Page 28 of Prince

Maxence flicked his hand.“Thatwas how the European royal families acquired their problem with hemophilia, which has never impactedus. And,no.And,” the side of his upper lip lifted, the opposite side from his raised eyebrow,“No.We have enough DNA in common that Alexandre could give me a kidney. We are notthatkind of cousins.”

Everybody had lines they wouldn’t cross, Dree supposed.

“Besides,” Maxence said, his eyes returning to what he was reading, “he’s not my type.”

Opening.

“Who is your type?” Dree asked.

Maxence’s eyes slid to the side, and he smiled at her.

Oh, she knew that diabolical smile.

He swiveled his chair to the side and pointed at the floor in front of him. “Come here, pet.”

A thrill ran up her back, an almost-automatic response as she remembered all the times in Paris when he’d called herpet.

Now,thiswas why she’d come to Monaco, which was not to be asecretary.

Dree stood and placed the tablet on his desk. The black dress Chiara had selected for her was structured like a corset inside, and it kept her posture erect as she strutted around the desk, her legs pointing like a ballet dancer’s in the high heels.

He didn’t take his eyes off of her, and his smile became darker.

When Dree was standing in front of Maxence, he raised one eyebrow and pointed to the floor at his feet.

Instead, she braced her hands on the corners of the high back of his manager’s chair and pushed it, tilting him backward. She settled her knee on his thigh, parting her legs, and leaned toward him.

His fingers found her knee and slowly traveled up the inside of her thigh.

She lowered her head, letting her blond curls brush his cheek, and whispered in his ear, “Not until you call your buddy the Pope and have him revoke your Holy Orders.”

“What?”

Dree shoved herself backward, away from his fingers that had crawled up to the sensitive center of her thigh, and backed up. “When we were in Nepal, I thought I was having one last night with a man I was falling in love with but couldn’t spend my life with. But this?Thisisn’t one last night.Thisisn’t a game. This is somethingelse.You keep telling people you’re going to take the next step of Holy Orders to be a priest.I don’t sleep with priests.”

Maxence folded his hands on his stomach, and his eyebrows pinched together. “I can’t.”

“Can’twhat?”

“I can’t be laicized right now.”

She squinted at him, analyzing everything from his composed posture to his resting respiration rate. “You said you could, that your vows were written to be broken.”

He shook his head. “I’d be dead within a day.”

His absolute calm was convincing. He wasn’t lying to himself or her. Hebelievedit.

Even though something in Dree’s mind wanted to become hysterical at the conflicting winds buffeting her, she clasped her hands in front of her and drew a deep breath. “Like, what? Like some sort of an assassin-priest will knock you off for wanting to back out?”

He shook his head again. “Not Rome.”

“You’re still an ordained deacon in the Church, and it bothers me that we’ve had relations when you’re not supposed to, and yet I don’t want to stop myself.”

Maxence spread his knees a little wider and patted his thigh. “Sit.”

“You’re just going to tell me some sophisticated argument that I’m not going to understand, and it’s gonna make my head spin around and I’m going to have sex with you anyway, and then I’m going to feel like this again.”

“Sit.” His voice was lower this time.