скачать книгу бесплатно
The Once and Future Prince / Pretend Mistress, Bona Fide Boss: The Once and Future Prince
Yvonne Lindsay
Olivia Gates
The Once and Future Prince Olivia GatesPrince Leandro D’Agostino had gone into exile. But now Phoebe Alexander, once Leandro’s secret lover, was being sent to convince him to accept the crown. But she’d refused exile with him and her betrayal still fed Leandro’s anger. He would rule only if Phoebe bowed to his wishes… Pretend Mistress, Bona Fide Boss Yvonne Lindsay Sultry, elegant, sophisticated…the woman Adam Palmer glimpsed at a casino was temptation in scarlet. To his surprise, she was no stranger. The New Zealand business magnate never knew his quiet personal assistant had a seductive side. And Adam planned to learn what other secrets she had been hiding…
The Once and Future Prince by Olivia Gates
“Should we get on with the negotiations, Prince D’Agostino?”
The title that he hadn’t heard in eight years and the formality that had never before passed her lips were like claws swiped across raw tissue.
“Leandro.” He couldn’t temper his anger. “You remember my name, don’t you, Phoebe? Say it. You once moaned it, sobbed it, screamed it. I’m sure you can now pay me the courtesy of just saying it.”
Her eyes wavered before they hardened, her lips twitched before they thinned. “I see no reason to. Prince D’Agostino is what’s proper in this situation. And I demand you pay me the courtesy of not bringing up our past liaison again.”
He gave a rough huff. “You’d better realise fast that I don’t respond well to demands, Phoebe. I’m also notorious for being impossible to steer. So quit wasting your breath trying to manoeuvre this ‘negotiation.’ We’re doing this my way.”
Pretend Mistress, Bona Fide Boss by Yvonne Lindsay
“Why hide everything?”
Lainey pulled away and took a step back, nervously smoothing the jacket of her beige suit.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t play games with me, Lainey. You know exactly what I’m talking about. This—” He gestured to her suit which, while well cut, was a size too large and gave the impression she was heavier than she really was. “And this.”
He gestured this time to her hair, his hand snaking out and pulling at the pronged pin she’d used to secure her habitual bun for the office. As her hair tumbled over her shoulders, she saw again the same burn of interest in his eyes that had halted her in her tracks last night at the casino. The near feral look of possession, or at least the desire to possess, that had both excited and terrified her in one fell swoop.
Eight hundred years ago, Antonio D’Agostino founded the Mediterranean kingdom of Castaldini. With a culture mixing Italian and Moorish influences, the kingdom was unique. But what set it apart from the world’s monarchies was the succession law Antonio D’Agostino created. He knew none of his sons was fit to wear a crown after him, so he decreed that the succession would not be by blood but by merit. Anyone from the extensive D’Agostino clan, all now considered the royal family, could prove himself worthy of being the next king. He set stringent rules that had to be satisfied before someone could be a candidate for the crown, including that the selection of the next king had to be with the unanimous approval of the royal council of the reigning king.
And the other rules? That the future king be of impeccable reputation, of sturdy health and no vices, of solid lineage from both sides, a leader people followed due to the power of his character and charisma, and above all, a self-made success of the highest order.
So it had always been—D’Agostino men vying for the crown, striving to deserve it. Throughout history, one D’Agostino man always won over all competitors and claimed the crown. He chose his council from the royal family and during his reign selected the next king to be his crown prince, so that the transition of power occurred smoothly in case anything befell him.
And the kingdom’s motto was Lasci l’uomo migliore vincere.
Let the best man win.
Available in April 2010 from Mills & Boon® Desire™
Inherited: One Child by Day Leclaire & Dakota Daddy by Sara Orwig
Propositioned Into a Foreign Affair by Catherine Mann & Seduced Into a Paper Marriage by Maureen Child
Mini-series— THE HUDSONS OF BEVERLY HILLS
The Once and Future Prince by Olivia Gates & Pretend Mistress, Bona Fide Boss by Yvonne Lindsay
The Once and Future Prince
by
Olivia Gates
Pretend Mistress, Bona Fide Boss
by
Yvonne Lindsay
MILLS & BOON®
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
The Once and Future Prince
by
Olivia Gates
Dear Reader,
After my THRONE OF JUDAR series, which was magical to write, I wondered what to do next. I wanted to continue writing to that same level of sumptuousness and enchantment, with the same world-shaking stakes. I longed to create more irresistible, über-alpha, larger-than-life men and the women who are their perfect counterparts. I wanted to tell more stories of impossible riches and towering passions.
And so was born THE CASTALDINI CROWN, a trilogy set on a lush Mediterranean island drenched in sun and history, a kingdom that has refused to follow the rules of the world. For in Castaldini the crown is won, not inherited.
For the first time in eight hundred years, Castaldini is in jeopardy. The reigning king is sick and the quest for the next king is made more desperate because, according to the ancient laws, each of the only three men suited to hold the crown has one major criterion that makes him ineligible for it.
THE CASTALDINI CROWN launches with The Once and Future Prince, as renegade Prince Leandro D’Agostino wrestles with the decision to return to the kingdom that exiled him and with his fear of surrendering his heart again to the woman who deserted him. Or did she?
The storyline continues in the next two months with The Prodigal Prince’s Seduction and The Illegitimate King.
I would love to hear your thoughts at oliviagates@olivia gates.com. Also please visit me 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.
To Melissa Jeglinski.
Thank you for the wonderful new path. I wish you happiness and success in everything you endeavour, MJ.
To Natashya Wilson, my incredible editor.
Can’t be happier that we’re a team, Tashya.
Prologue
Eight years ago
“Come closer, Phoebe. I won’t bite. Not too hard.”
Leandro’s rumble reverberated in Phoebe’s bones.
She choked on the surge of response, on the breath that was trapped inside her lungs. The breath she’d been holding waiting for him to contact her. The one she always held until he did.
She still couldn’t breathe. He stood as if carved from rock, staring out of his penthouse’s floor-to-ceiling windows at the Manhattan skyline, which glittered like clusters of stars set in arcane patterns. Her starved senses registered only him.
The power of his physique, the silken layers crowning his head, dimmed spotlights overhead caressing copper overtones from the hairs’ deepest mahogany. Her hands stung with the memory of convulsing in that hair as he’d exposed her to the mercilessness of his pleasuring.
His scent invaded her with a maleness and a potency that were only his, an aphrodisiac even from the distance he bade her to eliminate. He’d already gotten her to travel four thousand miles to “come closer.”
Eight hours ago, she’d received a message from Ernesto—Leandro’s right-hand man, and their secret go-between—during Julia’s daily physiotherapy session. She’d thought he was inviting her to yet another clandestine rendezvous, one even more secret because Leandro’s situation in Castaldini was more delicate than ever after his resignation from his ambassador post. But she hadn’t found Leandro. Just his jet. There’d been no word from him all through the seven-hour flight to New York.
There hadn’t been one in four months. She’d feared silence had been his way of informing her it was over. But it wasn’t…
“I turned thirty, two months ago.”
She lurched at his rasp, a twist of longing in her gut. She’d known that. On October 26th. The urge to call him that day had frayed what had remained intact of her nerves. But his rules had been clear. He contacted her. It had seemed he wouldn’t anymore.
“Happy birthday.” She winced as the lame response left her lips.
His huff abraded her. “Indeed. The happiest birthday ever.”
He turned to her then. She would have staggered if she hadn’t been incapable of moving a muscle, even involuntarily.
“Nothing more to say, bella malaki?” My beautiful angel. The endearment shuddered through her, that mix of Italian and Moorish only he used. He prowled toward her, his shirt phosphorescent in the dimness, unbuttoned to his waist, revealing chiseled power that bunched and gleamed with every step. “Shall I make it easier? Give you a lead?” He stopped half a breath away, his emerald eyes flaring and subsiding like pulsars. “Miss me?”
She’d thought so. She’d been wrong. She’d starved for him.
He reached out to her, warm, large hands singeing her, steadying her body, shaking everything else. “Shall I find out?”
Yes, her every cell shrieked.
But he did nothing, stilled. She started to shake.
The moment her tremors hit him, his pupils obliterated his irises, black holes that sucked coherence from her mind, wrenched hunger from her depths. She pitched forward, a helpless satellite yanked to an inexorable planet, hurtled into his containment.
It was like a dam had burst. Violent. Deluging. Their mouths collided, merged, flooding her with what she’d never thought to find until him. Oneness. Need that sliced her open.
Her world churned, with the delight of reconnection, with his savagery and what it betrayed of a hunger as searing as hers as his power bore them deeper into passion.
“Next time, bellezza helwa…next time I’ll take hours…days to worship you…but this time…this time…”
He threw her down, and she could only moan as she sank into the luxury of silk sheets and his scent, anticipation becoming agony as their clothes disappeared under the force of his impatience. Her arms shook, begged for his possession. He obeyed, impacted her with the force she was gasping for, thrust inside her, no preliminaries, no way to withstand any, fierce and full and beyond her endurance, razing her with pleasure, ripping an orgasm from the core that clenched around his invasion. He snatched her scream of release into his ravaging mouth, roared his own, jetting into her depths to the rhythm of her convulsions until she lay beneath him, boneless. Devoured. Replete. Leandro. Her lion man. Back in her life. No longer in secret…?
He drove deeper inside her, ending questions. She arched beneath him, taking, offering all. He growled into her neck, the darkness of it shaking through her with the reverberation of satiation, the accumulation of renewed need.
Until the words it carried lodged in her brain.
“I will never return to Castaldini.”
Everything stilled. She knew the situation had been tense for him in Castaldini. But not to return there, ever? Nothing could be that bad. That final. Could it?
She squirmed beneath his suddenly crushing weight. “What d-do you mean you w-won’t return? You have to…”
He pulled back, stared down at her for a long, incredulous moment, before he made an explosive sound deep in his gut, then jerked away, separated from her body, left it aching. Bereft.
“You don’t know?”
She winced at his rage. “Know what?”
“Dio, could it be? They’ve kept their decree a secret in Castaldini? This is much worse than I thought. They’re not only culturally and economically isolating Castaldini, they’re keeping it behind their own brand of iron curtain.”
“Please, Leandro…I don’t understand.”
“You want to know what spread like wildfire through the world news before the media found something else to exploit? The trivial news that I, Prince Leandro D’Agostino, whom the world was certain would be named Castaldini’s crown prince and next king, through merit and lifelong achievement—the moment I defied the current king and his men, I was declared a renegade and stripped of all my titles.”
“Oh, no…”
He barked a harsh laugh. “Don’t ‘oh, no’ yet. There’s more. I was stripped of my Castaldinian nationality, too.”
She went still, as if under the weight of a collapsing wall. She struggled for breath. “That c-can’t be true.”
“Oh, it can. I’ve been offered American citizenship and I’ve accepted it. I’m never setting foot on Castaldini again.” Suddenly he hauled her to him, stabbed his fingers into the tumble of her locks, plundered her lips in a kiss that branded her. His urgency chased everything away, had her clinging until he rasped against her lips, “And you’re never going back, either.”
The fierceness of his declaration jolted through her, had her wrenching her lips away. “I have to.”
His eyes became slits of hypnosis as he spread her, loomed over her, the embodiment of her desires. “No, you don’t. This is your country, as it now is mine. You’ll stay with me.”
She wrestled the rest out. “I have to go back to Julia.”
His hand stilled its caresses on her aching-from-pleasure breast. “Oh, yes, your poor dependent sister. The princess with a whole kingdom at her disposal and her service.”
“You know it’s not like that. She needs me.”
“I need you.”
The agonized confession lurched through her heart, each syllable a stab. Of shock.
Out of paralysis, hope started to quiver, only to be stilled in the cold grip of…suspicion.
