The Royal’s Pretend Wife (7 page)

When his thrusts grew rougher and he was reduced to growls of pleasure, she had to press her face into her hands to stop from coming. She could feel her pleasure rising with his, her desperation as hot as his.

When he grasped her hips tightly, thrusting in one final time, she barely managed to stop herself from climaxing along with him. Instead, she lay trembling and taut as a violin string as he shuddered with his pleasure.

“Perfect,” he whispered.

When he pulled away, Trinity was momentarily terrified that he had lied, that he wasn't going to give her anything at all. Then with that same casual strength, he flipped her over so she lay on her back on the kitchen island.

'You are utterly perfect,” he whispered.

He spread her legs with his hands, and his dark head dipped between. At the first touch of his clever tongue, she wailed. Her hands came down to bury themselves in his hair, and she rocked upwards towards his face.

In a matter of moments, she was shouting her climax so loudly that her cries echoed off of the tall ceilings. The pleasure that shot through her burned as bright and as hot as firecrackers. She had never been so very thoroughly in her body, the pleasure making her feel every inch of her kin. She sobbed with her pleasure, riding it out, letting it take her as high as it could before she fell back limply against the marble.

She came back to her senses to the sounds of her own ragged breath. Apolo had stood again, leaning over her with a wide smile on his face.

“Can I kiss you?” he asked, “I only ask because—”

She reached up to hook her hand around the back of his neck, pulling him down to her. She could taste herself on his lips, something that made her purr with pleasure. When she had kissed him thoroughly, she let him go to sit up on the counter.

“I'm afraid your poor kitchen island will never be the same,” she murmured.

When she tried to hop down, he stopped her until he could support her in his arms.

“It's marble, I am sure it will be fine,” he said. “Are you all right, little gata? You were a little dreamy there for a while…”

She laughed. “You made me feel as if the top of my head blew off,” she said. “If we're one-tenth as convincing as we were right then, we're going to do just fine tomorrow.”

Something about what she said drew a flicker of darkness across Apolo's face, but he shrugged, smiling.

“I think we will do just fine. Though with that in mind, we should likely shower and sleep.”

She hesitated for a moment. She knew what her natural inclination was, but after all, this was a job. She was beginning to find the professional nature of it…strange and uncomfortable, she decided, but that didn't change the reality of things.

“So…are we going to sleep together or separately?”

There was a bare moment of hesitation, and then he nodded.

“Together. And we can shower together as well.”

As they cleaned each other in Apolo's enormous shower, Trinity had a moment of fear over what the next three weeks would bring. What they had had tonight had felt real, more real than anything she had experienced before, if she were honest, but tomorrow…tomorrow they would have to be real for the cameras.

“We're going to be brilliant,” he said as if he could read her thoughts, and though she was still troubled, she smiled up at him.

If he needed them to be brilliant, then she would make damn sure that they were.

Chapter Five

By Tuesday, Trinity thought that she had the shape of things, and the shape of things was that she wanted nothing more than to strangle her co-stars.

The reality show, called
Real Royals
, was being shot in a gorgeous manor in London. The theme of the show was to capture the three-week-long retreat of some of Europe's wildest jet-setting young royals and to see what they did when they were sharing space.

It sounded a little dubious to Trinity in the first place, and then she had met their co-stars.

Jozef and Serafina of Montal had been married for a year, and even to Trinity's inexpert eye, they were on the rocks. The two royals had come into the house bickering, which the camera had loved, and before they switched to their native German, Trinity was sure that she had heard the words “bitch” and “bastard” used liberally throughout their rants.

At the other end of the spectrum were Carolina and Antonio of Castell de Muntanya, the prince and princess of a small mountainous country on the border of Spain and France. They looked like they were intensely in love, but there was something to the gleam in Carolina's eye that Trinity simply didn't trust. When Carolina wasn't spending her time cooing over her husband the prince, she was watching the other royals with a hard and glittering eye. Being in the same room with the woman was going to be uncomfortable in the extreme, and Trinity could already tell that was going to be a source of conflict the producers were going to push.

Then there was Apolo and herself. They had been filmed entering the gorgeous London manor, something that she had been expecting, but the cameras had shocked Apolo. He had started visibly when there was a camera running as they opened the doors. Trinity had squeezed his hand, directing his attention to the stained glass window above the foyer.

“Oh, how lovely,” she said with genuine pleasure. “It must be Swiss, yes?”

Distracted, he looked up at the glass and, to her relief, stopped scowling at the camera.

“Good eye,” he said after a moment. “It's a great deal like one at the art museum in Athens.”

“The Pierre du Pleiss? The red? I love that one…”

If he was a little startled at her knowledge of seventeenth-century glass work
, he gave no sign. Instead, he allowed her to lead him into the living room, where the other royals were waiting.

It was, Trinity thought, neatly done. She didn't mind being seen as the artistic one, even if that meant that she saw less drama than Serafina and Carolina. She had sat, one hand carelessly on Apolo's arm, as the host explained the show to the camera and also to the royals themselves.

It was not as bad as she had feared. There was no real competition, no real reason for animosity. It was simply an excuse for people who would otherwise have little to do with one another to live close. At the end, it was nothing more than a way for people to see what their favorite royals looked like when they were simply living their lives.

There would be a few tasks, but they were simple things. To Trinity's great relief, the show would not be going out live, which at least would reduce the amount of panic that she had. If worse came to worse, she knew that Apolo's lawyers would simply step in and commandeer the film.

“And with that in mind,” said the host with a winning smile, “I hope that the six of you enjoy each other's company! You can be sure that our viewing audiences across Europe will be enjoying their time with you!”

After that, the shooting was done for the night, allowing them to rest until the show began in earnest the next morning. An overawed intern showed them to their luxurious suite, and after the door closed behind them, Apolo sighed, rubbing his forehead with one weary hand.

“Well, that wasn't disastrous,” he said.

“I have to agree,” she said, flopping down on their elegant chaise longue. “I'm pleased that we're being cast as the grownups, I think.”

He frowned at her. “What do you mean by that?”

“Oh, you didn't notice?” Well, he was new to entertainment. “Jozef and Serafina are going to be the villains, the ones who hate each other so much that they're going to make us hate them too. Antonio and Carolina are going to be the impassioned young lovers, who will do anything for love and might also make us hate them. You and I, because we didn't come in cursing or nearly making love in front of the camera, are likely going to be the adults.”

“Is…that a good thing to be?”

She shot him an amused look. “Well, would you rather I take a swing at you over breakfast? I'm sure that our host would adore that.”

He smiled a little wryly. “Please don't. I still have very little idea what is going on, so I'm prepared to bow to your superior experience. If we've been cast as the sane couple, I'm going to run with that. Any other good advice you can give me?”

She thought for a moment, mentally reviewing what they had done together that day.

“You're doing well right now,” Trinity said thoughtfully. “At the moment, you are coming across as a man who's not quite sure why he's there, half-convinced it's a waste of time and good-humored in spite of it. That's a good place to be. That's safe.”

Apolo raised an eyebrow. “And you?”

“Well, for me, it's a little different. Men get a lot more leeway to be grouchy and suspicious about things than women. If I tried that, most people would start to whisper that I was a spoilsport or a shrew. As it is, I'm pushing the fact that I think that this is all darling and that everything is delightful. I'm touching you a great deal, so I probably look a little more into you than you’re into me.”

To her surprise, Apolo frowned.

“I don't like that,” he said. When he caught her puzzled look, he quickly amended it. “I mean that I don't think that an unequal partnership is something that we want people to see, that's all. I want to make it very clear that we have a real chemistry, a real romance.”

Trinity nodded briskly. “That makes sense. It will certainly reflect well on you as a modern and equality-driven royal…”

He looked a little uncertain about that, but he nodded. “So what do I do to make it look as if I am madly in love with you?”

For some reason, she hesitated. It felt strange to tell a man how he should treat her if he was in love with her, but if she were honest, that was exactly what her job was here.

“Well, start with touching me, and not just romantically. People who are into each other touch a great deal, just as a matter of default. We can be a casual-kiss couple if you want to be, or we can just lightly touch each other throughout the day. Basically, the more casual about it we are, the more natural it will look.”

“And is that something we should rehearse as well?”

She looked up at him warily. after their night of passion in Spain, they had hurried to get on the plane to London. Since then, they hadn’t had the chance to touch base at all about what had happened. If she were being purely professional and mercenary about it, she would have been pleased that she had such good chemistry with her co-star. If she wasn't…her heart beat faster when she looked at him. Sometimes, when she glanced at him, she could feel his hands moving over her pale body and waking up every single nerve in her.

“I think it will come naturally,” she said at last. “We…we have a lot of natural rapport with one another. It's something they would look for if they were casting us as husband and wife.”

He tilted his head to one side, studying her with a kind of predatory patience.

“Rapport…That sounds very much like something an actress would say, little gata.”

“I am an actress,” she said, refusing to allow him to cow her. “That is what I am here for. I cannot help it if I am good at my job.”

There was a faint scrim of ice over his features, but he nodded at her politely enough.

“Then will say that I am pleased for the rapport that we have, and I hope it will allow us to be successful.”

She bit her lip. When he stood up to go, it took everything she had to call him on the distance he put between them.

“Don't do that,” she said, and he turned to look at her. His eyes were cool, and he looked at her as if she was some secretary or aide who had made a minor mistake. Trinity knew that was wrong, and she knew that she had to fix it if they stood a chance.

“Okay. Listen. You hired me for my skills and my expertise, is that correct?”

“Yes, that's correct.”

“Then you can't get angry at me for being good at the thing that I do. Don't get cold like that. Don't hold me in contempt because I am being a good wife. It's not very fair to me, and if you don't care about that, then at least care about the fact that it will transfer over very, very quickly when it comes time to be ourselves in front of the camera.”

She had kept her voice level throughout the speech, but there was a part of her that wanted to make a much more impassioned plea. She stomped on it quickly, because no matter what her heart had to say, there was no room for it in this conversation.

There was a fire in Apolo's eye. For a moment, she thought that he would simply dismiss her out of hand. Then, to Trinity's relief, he nodded reluctantly.

“You're right,” he said. “I'll admit, I am in over my head. I had not expected it to be so. We are performing, and sometimes I am entirely swept up in it. Other times, I remember that it is just a performance, and that I am alone with these feelings.”

“Not alone,” Trinity said, pleased to be back on familiar ground. “Every good performer feels what they are doing. It is not a cold thing. The connection is real, believe me. The only issue is when we take it for more than it is.”

Apolo winced, ever so slightly, but he nodded. “Very well. How can we maintain the connection without fooling ourselves into mistaking it for more?”

Trinity thought for a moment. “I can think of one way,” she offered. “To maintain our connection, we could sleep together. To make sure we don't read more into it, we can keep it at sleeping together.”

It was only her extensive training that allowed her to make the offer as serenely as she did. Inside were a dozen voices, all shouting at her for different reasons. She shouldn't get so close. That wasn't close enough. She was shooting them in the foot. She was doing something terrible.

Apolo didn't have her training. A number of different emotions flickered over his face, too fast for her to read. Finally, he nodded.

“Very well. That sounds sensible enough to me.”

That was where they left it, and Trinity was proud of herself for such a clever compromise until it came time to go to bed.

She had a long sleeveless cotton nightgown that went right down to her knees. It was a prim thing, comfortable but hardly sexy. When Apolo came into the master bedroom, she was pleased to see that he wore a pair of soft sleep pant. It was normal. There was nothing too difficult or sexual about it.