Page 3 of Awakened On Her Royal Wedding Night
How was hehere?
It didn’t make sense, but Claudine didn’t think, only reacted, trying to get away from the devil himself. She closed her hand on whatever bits of shells and rocks were on this godforsaken excuse for a beach and threw it at him.
While he swore roundly, she tried to roll away from him and get her arms and legs under her, but her muscles were utterly exhausted. She was shaking and weak, disoriented.
In the same moment, there were shouts and a scuffle of noise. A harsh male voice barked something in Italian. A heavy, rough weight pressed onto the back of her shoulder, squashing her onto her own feeble arms.
She should have let the sea take her because she was going to die tonight regardless of her fight to live. She let her face droop onto the pebbled beach beneath her.
I’m sorry, Mom. You were right. I’m so sorry.
There was a potent moment of silence, one that made her realize she had spoken aloud.
A burst of authoritative Italian came out of the Prince. There was the sound of a dull slap that transmitted a vibration into her shoulder before the punishing weight lifted off her back. It had been a foot, she realized, one with a roughly treaded sole. That’s all she could see when she lifted her head. Boots and more boots.
“Don’t attack me again,” the Prince warned in his accented English. “My guards don’t like it.”
If onlyshehad guards, she thought with brief hysteria. Instead, she had been one woman defending herself againsthisattack.
She tried to push herself into sitting up and facing him, but her arms were overcooked pasta, completely ineffectual. Every part of her hurt. She didn’t even have the strength to cry.
“How did you get here?” he asked.
That seemed too obvious to bother answering. She searched for a path of escape, but only saw boots, boots, rocks and more boots. Then feet in what had to be bespoke Italian shoes. Not deck shoes like the Prince had been wearing earlier. Laced leather shoes with fancy detailing.
She could still hear the swish and churn of the water at the mouth of the lagoon. Soft waves were caressing her calves. Dare she try that route again? Swimming had been her only escape the first time, but she hadn’t managed to escape him, had she?
With a sob of utter despair, she dropped her head onto her wrist.
“Why are you here?” he prodded.
Seriously?
“I was aiming for Sicily. Is this not it?” she asked in a rasp.
There was a smirk from one of the hovering guards. The aggressive one who’d stood on her earlier nudged her hip with the toe of his boot.
“Don’t be smart. You’re under arrest. Answer the Prince’s questions.”
The Prince, whom she heartily consigned to the hottest corner of hell, said something in quiet, lethal Italian that had all of his guards shuffling back a few steps.
“Now,” the Prince continued in English, “if you want to lie here waiting for all your cuts to grow septic, we can do that. Or you can come up to the castle for medical attention and give me a full explanation for your presence here. Can you stand?”
He started to take hold of her arm, but a fresh surge of pure adrenaline, the kind with its roots in an atavistic desire to survive, knocked his hand away. She scrabbled for a fresh handful of sand to throw at him.
“No.” His knee went into the bed of pebbles in front of her eyes while his firm hand pinned her wrist to the ground. The other immobilized her bent arm against her chest, pressing her onto her back. “We’ve talked about that.”
She was dimly aware of a noise that she had only heard in movies. It was the sound of guns being cocked and readied for firing. She had never been so petrified in her life. Her heart ought to have exploded.
She refused to look at him, though. She stared at the crease that went down the front of his trousers, from his knee to his shoe. Out of her well of pure hatred, she said, “Don’t. Touch. Me.”
“Open your hand,” he commanded.
“Go to hell.”
“We’re staying here, then?”
She hated him. Really truly hated him.
