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QUEEN CONQUERED BY CHRISTMAS

Caitlin Crews

CHAPTER ONE

CESCA LIANDERO—more formally known as Princess Francesca of Liandero and the current heiress presumptive to the alpine kingdom’s throne, not that she answered to her title when she could avoid it—was dancing her face off at an epic holiday rave that she had no intention of leaving until late the next morning, if at all.

She didn’t care that it was Christmas Eve.

Or that her brother was meant to theatrically end his lifelong betrothal with an over-the-top, old-school Lianderoan Christmas wedding that same morning, which she was naturally expected to attend.

Maybe if her soon-to-be sister-in-law wasn’t a literal gorgon she might have been more enthusiastic… But that wasn’t reality.

Cesca personally thought reality was overrated. That’s why she left it to her brother. As king, he really liked all that stuff.

She just wanted to dance. The current killer set, with a bassline drop that made her bones glow with sheer joy, was the only reality she cared about.

Cesca danced and danced. She lost herself in the journey, the lights, and the energy of the crowd all around her, and she only stopped when forced.

Actually and literally forced, thanks to a hard, masculine hand wrapped around her wrist like a manacle.

As she was summarily towed out of the heaving scrum of ravers—her favorite people in the world and not a royal courtier among them, not a coincidence—her head whirled a bit. And not entirely from the music any longer.

Certain facts landed, like it or not.

No one could just…walk up and put their hands on her. Her long-suffering security detail would never allow it. Their job was to let Cesca do her thing and keep anyone she didn’t personally invite closer to stay far, far away from her, and they were very, very good at that job.

That they were not intervening in what was happening now told her that the man dragging her out of this club could only be one of two men in all the world.

And she knew it wasn’t her brother, the king.

Vesuvius was far too concerned with his kingly image to appear in a club mere hours before his much-anticipated and long-overdue wedding, particularly since the general public did not know that his betrothed was awful.

But the only other option would never darken the door of a club like this, or any club at all, given that he had made a career out of being all that was good and righteous and pure as the driven snow.

Good lord, Cesca thought, but there was no one on the whole of the planet more infuriating than Saviero Cimarosa.

Sadly, she saw—when he pulled her out a door she hadn’t known was tucked away in one wall and out into an alleyway currently lit with the high beams of at least five gleaming SUVs that clearly belonged to the Royal Guard—that it was indeed him.

Saviero himself.

The most boring man alive.

When he turned to face her, she was hit with the usual astonishment she always felt when she looked at her brother’s longtime best friend and current High Minister—meaning, for all intents and purposes, the powerhouse behind the throne.

Because the universe had a wicked sense of humor and had made the deeply boring Saviero one of the most darkly beautiful men alive. An absurdly chiseled jaw. A tall, muscular build that suggested a ruggedness not normally seen in a royal courtier, or anyone else, for that matter. Shoulders that Atlas could only dream of.

And the bluest eyes in Europe.

The man was a god and yet he chose to spend his days sternly and ruthlessly obsessed with the kinds of rules Cesca had started breaking while she was still in diapers. His hobbies involved nitpicking, pointless worrying about tedious topics, obsessing over minor points of ancient protocol, and making himself a nuisance in every possible regard.

It was such a waste.

“If you wanted to go clubbing, Sav, you could have just asked,” she said, smirking at him.

He did not smile back.

This was not unusual, as Saviero never smiled. He brooded. He frowned. He exuded deep and abiding disappointment at all times, as if that was his sole purpose upon the planet.