The Prince Who Charmed Her

She didn’t want to hear this. She wanted out. ‘Why don’t you cut to the chase, Stefano? Why are you here on this ship?’ And, more to the point, ‘Why am I here in your suite?’

He stepped closer. ‘The truth?’

She shrugged, trying hard to disguise the fact she was getting more spooked by the minute. ‘Novel idea, I know.’

He came to stand in front of her chair. ‘I could not forget you.’

‘Spare me.’ Please don’t say that, she pleaded mentally. ‘It took you nine months to figure that out?’ She winced. Unobtrusively she eased back in the seat to create a little more space. Now she could inhale his aftershave, just a wisp, and it was true: the sense of smell was the one true memory.

He looked down. Apparently sincere. ‘I did search for you.’

‘Then you’re not very good at it, are you?’ She’d still been in the same flat for the next five months. Waiting. Hoping he’d at least call back. Until she’d woke up to reality. ‘Tell me. When did this fictitious search occur?’

Thankfully he stepped across to the window that looked out from the stern of the ship and she could breathe again.

The glorious picture window framed the blue of the ocean, the trail of the wash from their ship, and the haze of land off to the east. And the outline of Stefano’s magnificent frame.

‘It was many months before I could begin. Only now, through chance,’ he added more thoughtfully, ‘or fate, have I found your whereabouts …’

He’d waited months! Not in a hurry to find her, then. Four weeks after he’d left she’d discovered she was pregnant. Another fourteen weeks and she’d been desperate for him to call so she could share her confusion, share her joy at the promise of finally feeling as if she belonged to someone, share her fears and hopes with the father of her child. Instead she had been completely alone.

But not as alone as she’d been when her baby had slipped away one silent night. The doctor had said her baby had a cardiac malfunction, a missing part so the growth could not progress, and she had accepted that—with grief, like the lacking in the relationship it had come from. The grief had been worse because in the beginning she had been ambivalent about its coming. Had thought more of the complications than of her own child until it had been too late for fierce regrets.

And the due date was next week.

The ever-present ache squeezed in her heart. It was time to go before her control let her down. ‘Great. Thanks for that.’ She stood, glanced at him up and down. ‘You look well. Don’t seem to be pining. I think you’ll survive.’

He stepped back into her comfort zone. ‘Is Hobson your lover?’

They were standing chest to chest, a pulsing fission of air between then, and she almost missed the question.

What? Where did this guy get off? But stoking up her anger was a good idea. Much better than sadness. Anger made her feel less trapped. Less baited by his need for control at this moment. Less weak.

Flippantly, with an airy wave of her hand, she said, ‘He’s one of them.’

The flare in his eyes stunned her.

‘Then his position has become vacant.’

She blinked. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ She sat down again in shock. Any other man and she’d think he was joking. ‘You can’t do that.’ Wrong thing to say. She knew it as soon as it was out of her mouth.

He didn’t even have to say it out loud. Of course he could do it. The power of the Mykonides in the Mediterranean had never been in doubt.

Her turn to back-pedal. She’d suspected he had this side, had just never been shown it before. ‘Of course Will’s not my lover.’

Stefano cursed his temper, something he usually had an iron control over, and wheeled away to look over the sea again. The sea was unpredictable today, like his feelings for Kiki, and just as dangerous. More bad behaviour on his part. But despite that he felt his shoulders relax a little. He had not believed Hobson was her lover, but the concept had been gnawing at him since his visit to the ship’s hospital this morning.

So what else had she said that was not true. ‘Is there a man in your life at the moment?’ He could feel the beast within him stir at the thought, and it didn’t escape his notice that he had no right to ask such a thing.

She opened her eyes wide. ‘Is there a man in yours?’

Little witch. ‘Why are you baiting me?’

She glared back at him. ‘Because apologies and good wishes haven’t appeared on the menu and that was what I was promised.’

She had a point. And again he was behaving badly. Why did this happen with the woman he wanted to liaise honourably with?

He paced and came to stop in front of her. ‘I sincerely apologise for leaving without explaining my reasons.’

She nodded. ‘And the phone calls you didn’t return?’

Those he could not remember? ‘I did not get them.’

‘Perhaps not.’ Her tone said she didn’t care any more and she put her glass down. ‘I accept your apology. Thank you for my drink.’ It was untouched.

So that was that. The degree of disappointment seemed out of proportion to what he’d expected. The wall between them was too great for them to part amicably but his expectations had been optimistic. At least he knew where he stood. It was time to move on. To duty.

She stood again. ‘Goodbye, Stefano.’

But as she passed him his hand reached out of its own volition and captured her wrist. Her skin was soft and supple and so fragile. She froze and lifted her eyes to him. Limpid pools. He’d forgotten how her emotions changed their colour from brilliant blue to dark violet when she was aroused. Or angry. Which was it?

His thumb stroked the pulse on the underside of her wrist. ‘Dine with me. Tonight.’

‘No.’ She tugged in slow motion, as if already unsure if she wanted release or not.

‘Tomorrow?’ He stared into deepening violet and between them the fire flickered and stirred and the wraith encircled them both.

‘I’m working.’ Almost a whisper.

He stroked her wrist again. ‘Then it must be tonight.’

Huskily, With another brush of her tongue over her lips, she said ‘What part of no don’t you understand?’

But for Kiki it was too late. Too, too late. He’d touched her.

His hand held her wrist, his skin was on hers, and the two receptors were communicating, entwining in their own matrix of reality. The warmth crept up her body, wrapped around her in tendrils of mist, and in slow motion he drew her forward. Subconsciously she swayed like a reed towards him.

His other hand came up and tenderly brushed the hair out of her eyes. ‘You have grown even more beautiful.’

With worship his fingers slid across her cheek and along her jaw as his mouth came down, and she could do nothing but turn her face into his palm and then upwards. To wait.

As he had with their first kiss he took her breath, inhaled her soul as she did his, and the sometimes comical, sometimes cruel world disappeared.

Her hands crept up around his neck and his hands slid down, until he cupped her buttocks and pulled her in hard against him. With the taste of his lips on hers, she could feel all of him, rock-solid against her, familiar, and then his mouth recaptured hers in the way only Stefano’s could.

She moaned against his lips, her mind blank in the thick sensuality only he could create. She forgot all her intentions, all her reservations, and when he lifted her shirt, swept it over her head, sighed at her lace-covered breasts, she gazed up in a sensual mist of buried memories at the man she’d dreamt about last night.

He carried her across the room and she hooked her legs around his hips. Her mouth was on his, starving for the fuel of life she’d missed, as they went up the stairs to the loft bedroom in a haze of heat and hunger and primitive surrender.

The fog parted briefly as he lay her down, stripped off his own shirt. She could see the muscled perfection of his chest, the fine sprinkling of dark hairs and the nipples erect with his desire. Quickly he protected them both. And before her brain could function sensibly he was beside her, stroking, murmuring his delight, kissing her mouth as if he would never stop, and she was lost again despite the insistent whisper that warned she would taste remorse later.

She felt a long ridge of unfamiliar scarring on his thigh, a myriad of smaller ones, and her hand stilled. But he swept her up again before she could investigate further and the moment was lost in the maelstrom.

Stefano felt the swell in his chest, the furnace of desire for this slip of a woman who, until he touched her, could hold her own. Then she was his. He sensed it. Tasted the victory he hadn’t known he burned for until it was upon him.

Clothes had fallen away, skin melted into skin, and heat seared between them as they reacquainted, shifted, joined. Together they cried out, until the sound died in the little death and she lay beneath him, limp and spent in his arms.

Then he moved again, slowly, savouring every tiny moment, every gentle trail across pearl-coloured skin, every cupping of mounds and exploration of hollows. And always he returned to her mouth, her honeyed mouth that he could never have enough of, until the beat grew faster, the hunger more desperate, the climax more shattering, and again they collapsed.

Replete for now, in awe, still confused by the speed and urgency that had carried them both, he lay back with his arm under her, hugged her close, smiling and sated.

For the moment.

Until the drop of a tear landed on his bicep.

‘You are crying?’ Stefano felt the dagger of shame and turned to see her face. Kiss her hand. ‘I have hurt you. God, no. I am a beast.’

Kiki was in shock. She’d done it again. One touch and she’d lost all will. How could that be? She was no young and foolish teenager, swept off her feet by a handsome man. She knew what he could do. Had wept buckets at his hands before. If she didn’t get out now she would lose what shreds of self-respect she could gather from the clothes strewn around the floor.

‘I have lint in my eye. It’s okay.’ She eased out from under his hand and inched to the edge of the bed.

He sat up, the sheet falling from his chest, his hand out. ‘Let me help you.’

‘No.’ It was sharp and panicked, and she tried again in a calmer voice. ‘No. Thank you. One moment.’

A plan. She had no plan except to escape. Not to let him touch her again. Her feet touched the floor and she scooped up her underwear on her way down to the bathroom, padding down the stairs in bare feet to where her shirt lay at the bottom of the steps like an abandoned child. She scooped it up. Hopped on one leg as she slipped on her panties.

God. What had she done? How had it happened? At least he had used protection—but then they had done that last time. She would get a morning-after pill. Make sure.

All stupid thoughts when really she should be worried about escape and remaining undetected by a ship full of people who knew her. She opened and closed the bathroom door noisily, yet didn’t go in. Instead she hurriedly pulled on her bra and her shirt and slipped out through the door as soon as she was dressed.

Outside she pulled on her sandals and smoothed her clothes. To top everything off if somebody saw her leave the suite of a passenger her job would go. And she was due at work in an hour.

On the crew level she passed Miko, her friend from her first early days on the ship, when she’d been more than a little lost. He was another of her brother’s confidants, and the restaurant manager on the Sea Goddess.

She ran her fingers through her hair. Nooooo, she must look a sight. Miko raised his eyebrows, smiled sardonically, and walked on without saying a word. Did she look like a woman who had just left a man’s bed? Kiki hurried to her cabin in the crew’s quarters and as she went she groaned.

Stefano groaned too.

She’d gone. He knew it. And now, instead of finding resolution, they were in deeper trouble than before. What the hell had happened? He pushed the heel of his hand back into his forehead. Idiot!

It had been like this the first time he saw her. She’d arrived breathless, like a beautiful, vibrantly exotic bird, grabbing his attention so that he’d barely been able to concentrate on surgical technique. Her fierce intelligence had shone joyfully out of the most beautiful eyes in the operating theatre, like the Mediterranean Sea at sunrise, and he’d been lost.

His time with Kiki in Australia had blurred into a golden haze of laughter and loving and lust, and even his responsibility to Aspelicus had faded for a brief while.

When duty had called he’d fully intended going back to reassess it all properly—discover where it led. He had thought it would be a matter of days before his return, but first there had been the accident, then the months of rehabilitation, when the chance of losing the use of his leg had hung in the balance. It had all kept him away. As if the gods had intended they should both suffer for too perfect a match.

By then she’d disappeared. And more crises had arrived. Slowly his mind had been torn from her as well—except for that tiny halo in his heart.

But it was bad that he had hurt her. Profoundly. He could see that now, and deeply he regretted it. The trouble was that it seemed if he had an opportunity to hold her again he had no choice but to take it. Hold her. Lose himself. This had to stop. This was not healthy. Not wholesome. Because the way he felt at this moment he would destroy them both before he could stop the way he wanted her.

The next morning, as the ship moored at Civitavecchia for Rome, the clinic was quiet.

‘You okay?’ Will looked at Kiki with concern.

She forced a smile. ‘I must have eaten something that disagreed with me.’

Like a morning-after pill that sat on her stomach like a rock. She couldn’t rid her mind of the distant warning that this had been the only chance she’d had to carry Stefano’s child again. She hated that thought.

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