Freya paled and he wondered if she really thought he was so stupid not to have figured out that she had a stake in this. In the back of his mind a warning sounded. A dutiful soldier wouldn’t push, wouldn’t question. But maybe he was finally done being the dutiful soldier after all it had cost him over the years.
Enzo, home.
Her.
He drank in the sight of arousal shimmering beneath the secrets in Freya’s eyes like a man dying of thirst. Her fingers gripped the table behind her, holding on or holding back, he couldn’t tell. Didn’t want to any more. His body inhaled the scent of her, warm and sweet on the air compressed between them, just as her head rocked back, exposing the long length of her neck. Their breaths fast and furious with need and desire.
He’d never stopped wanting her. It had always been there, in the back of his mind like a second heartbeat, just a millisecond out of sync. A shadow beat, constant and living, deep within him.
That was why there had never been anyone else. Ever.
It had only been her.
Rage and fury burned at the edges of his desire, inflaming his want and feeding his need and he hovered on the brink. But even if he gave into a temptation that could drive him beyond madness, even if they indulged in every whim he’d seen flash across her amber gaze—she was still a princess and he was just a soldier. She had always been out of his reach. As a young man he’d not realised what that meant, but the events of the last eight years had taught him well. So he marshalled his body with a ruthlessness that bordered on brutal and returned his gaze to hers.
As if sensing the shift in his focus, she averted her gaze, evidently more comfortable with her attraction to him than the secret she kept from him. And, like the trained hunter he was, he followed the trail of her deception.
‘Why do you need me to take the medal, Freya?’
‘I’m renouncing my royal title. And Aleksander will only let me go if you accept the medal.’
CHAPTER SIX
THWACK.
Kjell spun, kicking out at the punchbag hanging from the ceiling of the outbuilding. Despite the sub-zero temperature and the howling wind pounding the insulated walls, sweat dripped from his body. Squaring off against the sand-filled heavy bag, he threw his fists in a punishing combination ending—again—with another rounded kick, before landing comfortably on his feet.
I’m renouncing my royal title.
‘Why?’ he’d demanded, truly shocked for the first time since she’d turned up on his doorstep. She loved being a royal. She always had. You didn’t have to know her to see that every time she was caught by a photographer, interviewed or overseas on a diplomatic visit, public service made hershine. She did her duty with the kind of grace that was innate, natural and genuine. Everyone commented on it, internationally and at home, and of all the royals Svardia’s people would choose her again and again.
‘It’s none of your business.’
Thwack.
Her tone had been as cold as the icicles forming on the solar panels on the roof—and just as deadly to his peace of mind.
‘It is when it’s conditional on me accepting a medal I don’t want,’ he’d growled. ‘Don’t bother asking me again until you’re ready to tell me what’s really going on.’
Thwack. Thwack.
She’d stood there and stared him down until he’d finally stepped back to let her leave or risk becoming the kind of monster he’d claimed not to be. She’d slipped past him and the last thing he’d heard from her was the door to the bedroom closing behind her.
His fists were a blur, his knuckles long since numb beneath the wrap he’d wound around his fingers, palm and wrist. Leaning in to add an elbow to the combination, he felt sweat flick from his skin as he stepped back and planted his non-load-bearing foot into the centre of the bag, sending it high into the air, before striking it again on the backswing.
Ignoring the unfamiliar tremble in his arms, he cycled through the routine, sweat shining his skin and his pulse tripping.
She’s not stupid, he heard Enzo observe in his mind.
No, Kjell thought. She wasn’t. The Italian soldier would have liked Freya. A lot. Or he would have liked who she’d been at university. The years in between had made her...sharper. Less soft. Less giving. But no less stubborn. Dropping to the floor into a plank, he counted down from sixty.
‘You have no sense when it comes to that woman,’ Enzo said through his laughter.
Kjell smiled back as his team took some R&R in Bosnia. Eight of them, five men, three women, all of similar rank, sat round the table, drinking beer from ice-cold bottles under the umbrellas of the cobbled street café. War stories of the romantic kind were being shared because the real kind didn’t really bear thinking about. Every single man and woman there had been shot at, near exploding IEDs, and had seen enough human misery to make even the hardest heart weep. And every single person at that table was staring at him as if he’d grown a second head.
‘Really? Princess Freya of Svardia?’ Suzu Kuroki asked.
Kjell considered it a feat to surprise the cool, calm intelligence officer from Japan.