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“I don’t know that you realize just how rare it is for me to take a woman up on such an offer.”
“And here I thought you took women up on such offers on a nightly basis. I’ve read about you.”
His lips twisted upward in a cynical impersonation of a smile. “Of course you have.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Should I pretend I don’t know who you are? Should I pretend that this is simply a chance encounter, and I came to your club with no prior knowledge of who you were?”
He affected a casual shrug. “Many women would.”
“Perhaps those women have the luxury of time. I don’t.”
“You don’t have a bomb strapped to your chest, do you?”
She swallowed hard, letting the edges of her coat fall open, revealing the only thing she had against her chest, that emerald, which immediately felt cold in the icy room. “You’re welcome to look for yourself.”
His gaze flickered over her body, and it didn’t stay cool. “I see. Someone waiting for you at home, then?”
That was close enough to the truth. “Yes,” she said.
“Can I have your name?”
“Alice,” she said.
“Alice,” he repeated. “From?”
She knew her English was quite good, but that it would also be colored by an accent. His was too, though different from hers. She liked the way it sounded. She wanted to hear his voice speak his native tongue. And hers. What sort of accent would it give to her own language? And what sorts of words might he say…?
“England,” she said. “Not originally. But for most of my life.”
“What brings you to Italy?”
“Your party,” she said.
“I see. Are you an enthusiast when it comes to clubs, or are you a sex tourist?”
The words were bold, and she knew that she was playing a bold game and she needed to be able to return in kind.
“In this instance, I suppose it’s sex tourism.”
“Am I to understand that you saw my picture in the news and decided to make a trip all the way to my club for sex?”
Nothing he’d said was a lie. There might be more in her reasoning, but she had seen his photo. And she had wanted him on sight.
“Chemistry is a fairly powerful thing.”
“Can you feel chemistry with a photograph?”
“I didn’t even have to go looking for you,” she said. “You came to me. So that makes me wonder if it’s possible.”
And that was the honest truth.
She had never expected Mauro Bianchi to approach her. No, she had expected that she would have to chase him down. That she would be the one pursuing him. And yet, he had simply appeared. And now, he had taken her to a VIP room. So it all rather did beg the question if chemistry could be that obvious.
The expression on his hard face did something then, and she couldn’t quite put into words what that was. He looked quite irritated, but at the same time perhaps a bit impressed with her boldness and her reasoning. And he couldn’t argue. Because here they were, sitting in this private suite, strangers who had never met until only a moment ago.
“I think the only thing to do then is perhaps test your theory,” he said, his voice lowering to a silky purr.
“That is what I’m here for,” she said, fighting to keep her voice smooth.
“Perhaps you would like to see my private suite.”
“I would like that very much,” she said.
This was moving much quicker than she had anticipated. But it was also going exactly according to plan.
She had expected…obstacles. Resistance.
Perhaps because the last year of her life had been marked by such things. Endless resistance from her father’s officials. Endless proclamations being made. Demands that she be married. The concern over her producing an heir, as for her, there would be a time limit, unlike with men.
But they had not counted on one thing. Because they had not educated themselves, not to the extent that she had.
Men. With their arrogance. Their certainty that they were right. That they could not be bested, least of all by her.
She had read the laws. She had studied. She had made sure, above all else, that she was prepared for her position, and that she would not be taken by surprise.
Because for the protection of the queen, for the protection of the throne, if she claimed that her issue had no father, that it was the queen’s alone.
And there were no questions of legitimacy. A law set into motion to protect the queen from marauders, Vikings and barbarians, anyone who might seek to use her to claim power.
And at this point in history, in time, used to protect the queen from forced marriages, and politicians who overexerted their power, and sought to keep a nation in the dark ages.
All she needed was her marauder.
And she had found him.
“Yes,” she said. “Let’s go to your room.”
CHAPTER TWO (#ufc28c622-4abb-5f43-b3b0-aa1ea4440592)
BY THE TIME they had gone through a maze of high-gloss marble corridors and arrived at Mauro’s suite, Astrid was trembling. She did her best to try to disguise it, and hope that he would perhaps assume it was because they were surrounded by ice. But the fact of the matter was, the pieces of the structure that were not made of ice were quite comfortable, and she imagined he assumed no such thing.
She was so good at pretending to be confident, serene and as if she were in possession of every secret in all the world, that sometimes she even convinced herself such things were true.
Sometimes she forgot what she really was.
She was a queen, that much was true. A queen with quite a lot of power, education and confidence that was rightly earned.
She was also a woman who had been kept separate from peers for most of her life while she focused on her education. A woman who had danced with a man, but never, ever kissed one.
She was a virgin queen, above reproach as her mother had always instructed her to be.
But matters had become desperate, and so had she.
And she was waging war in a sense, and that meant she could not afford nerves. Even as they rolled over her in a wave, the reality of the utter disparity between the two of them a strange and intense sort of drug.
An aphrodisiac and a bit of a terror.
She was used to having a mantle of power over her, but he didn’t know who she was. And here, in this private room he had just ushered her into, he was the experienced one. He was physically so much more powerful than she could ever hope to be, and her guards were well and truly dismissed. She had no one to snap her fingers for and call for rescue. She didn’t even have her phone, as she and Latika had agreed that her being traceable to the club in any manner wasn’t acceptable.
It was why the timing of everything was so crucial.
His suite was warm, wonderfully appointed with furs in a dark ebony, and bright white cotton spread over a massive mattress.
She looked over at him, and his lips curved as he closed the door behind them.
“Second thoughts?”
“No,” she said, squaring her shoulders. “Not at all.”
“I did not take a woman who would freely admit to being a sex tourist as one who would be overcome by the nerves of an innocent.”
She laughed, so very grateful for all the years she had spent at various political events dodging barbs of every sort, allowing her an easy smile and confident stare even while verbal daggers were being thrown her way. “Naturally not. It’s only that… We haven’t even kissed yet. And I do want a bit of certainty regarding chemistry.”
“A woman of high standards.”
“Exceptionally,” she said. “I should have mentioned to you that I am—as far as sex tourists go—not a backpacker. I only go first-class. And if things are not to my liking, I don’t stay.”
A dark flame burned yet higher in his eyes, a clear response to what he obviously took as a challenge.
“I was going to offer you a drink,” he said.
“Why? Because you think you should fare better if my senses are dulled?”
He chuckled and moved to her, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her against his body. He took hold of her chin, keeping her face steady as he stared down into her eyes.
“Let us test the chemistry, then,” he said, his voice rough.
He bent down, closing the distance between them, and it was like a flame had ignited across her skin.
His kiss was rough, commanding and intense in ways she had not imagined a kiss could ever be. And this was why she had chosen him. It was why he was the only one she could fathom being with.
She had known, somehow, that he would be the one who could make her forget, for just a moment, what she was. That he could be the one who made her exult in feeling delicate. Fragile.
His masculinity was so rough. So exciting. His kiss that of a conqueror. And how she reveled in it. Gloried in his touch. His hands, large and impossibly rough, held her face steady as he angled his head and took the kiss deeper, deeper still, his tongue invading her, making her tremble, making her knees weak.
When they parted, he stared down at her, those eyes shot through with intensity. “Is that quite enough chemistry for you?” he asked.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I think that is exactly the chemistry I was looking for.”
He stood back and shrugged his jacket off, tossing it carelessly toward the couch on the opposite side of the room, and then he began to unbutton his shirt.
Astrid’s mouth went dry as she watched him expose his body. His chest was hard looking and muscular, his abs clearly defined, with just the right amount of dark hair dusted over those sculpted ridges. And he had tattoos. Dark, swirling ink that covered his shoulder, part of his chest geometric patterns that she couldn’t quite divine the meaning of.
But the beauty of tonight was that it didn’t matter.
It didn’t matter what any of this meant to him. All that mattered was what it meant to her.
Freedom. Wildness.
A night with her very own barbarian.
The kind of man she would scarcely have been allowed to speak to if her handlers were present. Much less be alone in a room with.
Much less be on the verge of…
“Pictures don’t do you justice,” she said.
“I have a feeling that dress doesn’t do you justice,” he returned. “But I would like to see for a fact if this is true.”
With shaking fingers, she reached around behind her back and slowly lowered the zip to her dress, letting the soft white fabric release itself from her body and fall to the ground, a pale, silken pool at her feet.
She was still wearing those impossibly high heels and a pair of white panties. Nothing more. He seemed to approve.
Her breasts grew heavy, her nipples tight, her body overcome with restless anticipation.
Then he sprung into action, his muscles all languid grace and lethal precision as he took her in his arms and swept her up off the floor, carrying her over to that large bed and setting her down on the soft, black fur that was spread over the top.
He said something in Italian, something completely unfamiliar to her, something she assumed was something like a curse, or just something so filthy no one would have ever seen fit to teach her. Anticipation shimmered deep and low inside her.
He drew away from the bed, his eyes never leaving hers as he slowly undid his belt, drawing the zipper on his pants down as he divested himself of the rest of his clothing, leaving him completely naked in front of her.
Astrid was one for research. For being prepared when going to war. And as such, she had done a fair share of figuring out just what happened between men and women in bed, not simply in the perfunctory sense. She had done a bit of pictorial research.
But it had not prepared her for this. For him. All of him.
He was quite a bit more of a man than she had ever seen, and she had certainly never been in the same room as a naked man before. So deliciously, impossibly male.
“You are stunning,” he said, advancing on her, moving toward the bed. Her stomach twisted, fear and excitement twining together and becoming something so exciting, so unbearably potent she could scarcely breathe, let alone think. She licked her lips, grabbing hold of the waistband of her panties and pushing them down her legs as she arched her bottom up off the mattress, managing to pull them only down to her knees, then uncertain how to continue. He clearly took her uncertainty as an intentional coquettishness, and she was happy to have him think so. He growled, moving down to the bed and grabbing hold of the scrap of lace and wrenching it from her body. Leaving her bare and exposed to him.
His eyes roamed over her hungrily, and there was something so incredibly close and raw about the moment that Astrid had to close her eyes.
Because there was no title here to protect her. No designer clothing, no guards. Nothing between her and this man. This man who seemed to want her, though he’d had many other women.
Astrid was used to being special. Singular. But she had none of the hallmarks here that made her any of that. She was simply a woman. She was not a queen.
And yet.
And yet he still wanted her.
