way up the back of his throat. He was breathing too fast, hardly taking in air, and his fist stung as he pounded it repeatedly.
“Hey.” Suddenly Frankie spoke from beside him, voice low and heavy with concern. For a fleeting second, her hand closed over his fist. “Calm down.”
“Frankie.” He made a grab for her, but she pulled away. A heartbeat later, his guards retreated, and he was on his feet, stepping closer to her, scanning her face, her body—noting that aside from mussed hair and the thundercloud of her expression, she looked unharmed. “Are you—?”
“Stay back,” she muttered, and glanced behind him.
A prickle passed down his spine, and he turned to see that almost everyone in the bar was watching him. They stood quietly, talking in hushed voices, contained by his security team. A couple of guards knelt on the floor, pinning his assailant.
Kris switched on a smile. “Everyone alright?”
He received grins in return, a few whoops, and one guy said loudly, “Your guard’s good, Highness.”
“That she is. Sorry for the trouble.”
He turned his back, jaw setting as he met Frankie’s bleak stare. “Do you know what his plan was?”
Anger flickered across her face as she shared a look with Hanna. “He wouldn’t stop mouthing off at me,” she said, running a hand down her neck. “We have ourselves a psycho misogynist. Apparently, he didn’t intend to harm you, but get close enough to prove he could—because obviously with women highly positioned within your security team, your safety was at risk.”
“Mother—” Kris spun around and found Peter blocking his path.
“Pretty sure Frankie disproved his theory,” Hanna said.
Hands balled by his sides, he turned back, his gaze returning to Frankie like a key sliding into its lock. His breath was still coming too fast, but it quickened further as she returned his stare, her green eyes unreadable.
“Not the weirdest we’ve had.” Hanna tugged at her ponytail to tighten it. “I heard that in his youth, Prince Noel was pulled into a public restroom by groupies who declared he had to have a five-way with them before they’d let him out.”
“I’ve had weirder,” Peter said. “Last year, a man tried to get at Prince Aron with a syringe because he wanted to run blood tests to identify markers of the royal gene.”
Frankie snorted. “There’s someone who failed science class.”
“Yeah,” Hanna said. “Everyone knows all you need is a cheek swab.”
It was an effort to diffuse the tension, a few jokes to bring their stress down, but Kris’s muscles were locked tight as a bull’s, his heart stamping like a charge, and he couldn’t tear his eyes off Frankie.
“Your Highness,” she said carefully, and the others glanced at him.
“Get me the hell out of here.” His demand was roughshod, but she must have heard the crack of a man about to break, because she had him out the rear staff exit and inside the car before he even noticed the blood behind her ear.
Frankie took him to the only place she knew that offered privacy and an open sky. She’d instructed Hanna and Peter to have their incident reports on her desk by tomorrow morning and set her earpiece to incoming only, because she had no trust in Kris to keep his talk professional.
“We call this The Scepter,” she said, sitting on the top step without looking at him. She figured if they sat facing the city, rather than looking up over their shoulders, the palace didn’t even have to exist. A public garden stretched out directly behind them and the steep descent of endless steps fell away in front. The security team had swept the garden upon arrival, and finding it empty, had taken position around the perimeter. Impassable and out of sight, so it was just her and Kris alone under the stars. Exactly what Kris needed. “I used to come here growing up,” she said, sliding off her jacket. “Late at night. Just to breathe and watch the city sleep.”
Without answering, he hunkered down beside her, planting his feet two steps below, knees wide. He leaned back on his hands, tipping his head to gaze at the sky.
Then he said, “He drew blood,” and the fury in his voice betrayed that his silence since the bar in no way meant he’d calmed down.
Frowning, she extended her arms in front of her, trying to find where he meant.
“Above your ear.”
“Oh.” She touched the tender spot with a shaking hand. “I headbutted him once I had him in a lock. I