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His command was raw enough to make her forget the harsh note in his voice as he had said stripper. Her hands were trembling as she pulled her panties down and tossed them aside, and half-ran across the room towards him. And then she straddled him, easing herself down onto his hardness, squealing with delight as he filled her.
She thrust forward with her hips, as if she was riding bareback. But he rolled her straight over onto her back, assuming the position of mastery.
‘Now,’ he groaned, as he drove into her, over and over, each sweet, savage thrust sending her careering close to the edge. ‘Now!’
He bent his head to kiss her. The touch of his lips seemed to set fire to the touch-paper embedded deep in her heart and unstoppable flames began to flicker through her veins. She gave a broken little cry, but she bit down on it. She wanted to tell him that only he could make her feel this way. But for Guido this was simply good sex, and everyone knew that men could get good sex from any number of women.
And then the release washed over her—great powerful waves of it which rocked her to the very core, obliterating everything except the sheer wonder of the moment. Lucy clung to him, burying her face in his shoulder as he began to tense inside her, and to feel him beginning to orgasm only magnified her own pleasure.
For Guido it went on and on, and even when it was over he lay back, gazing dazedly at the ceiling. He couldn’t remember sex as good as that. Never. He yawned, aware that his defences were down, irrevocably slipping into the dark, cushioned tunnel of sleep.
Lucy lay quite still until she heard Guido’s breathing steady, then slow and deepen, and only when she was certain that he was asleep did she risk turning onto her side to look at him.
In sleep he was beautiful and curiously accessible in a way he never was while awake—making it impossible not to weave hopeless fantasies about him. Only in sleep did his hard and handsome face relax. The cruel, sensual mouth softened and the piercing brilliance of the ebony eyes was shielded by the feathery arcs of his lashes, which curved with such childlike innocence against his cheek.
His dark head was pillowed against a recumbent hand, and the long, lean limbs were sprawled over the giant-sized bed.
Lucy wriggled up the bed a bit, resting against a bank of drift-soft pillows, and looked properly around the room for the first time.
So this was the Prince’s bedroom!
There was little to mark it out as a Royal residence—it just looked like home to a very wealthy man. The bed was bigger than any she had ever seen, and the view from the window was utterly spectacular. No cost had been spared in the restrained but elegant furnishings. It was minimalist and unashamedly masculine, without in any way being hard or cold.
Only a silver-framed photo beside the bed gave any indication of his identity, and unless you knew it could have been any snapshot of any rich and privileged family.
But it was not.
It was a picture of Guido, taken with his mother, his elder brother Gianferro, and their father the King. Guido, with his black hair and black eyes, looked to be about four or five. Lucy bit her lip, moving her eyes over the figure of the beautiful young Queen. There was no outward sign of her pregnancy with Nicolo—the youngest—and certainly no sign that within a year of that photo being taken she would be dead. Thank God humans could not see into the future, she thought, with a sudden stab of pain.
She stared at the young Guido. In the face of the child it was possible to see the man. His face was sweetly handsome, his expression almost grave, as if he was determined to be a grown-up boy for the mother whose hand he gripped so tightly.
But Lucy had only learnt all this subsequently. It was easy to find out things about someone when you were interested—and when they were in the public eye. Not that she had known that he was a prince when she’d met him. At least, not at first.
To Lucy, he had been just a heart-stoppingly gorgeous man who had struck up a conversation with her at a party.
CHAPTER THREE (#ubde2bfc0-ad63-5ed2-ba60-0c34f30e9d78)
IT HAD been one of those parties that Lucy hadn’t particularly wanted to go to—she had been on a stopover on her way back to London and desperate for some sleep—but the flight crew had overridden her objections. Apparently, parties didn’t get much better or more highly connected than this one. One of the other stewardesses had said that a prince was going to be there, but quite honestly Lucy hadn’t believed them.
Well, who would have?
When they had walked into the expensive Bohemian TriBeCa townhouse, Lucy had looked around her with interest. It had been like stepping into some lavishly appointed Bedouin tent—with embroidered cushions and rich brocade wall-hangings, and the heady scent of incense. The hypnotic drift of what had sounded like snake-charmer’s music had only added to the illusion of being on a film set.
‘When do the belly-dancers arrive?’ she asked drily.
‘Shh!’ someone hissed. ‘You know people tend to misunderstand your sense of humour!’
So Lucy decided to observe, rather than to participate, and went to stand in a darkened corner which nonetheless gave her a great view. She took a glass of punch with her and sipped it, then shuddered, hastily putting the glass down on a small inlaid table.
‘Disgusting, isn’t it?’ came a rich, accented voice from a few feet away.
Lucy was just about to protest that he had startled her when her words somehow died on her lips. ‘It’s…a little heavy on the spices,’ she agreed, blinking slightly, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing.
‘And the alcohol, of course.’
‘Well, there is that, of course,’ she echoed, and he smiled.
They stood looking at one another in the way that two people did at parties when there was a strong sexual chemistry between them.
Lucy was wearing a simple green velvet tunic dress—quite short, so that it came to mid-thigh and made her legs look endlessly long. But her baggy suede boots gave the outfit a quirky appearance. Her hair was loose, flooding down over her shoulders in a heavy Titian fall.
Guido thought that she looked like a very sexy bandit. Her face was pale and freckled—he liked the freckles—and her wide honey-coloured eyes were slightly wary—he liked that, too.
Lucy thought, quite honestly, that he was the most gorgeous man she had ever laid eyes on. But then, she had never seen a man who looked quite like this.
He was tall, and his body was both lean and powerful. His hair was as black as the night, and his eyes only a shade lighter, and he had an almost aristocratic bearing. She wondered if he was Italian, or maybe Spanish. He was certainly European.
And he almost certainly has a girlfriend, she told herself. If not one, then a legion of them.
Guido waited, but she said nothing, and he liked that even more. So, did she know? he wondered. And was she pretending not to? ‘You’re not from round here?’ he questioned slowly. ‘No.’ ‘You’re on holiday?’ he persisted. ‘Not really. I work for Pervolo Airlines.’ ‘As a pilot?’ ‘You ask a lot of questions.’
His eyes glittered. ‘One of us has to.’
Hers glittered back. ‘I’m a flight attendant, actually—but thank you for not making the assumption.’
‘Assumptions are such a bore, don’t you think?’ he questioned carelessly.
It was something about the way he spoke—some unknown quality underlying the velvet accent of his voice—which Lucy had difficulty recognising at first, because she had never heard it before. And then he gave her a silent clue in the proud way he was holding his head—in the dismissive little curve of his sensual mouth as a woman wearing so little that she might have been one of those belly-dancers started ogling him from the other side of the room.
It was privilege, Lucy realised. A sense of self-worth bordering on arrogance which radiated from him in a way which was almost tangible. Haughty, but with a devilish glitter to his eyes, he managed to be both gloriously touchable and yet impossibly remote at the same time.
‘You’re the Prince,’ said Lucy slowly, and she felt the slightest pang of disappointment. Just her luck to find someone who could have whisked her off her feet and then discover he was out of bounds! ‘Aren’t you?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘You knew?’
Lucy shook her head. ‘No. I’ve just guessed. Someone said there was going to be a prince here, but I didn’t believe them.’ Her eyes were candid. ‘What a bore for you—that everyone knows about you in advance.’
‘The perfect catch for the ambitious society hostess,’ he observed drily.
‘Yes, quite.’ So, was that arrogant? Or merely honest? Lucy expelled a sigh and gave him a small, regretful smile. She certainly wasn’t going to fill the stereotypical role of hanging around and being starstruck. ‘Well, it was nice meeting you—’
‘But we haven’t, have we?’ he said suddenly. ‘Met, that is. Perhaps we should remedy that?’ His smile was irresistible, and so was his voice, and he took her hand in his without warning. ‘I’m Guido.’
‘Lucy,’ she said breathlessly. His touch was sending her senses haywire. ‘Lucy Maguire—but you’d better let me go—I don’t want to monopolise you.’
‘Liar,’ he taunted softly, his fingers continuing to curl possessively around her narrow wrist. ‘You know we both want to monopolise each other.’
‘How outrageous!’ she murmured, but she didn’t move from the spot.
They talked all night. She was simultaneously lulled and stimulated by his quicksilver mind and sexy accent. He came from the Principality of Mardivino, but he had long ago rejected princely privilege. ‘Perhaps you find that disappointing?’ he mocked.
‘I thought you weren’t into making assumptions,’ she returned crisply. ‘Because that was an extremely arrogant one.’
‘You sound like a prim schoolteacher,’ he observed sultrily. ‘Even if you do not look like one.’
Lucy raised her eyebrows but said nothing—certainly not anything that was going to lead into the tantalising land of sexual fantasy.
‘So, what do princes do?’ she questioned. ‘When they’re not being princes?’
‘Oh, they wheel and deal,’ he murmured, drifting his gaze over her freckle-spattered face. ‘Just like other mortals.’
She didn’t think so. Other mortals did not have the faces of dark fallen angels. ‘A-anything in particular?’ she stammered—because when he was looking at her like that it was difficult to breathe, let alone to speak.
‘Property,’ he said succinctly.
He offered to give her a lift back to her hotel, but Lucy refused—though she let him flag her down a cab. She wasn’t sure she trusted his unique brand of sexy charisma enough to be alone in a car with him—or maybe it was that she didn’t trust herself not to respond to it.
He leaned into the cab and handed her his card.
‘Why don’t you ring me when you’re next in town?’ he suggested softly.
Lucy smiled politely and took the card, but the smile was edged in a frost he appeared not to notice. She got the distinct impression that he felt he was bestowing an enormous favour on her by giving her a contact number. Bloody cheek!
She didn’t bother ringing. His arrogance had disappointed her, yes—but it was more than that. He was a prince, for heaven’s sake—and thus completely out of her reach. Only someone with a streak of masochism would willingly subject themselves to such inevitable rejection.
But Guido, of course, had never before been ignored by a woman.
At first he simply couldn’t believe that she wasn’t going to bother to ring. But after several weeks he had no choice but to do so.
Why, he couldn’t even remember her surname!
But that, of course, did not pose any real problem. Guido had left his life as a working prince behind a long time ago, but very occasionally he used his title. He still had to exist with all the drawbacks of having it, he reasoned—so why not enjoy some of the benefits?
And Pervolo Airlines seemed only too happy to release a few facts about one of their stewardesses to a prince!
He found out when she was next flying and settled back in his seat in First Class, anticipating her reaction with a certain degree of relish, feeling himself grow deliciously hard as he saw a pair of long, long legs slinking down the cabin towards him.
Lucy had noticed him, of course—it would have been difficult not to, even if they hadn’t already been briefed by the Purser that there was a Royal prince on board.
But she had no intention of reacting to the look of appreciation which had softened the ebony eyes. She had no desire to be just another notch on a handsome, privileged man’s bedpost, and she was perceptive enough to know that this man could be a real heartbreaker.
She reached him, her face set in an unflappable, official smile. ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ she said pleasantly. ‘Can I get you a drink before take-off?’
He had been expecting…what? That she would blush and stumble over her words? Look regretful or uncomfortable? Suddenly he laughed, and his pulse began to race.
‘No, you can have dinner with me tonight instead,’ he murmured, and some of his arrogance dissolved as he stared up at her. ‘Please.’
Lucy would have defied anyone to resist that look, or the one-word plea she guessed he hadn’t had to make very often in his life. So she went for dinner with him, and then—after not much of a fight—to bed. She wanted him more than she had ever wanted anything in her life, and to hold him off any longer would have been hypocritical and self-defeating.
But, despite the passion of the night which followed, an instinctive feeling of self-protection made her noncommittal towards him the next morning. She was determined not to seem pushy, or to act as if it would be the end of the world if he didn’t ask to see her again, and her very coolness seemed to fascinate him.
She guessed he’d never encountered it before, and to a man with an appetite jaded by exposure it was fresh and exciting fare. Soon it would no longer be fresh, nor exciting, and it would pale, but she was prepared for that—or at least that was what she told herself over and over again.
Apart from a minor blip at the very beginning, they now met up once every couple of months and it was perfect—for what it was. They had dinner, sometimes saw a film, and once or twice he had taken her to the theatre. But she had never met any of his friends, nor he hers. It was a complex game they played, with its own set of unspoken rules. As if she had been given her own separate compartment in his life—the one marked ‘mistress’—and as long as she accepted that, then she was okay. The moment she started wanting more, then it would be over.
So why had he brought her to his apartment today? Why not the usual anonymity of a hotel?
She stared down at his sleeping face just as the dark lashes fluttered open and ebony eyes blazed sleepily up at her.
‘Ciao,’ he murmured, and reached for her breast. ‘Come back here.’
‘In a minute.’ She let him stroke idly at her breast as warmth began to flood over her. If he had broken a rule of a lifetime, then why shouldn’t she? Lucy trickled her fingertip down through the thick whorls of hair at his chest to dip it into his belly, and he groaned with pleasure. ‘How flattering that you have allowed me onto your territory, Guido,’ she commented softly.
‘Why not?’ His eyes were watchful black shards. ‘Though you’ve never shown any particular desire to see where I live.’
‘Ah.’ She raised her eyebrows. And presumably if she had then his apartment would have been off-limits! ‘Interesting.’
How her self-containment enthralled and exasperated him! Why, any other woman would have used his post-coital sleep as an opportunity to poke around the apartment! Yet here she was, naked and beautiful beside him, as though she visited his home every day of the week!
He narrowed his eyes as he felt the heavy throb of desire beating its way through his veins. As a lover, he could not have asked for better. She was responsive and beautiful and she made no demands on him. How unlike most women!
His mouth hardened as he thought about commitment and expectation. And, in particular, about the lavish christening of his nephew, soon to take place on Mardivino, and all that it would entail. He stared at the naked woman beside him and an idea began to form in his mind. Maybe her cool indifference could work to his advantage…
‘Would you like to go away with me for the weekend, cara mia?’ he suggested casually.
Lucy didn’t answer immediately—it was never a good idea to appear too eager; every woman knew that! ‘Did you have anywhere particular in mind?’
‘But of course.’ His eyes glittered as he wondered what her reaction would be. For if she read too much into it then it simply would not work. ‘I thought that perhaps you might care to accompany me to Mardivino.’
There was silence as, for a minute, Lucy thought she was hearing things. ‘To Mardivino?’ she repeated blankly.
‘Do try to contain your excitement,’ he commented drily.
Oh, if only he knew! Lucy’s heart was banging against her ribcage and she felt quite faint. He was taking her home—to meet his family!
A slow smile curved her lips. ‘And to what do I owe this honour?’
Guido concentrated on whispering his fingertips over her tightening nipple. ‘Maybe I’d like to show you the land of my birth,’ he murmured.
Lucy closed her eyes, partly because the way he was touching her meant that she could barely think straight, but partly to hide her eyes. To conceal from him the breathless excitement she was feeling.
Don’t frighten him away with emotion, she told herself, sinking into his arms. Let’s just take it one step at a time.
‘Okay,’ she said lightly, as if it didn’t matter. As if it didn’t matter! ‘Why not?’
He smiled with satisfaction at her response. It was better than he could have anticipated! ‘And maybe I would like a beautiful woman to accompany me to the christening of my nephew.’
There was a long pause as Lucy stared up at him. ‘Say that again.’
