I almost say it when I hear him whisper those words to me again.

I love you.

But I can’t. If I let myself say it again—this time because I mean it—it’s one more thing he can use against me when this is over.

When this is over.

I close my eyes, breathing him in. I don’t want to think about that right now—about what happens when this is all over. When this whole thing blows up, which it almost certainly will. Right now, I just want him to hold me. To tell me without words that this is the right thing.

God, I love the way he smells. The way he feels. The way he seems to have some instinct about how to touch me. Where to touch me. I love the way our bodies seem to fit together perfectly, like we were each made for the other. I love how he says my name too often. I love that he loves to argue with me. I love that he came back for me. I love how he tells me he loves me. I love that I believe him.

I love him, too. Fuck, I love him, too.

Something about acknowledging this, even to myself, makes my heart speed up in panic. My breaths are coming too quickly, and I feel like I’m not getting any oxygen.

Leo kisses the top of my head and pulls me closer. He slides a hand down my shoulder, trailing his fingers down my arm to pull my hand into his. He laces his fingers through mine—almost like he’s reassuring me. Almost like he’s able to read my mind.

Damn it, I love that, too. How he can read my mind.

This is happening too fast. If I think about how many days—about how much time we’ve actually spent together, it isn’t much. It damn well isn’t enough to be in love. This—whatever this is—cannot be love. It’s impossible on so many levels.

But what do I really know about love? I’ve thought I was in love exactly twice before now—and neither of those men loved me back. They said the words—they both said everything right… They were just liars. Leo isn’t like them, though. He doesn’t want anything from me.

Except he does.

Whatever happened here in Montovia in the past three months has little do with me—I already know that. Leo has been in trouble with his father for his behavior, and he needs to do something to improve his standing. And not just with his father—with the world. I’m not sure how I fit into this equation unless Leo is telling the truth. Nothing that’s happened makes any sense unless he really has done everything because he really is in love with me. Unless…

No. I shouldn’t let myself go there. I should close my eyes—enjoy this moment. Sex with Leo is the best I’ve ever had, and I should at least take the opportunity to savor this. To burn every bit of it into my memory, just in case my unless is real. In case this is as short lived as I suspect it will be. I mean, the door is just over there, and he can get up any second now and walk out, promising to return. Promising to—

“I should return to my room.” He finally breaks the long moment of silence. He squeezes my hand while his other arm is wrapped around my shoulder, his fingers stroking my hair. “I’ll get the condoms…”

I freeze. My eyes are wide and I’m pretty sure I’m not breathing. I can’t speak—I can’t really even tell what I’m thinking. I only remember the last time he said those exact words when we were together at my house in Santa Monica. The last time he said he’d be back in a second. The last time he’d left me naked in bed to get condoms.

He kisses the top of my head again before pulls his hand from mine and eases his arm out from under me, sitting up. He smiles down at me. “I’ll have Matthias make you an appointment this week so you can begin using birth control. Then we won’t have these needless interruptions.”

I blink a few times, snapping myself out of my momentary panic attack.

Maybe he isn’t leaving me for good. Maybe he really does only want to return to his room to grab them. Maybe.

I sit up, folding my arms over my breasts, suddenly very self-conscious. I watch him walk back into the sitting room, pulling his clothes from where they were strewn about the floor. He pulls his pants on before he grabs my clothes, too, returning to the bedroom.

He hands my clothes to me. “Matthias will have hung your other things in there,” he says, motioning to a door on the other side of the bedroom. “Your washroom is over there.” He motions to another door on the opposite side of the room.

Leo looks at the clock on the nightstand and his eyes widen a bit. “It is getting rather late. I should shower and prepare myself for dinner with my family.” He pulls his shirt on and begins buttoning it.

I can only sit and stare at him, my arms still firmly crossed over my chest.

He seems lost in thought, only staring at the clock, keeping his gaze averted from mine.

He finally finishes dressing and turns back for the door. He barely glances over his shoulder when he speaks. “You can call for your dinner whenever you like. Someone will be happy to bring something up for you.”

I quickly pull my blouse on, then my pants, holding my top closed with my hands. “That’s it?”

He turns slightly but doesn’t meet my gaze. “Is what it, Elle?”

I want to call him out—I want to ask if this was some sort of fuck-and-run. Some sort of steam-blowing activity before he has to deal with his father again at dinner. But I don’t.

He runs a hand through his hair, but still won’t make eye contact with me. “I’m not sure what you want, Elle. Last night on the plane you were quite clear about how you needed space—”

“That was last night.”

“Indeed.” He sighs and turns a bit more toward me, but still won’t meet my gaze. “If you would like to spend the night in my suite, Elle, I would have no objection.”

I lift a brow. “Would your father?”

If I didn’t know better, I would swear his cheeks turn pink at my words. He runs a hand through his hair again. “I suppose he would.”

“I see. So the whole ‘we can spend all the time we want together’ thing isn’t exactly true, is it, Your Highness?”

“I’m not sure if any of us…” His voice trails off for a moment before he turns to me. His gaze finally meets mine. “I may be the first of the royal children to bring home a lover.”

I frown. “Is that what I am? A lover?”

He smiles. “You’re much more than that, Elle. I believe we’ve already established that fact.”

I nod and pull my blouse a little tighter across my chest. “You haven’t had the talk with them, have you? About what’s acceptable under your parents’ roof?”

“Ah. Yes, I suppose that is accurate.” He grins. “Though it clearly is not going to stop me.”

I lift a brow. “But if your father finds out…”

He frowns. “And he almost certainly will.” He tilts his head and looks at me for a moment. “I didn’t think this through very well, Elle. I suppose you may add that to my short list of flaws.”

“I think rash decision making was always on there, Leo.”

“Yes, I suppose it was.” He stares at me for a moment. “We’ll figure something out.”

“Your walls have ears and eyes. Surely they’ll see you coming into my room each night. Or me going into yours.” I pause. “And someone will certainly notice all the condoms in the trash.”

“Shit.” He frowns and stares at me again for another long moment. “I’ll speak with them at dinner.”

I lift a brow. “About wanting to sleep with your girlfriend?”

He flashes me a toothy grin. “Are you willing to call yourself that now?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. You said I was more than a lover. I’m not sure how you want to define me. Maybe I’m just a means to an end? A way for you to get back into your father’s good graces?”

He chuckles, rubbing his jaw. “I can think of a hundred better ways to get in my father’s good graces than taking up with a common—” He stops, his smile falling. “What I meant to say was—”

“I know exactly what you meant to say, Leo. A commoner.” I shrug again. “Whatever. That’s what I am, right? I don’t even have celebrity status to fall back on. It must be killing your parents, knowing you’ve taken up with someone who can only drag you down.” I have to force myself not to roll my eyes. As if I give a damn about celebrities or status.

He shakes his head. “Perhaps for my father. But not for my mother. She already knows of my feelings for you, Elle. We’ve spoken at great length about it, actually. And she is looking forward to meeting the woman who has changed her son.”

Great. I’ve never met the parents of any man I’ve ever dated—Leo’s father is the first, and that went so well…

He continues. “Perhaps tonight after dinner. Or we can take tea with her tomorrow afternoon, after we’ve all had a chance to rest.” He grins. “If we rest. I’m not so certain I’ll be able to, particularly after you’ve reminded me these past few days of what I’ve been missing, Elle.”

My cheeks heat up in an instant and my heart pounds in my chest. Energy coils low in my belly, pulling at me again. Making me want him inside me again. Now.

I don’t want him to leave. But I don’t say it out loud—he needs to make amends with his family, as I’m all too aware. And I don’t want to make things worse for him by making him late to dinner because he was fucking his horny girlfriend.

His eyes darken, probably in response to mine. “Mm. I do love making you blush, Elle. Nothing gives me greater pleasure. Well, almost nothing…” He closes his eyes and turns back to the door. “I will come to see you after dinner if you’d like.”

“I would like.”

He grabs the frame of the door so hard I can see his knuckles turn white. He stands there for a moment before he speaks. “I can’t stay. Even if there was time, I don’t trust myself to…”

Pull out. It’s like we’re teenagers, for Christ’s sake. Horny, stupid, reckless teenagers.

I begin to button my blouse, almost glad I had the flash of sense not to call him back to the bed. I have no doubt he would have returned to me—and that I could have convinced him to skip dinner with his family after all. But then someone would have come looking for him, and the likelihood of someone walking in on us… It’s not something I want to deal with tonight.

He lets out a long breath, almost as though he’s had the same thought. That even if it is what we both want—even if we can’t keep our hands off each other—the timing, at least for the moment, is not right.

He turns back to face me, and his eyes are still dark with passion. “I will see you later this evening, Elle.” He pauses. “Only if I am invited, of course.”

I narrow my gaze, staring at him for a long moment. “Consider this your invitation, Your Highness. And you’d better figure out a way to sneak in here without anyone seeing you. I don’t want to have to face the wrath of King Edmund tomorrow for defiling his little boy.”

He squeezes his eyes shut and he speaks through his tightly clenched jaw. “I will be back after dinner, Elle. I will find a way to come to your room undetected.” He pauses for a moment. “And you have no idea how much it is killing me to leave now.”

His hands close into fists and he turns on his heel, walking out of the bedroom.

He doesn’t say another word to me—I only hear the click of the door on his way out.

Something about his tone tells me our conversation isn’t quite over—that maybe he’ll come back in the room. But he doesn’t.

After minute or so, I rise from the bed, finally ready to check out my fancy suite. I pull open the door that Leo had mentioned was the closet—and I nearly faint when I glance inside.

The closet—if you can call it that—is bigger than my bedroom at home. It’s mostly empty, of course, but the gowns Leo had made for me are hanging near the entrance, along with several other casual dresses and outfits I haven’t seen before. The space for hanging clothes extends the length of the room and across the back. On the other side, several pairs of shoes—I recognize the ones I wore last night along with the others I hadn’t chosen—are lined up on the top of several rows of angled shelves. There is enough space here to house a shoe store—it could probably hold more shoes than I and everyone I’ve ever known have owned in our lives.

But this isn’t my life. It isn’t even a life I’ve ever imagined wanting.

I stand in the doorway of the closet, staring silently at the empty space—unable to imagine what it would look like full of clothes—when I hear a knock on my door.

My stomach does the weird fluttering thing it always does and my chest tightens. I can’t help but grin—he came back.

I ignore the part of me that hates myself for getting so excited thinking about it—that he did what he said he would do. That he went to his room for a few minutes to get the condoms. That maybe he decided to blow off dinner with his family to spend the entire evening with me. That he chose me.

He chose me.

I smile again and try not to skip to the door. My cheeks almost hurt from how wide my grin is.

I’m ready to pretend to torture the living hell out of him for leaving me in the first place. But my smile falls as soon as I crack open the door.

It isn’t Leo standing there. It’s Stephan.

He doesn’t even wait for me to acknowledge him—he pushes through the door, stepping around me and into the room.

I’m still staring out into the hallway—I have to blink a few times before I realize what’s happening. I close the door and turn to face the pudgy man. I don’t say anything—I only lift an expectant eyebrow.

He sniffs, lifting his nose in an obvious display of condescension. “Yes, right. I suppose you’re wondering—”

I interrupt. “I know I’m not from Montovia or anything, but even in America, it’s impolite for a stranger to barge into a room—”

He interrupts me this time with what almost sounds like a snort. “Ha! Impolite? You, Miss—”

“Doctor. You may call me Doctor. I’m hardly—”

“Miss.” He almost hisses the interruption this time and glares at me, almost daring me to say anything else. “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted…” He pauses, lifting a bushy eyebrow. “Right. As I was saying, you seem to have cornered the market on rudeness, at least as far as anything I’ve ever been witness to in this palace. And I dare say I’ve served here longer than you’ve been alive.”

Served. It’s still difficult for me to believe that Matthias and Stephan—and probably countless others working in the palace—have given up their lives in devotion to Leo’s family. I guess I have nothing to compare it to—people don’t do that where I come from. I feel devoted to serving children—to helping keep them healthy—but certainly not to one job. I guess I can’t imagine committing my life to only working in one place. I can’t relate, no matter what I do to try to see things from his perspective.

“It goes without saying that this…” He makes a sweeping motion with his arm. “This is not how things are done here. Regardless of what His Highness, Prince Leopold may desire.”

I stare at him, expressionless. What the hell am I supposed to say to that?

He stares back at me in silence for a long moment. “We don’t tolerate your kind here.”

“My kind?” I blink a few times for effect. “What exactly do you mean by my kind?”

He narrows his gaze and folds his arms over his square chest. “I believe you know exactly what I mean.”

I nod, but not because I agree. Leo should be here—to stop me from killing this man at the very least. I can feel my heart starting to thud in my chest, my stomach tightening. I’m going to unleash on this poor bastard, and he’s not going to know what hit him.

But I’m only barely able to open my mouth before he continues. “I’ll not stand for it. You’ll retrieve your things now and you’ll be gone before His Highness returns from dinner. And you’ll not return to Montovia again for as long as you live.”

I press my lips into a line and lift a brow. I stare at him for another moment, trying to contain my rage before I allow myself to speak. “Look…” I suppress the urge to use the word asshole. “Leo, Andrew, and their father all came to an agreement. I guess you might not be privy to the details just yet, but—”

“I’ve heard every detail of the arrangement His Royal Majesty has made with Prince Leopold. That is not why I am here this evening.”

I nod. “I see. Well, then I suppose you should take that up with Leo and leave me the fuck alone.”

His eyes widen at my use of the word fuck. “Your language alone makes you entirely unsuitable to even enter the palace, let alone sleep here. I’ll not have anyone here who—”

“But it isn’t really your choice, is it? I mean, you might think you run this palace—”

“Miss, I do run this palace.”

I glare at him again. “Doctor. You may call me Doctor. I worked pretty goddamned hard to get through medical school, and I fucking well earned that title.” My heart pounds again—mostly because I hate doing that. I never make anyone call me Doctor, and I’ve always sort of hated people who insist on hiding behind their title. But it seems my medical degree is the only thing I have to hold up as some sort of evidence that I’m worth anything at the moment—because Stephan certainly doesn’t seem to think I’m even worth the time he’s taken to come here.

The sneer he gives me does nothing to make me think otherwise. “The only titles that matter in Montovia are those of the Royal Family.” He glares at me again. “Considering you’re little more than a courtesan, you’re very lucky I haven’t had you arrested and thrown into the local jail.”

The little fucker just called me a whore. And my mind begins to race, the same old song playing through my head again. Undeserving. Unlovable.

Worthless.

My stomach drops to my toes. He’s right. I mean, maybe he isn’t right, but it doesn’t matter. I definitely don’t deserve to be here. There’s nothing even remotely redeeming about me. There’s no way Leo is going to be able to turn me into some quasi-princess, fit to accompany him or anyone else to some fancy thing where he can rehabilitate his reputation. The only thing I’m going to do is drag him down.

“You’ll collect your things at once. A driver will be waiting at the servant’s entrance in one hour. I’ll not have you seen at one of the family’s entrances…”

I nod, but I’m not even listening to him. I’m already planning my next move.

Leaving Leo. Again.

And this time, it will be for good.

* * *