Indian Prince's Hidden Son

The bell shrilled while she was putting on her pyjamas and she groaned, snatching her robe off the back of the bathroom door to hurry barefoot down the steep stairs and answer the door.

When she saw Jai outside, she froze in disconcertion.

‘I brought dinner,’ Jai informed her as she hovered, her grip on the robe she was holding closed loosening to reveal the shorts and T-shirt she wore beneath and her long, shapely legs. He drew in a stark little breath as she stepped back and the robe shifted again to expose the tilted peaks of her small breasts. In a split second he was hard as a rock, his body impervious to his belief that he preferred curvier women.

‘D-dinner?’ she stammered in wonderment as Jai stepped back and two men with a trolley moved out from behind him and, with some difficulty, trundled the unwieldy item through the tiny hall into the cramped living room with its small table and two chairs.

Those wolf-blue eyes of his held her fast, all breathing in suspension.

‘My hotel was able to provide us with an evening meal,’ he clarified smoothly.

No takeaways for Jai, Willow registered without surprise while she wondered what on earth such an extravagant gesture could have cost him. Of course, he didn’t have to count costs, did he? It probably hadn’t even occurred to him that requesting a meal for two people that could be transported out of the hotel and served by hotel staff was an extraordinary request. Jai was simply accustomed to asking and always receiving, regardless of expense.

‘I’m not dressed,’ she said awkwardly, tightening the tie on her robe in an apologetic gesture.

‘It doesn’t bother me. We should eat now while it’s still warm,’ Jai responded as the plates were brought to the table, and she settled down opposite him, stiff with unease.

A bottle of wine was uncorked, glasses produced and set by their places.

‘I thought you didn’t drink,’ she commented in surprise as the waiters went back outside again, presumably to wait for them to finish.

‘I take wine with my meals,’ he explained. ‘It’s rare for me to drink at any other time.’

His eyes had a ring of stormy grey around the pupils, she noted absently, her throat tightening as her gaze dropped to the fullness of his sensual lower lip and she found herself wondering for the first time ever what Jai would be like in bed. She had been too shy and immature for such thoughts when she was an infatuated teenager and, now that she was an adult, her mental audacity brought a flood of mortified colour to her pale cheeks. Would he be gentle or rough? Fiery or smoothly precise? Her thoughts refused to quit.

‘Why did you feel that you had to feed me?’ she asked abruptly in an effort to deflect his attention from her hot cheeks.

‘You had no food in the kitchen. You’ve just lost your father,’ Jai parried calmly as he began to eat. ‘I didn’t like to think of you alone here.’

He had felt sorry for her. She busied herself eating the delicious food, striving not to squirm with mortification that she had impressed him as an object of pity. After all, Jai had been raised by his benevolent father to constantly consider those less fortunate and now ran a huge international charity devoted to good causes. Whether she appreciated the reality or not, looking out for the needs of the vulnerable had to come as naturally to Jai as breathing.

‘Why are you moving out of here tomorrow?’ he pressed quietly.

Willow snatched in a long steadying breath and then surrendered to the inevitable, reasoning that her father could no longer be humiliated by the truth. She explained about Brian Allerton’s unsuccessful stock-market dealing and the impoverishment that had followed. ‘I mean no disrespect,’ she completed ruefully, ‘but my father was irresponsible with money. He never saved anything—he only had his pension. All his working life he lived in accommodation provided by his employers and most of his meals and bills were also covered and it didn’t prepare him very well for retirement living in the normal world.’

‘That didn’t occur to me, but it should’ve done,’ Jai conceded. ‘He was an unworldly man.’

‘He was so ashamed of his financial losses,’ she whispered unhappily. ‘It made him feel like a failure and that’s one of the reasons he wouldn’t see people any more.’

‘I wish he had found it possible to reach out to me for assistance,’ Jai framed heavily, his lean, strong face clenched hard. ‘So, you are being forced to sell everything? I will buy his book collection.’

Willow stared across the table at him in shock. ‘Seriously?’

‘He was a lifelong book collector, as am I,’ Jai pointed out. ‘I would purchase his books because I want them and for no other reason. We will agree that tonight and hopefully that will take care of your rent arrears.’

Willow nodded slowly and then frowned. ‘Are you sure you want them?’

‘I have a library in every one of my homes. Of course, I want them.’

Willow swallowed hard. ‘How many homes do you have?’ she whispered helplessly.

‘More than I want in Chandrapur but it is my duty, as it was my father’s, to preserve our heritage properties for future generations,’ he countered levelly. ‘Now let us move on to other, more important matters. Your father was too proud to ask for my help. I hope you are a little more sensible.’

Reckoning that he was about to embarrass her by offering her further financial help, Willow pushed back her plate and stood up to forestall him. ‘I’m going upstairs to get dressed first,’ she said tightly.

Jai sipped his wine and signalled the staff to remove the dishes and the trolley. He pictured Willow sliding out of the robe, letting it fall sinuously to her feet before she took off the top and removed the shorts. His imagination went wild while he did so, his body surging with fierce hunger, and he gritted his teeth angrily, struggling to get his thoughts back in his control.

Upstairs, Willow stood immobile, reckoning that Jai taking her father’s books could well settle the rent arrears. Did he really want those books? Or was that just a ploy to give her money? And when someone was as poor as she was, could she really afford to worry about what might lie behind his generosity?

Her attention fell on a sapphire ring that lay on the tray on the dressing table. It was her grandmother’s engagement ring and it would have to be sold too, even though it was unlikely to be worth very much. Her father had refused to let her sell it while he was still alive, but it had to go now, along with everything else. She could not live with Shelley without paying her way. She would not take advantage of her friend’s kindness like that.

She spread a glance round the room, her eyes lingering on the precious childhood items that would also have to be disposed of, things like her worn teddy bear and the silver frame housing a photo of the mother she barely remembered. She couldn’t lug boxes of stuff with her to clutter up Shelley’s small studio apartment. Be practical, Willow, she scolded herself even as a sob of pain convulsed her throat.

She felt as though her whole life had tumbled into broken pieces at her feet. Her father was gone. Everything familiar was fading. And at the heart of her grief lay the inescapable truth that she had always been a serious disappointment to the father she loved. No matter how hard she had tried, no matter how many tutors her father had engaged to coach her, she had continually failed to reach the academic heights he’d craved for his only child. She wasn’t stupid, she was merely average, and to a man as clever as her father had been, a man with a string of Oxford degrees in excellence, that had been a cruel punishment…

Downstairs, enjoying a second glass of wine, Jai heard her choked sob. He squared his shoulders and breathed in deep, deeming it only natural that at some point on such a day Willow’s control would weaken and she would break down. There had been no visible tears at the funeral, no emotional conversations afterwards that he had heard. Throughout, Willow had been polite and pleasant and more considerate of other people’s feelings than her own. She had attempted to bring an upbeat note to a depressing situation, had behaved as though she had already completely accepted the changes that her father’s death would inflict on her.

When the sounds of her distress became more than he could withstand, Jai abandoned his careful scrutiny of her father’s books—several first editions, he noted with satisfaction, worthy of the fine price he would pay for them. He drained his glass and forced himself to mount the stairs to offer what comfort he could. All too well did he remember that he himself had had little support after his father’s sudden death from a massive stroke. Thousands had been devastated by the passing of so well-loved a figure and hundreds of concerned relatives had converged on Jai to share his sorrow, but Jai hadn’t been close enough to any of those individuals to find solace in their memories. In reality only he had known his father on a very personal, private level and only he could know the extent of the loss he had sustained.

Willow was lying sobbing on the bed and Jai didn’t hesitate. He sat down beside her and lifted her into his arms, reckoning that she weighed barely more than a child and instinctively treating her as such as he patted her slender spine soothingly and struggled to think of what it was best to say. ‘Remember the good times with your father,’ he urged softly.

‘There really weren’t any…’ Willow muttered chokily into his shoulder, startled to find herself in his arms but revelling in that sudden comforting closeness of another human being and no longer feeling alone and adrift. ‘I was always a serious disappointment to him.’

With a frown of disbelief, Jai held her back from him to look down into her tear-stained face. The tip of her nose was red, which was surprisingly cute. Her wide green eyes were still welling with tears and oddly defiant, as if daring him to disagree. ‘How could that possibly be true?’ he challenged.

‘I didn’t do well enough at school, didn’t get into the right schools either,’ Willow confided shakily, looking into his lean, strong face and those commanding ice-blue eyes that had once haunted her dreams. ‘Once I heard him lying to make excuses for me. He told one of his colleagues that I’d been ill when I sat my exams and it was a lie… Dad wanted a child he could brag about, an intellectual child, who passed every exam with flying colours. I had tutors in every subject and I still couldn’t do well enough to please him!’

Jai was sharply disconcerted by that emotional admission, which revealed a far less agreeable side to a man he had both liked and respected. ‘I’m sure he didn’t mean to make you feel that way,’ he began tentatively.

Willow’s fingers clenched for support into a broad shoulder that felt reassuringly solid and strong and she sucked in a shuddering breath. It was a kind lie, she conceded, liking him all the more for his compassion. Even so, she was still keen to say what she had never had the nerve to say before, because only then, in getting it off her chest, might she start to heal from the low self-esteem she had long suffered from. ‘Yes, Dad did mean it. He honestly believed that the harder he pushed me, the more chance he had of getting me to excel! He didn’t even care about which subject it might be in, he just wanted me to be especially talented at something!’

‘I’m sorry,’ Jai breathed, mesmerised by the glistening depth of her green eyes and the sheer passion with which she spoke, not to mention the unexpected pleasure of the slight trusting weight of her lying across his thighs and the evocative coconut scent of her hair. The untimely throb of arousal at his groin infuriated him and he fought it to the last ditch.

‘Dad wasn’t remotely impressed by my studying garden history and landscaping. And that’s why I’m crying, because I’m sorry too that it’s too late to change anything for the better. I had my chance with him, and I blew it!’ Willow muttered guiltily, marvelling that she was confiding in Jai, of all people. Jai, who was the cleverest of the clever. It didn’t feel real; it felt much more like something she would imagine to comfort herself and, as such, reassuringly unreal and harmless. ‘I never once managed to do anything that made Dad proud of me. My small successes were never enough to please him.’

And the sheer honesty of that confession struck Jai on a much deeper level because he wasn’t used to a woman who told it as it was and didn’t wrap up the ugly truth in a flattering guise. Yet Willow looked back at him, fearless and frank and so, so sad, and his hands slid from her back up to her face to cup her cheekbones, framing those dreamy green eyes that had so much depth and eloquence in her heart-shaped face. She looked impossibly beautiful.

He didn’t know what to say to that. He did not want to criticise her father, he did not want to hurt her more, and so he kissed her…didn’t even know he was going to do it, didn’t even have to think about it because it seemed the utterly, absolutely natural next step in their new understanding.

CHAPTER TWO

THE TASTE OF JAI, of fine wine and a faint minty after-flavour, threw Willow even deeper into the realms of fantasy.

Because fantasy was what it felt like, totally unthreatening fantasy in which Prince Jai Hari Singh, Maharaja of Chandrapur, kissed her, Willow Allerton, currently unemployed and soon to be homeless into the bargain. Being in his arms didn’t feel real but, goodness, it felt good, the delve of his tongue into the moist aperture of her mouth sending a shower of fireworks flying through her tummy, awakening a heat that surged enthusiastically into all the cold places inside her, both comforting and exhilarating all at once.

It was everything she had dreamt she might find in a man’s arms and it felt right as well as good, gloriously right as if she had been waiting her whole life for that moment and was being richly rewarded for her patience. In the dim light from the bedside lamp, Jai’s eyes glittered with the pale ice of polar stars, but the ice that powered him burned through her like a rejuvenating drug, banishing the grief and the guilt and the sadness that had filled her to overflowing. Her fingers drifted up to curve to his strong jawline.

‘I like this,’ she whispered helplessly.

‘I like it too much,’ Jai conceded in a driven undertone, lifting her off his lap to lay her down on the bed where her strawberry-blond hair shone in the lamplight, leaning over her to cover her lush mouth with his again.

‘How…too much?’ she pressed.

‘I was trying to comfort you, not—’

Featherlight fingers brushed his lips before he could complete that speech. ‘Kiss me again,’ she urged feverishly. ‘It drives everything else out of my head.’

She wanted forgetfulness, not the down-to-earth reminder that such intimacy was untimely. Jai’s stern cautious side warred with his libido, his body teeming with pent-up desire. They were alone and free-to-consent adults, not irresponsible teenagers. He gazed down at her and then wrenched at the constriction of his tie with an impatient hand, suddenly giving way to the passionate nature that he usually controlled to what he deemed an acceptable level. The allure of her pink ripe lips was more than he could withstand.

That next explosive kiss sealed Willow’s fate, for she could no more have denied the hunger coursing through her than she could have denied her own name. There was also a strong element of wonder in discovering Jai’s desire for her. That was thrillingly unexpected and wonderfully heartening, that she could have it within her to mysteriously attract a man well known for his preference for gorgeous models and Bollywood actresses, a gorgeous, incredibly sexy man, who could have had virtually any woman he wanted. It changed her view of herself as the girl next door, low on sex appeal.

‘I want you,’ Jai ground out against her reddened mouth as he shed his jacket with a lithe twist of his broad shoulders.

Only for a split second did she marvel at that and then all her insecurities surged to the fore because she was skinny and lacked the curves that were so often seen as essential to make a woman appealing to a man. But an internal voice reminded her that Jai wanted her, and she opened her mouth beneath the onslaught of his, let her tongue dart and tangle with his, feeling free, feeling daring for the first time ever.

There was intoxication in the demanding pressure of his mouth on hers and the long fingers sliding below her top to cup a small pouting breast while he toyed with the tender peak. Her body arched without her volition as that sensual caress grew more intense, tiny little arrows of heat darting down into her pelvis to make her extraordinarily aware of that area. Her hips shifted as he pulled her top off, exposing the bare swell of her breasts, bending over her to use his mouth on the plump pink nipples commanding his attention. She tingled all over, goose bumps rising on her arms as he suckled on the distended buds. Between her thighs she felt hot and damp and surprisingly impatient for what came next.

And she knew what came next, of course she did, but her friends’ bluntness on the topic had warned her not to expect triumphant bursts of classical music and glimpses of heaven in the final stages. It would be her first time and she was aware that her lack of experience would not affect his enjoyment but that it might well detract from hers. All a matter of luck, a friend had told her sagely.

Dainty fingers spearing through Jai’s silky black hair, Willow was revelling in the intimacy of being able to touch him while still marvelling over how fast things could change between two people. Yet she had no doubts and was convinced she would have no regrets either because she had already reached the conclusion that she would rather have Jai as her first lover than anyone else.

Jai dragged off his shirt, returned to kiss her again, his wide, powerful torso hard and muscular against hers. She made a little sound of appreciation deep in her throat even as her hands skated up the hot, smooth skin of his ribcage to discover the muscles that flexed with his every movement. She couldn’t think any more beyond that moment because the craving he had unleashed grew stronger with every demanding kiss and utterly controlled her, dulling her brain with an adrenalin boost that was wholly physical.

She writhed under his weight as he traced the hot, swollen centre of her, touching her where she desperately needed to be touched so that her body arched up to him, her heartbeat thundering, her entire being quivering with feverish need. A finger penetrated her slick depths and she gasped, all arousal and captive energy, wanting, wanting…

‘Is it safe?’ Jai husked, wrenching at his trousers to get them out of his path and so overexcited he barely recognised himself in his eagerness but her response, the passage of her tiny hands smoothing over his overheated body, had pushed him to the biting edge of a hunger greater than anything he had ever known before.

Safe? Safe? What was he talking about? She wasn’t expecting any more visitors; they were alone. Of course, they were safe from interruption or the potential embarrassment of discovery.

‘Of course, it is,’ Willow muttered.

Jai came down to her with a wolfish smile of relief. ‘How very fortunate… I don’t think I could stop unless you ordered me to.’

‘Not going to,’ Willow mumbled, entranced by the fierce black-fringed eyes above hers into absolute stillness.

Jai tipped her legs back and slid sinuously between them, shifting forward in a forceful surge to plunge into her. Eyes closing, Willow felt the burn of his invasion as her untried body stretched to accommodate him and then a sharp stab of pain that jolted her even as he groaned with satisfaction.

‘You’re so tight,’ he breathed appreciatively.

The pain faded and, as it had been less than she had feared, her stress level dropped, and her body relaxed to rise up against his as he withdrew and forged back into her again. Little tendrils of warming sensation gathered in her pelvis and the excitement flooded back, kicking up her heartrate simultaneously so that even breathing became a challenge. She moved against him, hot, damp with perspiration, losing control because the insidious tightening at her core stoked her hunger for him. His fluid insistent rhythm increased, and she felt frantic, pitched to an edge of need that felt unbearable. She lifted to meet his every thrust, need driving her to hasten to the finish line and then, with a swoosh of drowning sensation, the tightness transformed into an explosion of sheer pleasure unlike any she had ever envisaged and she fell back against the pillows, winded and drained, utterly incapable of even twitching a limb.

‘That was incredible,’ Jai purred like a well-fed jungle cat in her ear, long fingers tracing the relaxed pout of her mouth and trailing down to her shoulder to smooth the skin before he pressed his mouth hungrily to the slope of her neck. ‘All I really want now is to do it all over again.’

The tension of discomfiture, of not knowing how to behave, beginning to rise in Willow ebbed. He was happy, she was happy, there was nothing to fret about. Again, though? She had assumed that men were once-only creatures in need of recovery time, but Jai was already shifting sensually against her again, his renewed arousal brushing her stomach. That he could still want her that much gratified her and she smiled up at him.

That smile full of sunshine disconcerted Jai. His conscience twinged and it took him a moment to recognise the unfamiliar prompting because it was rare for him to do anything that awakened such a reaction. ‘You do realise that this…us, isn’t likely to go anywhere?’ he murmured.

‘How could it? I’m not an idiot,’ Willow parried in surprise and embarrassment that he felt the need to tell her that they had no future as a couple.

‘I didn’t want you to get the wrong impression,’ Jai told her levelly. ‘I only do casual with women and I never raise expectations I have no plans to fulfil.’

‘Neither do I,’ Willow assured him cheerfully, secure in her conviction that he had not guessed that she was inexperienced and relieved because pride demanded that he believe that he was no big deal in her life. ‘I wouldn’t want you getting the wrong idea about me either.’

Faint colour edged Jai’s high sculpted cheekbones because no woman had ever dared to tell him that he was just a casual encounter. ‘Of course not.’

‘Then we’re both content,’ Willow concluded, refusing to recognise the little pang of hurt buried deep within her…hurt that she wasn’t a little different from other women in his eyes, more special than they were, somehow less of a casual event in his life. He was telling it as it was and she should be grateful for that. This way she knew exactly where she stood and she wouldn’t be weaving fantasies around phone calls that would never come or surprise visits. After all, he didn’t have her phone number and even she didn’t know where she’d eventually be living. She and Jai really were ships that passed in the night.

‘I want to kiss you again,’ Jai breathed with a raw edge to his dark deep voice.

He had only one night with her, and he wanted to make the very most of the best sex he had ever had. He would move on; she would move on. That was the way of the world, yet a stray shard of guilt and regret still pierced him because she was so open with him, so impervious to his wealth and status. He would check that she was all right from a safe distance, stay uninvolved, he promised himself. He supposed there were ties between them that he was refusing to acknowledge lest they make him uncomfortable. He had vague memories of her as a child, could remember her shouting his name in excitement at sports events and could recall the way her eyes had once clung to him as though magnetised. But she had grown out of all that. Of course, she had.