Page 67 of Royal Games (The Royals of Monterra)

And I didn’t want to waste his or mine on talking. I put my hands on the back of his neck, pulling him against me, reveling in the feeling of his hot, passionate lips responding. Several minutes passed before he stopped again. He actually moved back, like he didn’t trust himself to stay close to me. “There’s something I have to tell you first.”

“I don’t care,” I told him, as I closed the gap, kissing that pulsing point in the hollow of his neck. With a growl he dragged me up to meet his lips, giving me more of the delicious and intoxicating feelings only he had ever managed to invoke.

Molten lava traveled along my nervous system, burning everything in its path. Like I’d swallowed a bucket of burning coals. I had stopped breathing at some point, but while he devoured me like this, it didn’t matter.

His hands on me and his mouth on mine were the only things that mattered.

I wanted to feast on him. Turned out I had a real problem with gluttony. Until his hands started inching toward some seriously dangerous territory.

Should you be doing this?some little worried voice asked, restoring some of my sanity.

I moved his hand away, and he left it where I’d moved it. He started to lean back, and I instinctively stopped him. That was too much. I wouldn’t lie down with him. I had to keep some boundaries, and I knew if I did what he wanted, we wouldn’t stop. And even though I didn’t want this to end, even though it felt like everything was building to some inevitable conclusion that I didn’t want to frustrate, I had to stop him. Stop this from going further. Even if he might be the right man, this wasn’t the right time.

Just a few more minutes of this ecstasy and I would stop.

I would.

“Genesis,” he said in a low voice against my lips, short-circuiting my higher reasoning. And then everything else faded away into oblivion, leaving only fire and want in its wake.

Then I heard a sound that seemed very far away. It was like a voice coming from the bottom of a well, echoing and indecipherable. It sounded like, “Dante, I wanted to tell you ...”

We abruptly stopped kissing. My eyes tried to focus. Lemon was here. Why was Lemon in Rafe’s room?

It took me a moment to understand what was happening.

She threw a vase at Rafe, just missing him. I gasped. She’d kept saying she didn’t have feelings for him. Why was she reacting this way? Why would she care what we were doing?

They started to argue. She called him names, and he tried to figure out what she wanted. I was in total shock. Then she got angry at me, which upset me. I thought of how it must have looked to her. If she was in love with him too, it must have devastated her. It would have destroyed me. Which made me angry and disappointed at myself and at Rafe. Why did this happen with us? Why did I always respond to his touch and his kisses like that? I saw the camera crew behind her, recording everything. I raised a hand to my flushed cheek. Had they seen anything? Filmed anything that had happened between me and Rafe? It didn’t even matter. All of America would jump to the same conclusion Lemon had when they saw me in his room, on his bed, and him without a shirt.

Lemon finally stormed out, and Rafe roughly ran his fingers through his hair. “This is the worst possible—” he said, stopping when he saw me, as if he’d forgotten I was in the room. I did not like how that felt at all.

“I have to fix this. Stay here, please. I will explain everything to you.” His tone was all desperation and pleading.

Before I could respond, he chased after another woman.

There was only so much humiliation I could stand in one night. Holding my head high, I walked past the crew without even a glance, heading back to my room. From his actions, it was obvious he liked Lemon more. Normally I might have cried, but I was still in shock at what had just occurred. I wondered if I could leave the show. There was no point in staying here now.

At some point Taylor, the field producer, came by to talk to me. I only caught every other word that she said. Like I was underwater and everything was distorted by shimmering, moving waves.

“Can I leave?”

“The show?” Taylor looked totally panicked, her voice high and anxious. “No. You can’t leave the show. You’ll be in violation of your contract and there will be monetary fines if you do that.”

I found out later that Lemon had walked out, going back home, but she had the money to pay whatever the penalty was.

I didn’t.

The ache in my heart was incredible, unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. I had been head over heels in love, and he wanted someone else. And I was stuck in my room like some kind of prisoner, refusing to speak to any of the producers who filed in and out, asking me with fake concern if I wanted to talk about what had just happened.

My whole body was numb. Where there had been fire, now there was only ice.

And regret.

Then emptiness set in. I’d been used. He had used me. Taken advantage of me and of my naïveté. Like I was some stupid country bumpkin who was about to become the punch line in the monologues of late-night talk show hosts.

Taylor came back in at some point. She sat on the bed across from me talking. I mostly tuned her out. I knew she wanted a reaction. Then something she said caught my ear.

“Identical twins?” I repeated.

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