Captured (Gowns & Crowns #2) Read online

  Captured

  Gowns & Crowns, Book 2

  Jennifer Chance

  Copyright © 2016 by Jennifer Stark

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-943768-06-6

  Cover design by Liz Bemis, Bemis Promotions

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locations are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in encouraging piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.

  Purchase/Download only authorized editions.

  For Misti

  Run with the stars, beautiful girl.

  Chapter One

  Tonight wasn’t about doing everything perfectly. Tonight was about letting go.

  Flipping the tsipouro glass over with a flourish and smacking it down onto the table, Lauren Grant smiled with the first surge of honest pleasure she’d felt in days. She’d had to work way too hard to find this dive bar in the seaside paradise of Garronia, and harder still to ditch her friends and the persistent tagalongs from the palace security. But it was worth it.

  She’d spent most of her life under the careful watch of others, and that hadn’t kept her safe. For safety, she’d had to rely on herself. Same for having fun.

  Two men and one woman were left facing her across the table. The woman listed to the side, supported by her husband, who kept shaking his head and grinning. The pile of cash in the center of the table was barely enough to buy a pair of shoes, but cash was never the goal anyway. It was simply a way to keep score.

  The goal was to be the last woman standing.

  “Another!” Lauren called out, and a cheer went up from the crowd circling the tiny table, along with laughter and catcalls, the usual fare of late-night drinking contests. The waitress moved forward instantly, a new round of tsipouro at the ready, but the husband waved her off as his wife slumped fully against him.

  That left two.

  Lauren smiled saucily at the duo. She was almost certain they were brothers, which didn’t bode well for her. They were big men, swarthy, their Greek heritage not a distant echo but evident in every line of their sun-worn faces and thick, dark hair. These were the true backbone of the Mediterranean, not the people living in the vaunted castle on the hill, where her dear friend Emmaline was being courted by an actual prince. Hell, not even courted. She was going to marry the guy. And that was cause for celebration.

  “Yamas!” She raised her glass with the word to another round of applause. Close enough to the Garronois equivalent of “cheers,” her lapse into Greek made her competitors eye each other smugly. The three of them tilted the tsipouro back, and the potent grape liquor washed down Lauren’s throat in a fiery line of absolution. The distilled spirits might have been made of the dregs of the wine-making process, but it definitely packed a punch.

  As she crashed her glass down on the table and more money changed hands, however, she saw him.

  It didn’t take much. A shift of the crowd in exactly the right way, the right-dodging face that should have dodged left. She didn’t squint into the gloom surrounding their table to make sure, because she didn’t have to. The man was Dimitri Korba, ranking captain of the Garronia National Security Force. Kind of a high-rent shadow, but that didn’t improve her mood.

  Dimitri Korba was everything Lauren didn’t need right now, here in this tiny little bar in Garronia on the one occasion she’d been able to break free in days.

  Granted, the man was mouthwateringly gorgeous in a big, iron-fisted kind of way. Six foot four if he was an inch, he wasn’t built like the guys she knew back at home, their lean muscles and sinewy bodies honed with miles on the bike and the treadmill. Dimitri Korba was a giant. Heavily muscled legs, powerful arms, granite-set jaw beneath his dark, flashing eyes. Everything about him angled dark, actually, from his richly tanned skin to his black hair to his obstinate scowl. He was the quintessential bull, determined to tromp into any china shop in his way if it blocked him from his goal.

  But in the end, he was simply another babysitter.

  And Lauren knew how to handle those.

  Swiveling around, she waved for the waitress, not missing the fact that the arc of her swing was a little too wide, a little too sloppy. Finally, the drink was taking effect. Finally, for at least a little while, the game was changing. She wouldn’t have to think for a while, wouldn’t have to think about anything but the next hour or how she was going to get herself home. Tomorrow, there would be consequences. There would always be consequences. But in this moment, she didn’t need to worry about—

  “Miss Grant.” Strong hands caught her as she canted dangerously to the right. The right? Hadn’t she been moving to the left? She blinked up into the impossibly hard planes and harsh, dark-eyed stare of the man looming over her. Because that was what Dimitri Korba did best. He loomed.

  “I thought that was you back there,” she said archly. She could always do “arch,” even drunk off her ass. She’d be able to do “arch” when she was ten years dead, she suspected. “Stand aside. I have a wager with these men.” She turned around, but her drinking mates were gone from the table, standing at a distance. They looked at her reproachfully, their gaze ricocheting in a triangle between her, Dimitri, and the small pile of euros between them. She could tell immediately that the game had soured, and anger blossomed within her, thick and hot. “Oh, great. Look what you’ve done.”

  She spoke in Garronois as a matter of course, though the desire to slip into a flow of utterly American curses was almost impossible to beat down. She shoved Dimitri away, and he stepped back easily, fluidly, with the movements of a born fighter. Then she stood, proud that she didn’t falter, and held herself perfectly in check to ensure her center of gravity was stable. She inclined her head with all the grace born of twenty-three years of Grant family training and control. Lifting her chin again, she smiled at the two men with exquisite precision, and gestured to the cash.

  “I default by cause of this ox beside me,” she said, her words ringing out loudly in the preternaturally quiet bar. She had a feeling Dimitri did that a lot, when he wanted. Intimidated merely by standing there. “The money is yours, with my thanks. And here.” She reached for her purse, startled when Dimitri’s large, bronzed hand shot out to cover hers.

  For a moment, she stared at it. His hand looked overlarge, almost cartoonish against hers. She was no simpering pale flower, but her light golden tan couldn’t compare to his skin tone, weathered almost to burnt sienna with the work he must do in the sun all the time. The sun, the wind, the rain, the—

  Focus. She was losing control here, the tsipouro hitting her too hard after barely seeming to affect her for the past hour. It had been that way last time, but she’d been building up a tolerance since then, she’d thought. The same way she’d been building up a tolerance to Dimitri Korba.

  Neither of those was working out too well right now.

  “Let go of me,” she said curtly.

  He smirked but obligingly dropped her hand. “Your wish is my command, princess.”

  “Remember that.” She flipped her purse open, dipping in for the money clip she’d always intended to go for at the end of this night. It wasn’t a lot of cash, merely a fraction of the amount on the table. But it was a gesture, and gestures mattered to proud people.

  “My thanks for a good evening, and for
your company.” Lauren flipped the clip on the table to the cheer of the drunken Garronois around her, then scowled again at Dimitri. “Get out of my way.”

  He continued to fall back, but not nearly fast enough or far enough, and another flare of anger bit through her, clearing away some of the alcohol-induced fog. She knew she was being unreasonable. She knew she was probably being borderline stupid. Somewhere in the sane part of her brain, she realized that Dimitri Korba hadn’t been sent here by King Jasen or Queen Catherine, her hosts at the palace of Garronia.

  No, he’d most likely been sent by her friends—probably Emmaline, who worried constantly about everyone, or maybe by Fran or Nicki. They’d all known her since college and understood her moods. She’d been cooped up too long in royal confinement since Emmaline’s engagement to Prince Kristos…

  Even thinking those words seemed absolutely ridiculous. Nevertheless, that was exactly what had happened these past several days. They’d landed in an honest-to-God fairy tale kingdom, and damned if Emmaline hadn’t caught the eye of her own Prince Charming.

  Which Emmaline should. She deserved it.

  While Lauren deserved to be babysat by Megatron behind her.

  Stifling a giggle, Lauren pushed her way through the crowd, knowing Dimitri would be on her heels. The hulking bodyguard would ordinarily be someone she appreciated, at least for eye candy. She’d never seen him naked, but she’d seen enough of his muscles to turn her own tennis- and Pilates-strengthened body completely weak. She got the feeling he didn’t build all those cuts and curves on a pink mat somewhere.

  Stop thinking about him.

  She pressed out through the bar until she finally burst forth like a buoy clearing the surface of the ocean, gasping at the sudden fresh air. It was June and another cloudless night in Garronia, and the sky was an almost excessively beautiful canopy of stars. The capital city of this idyllic nation had no appreciation for light pollution, and Lauren almost felt oppressed by the stars shining down over her. They were so close, really. So amazingly, perfectly close—

  “You are drunk. And foolish.”

  Dimitri’s rebuke pulled her back with the viciousness of a slap. “Don’t talk to me. Don’t even come near me,” she said, turning sharply around.

  Well, perhaps not so sharply as that. Her arms went out a little too far, to steady herself, and she knew exactly what she looked like. But she’d practiced this. She’d practiced everything. She knew what she needed to do. Slowly, carefully, Lauren straightened, locking down her core and keeping her weight evenly balanced on her toes. She needed to get away from Dimitri Korba. She needed to get far away.

  Suddenly, it seemed the smartest way to accomplish that was through him.

  “You’re not allowed to order me around, you know. You barely know me,” she snapped, though she knew she sounded fourteen and not twenty-three. She pointed her elegantly manicured finger into the rough cotton shirt stretched tight across Dimitri’s really, really broad pecs. Without realizing it, she flattened her hand on that chest, feeling the powerful muscles contract, the heart beneath thud against her palm. She scowled up into his angry, uncompromising face as the wave of his disdain crashed over her.

  Disdain and…something else. Something that was more familiar, that thrilled through her like a siren song. This she understood, this she could work with. This was a barrier she could throw up to protect her from everything else.

  But first, she had to be sure…

  She knotted her hand in Dimitri’s shirt and sagged forward.

  Instinctively, Dimitri’s arms went around the American woman, tightening his control on his own body as he gathered up hers, trying to keep her on her feet. Even drunk, hell, especially drunk, Lauren Grant was beautiful, with her normally restrained hair now tied into some sort of loose, low bun, her perfect features soft and easy, not held tightly in a coy smile or coolly sophisticated smirk. When she wobbled, he firmed his hold on her, scowling down the street toward the castle.

  He needed to get her back there. It was late, and the streets were dark, but she was a guest of the royal family.

  And he had a job to do.

  “Mm. You’re so warm.” Instead of fainting as he expected, the American pressed forward, angling her soft curves along every plane and ridge of his ever-more-hardening body. Her face was buried in his chest, her breath hot and wet against his shirt, and her arms shifted to encircle his waist, hands moving down to palm his ass.

  His goddamned eyes almost crossed as she wiggled forward.

  “That’s not something you want to do, princess,” he growled, stepping away from her. She seemed alternately too alert and too sloppy, but tsipouro could do that to a woman. It could do that to a full-grown man, and she weighed barely enough to strain his arms as he steadied her again.

  “What if I do want to do it?” she whispered, swaying close. Her lips parted and her eyes were wide and clear, and she looked so beautiful standing there in the starlight that he nearly groaned, though he knew what she was doing, could sense the cunning and intelligence wafting off her as easily as her expensive perfume and the cheap tsipouro.

  She’d correctly figured out he was getting hard over her, but he’d have to be dead not to want that piece of ass. However, she’d incorrectly decided that he was going to do anything about it.

  That wasn’t his assignment. And he’d be damned if someone as brittle as this uptight American ice pick would make him go back on his assignment.

  He’d known she was trouble the first time he’d seen her, striding up the beach like she’d owned the entire country, wearing nothing but a see-through cover-up over her tiny bikini, which did nothing to shield her and everything to thrust her assets into the face of anyone with eyeballs to see. She’d spoken Garronois with a native’s ease—a native royal, anyway, her consonants crisp and her syllables short and precise. And she’d tossed her blonde hair and ignored him as if he was some sort of foot soldier, when in fact he commanded his own company in the GNSF and he was a trusted and valued part of Garronia’s military defense.

  She’d done it all in the blink of an eye, without hesitation—she’d made an instant assessment and then charged forward.

  He got the feeling she did that a lot.

  “You don’t like me very much, do you?”

  Somehow the American had moved closer again, leaning into him so that her perfect lips, parting on her words, rested below his mouth. Since she’d shown up in his country less than a week ago, that mouth had been the subject of way too many fantasies and irritating daydreams, all of them ending really, really badly for him. But the near-term ride was almost always worth it in his mind.

  But that was his mind. This was reality, and he had to get the obnoxious woman back to her quarters. He sure as hell couldn’t let her make her own way, not with her about to get hit with the full brunt of tsipouro.

  “Dimitri.” The sound of his name startled him, and he glanced down—a mistake, but a reasonable one, given the fact that Lauren Grant was a refined American heiress with a million years of finishing schools and private tutors and expensive colleges…and yet she spoke his name like she wanted nothing more from him than his mouth and his body.

  Lauren pressed up toward him, her lips brushing his.

  Need rocketed through Dimitri hot enough to burn. He let her nuzzle his mouth once, twice, until his sight dimmed to a pinpoint and his muscles were clenched so tight, he practically spasmed. She wasn’t his to play with. She was part of the group of friends of Prince Kristos’s new fiancée, a woman he did admire, unlike this unholy hellcat who darted out her tongue to taste his mouth, turning him inside out, and—

  With a surprising amount of strength, Lauren drove her heel into his instep.

  The move was remarkably effective, given that he wasn’t wearing his usual GNSF boots but the soft-soled shoes that had made tracking her child’s play tonight, and he flinched away from the blow while trying not to hurt her. Unfortunately, that provided the blonde wit
h all the distraction she needed. She slipped out of her light sweater and left it hanging in his grasp. Then she was off through the darkness, running faster than he would have given her credit for.

  Dimitri hopped once on his foot, allowing her enough time to feel safe, then he set out after her. He should let her go, he knew. She was running back toward the castle, back toward safety. He could simply track her and make sure she made it, then vanish into the night. Easy and done, mission accomplished.

  Besides, if she believed that she’d given him the slip, what harm would it cause? She’d feel good about herself, as if she’d won some kind of battle. He would have done what he’d been ordered to do, to get her home safely. Everyone would sleep better in the end—except maybe him, his cock now hard enough to pound nails and his body so ready for sex he was about to burst.

  Dimitri pushed those thoughts away as he ran, assessing every turn, every stride of the young woman ahead of him. If anyone saw the pursuit, they knew well enough to stay out of the way. Dimitri had spent years in this town. He was known and respected by everyone.

  Everyone except Lauren Grant.

  The blonde chose that moment to make her first mistake—a fatal one, in his mind. She darted off into a side street, a street that clearly did not lead to the castle. Which meant that she had no intention of heading back to the safety of her bed.

  Do not think about that woman and “bed.”

  Dimitri picked up his own pace, pounding forward now, and he could hear her squeak of alarm. She knew he was back there, could sense the difference in his pace, his urgency, knew somehow she’d screwed up, but clearly she wasn’t going to stop, wasn’t going to give in—

  He ducked into a side alley, blending into the shadows. She’d figure it out soon enough.

  She did. The lane she turned down next dead-ended, and the American’s frustrated cry made him a little too happy. He schooled his breath and waited. She would have to come back out this way. She would know he wasn’t following her anymore. Which meant she knew he was waiting somewhere in the dark. Waiting for her.