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She began to push the shoes off she was wearing, and he moved over her, gripping her wrists and drawing them up over her head. “Leave them,” he said, pressing a kiss to her mouth before skimming his hand over her curves, his thumb moving over her nipple, an arrow of pleasure hitting her down low, making her feel aching and hollow. And then he kissed her neck, her collarbone, down to the plump curve of her breast, his tongue tracing a line around the tightened bud there.
She squirmed, arching against him, but he held her wrists fast with one hand while he continued his exploration with his mouth, and his other hand, which had moved to her hip, and was now drifting between her thighs.
Her hips bowed up off the bed when he touched her there. His fingers delving expertly into her silken folds, finding her embarrassingly wet for him.
But then, there was no point to embarrassment. Not now. Not with him.
This was her one night of freedom.
Her one night to claim a lifetime of greater freedom.
And she would not do it with a whimper. But with a roar.
She moved her hips sinuously, in time with his strokes, with the soft suction of his mouth on her breast.
He moved his thumb over the most sensitive place between her legs, stroking back and forth, and she cried out, caught off guard by the intensity of the sensations he created there. When her release broke over her, it was a shock, shattering her like a fragile glass pane, the sharp, jagged edges of her pleasure making her feel weak and vulnerable.
She clung to his shoulders, kissing his mouth, moving her hands over his finely muscled back as she did. She shifted beneath him, feeling the hard, heavy weight of his erection against her thigh. He began to move away.
“It’s okay,” she said in a rush, while she still had her wits about her.
And she knew what he would interpret it to mean.
She also knew, from much of her reading, that he was a very careful man when it came to these matters.
But she was counting on him being lost in the moment. She was counting on him being mortal.
This was her killing blow, so to speak, and she had to deliver it and not falter.
“Please,” she whispered against his mouth and she rolled her hips upward, so that his erection was settled against her wet heat, and she arched back and forth, the pleasure making her see stars.
She could see, mirrored in his own eyes, no small amount of that same pleasure. Of that desire. That need. He was no stronger than she, and she had been counting on that.
He growled, wrapping his hand around his arousal and positioning himself firmly against her before he slammed inside.
His savage kiss swallowed her cry of pain, and she knew that he misinterpreted it as pleasure as he lost control and pulled out slowly before thrusting back home again.
Astrid closed her eyes tight, willing herself to make it through this without crying, without embarrassing herself.
She simply hadn’t anticipated it would hurt quite so badly.
He was lost to it, and she needed him to be. She only wished that she could join him.
She held his shoulders, burying her face in his neck.
And then he seemed to grasp some kind of hold on himself, his movement slowing, his pelvis rocking forward, hitting her just so, and creating a spark inside her she had been convinced would be lost in this encounter.
But it wasn’t. Oh, it wasn’t.
Suddenly she felt it. Deep and pleasurable and building inside her. Overcoming the pain. Overcoming everything else. It was wonderful. Beautiful and real.
He kissed her as he held her hips and drove home, hard and relentless, and welcome now. It was like she couldn’t get enough. As if he couldn’t go deep enough, hard enough.
There was something mystical in this joining that she couldn’t figure out, but it had something to do with that instant spark that had happened when they laid eyes on each other.
Maybe even with the spark she felt when she had first seen his picture.
And when her release broke over her, it was different from before. Her body gripped his, drawing him deeper, pulsing around him as light exploded behind her eyes. And she didn’t feel shattered. She felt renewed. Reinforced as he broke apart, as he trembled in her arms, this large, muscular, experienced man, reduced to shaking as he spent himself inside her.
They lay there, not for long. Only a few moments. While Astrid tried to catch her breath.
And then she heard the sound of a clock strike two chimes.
“What time is it?”
“Two?” he asked, his words muffled, sleepy.
“I have to go,” she said. She scrambled out of bed in a panic, hunting around for clothing, getting dressed as quickly as possible while Mauro looked on.
“You’re not going to just leave.”
“I have to,” she said, desperation clawing at her.
“Give me your name.”
“Alice,” she said.
“Your full name. I wish to find you again.”
“Alice Steele,” she said, the lie tripping off her tongue.
“That’s wrong,” he said.
“No,” she said, panic like a wild thing inside her. “It’s on the invitation.”
“That isn’t your name,” he said, his dark eyes seeing straight into her.
She straightened and looked at him for one last, lingering moment, before she fled. She made her way down the halls, thankful that he was naked, and therefore wouldn’t be able to move as quickly as she.
By the time she made it out to the main part of the club, Mauro was right behind her. She kept on running, one of her shoes flying off as she did, as she made an uneven escape down the stairs and tumbled straight into the limo that Latika was driving.
“Go,” she said.
“Were you successful?”
She looked back at the doorway and saw him standing there, holding her shoe in his hand.
“Just go,” she said, panic and emotion rising up in her throat.
And Queen Astrid escaped into the night, without her virginity, but very hopefully, carrying her heir.
CHAPTER THREE (#ufc28c622-4abb-5f43-b3b0-aa1ea4440592)
“FORGIVE ME FOR saying so, sir, but you do not seem yourself.”
Mauro Bianchi, dissolute playboy and renowned billionaire, looked over at his assistant Carlo, and treated him to a fearsome scowl. “You are not forgiven.”
Not because his assistant was not wrong in his observation. No. Mauro was not himself, and had not been for the past three months. He could not pretend he didn’t know why. He did.
He was held utterly captive by memories of a bewitching redhead, and a stolen hour in his private suite of rooms.
By the way she had run from him, leaving him holding her shoe.
And by the discovery he’d made when he had gone back to his bedroom.
The blood left on the sheets.
It was entirely possible the woman had started her period, he supposed.
Also… Also a possibility that she had been a virgin. Though he could not fathom a virgin speaking as boldly as she had.
A virgin going back to a man’s room for sex, and only sex.
And she had said there was someone waiting for her at home.
He was captivated by the mystery of her, by the erotic memory of her, and nothing he did allowed him to shake it.
Apparently his staff was beginning to notice.
Certainly, the paparazzi had.
Wondering why he’d yet to turn up anywhere with a new woman on his arm, and there was endless speculation about that.
Some even suggesting that he might be in a real relationship, rather than just engaging in one of his usual transient sexual dalliances.
Of course, the press could not be more wrong.
His bed was cold and empty. And Mauro Bianchi could not remember a time in his life when that had been true before.
As soon as he reached sexual maturity, he’d not been alone unless by his own choosing. As a homeless boy, he’d found quite handily that if he were to seduce a woman who did have a bed, he could get not only sex but a nice place to stay.
He had never been shy about using his body. It was one of his many tools. Something that could bring him profit and pleasure, and why not?
He behaved thus even still.
But since his encounter with Alice. Alice Steele, who he knew was not real. He had searched high and low for women bearing that name who resembled her even slightly. Women who resided in England, and then indeed anywhere, and none fit her description.
As he suspected, her name was not real.
She was like a ghost. And the only thing he had to assure himself that she had been real at all was the shoe.
The shoe that sat on his nightstand. Not the act of a man who was in his right mind. Not at all. But knowing that did not entice him to change it.
He didn’t feel in the mood to be in his right mind. That was the problem.
He was in the mood for her. Hungry for her.
He’d told himself he’d never be hungry again. Never want without having.
She’d forced him into that position and it made him feel…
Powerless.
Which was a foolish thing. He was a man at the top of the world. At the top of his field. She was… She was nothing. Just a woman in a club. He was a man who’d risen from the slums of Italy in defiance of his father, a man who had been rich and titled and had wanted nothing to do with his son.
On the far wall, between the windows that overlooked a view of Rome below, news was playing on the TV. He always had news on. It was imperative that he keep up with world events, and he was well able to absorb information without giving it his full attention. His ability to multitask another part of his storied rise to success. His aptitude for numbers, and investments, and indeed for picking places that would become the hottest locations in terms of real estate and trends, had made him incredibly wealthy.
That required him to work constantly, and to pay attention to a great many details at once.
Of course, he could pay people to do much of the day-to-day things now, but still, if he didn’t have a lot of input he was bored easily.
Without a female in his bed for the past three months he was growing intensely bored and incredibly bad tempered.
But no one appealed to him. None at all. None save…
Suddenly, a flash of red hair caught his attention and he gave his full focus to the TV, where a woman was sitting in a private-looking room, pale legs crossed at the ankles, hands folded in her lap. She was dressed incredibly demurely. Her red hair was pinned into an elegant bun, her butter-yellow skirt falling below her knees, her high heels sensible and sedate.
She looked so very like the woman—his woman—from three months ago, and yet like a different creature entirely.
She was regal in her posture, her every movement elegant, each slight turn of her head intentional.
“Sir,” Carlo said.
“Shut up,” Mauro said, grabbing the remote and turning the TV up.
She was speaking, but it was in a different language, something like Norwegian, but slightly different, and he didn’t speak it either way. They were not putting up subtitles on the screen, but the news commentators were going over the top in his native Italian.
“Queen Astrid von Bjornland issued a statement today to her people, that she is about to embark on an unusual path for a woman in her position. The queen is pregnant, it seems, and is determined to raise the child alone. Invoking an old rule native to the country, the queen is able to claim herself as the sole parent of the heir to the throne.”
The camera panned away from the woman, shrinking the video down to a small square, where two news anchors were sitting at a desk now, a man and a woman.
“And only women can do this?” the man asked, looking somewhat incredulous.
“Yes.” The female news anchor nodded gravely. “An old, protective law that ensured a queen would not be bound to one of the country’s invaders, should she be forced against her will.”
Against her will? She had…
That lying bitch.
