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It certainly had nothing to do with Mauro Bianchi. Not in the personal sense. She didn’t even know the man, after all. But she knew about him. Everyone did. A self-made billionaire who had risen up from abject poverty thanks to his grit and determination.
In Astrid’s opinion, had this been the Middle Ages, he would have been a marauding conqueror. And as she was dealing with arcane laws more firmly in the Middle Ages than in the modern era, that had only made him all the more attractive to her as she set about hatching her plan.
She took a step forward in line as all of the people shuffled upward, and she found herself facing a large, grim-looking bouncer with a pronounced scar running across the length of his face.
She squared her shoulders, and then, changed tactics. She arched her breasts outward instead, and rather than affecting her typical severe glance, she went with a pout, just as she and Latika had been practicing in her hotel room tonight before they had gone out.
“Here is my invitation,” she said, somehow feeling like she hadn’t quite gotten down the simper that the other women in the line had thrown out when they had presented their invitations to the bouncer.
But it didn’t matter. The invitation—while for a person who didn’t exist—was for the person she was playing, and it was legitimate.
“Of course,” he said, looking her over, something he did in his gaze that Astrid had never had directed at her before. “Enjoy the party, Ms. Steele.”
He kept the card firmly in his hand, and ushered her inside.
It was a strange and wondrous place, some rooms carved entirely of ice, and requiring coats for entry, others fashioned of steel and glittering lights, everything fading into each other like a twisting, glittering paradise.
Astrid had grown up surrounded by luxury. But it was not a modern luxury. Not in the least. It was velvet and drapes, gold and ornate wrought iron. Cold marble and granite.
This was color, twisted metal and light. Fire and ice all melded together in an escape for the senses that verged on decadent.
There was a dance floor that was suspended up above a carved icy chamber. It glittered and twisted, casting refracted light all around. Railings around the outside of the platform prevented the revelers from falling below. She had never seen anything quite like it.
It was like something from a dream. Or a fairy tale.
If fairy tales contained house music.
And for the first time, a slight thrill went through her.
She had come about this entire plan with the grimness of a general going to war.
At least, that was what she had told herself. She had told herself that it had nothing to do with the fact that she wanted one night of freedom.
Had told herself that Mauro Bianchi had not been her target because he was attractive. Because he had a reputation for showing women the kinds of pleasure that was normally found only in books. No.
She had told herself that he was a strategic target.
A man with no royal connection or blood, which would make the claiming of her position even more unquestionable. Had told herself that a known playboy was sensible because as an unpracticed seductress, she would need a target that would have very low resistance.
Because she knew where to find him.
She had told herself all of those things, and the more she had read articles about him, the more she had seen images of him, his face, his body, the dark tattoos that covered his skin…
She had told herself that none of that mattered. That his beauty was secondary, and indeed only a perk in that it was a genetic point of desirability.
But now that she was here… Now that she was here in this club with dance music wrapping itself around her skin, and the thrill of her deceit rocketing through her like adrenaline, a smile spread across her lips.
Freedom.
This was a moment of freedom. A moment to last a lifetime.
Yes, she was doing this to claim the maximum amount of freedom a woman in her position ever could. But even so, she would go back to her life of service when all this was said and done. But this… This was a moment out of time.
Not a moment to think about the future. Of what it would be like to finally have the power over her country she deserved. To finally get out of her father’s stranglehold. Not a moment to ponder how the ache of loneliness she felt inside might finally be assuaged by holding a child of her own. A child she would love no matter what.
She was Alice, through a looking glass. Not Astrid.
And she was going to seduce a man for the first time in her life. Possibly the last.
All she had to do was find him. And then she saw him, there could be no mistaking him. He was up on a platform above the dance floor, surveying the party below. It could be only him. That dark, enigmatic gaze rolling over the crowd with an air of unquestionable authority.
Astrid was royalty in Bjornland. She was the queen.
But there was no mistaking that here in this club, Mauro Bianchi was king.
The king of sin, of vice, of pleasure.
The kind of king who would never be welcome in a state and steady nation such as hers. But the perfect king for tonight.
She took a breath and made her way over to the stairs, thanking a lifetime of deportment for her ability to climb them with ease even in those spiked, crystal heels she had on her feet. She let her fingers drift along the rail in a seductive manner, the kind that she had been warned against as a girl. She had been taught to convey herself as cool. Sexless, really.
She was the first female monarch in Bjornland since the 1500s. The weight of the crown for her could never have been anything but heavy.
Her father had ever been resentful of the fact that it was the daughter who had been born first. Resentful. Distrustful. Doubtful.
But her mother… It was her mother who had made absolutely certain that there would be no creative shifting of birth orders.
Astrid had been born first. And her mother had had the announcement issued with speed and finality.
Her mother had also made sure that Astrid’s education had been complete. That she had been trained in the art of war. Not just the kind found on the battlefield, but the kind she would face in any and all political arenas.
There was a ruthlessness, her mother had told her, to all rulers. And a queen would need to hone her ruthlessness to a razor-sharp point, and wield it with more exacting brutality than any king.
And so she had been instructed on how to hold herself, how to be beautiful, without being sexual.
She was throwing all of it away right in that moment. Allowing her hips to sway, allowing her fingertips to caress the railing like she might a lover.
She had never had a lover.
But it was the aim of tonight.
And so, she could forget everything she had learned, or rather, could turn it upside down in this place that was like a mirror of her normal life.
That was how she felt. As if she’d stepped through the looking glass. As if she was on the other side of wealth and beauty. Not the weighted, austere version, but this frivolous palace made of ice. Transient and decadent. For no purpose other than pleasure.
She tossed her hair over her shoulder, and the moment she stepped onto the dance floor, she looked up.
Her eyes collided with his.
He saw her. He more than saw her.
It was as if there was an electric current in the air.
And so she did something she would have never done on any other day when her eyes connected with a strange man’s from across the room.
She licked her lips. Slowly. Deliberately.
And then she smiled.
She tossed her hair over her shoulder and continued onto the dance floor.
There were many women, and men, dancing by themselves and so she threw herself into the middle of them, and she allowed the rhythm to guide her movements.
She knew the steps to any number of formal dances. Music composed to complement a dance, not music created to lead it.
But she let the beat determine the shift of her hips, the arch in her spine. And for one, wonderful moment she felt like she was simply part of the crowd. Exhilarating. Freeing.
And then she felt the crowd move. But it was more than that. There was a change in the air. In everything around her.
And she knew already what it meant.
The king was on the dance floor.
She turned, and she nearly ran into a broad chest, her face coming just to his collarbone.
He was wearing a black jacket, black shirt with the top two buttons undone, exposing a wedge of skin and dark hair, tantalizing and forbidden—in her estimation—as no dignitary she had ever encountered would approach her without his tie done up tight.
She looked up, and her heart nearly stopped. And then when a smile tipped his lips upward, it accelerated again.
Photographs had not prepared her.
She’d first seen him in a gossip magazine a year ago when Astrid had brought in a copy of a particularly vile rag that had featured a scandal about Astrid’s brother—who had not spent life on his best behavior in the slightest.
But it wasn’t Gunnar and his naked exploits with a French model that had held Astrid’s attention. First of all, it was a terribly common thing. Even for Gunnar. It wasn’t even interesting.
But second of all…
Oh, there had been Mauro. A dissolute, salacious, scandalous playboy in a tux, with one woman clinging to each arm as he walked through one of his clubs.
Her heart had stopped. The world had stopped.
That was just a photograph.
In person…
He was beautiful, but not in the way the word was typically used. He was far too masculine a thing for simple beauty. Hard and angular like a rock, his jaw square and sculpted, his lips perfectly shaped and firm looking. His dark eyes were like chips of obsidian, the lights on the dance floor swallowed up in those fathomless depths.
He said nothing, and she wouldn’t have been able to hear him anyway. But he extended his hand, and she took his, the spark of fire that ignited at that point of contact spreading over her body like a ripple in the water. Sharp and shocking at its core, rolling over her wider and broader as it expanded.
He caught her and held her against his body.
She had danced with men before, but they had not held her like this. So close that her breasts were crushed to hard, muscular midsections, a large commanding hand low on her back.
And then his lips touched her ear, his whisper husky. “I’ve never seen you before.”
She moved back, tipping her chin upward so that she could see him, so that she could look him full in the face. Except, she could hardly sustain it. She looked down.
And he captured her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze again. If she hadn’t been wearing those heels she would have been so incredibly dwarfed by him there would have been no responding. But he lowered his head, and she leaned in.
“Because I’ve never been here before.”
“It’s always nice to see an unfamiliar face,” he said, this time brushing her hair back from her face as he whispered.
“Dance with me,” she said, not bothering to whisper this time.
The way that the rather predatory grin slid over his mouth told her that he understood.
That she wanted to do more than dance.
His eyes burned into hers as he gripped her hips, dragging her toward him as they moved in time with the music. She felt his touch everywhere, not just where he had his hands, but all the points in between, down deep, in the most intimate parts of her. She had danced with men before, but it had never been like this. Of course, the perfectly polished aristocrats who had always attended the balls she’d been at had never been anything like this.
There was an element of danger to this man. And she found herself drawn to it.
In fact, she found she wanted to fling herself against it. Against him. She had always been asked to be strong, but she had also been sheltered in many ways. Her take on the world was theoretical. And now, she was being tasked with ruling an entire country, while still suffering from that same fate.
Power, but with chains around it.
She wanted to test herself. To test those bonds.
It was what she was here to do.
“Maybe you could show me your club.”
His grip tightened on her, and he looked at her for a long moment, before taking her hand and leading her from the dance floor. He held on to her as he took her down the stairs, away from the pulsing music. But they didn’t go back to the entry, where people had crowded in. Instead, he moved her down a slim corridor with black flooring that had gold light shooting through the spaces in the tile. He pushed open a door that simply looked like another obsidian panel. “You will want a coat,” he said, not taking one for himself, but offering her a snow-white one from a rack by the door.
“Thank you,” she said, taking the coat from him and putting it on.
She quite wondered if covering her body might put her out of this advantage, but he was the one leading her, so she supposed she had better follow instruction.
Another thing she had never been very good at. But unlike waiting, it was something she had been asked to do quite a bit.
Something she now wished to avoid.
The room he led her into was made entirely of ice, the walls carved in intricate designs, crystalline, nearly see-through. By a deep navy blue couch was a wall that allowed a mirror view, however rippling and obscured, of revelers next door.
“You are quite bold,” he said. “Asking me to show you my club.”
“And yet, you seem to be showing me.”
