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The Illegitimate King / Friday Night Mistress: The Illegitimate King / Friday Night Mistress
Jan Colley
Olivia Gates
Be swept away by passion… with intense drama and compelling plots, these emotionally powerful reads will keep you captivated from beginning to end.The Illegitimate King Olivia Gates Six years ago, she’d scorned him. And illegitimate secret prince Ferruccio Selvaggio had sworn he would make her pay. Now, Princess Clarissa D’Agostino was in his power. It was time to teach her a lesson…in desire.Friday Night Mistress Jan Colley One precious night a week, Jordan Lake fell into her secret lover’s arms in their elegant hotel suite. The breathless passion she found here with Nick Thorne had to stay hidden, because their wealthy families were the bitterest of enemies. But the affair was getting more intense…
The Illegitimate King by Olivia Gates
She had to surface from under his spell…
“Now that we’ve got the dinner you’ve been harping on for years out of the way, I hope we can discuss something important.” As Clarissa spoke, Ferruccio’s eyes drained of the warmth that had ignited them for the past hours. She braced herself against the urge to soften her tone. “So…go ahead. Negotiate. I can’t wait to hear your ‘terms.’ They should be entertaining.”
After the shock passed, rage crashed over Ferruccio. How had she blindsided him again? He could swear she’d taken off her mask and shown him her true self. Now she’d thrown his invitations in his face, taunted him. It didn’t matter that he would be king. He remained a bastard in her eyes.
She had no idea who she was dealing with, how out of her depth she was. It was time to make her regret her snobbery.
“You want to negotiate, Princess? By all means. I have only one term for agreeing to take the crown. That I take you with it.”
Friday Night Mistress by Jan Colley
Jordan Lake would be the ultimate takeover.
“Does it bother you,” he asked roughly, “this secret of ours? This thing between us?”
Jordan was past reason. She wanted much more of “this thing” between them and she wanted it now.
With an effort almost too much to bear, she forced her mouth to open, to speak. “I know the score, Nick,” she told him tightly. “I’m playing the game.”
Sex.
Simple. Sensational. Secret.
Available in June 2010from Mills & Boon® Desire™
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by Robyn Grady
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Man from Stallion Country
by Annette Broadrick
The Illegitimate King
by Olivia Gates
&
Friday Night Mistress
by Jan Colley
The Illegitimate King
by
Olivia Gates
Friday Night Mistress
by
Jan Colley
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
The Illegitimate King
by
Olivia Gates
Dear Reader,
As I wrote the last words in The Illegitimate King, the book that wraps up THE CASTALDINI CROWN trilogy, I found myself sighing in pleasure and regret. To have come to the satisfying end of a family saga that has been all I thought about for five months made me feel at once elated and wistful. I’ve fallen in love with each of my magnificent heroes. It was as wonderful to have known them as it was hard to leave them behind.
Then I remembered that I can always open the books and revisit them and that I can and will create more one-woman men who are everything a woman might dream of. Men who are powerful in character and passion as well as in sensitivity, who are towers of strength and tenderness at once.
The Illegitimate King’s hero, Ferruccio Selvaggio, aka the Savage Iron Man, is such a man, but he surprised even me as I wrote his story. He was bent on revenge, but the side of him that longed for love and family overwhelmed his harsh intentions at every turn. I loved him that tiny bit more for having triumphed over unimaginable horrors and hardships to become the incredible man who would become Castaldini’s king and the one man his heroine, Clarissa, could love.
I hope that reading their story will give you as much pleasure as writing it gave me.
I would love to hear from you at oliviagates@gmail.com. You can also visit me on the web at www.oliviagates. com.
Thank you for reading.
Olivia Gates
Olivia Gates has always pursued creative passions – painting, singing and many handicrafts. She still does, but only one of her passions grew gratifying enough, consuming enough, to become an ongoing career: writing.
She is most fulfilled when she is creating worlds and conflicts for her characters, then exploring and untangling them bit by bit, sharing her protagonists’ every heart-wrenching heartache and hope, their every heart-pounding doubt and trial, until she leads them to an indisputably earned and gloriously satisfying happy ending.
When she’s not writing, she is a doctor, a wife to her own alpha male and a mother to one brilliant girl and one demanding angora cat. visit Olivia at www.oliviagates. com.
At the end of this trilogy, I again dedicate it to the two ladies who made it possible for me to write it.
My phenomenal editor, Natashya Wilson.
And Melissa Jeglinski, a wonderful lady and Desire’s former senior editor.
Thanks, ladies. It’s been a fantastic ride.
Prologue
Six years ago
“So gods do walk the earth!”
Clarissa D’Agostino frowned at her friend’s breathless exclamation as she dabbed at the stain on the décolleté of her lavender chiffon gown.
She cursed herself for biting into that overripe plum. Way to go, making a fool of herself when she was supposed to be Castaldini’s princess, all grown up and fit for court appearances at last. It seemed that four years in the States and graduating at the top of her class from Harvard Business School hadn’t done a thing to improve her ability to handle public appearances.
She grimaced at the visible stain. “What are you going on about?”
“I’m all about that…god over there!”
Clarissa swung around. Not to search out the proclaimed deity, but to check her best friend for signs of intoxication.
She found Luci fanning herself. “And I thought his profile was hard-hitting. His full-frontal assault is devastating.”
Clarissa gaped at her. Luciana Montgomery, whose feminist outlook and American side dominated her Castaldinian roots, was the last woman she knew who’d drool over a man. She’d never seen Luci react like this to anyone—not in the States, where they’d gone to college together and where hunks had regularly pursued the vivacious redhead, and not in Castaldini, which was crawling with gorgeous men. The only men Luci had ever even said were drool-worthy were Clarissa’s brothers and a few of her cousins. And she hadn’t reacted this way to any of them. It was weird, seeing her tongue almost lolling out.
The weirdness took a turn into the absurd when Luci grabbed her arm and squeaked in excitement, “He’s looking our way!”
“I could have sworn you had only one glass of champagne, Luci.” Clarissa turned to investigate the phenomenon who had made the most poised twenty-two-year-old woman she knew flutter like a giddy schoolgirl. “I’ll have to see if someone’s spiking the…”
The words backed up in her throat.
There were so many men in the ballroom whom Clarissa didn’t recognize. She’d been away for so long and had never been active in court life, and she was the one member of the king’s family who everyone almost forgot existed, just the way she wanted them to. But there could be only one man who warranted Luci’s overreaction.
There was only one man who Clarissa could see.
He wasn’t a god. He surpassed all depictions of gods she’d ever seen, with all the perfections worshippers’ imaginations had lavished on them. No one could have imagined him. She certainly hadn’t. She could barely believe he was real.
He was. And he was looking their way. Her way.
Her heart plunged into the pit of her stomach. Time ceased. Reality fell away. Existence converged onto one thing. His eyes. Stormy skies illuminated by lightning, all their focus and power targeting her. But what started tremors arcing through her was what she saw in them; a reflection of her own state, stunned free fall into the awareness that crackled between them.
Suddenly he blinked, turned his face away. Through the fugue encompassing her, she realized why he had severed their connection. Her father.
King Benedetto had appeared beside the man, a wide smile—one she couldn’t remember seeing since she was a small child—spreading across his lips.
The man gazed at her father as if he didn’t recognize him. Her father spoke, the man listened. She found herself moving, unaware of anything or anyone, just needing to be closer, to find out what had just happened. Suddenly the man turned back, snared her again in the bull’s eye of his focus.
She stopped. Moving. Breathing. Her heart quivered inside her to a standstill. Shock splashed through her like ice water.
It was unmistakable, what she saw in his eyes now. Coldness. Hostility. Which meant one thing. She’d been wrong. It hadn’t been a blast of attraction she’d seen in his eyes, felt radiating from him. That had all been on her side.
Before she could recoil from the rush of mortification and letdown, he turned and walked away from her father.
She stood there, feeling as if a knife had been thrust between her ribs, heard Luci’s voice as if it were seeping in from another realm.
“Lord, what was that?”
Clarissa couldn’t produce a thought, let alone an answer.
“That was the Savage Iron Man.”
Clarissa swung around unsteadily toward the purring voice.
Stella. She’d been making Clarissa’s skin crawl ever since they were children. Thankfully, they were only third cousins, so she’d seen as little of Stella as possible. She would have liked to see far less. None.
Stella’s words made as much sense now.
It was Luci who summed up Clarissa’s thoughts: “Huh?”
“Ferruccio Selvaggio, shipping magnate extraordinaire, who, at thirty-two, is one of the richest men in the world. He’s like a wrecking ball, rising so high so young, over the smashed remains of anyone who’s dared stand in his way. Hence the nickname, which also happens to be the meaning of his aptly given names.”
“That’s according to you, of course.” Luci smirked.
“That’s according to common knowledge. He’s a terror. But judging by our king’s enthusiasm, it seems he’s willing to overlook that fact—along with the other fact, that Ferruccio is a bastard, literally—if he’ll only invest heavily enough in Castaldini.”
“My, Stella, I hope nobody thinks you’re the example of what royal blood does for a person,” Luci said. “It would be so unfair if you gave us all a reputation for being stuck-up bitches.”
Stella pouted. The perfect beauty was always putting on an act, oozing class and subtle sexuality, showing her true self only to other women, knowing men would think them jealous harpies if they criticized her. “Being a mongrel yourself, Luciana, you don’t have to worry about that. But then, that makes you the perfect merchandise he’s here to shop for. You have enough diluted blue blood that you might fit the bill in his bid to buy legitimacy. With what he has to offer in return, I say go for it.”
As Luci continued to argue with Stella, Clarissa turned and walked away. Stella’s vile words were like acid poured over the rawness of that incendiary moment. It didn’t matter that it had all been in her mind. The damage was real.
She’d moved a good way through the crowd when something made her turn around.
He was heading toward where she’d been standing. Coming back for her? Had she been wrong about that second look? She began walking back.
Her feet gathered momentum as he zeroed in on Luciana and Stella. Would he ask them about her?
Then she was close enough to see the glazed look entering the women’s eyes at being under his immediate influence, to hear the rumble of his deep voice, the predatory flirtation in it.
Something shriveled inside her, like a paper curling up as flames ate it to ashes. Her feet changed course again, quickened, until she was almost running as she exited the ballroom to the verandah. She breathed hard, snatching air into constricted lungs.
