Arranged Marriage, Bedroom Secrets

“I have a brother. He’s in Europe right now,” Angel said lightly, but he saw the way she pressed her delectable full lips together as if she was holding something back. “How about you?” she asked, almost as if her question was an afterthought.

“An only child.”

“Was it lonely, growing up?”

“Sometimes, although I always had plenty of people around me.”

Angel gestured to the guard in front and the others nearby. “People like them?” she asked.

“And others,” he admitted.

They stopped at a set of lights and she lifted her chin and stared straight ahead. “Sometimes you can be at your most lonely when you’re surrounded by people.”

Her words struck a chord with him. There was something about the way she’d made her statement that made him think she spoke from personal experience. The thought made something tug inside him. He wished he could remove the haunted, empty tone from her voice and fill it with warmth. And what else, a voice inside him asked. He pushed the thought aside. There could be nothing else. Come morning he would be a different man to the rest of the world. A king. This interlude of normality would be nothing but a memory. One, he realized, he would treasure for a long time to come.

“So what do you do?” Angel asked him after they’d crossed the street.

“Do?”

“Yes, for a living. I assume you do work?”

Yes, he worked, but not in the sense she was probably expecting. “I’m in management,” he said, skirting the truth.

“That’s a very broad statement,” she teased, looking up at him with a glimmer of mischief in her tawny eyes.

“I have a very broad range of responsibilities. And you, what do you plan to do once you have completed your studies?”

Her expression changed in an instant—the humor of before replaced with a look of seriousness. Then she blinked and the solemnity was gone.

“Oh, this and that,” she said airily.

“And you accused me of being vague?” he taunted, enjoying their verbal sparring.

“Well, since you asked—I want to go home and make a difference. I want people to listen to me, to really listen, and to take what I have to say on board—not just dismiss me out of hand because I’m female.”

He raised his brows. “Does that happen a lot?”

“You did it to me,” she challenged.

“Yes, I did, and I apologize again for my prejudice. I hope you get your wish.” He drew to a halt beside a food truck. “Have you eaten this evening?”

“No, but you don’t have to—”

“I’m told you haven’t been to New York until you try one of these rib eye sandwiches.”

She inhaled deeply. “They do smell divine, don’t they?”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

He turned to the head of his security and gave an order in Sylvano. The man grinned in response and lined up at the food-truck window.

They continued to walk as they ate, laughing in between bites as they struggled to contain their food without spilling it.

“I should have taken you to a restaurant,” Thierry said as Angel made a noise of disgust at the mess she had left on her hands when they’d finished.

“Oh, heavens no! Not at all. This is fun...just messy.” She laughed and gingerly extracted a small packet of tissues from her bag so she could wipe her fingers.

Thierry felt his lips pull into a smile again as they had so many times since he’d met her. What was it about her that felt so right when everything else around him felt so wrong?

“I can’t get over this city,” Angel exclaimed. “There’s never a quiet moment. It’s exhilarating.”

“It is,” he agreed and then looked over at her. “Do you dance?”

“Are you asking me if I’m capable of it, or if I want to?” Angel laughed in response.

Thierry shrugged. “Both. Either.” He didn’t care. He suddenly had the urge to hold her in his arms and he figured this would be the only way he could decently do so without compromising his own values.

“I’m not exactly dressed for it,” Angel said doubtfully.

“You look beautiful. I’ve heard of a quiet place not far from here. It’s not big and brash like a lot of the clubs. More intimate, I suppose, and you can dance or talk or just sit and watch the other patrons if that’s all you want to do.”

“It sounds perfect.”

“So, shall we?”

She grinned back. “Okay, I’d like that.”

“Good.” He took her hand in his, again struck by the delicacy of her fingers and the fine texture of her skin.

What would it feel like if she touched him intimately? Would her fingers be firm or soft like a feather? Would she trace the contours of his body with a tantalizing subtlety, or would her touch be more definite, more demanding? He slammed the door on his wayward thoughts. It seemed he had more of his mother in him than he’d suspected. Still, there was nothing wrong with dancing with a woman other than his betrothed, was there? He had to do it at state functions all the time.

He tugged her in the direction of a club he’d visited on his last trip to New York and sent Armaund ahead to ensure they’d gain entry. The night was still young and he wasn’t ready for it to end yet.

Drawing her into his arms on the dance floor was everything he’d hoped for and more. The only problem was that it made him want more—and that was something he’d forbidden himself until marriage. He was determined to hold sacred the act of love and making love. It was something he would share with his wife and his wife alone. He hadn’t remained celibate purely for the hell of it. Sometimes it had been sheer torment refusing to acknowledge the demands of his flesh. But he’d promised himself from a very young age that he would not be that person. He would not allow physical need to cloud all else. Over the centuries his family had almost lost everything several times over because of a lack of physical control.

He’d always believed his forebears’ susceptibility to fleshly pursuits to be a mark of weakness, and nothing had happened in his thirty-one years to change his mind. Except perhaps the young woman dancing with him right now. Even so, he denied himself any more than the sensation of her in his arms—the brush of her breasts against his chest as he held her close, the skim of her warm breath on his throat—they were torments and teases he could overcome. When he boarded the plane a few short hours from now, to return to Sylvain, he would do so with the full knowledge that he had honored his vow to both himself and to the woman he was to marry.

But until then, he’d enjoy this stolen night as much as his duty and honor would allow.

* * *

The night had been magical—something even her wildest imagination could never have dreamed up. In fact, Mila doubted even Sally, with all her romantic ideas, could have come up with something like the night she’d just had. She felt like Cinderella, except in her fairy tale the prince was seeing her home and it was well past midnight. As the limousine, which had been waiting outside the club when they’d left it, pulled up outside her hotel she turned in her seat to face the prince. Tonight, she’d seen a side of him she’d never anticipated—and she was utterly captivated by him.

Maybe it was the champagne they’d drunk at the club, or maybe it was simply the knowledge that at month’s end she’d be standing next to him beneath the ancient vaulted ceilings of the Sylvano palace cathedral and pledging her life to him, but right now she felt as if she was floating on air.

At least now she knew what Thierry was like away from the pomp and ceremony that was attached to his position in the world. Once they were married and had the chance to spend time together alone, without all the trappings and formality of their official lives, she believed that they could become important to one another beyond what their marriage would gain for their respective nations. Tonight she’d had a chance to get to know the man beneath the crown. The man who would be her husband—who would share her days and her nights. And, given the fierce attraction between them, she looked forward to getting to know him even better. In every way.

He’d been the consummate gentleman tonight and, for the first time in her life, she’d felt like a desirable woman—one who could be confident that she would be able to make him happy in their marriage, too.

She turned to face him in the seat of the limo. “Thank you, Hawk. Tonight was incredible. I will never forget it.”

He took her hand and lifted it to his lips, brushing them across her knuckles in a caress that sent a bolt of longing straight to her center.

“Nor I.”

Thierry leaned forward, his intention to kiss her cheek obvious, but at the last minute Mila turned her head, allowing their lips to brush one another. It was the merest touch, sweet and innocent, and yet in that moment she felt something expand in her chest and threaten to consume her. It shook Mila to her core.

Words failed her and she pulled away, blindly reaching for the door handle and stumbling slightly as she left the private cavern of the vehicle. She didn’t look back. She couldn’t. If she did she might ask for more and it wasn’t the time or the place to do that.

She moved swiftly through the hotel lobby and to the elevator and swiped her key card to head for the penthouse. In the elevator car she reached up and tugged the blond wig loose and locked her gaze with her reflection in the mirrored walls. She’d been a stranger to Thierry tonight and he’d enjoyed her company. But would he enjoy it quite so much when he met the real Angel, or would he remember the gauche and chubby girl for whom he’d shown a moment of disdain? Only time would tell.

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