must always belong to heirs of the royal line.
But Freya didn’t see how they were ever likely to produce any heirs, given that Caras had barely looked at her, while he and her father had discussed her marriage as if they were debating a stock report.
She felt ignored now too as her father typed on his laptop. Her spirits sank further, the anxiety that had been sitting in her stomach like a rock for months harder to ignore. She’d always known her father didn’t like her much, because she bore an uncanny resemblance to her mother—who had run off with one of the palace’s security guards eight years ago in a blaze of scandal.
She still resented her mother for making that decision, and abandoning Freya and her two younger brothers to a life of royal servitude. She’d thought her mother loved them, but whenFreya was twelve her mother had just disappeared, and Freya had never been able to forgive her. So much so, that when her mother had died in a French clinic after a brief battle with cancer, Freya hadn’t mourned. She still had the letter her mother had sent her a few weeks before her death, sitting in her dresser, unopened.
Why should she care about the woman who had never even asked for visitation rights?
Freya had turned twenty a week ago and she’d never even been kissed properly, let alone had a lover. And now her father expected her to marry a man she didn’t want, and who Freya was certain didn’t want her.
Alexander Caras was handsome enough, if you liked men who were serious and old—because he had to be at least thirty-five.
But she wanted the fireworks she’d read about in the erotic novels she read late at night—whenever she needed a break from her suffocating life.
She wanted her heart to beat too fast, and her thighs to quiver and her sex to clench and melt. The closest she’d got to that feeling was three years ago when her father had enrolled her in a Swiss finishing school. But before she’d managed to do anything remotely exciting, her father had seen press photos of her having her first tequila slammer in a Zurich nightclub and pulled her out of the school. And she’d spent the two years since doing penance for her youthful exuberance—mostly because her father had threatened to send her brothers to military academy if she ever disrespected the monarchy again.
But this was a new low, even for Prince Monumental Killjoy.
She refused to marry out of duty… But time was running out to avert this disaster, because the engagement was due to be announced at an event being hosted by her would-be fiancé in the principality in less than a week. And despite all Freya’sprotests and entreaties and pleas, her father still hadn’t seen reason.
And Freya was fast losing the ability to evenpretendobedience to his wishes any longer.
‘But why can’t my duty be more proactive?’ she tried again, her jaw clenched so tight it was starting to ache. ‘Perhaps if I went back to school to study something more…’
‘You are too old for that now. And there is no need for it.’
Her jaw went slack. ‘But I’m only twenty… And you never let me graduate.’ She’d been begging him to let her continue her education after the Swiss-finishing-school debacle. She loved to read, and had a curious mind, but he had consistently refused. Her life had become a constant and relentless schedule of royal events and engagements at which everyone treated her like a regal mannequin instead of a flesh-and-blood woman. She had no friends in Galicos—and she certainly never had any fun. But trying to explain to her father that tequila-slammer-gate had happened because she had been acting like any girl her own age, that she wanted to be free to make her own mistakes, had fallen on deaf ears.
He had simply said that, ‘A royal princess of Galicos does not need that kind of freedom.’ And she’d resented her mother that much more.
Her father glanced up from his laptop. He stared at her across his mahogany desk, the disapproving frown one she recognised.
‘Caras will not need you to have an education,’ he declared. ‘All he requires is a royal wife to give him heirs.’
Heirs? Again, with this!
The control she had been holding onto like a Trojan for months snapped like a twig. ‘So, I’m to be his brood mare, am I? How romantic! Well, I won’t do it. I can’t. I refuse.’
There, she’d finally said it. But instead of looking even slightly moved, her father surged to his feet and slapped his palms on his desk.
‘Don’t you dare talk to me with such disrespect,’ he raged, his face going red.
‘Then don’t treat me like a possession you own.’
‘Except I do own you…’ he shouted, shocking her into silence.
A loud knock at the door interrupted the discordant buzzing inside her head.
Her knees felt weak, her stomach weightless.
