Scandal Befitting a Princess - Chapter 7

“I don’t remember a condom breaking,” Laszlo said behind her, voice difficult to read. “What happened?”

“After you left Geneva, I realized I was late. I’d seen you in Monaco and I’m usually like clockwork.” Sofia hurried to dress, far too defenseless and raw after giving herself up to him so quickly and thoroughly. “I’ve since gone on the pill. It’s totally fine.”

Then why tell him at all?

Because it had been her excuse for coming here.

Of course, she had fallen into his arms and his bed. Of course, she had shattered into a million pieces again and again. That’s why seeing him was such an irresistible compulsion. He brought her a pleasure that was so intense it was almost pain.

The pain was there, though. Blanketed by kisses and caresses and the joyous joining of flesh. The reckoning afterward was always inevitable. And excruciating.

If she told him about the scare, she reasoned, maybe he would make it easier for her to resist him in the future. Maybe the next time they met in a hallway, he would only nod and pass her by as if they were the acquaintances they pretended to be. Maybe he would find another woman to offer his room key to.

Mio Dio, that was a sickening thought.

“You should have texted me. I would have come back.”

“There was nothing you could do. I told my team I had food poisoning and they had a private doctor brought in. He gave me a pregnancy test. It was negative and he said it might be a low body fat issue since I’ve been running more this year.”

“Have you had follow-up tests?” he asked gruffly. “Are you sure it’s not something more serious?” He stepped into his briefs.

“I’m fine.” The royal physician had given her a physical and offered to freeze her eggs since she was thirty-one and not planning to have children yet. “I’m perfectly healthy, but it was stressful to realize I had worked so hard all my life to walk the straight and narrow, then come this close—” she pinched her finger and thumb together “—to landing up in that age-old position of being unwed and pregnant, unable to tell anyone who the father is. You can bet the press would have equated it to all of my father’s antics. Never mind how humiliating that would have been for me and Luca. I can’t do that to him.”

More reason to never see Laszlo again, but she couldn’t say it out loud.

She tucked in her blouse, then zipped up her skirt and smoothed it down her hips.

Laszlo stood there in his briefs, hands on his hips, watching her. He was like a bronze god with his honed muscles, flat hips and thick thighs.

She swallowed, still high on sex endorphins, trying to talk herself into leaving.

“I would have married you,” he said bluntly.

Sofia dropped the jacket she hadn’t realized she was holding. She picked it up and gave it a shake, trying to knock his words from her head.

“Don’t you mean you would have proposed and breathlessly awaited my response?”

“Sure.” His tone was more amusement than agreement. Laszlo was not quite as civilized as men were supposed to be these days. “And when you said yes, I would have married you.”