The Prince's Love-Child

He couldn’t work her out; she knew that—and she had actively encouraged it—but it was much more than a game to her. He closed himself off from her, so why should it fall on her shoulders to provide a one-way emotional show?

At the moment she had an air of mystery which he found alluring. If she allowed him to twitch that curtain of mystery aside, to let daylight come flooding in, then who knew what would happen?

She turned her head so that her lips brushed warm and soft and provocatively against his, and his eyes widened, surprising her with their hectic glitter.

‘I want you,’ he ground out.

‘I should hope so, too,’ she answered demurely.

‘I want you so badly I could do it—’

‘Here?’ she pre-empted, brazenly cupping him once more. Only this time he didn’t push her away. This time he groaned. She continued to trickle her fingers against his rock-hard shaft, pressing her lips close to his ear, as he had done to her at the airport. ‘Do you want me to unzip you, Guido?’ she questioned softly. ‘To free you and then to slowly take you into my mouth? To lick my tongue up and down until you can hold back no longer and—’

He gave a roar like an angry lion as the lift pinged to a halt, buckling back the doors as if they were the enemy and unlocking his apartment, thanking God that he had had the foresight to dismiss all his staff for the rest of the day.

He slammed the door shut behind them, and Lucy—for all her carefully suppressed curiosity—didn’t get a chance to notice any princely artefacts, for Guido was taking her by the hand in a way which broached no argument. But there again, who wanted to argue? Certainly not her.

He stopped short of actually kicking the bedroom door open, but his punch to it was so forceful that he might as well have done. Only when it was shut behind them did they stand facing one another, like two protagonists squaring up for a fight.

His breathing was laboured, and Lucy’s heart was beating so rapidly that she felt faint. She was blind to the beauty of the New York skyline captured outside the enormous window—blind to anything other than the beauty of his face. She drank in the stark hunger which momentarily made his features look almost cruel, and the knowledge that she had him on a knife-edge of desire filled her with a sense of daring.

He had awoken in her a sense of passion and experimentation which not one of her other—laughably few—lovers had come even close to.

Or was it, mocked a small voice in her head, simply because he was such an accomplished and experienced lover that she felt she had to keep pushing back the boundaries in order to match him?

She put her hands on her hips and surveyed him from between slitted eyelids, her provocative pose at odds with the starchy, almost prim appearance of her navy blue uniform.

‘Would you like me to strip for you…sir?’ she questioned, in a tone of husky subservience.

Guido groaned. Could he bear to wait? And yet could he bear not to? For a man whose hunger had become jaded over years of having exactly what he wanted, this new and acutely keen appetite was something he wanted to savour.

For did not the sensation of hunger make you feel more alive than when you satisfied it? Had the blood ever sung in his veins quite as much as it was doing at the moment? Or the hard ache in his groin threatened to make him fall to the ground in front of her in complete surrender?

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak for a moment as he walked towards the giant bed and lay back against the pillows.

‘Yes, strip,’ he ordered curtly. ‘Strip for me now.’

Lucy let out a sigh as her thumb and finger rubbed at the lapel of her jacket, caressing the material as sensuously as if it was skin. In a way, it was almost a relief to be able to play this game—for the game detracted from reality, and the reality was that Lucy suspected she was falling in love. Dangerous. Oh, so dangerous.

At least while she was acting the sultry siren she was able to stop herself from running over to him and cupping his hard, handsome face between her hands with a sense of wonder, then smothering it with tiny heartfelt kisses, telling him over and over that he made her heart sing and her senses come to vibrant and stinging life.

But that was not what he wanted from her. A man didn’t have to spell it out for you that he was happy with just a casual affair, and Lucy was perceptive enough to have worked it out for herself in any case. And because she wanted to stay in the game she followed the rules that he had set. Did that make her weak? Or simply responsive?

Guido saw her hesitation and groaned, fighting back the urge to have her join him on the bed.

‘Strip.’ His voice rang out, the word a single, clipped command.

His voice was hard, she thought, but his eyes were as she had never seen them before—on fire with need and desire, and she had to steel herself against that look, to stop herself from melting. She slipped the jacket from her shoulders and hung it neatly over the back of a chair.

‘Oh, Lucy,’ he murmured.

She surveyed him steadily. ‘Am I going too slowly for you, Guido?’

He heard the challenge in her voice. Say yes and she would take even longer! He shook his head, not daring—not able—to speak.

She began to undo the buttons of her crisp white shirt and saw him run his tongue over his lips as the garment joined her jacket. Slowly she unzipped the slim navy skirt and let it fall to the ground, so that it pooled by her feet. She stepped out of it. She heard his sharp inrush of breath as she stood before him, wearing just her bra and panties, stockings, suspender-belt and high navy shoes.

She undid the lace brassie`re and as it fell to the floor she began to touch her breasts, capturing his eyes with hers.

‘Come here,’ he whispered.

She shook her head. ‘Not yet. Take your shirt off.’

His throat was dry as he peeled off the layer of ice-blue silk and threw it at her feet.

‘Now your trousers,’ she instructed softly. ‘Take them off.’

His heart was crashing against his ribcage. ‘Why don’t you do it?’ he murmured.

‘Because I want you to.’

‘Oh, do you?’ he drawled.

He was aware that she was treating him as no woman had ever treated him before—and, rather more disturbingly, that he was allowing her to. But the sexual tension which was escalating second by frantic second was just too good and too powerful to resist.

In his highly aroused state he carefully slid off his trousers and briefs, watching with a certain mocking triumph as her eyes widened, her lips forming a pouting and moist little circle when she saw just how turned on he was.

‘Oh, Guido,’ she whispered, on a thready note of wonder.

Her fingertips moved from where they had been circling over her nipple to press between the juncture of her legs and her head fell back. She closed her eyes, and for a moment Guido wondered if she was just going to pleasure herself in front of him. And—in spite of his aching desire for her—wouldn’t that be unbearably erotic to watch?

Driven on by an overwhelming need, he stroked his hand over himself as greedily as a schoolboy, and looked up to find her staring at him. Their eyes met in a moment of complete and silent understanding.

‘Okay, Lucy,’ he said unsteadily. ‘You’ve played your little stripper game. That’s enough. I want you here. Right now.’

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

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.