The Prince's Pleasure
Clamping down on a shiver, the aftermath of the terror that had surged through her, she said feebly, ‘You can’t leave your car blocking the way.’
‘Then can I offer you a lift to the rank? You are really in no fit state to walk there by yourself.’ A hint of impatience threaded his decisive voice.
Alexa knew she should say no and head briskly off. She glanced up into a face carved in granite, and then looked away, her stomach knotting; although definitely a dangerous man, there was no criminal menace about him. The peril radiating from him was the simple, sensual danger a potent male represented to a woman’s composure.
‘Thank you,’ she said tightly, repressing another shiver.
With courteous speed the Prince put her into the front seat beside him and drove around the corner.
And of course the taxi rank was empty—as was the street, apart from one man lurching from lamppost to lamppost. Alexa stifled a little hiss of dismay.
‘If you’ll trust me with your address I’ll take you home,’ the man beside her said with an aloofness that should have reassured her as he pulled into the empty space in the taxi rank, clearly not at all concerned by the prospect of any cruising cab-driver’s outrage.
‘Thank you, but you don’t need to do that,’ she told him swiftly. ‘Perhaps you could take me to the nearest police station—if it’s not too much trouble,’ she added swiftly when he hesitated.
‘Of course,’ he said remotely, and put the car into gear again. When she’d given him instructions he said evenly, ‘Promise me that you won’t again walk by yourself at night in the inner city.’
‘I don’t make a habit of it. I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ she defended herself. ‘I suppose they thought it would be easy enough to grab my bag and get away before anyone arrived.’
‘Perhaps. And perhaps they didn’t want money.’
‘What else would they have wanted?’ she asked, then flushed at his derisive glance. A slow cold shudder tightened her skin. She’d only had one glimpse of their faces before they’d turned and sprinted across the street, but they were imprinted on her mind. ‘They can’t possibly have thought they could get away with…assaulting me on a public street when traffic and pedestrians could arrive—’
‘You forget the car,’ he broke in. ‘And surely your mother told you that beautiful women are always prey.’
‘What car?’ His words chilled her, yet she tingled because he’d called her beautiful.
The swift blade of the Prince’s glance skimmed her profile. ‘They’d parked down that little alley over the street. Didn’t you hear them drive off?’
‘No.’ Because her whole attention had been focused on him. Fear cramped her stomach as she realised how close she’d been to disaster. Alexa muttered through teeth she had to clench, ‘It was just bad luck—’
‘And foolishness,’ he said with a bite in his tone, startling her by pulling into the kerb and shouldering free of his jacket.
Before she had time to say more than, ‘What on—?’ he tossed the garment at her. It landed on her lap, warm and as superbly cut as the dinner jacket he’d been wearing in the hotel.
‘Wrap that around you,’ he commanded, when she stared mutely at him. ‘You’re shocked and cold.’
Startled and dismayed, she pushed at the garment. ‘I’m all right—’
‘You’re shivering,’ he pointed out. When she didn’t move—couldn’t move—he commanded, ‘Lean forward.’
Alexa reacted to the crack of authority in his words with automatic obedience. He dropped the garment around her shoulders, pulling it down to cover her arms.
As the cloth enfolded her sensation splintered in the pit of her stomach. Still warm from his body, the jacket sparked a violent, primal tug of awareness deep inside her, an awareness made keener, more intense by the faint, clean scent that had to be his—scent only a lover would recognise.
‘All right?’ he asked, frowning. He dropped his hands over hers, clasping them as he said more gently, ‘You’ve had a very nasty experience, but it’s over now. You’re safe.’
‘Thanks to you,’ she muttered. Safe? When every cell in her body was drumming with a wild, strange need?
He said something in a language that sounded like Italian before freeing her and turning away to set the car in motion. As it pulled away from the taxi rank he asked in English, ‘I have forgotten where we turn next.’
Still shaking inside, she gave him directions. Had he really said something like ‘dangerously beautiful’ in what must be his mother tongue?
Of course not. She tried to straighten her trembling mouth. In spite of a superficial resemblance, the Dacian language was not Italian.
But he found her attractive.
So what? Being rescued from what might have been an exceedingly nasty situation was no excuse for behaving like a halfwit. Prince Luka Bagaton of Dacia might possess courage and some kindness, he might even think she was beautiful, but he was way out of her reach—and she wasn’t reaching! A quick fling with a visiting prince was not her style.
Alexa stiffened her spine and her shoulders. When the car stopped outside the police station she groped for the door handle and said in her most formal voice, ‘Thank you very much for your help. I hope you enjoy the rest of your stay in New Zealand.’
After a quick glance at his watch, he said, ‘I’ll come in with you.’
Alexa objected. ‘You don’t need to become tangled up in this. You were on your way somewhere…’
To Sandra Beauchamp’s bed, perhaps?
Without looking at her he said, ‘I saw them too. I may be able to help identify them.’
‘I…’ She hesitated, then blurted, ‘You don’t want to get involved.’
‘You’re right,’ he said, courteously inflexible, ‘but it is my duty.’
CHAPTER TWO
HALF an hour later, after separate interviews, the sergeant complimented them both. ‘I wish all our witnesses were as observant as you two! With such good descriptions we should nail them before they do any damage.’ She looked at Alexa and said, ‘We’ll contact you if we need to.’
Alexa nodded. In the small room where she’d made her statement and drawn a sketch of both assailants she’d been given tea and some bracing, professional sympathy. It had helped, but her insides still felt as though someone had taken to them with a drill, and weak, irritating tears kept stinging her eyes.
Luka’s firm hand on her elbow ushered her out to his car. ‘You’ll have to direct me to your address,’ he said after a searching glance.
In a monotone Alexa guided him to her small flat in one of the inner city suburbs. He drove skilfully and well, although a couple of times she had to fill him in on New Zealand road rules.
Once they’d drawn up outside what had used to be a Victorian merchant’s house, now converted to flats, she said sincerely, ‘Thank you very much for everything you’ve done.’
The words stumbled to silence when he looked at her with cool, dispassionate irony, his angular features clamped into an expression of aloof withdrawal. Tension sparked through her, lifting the hair on her skin. Delayed shock, she thought protectively.
Swallowing, she continued with prickly determination, ‘I don’t like to think of what might have happened if you hadn’t come along.’
‘Don’t think of it. Your scream would have brought someone running. I did nothing,’ he said negligently and got out, swinging around the front of the car to open the door for her. ‘But promise me one thing.’
Clinging to the door, she braced herself. He was too close, but even as the thought formed he stepped back and she pulled herself upright on quivering legs.
‘What?’ she asked, her throat tightening around the words so that they emerged spiky with caution.
His smile was a flash of white in the darkness—sexy, knowledgeable and implacable. ‘That from now on you will call the doorman when you leave the hotel.’
‘From tomorrow I’ll be driving my own car, but I promise I won’t go walking alone at night,’ she responded quickly, groping in her bag for her keys. In her turn she smiled at him. Keep it impersonal, she warned herself, angry because she was so acutely conscious of him, tall and lethally masculine, his dark energy feeding some kind of hunger in her. ‘And I don’t work at the hotel,’ she added.
His eyes narrowed. ‘I saw you—’
‘Handing out snacks,’ she agreed. ‘I’m on the emergency roster and I was called in tonight because flu is laying the staff low.’ It seemed days ago now, as though the telephone call had summoned a different woman.
For someone who wanted to keep things on an impersonal level, she was failing miserably. Get out of here, she told herself silently. Now!
Walking carefully past him, she went up the steps to the front door, unlocked it and turned, to flinch back with dilating eyes at the tall, dominant silhouette that blocked out most of the light.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said harshly, hands closing around her upper arms. Warm, strong, unthreatening, they gave her support and steadiness. Frowning, he said, ‘You’re too pale. You’ve had a shock, and you should have someone to make sure you’re all right.’ His arms closed around her, pulling her into the hard warmth of his body.
In spite of the warnings hammering her brain, Alexa let herself lean on him, accepting the male comfort he offered with a purely female gratitude.
‘You were brave,’ he said on an unexpected note of gentleness. ‘I saw you gauge your options and decide that screaming and fighting back offered the best chance. Quick thinking, and a refusal to accept being a victim. Do you know how to defend yourself?’
‘No. I’ve always thought I should do s-something about it, but I’ve never s-seemed to have the time.’ She stopped her stammered explanation to drag in a quick, shallow breath. It was dangerously sweet to be cosseted. Forcing a brisk note into her voice, she pulled away, both relieved and disappointed when he released her instantly. ‘I’m sorry I interrupted your evening.’
He frowned, the dim light emphasising his brutally handsome features. ‘It was nothing. Can I ring someone for you?’
‘It’s really not necessary—I’m a bit shaky, but a good night’s sleep will fix that.’ Alexa suddenly remembered his coat, still keeping her warm. ‘Oh, your jacket!’ She set her bag down on the balustrade and struggled to get out of it, hauling at the material so recklessly that her shirt lifted free of her waistband.
The Prince’s hands skimmed the silken skin on either side of her waist, then jerked back as though the touch burned him. Alexa’s breath froze in her throat. She stared up into eyes that glittered in the light of the street lamps, into a face as hard and tough as a bronze mask.
For the space of several heartbeats neither moved until Alexa regained her wits enough to leap back and hand over the jacket. Both were careful not to let their fingers touch.
‘There,’ she said in a strained, hoarse voice. ‘And don’t say it was nothing.’
His mouth compressed. In a voice that could have splintered stone, he said, ‘I don’t lie. Go inside.’
Taut with a forbidden excitement, Alexa opened the door and escaped into the hall. ‘Goodbye.’
His dark head inclined. ‘Goodbye, Alexa Mytton.’
Incredulous, she thought she heard an echo of aloneness that mirrored her own. She looked up sharply, but his hard face revealed nothing except self-contained assurance. Heart hammering, Alexa pushed the door closed with an abrupt thud.
She listened until the sound of the car engine was lost in the noise of other vehicles, and then walked along to her flat, thinking that of all the idiotic things to suspect in Prince Luka loneliness was probably the most unlikely.
Yet he was far from the playboy prince she’d imagined, a handsome surface-skimmer, all machismo and conceit. He’d changed from a warrior, quick-thinking, formidable and exceedingly dangerous, to a man who offered aloof kindness and an inherent protectiveness that still surprised her.
Luka Bagaton was a complex, deeply interesting man. ‘S-sexy, too,’ she said aloud.
In the chilly security of her own flat she glanced at her reflection in the mirror, wincing at the feverish gleam in her pale eyes and the hectic flush along her cheekbones.
She had every right to feel jumpy and restless, but she wasn’t going to be able to sleep like this. Still trembling inside, she made herself a cup of milky chocolate, took it across to her computer and sat down to log on, searching for Luka Bagaton on the internet.
An hour later she switched off the computer and got up, stretching muscles that had locked as she’d read about Prince Luka of Dacia.
‘No wonder he’s so self-contained,’ she said, picking up the empty mug of chocolate.
At eighteen his father had succeeded to a princedom on the verge of being invaded by a country across the narrow strait separating the island of Dacia from Europe. Then, amazingly—and probably desperately—he’d married the only child of the dictator who’d threatened his country. His ploy had worked—Dacia had kept a limited independence. A year later the only child of the union had been born.
‘I hope they fell in love,’ Alexa said, yawning. ‘Otherwise it would have been hell for them both.’
Ten minutes before she had to leave for work the next morning, Alexa’s bell pealed. Her brows drew together as she pushed proof sheets into an envelope and went out to answer the chiming summons.
She opened the door to a man carrying a huge bunch of Peruvian lilies, delicately formed and fragile in shades of copper.
‘Miss Alexa Mytton?’ the messenger asked. At her nod he held them out.
Alexa automatically took the lovely things, looking down at the envelope with her name written across it in bold, very definite letters. Her heart jolted as she said, ‘Thank you.’
Back in her flat she arranged them in a glass vase in front of the window, admiring the way the autumn sunlight glowed through the silky, almost translucent petals. Had he chosen them to match her hair?
Only then, overcoming a kind of superstitious reluctance, she opened the envelope. I hope you are feeling much better this morning, he’d written, signing it with an arrogant ‘L’.
A swift shimmer of excitement took her by surprise. They were lovely, she thought, touching one of the lilies with a gentle forefinger.
Oh, all right, he’d probably said to someone, Send some flowers to this address, please, and forgotten about it immediately, but it was thoughtful of him. She swung around and caught up her camera. If only she could catch that silken transparency…
Glancing at her watch, she regretfully put the camera down. It would have to wait.
Alexa stamped into the flat late that afternoon, still tense after a hideous session with an actress who’d insisted on being photographed with her pair of psychopathic Dobermanns, laughing brightly every time they made a determined attempt to eat Alexa’s equipment.
The Peruvian lilies gleamed like copper tulle when she turned on the light, and her strained irritation mutated into a sweet, futile anticipation.
Carole had rung to say she had a full roster, so Alexa knew she wouldn’t see Prince Luka again, but she’d always remember his kindness and his flowers. She’d written a note to thank him for them, and would drop it off at the hotel in a few minutes.
The front doorbell jangled through the room. ‘Oh, great!’ she said, slinging her bag onto a chair. Perhaps it was a friend who’d called in for coffee.
But the man who waited there was no friend, although he looked vaguely familiar.
Before she had time to place him he spoke in an accent that told her what that familiarity was. ‘Miss Mytton?’
Her heart picked up speed. ‘I’m Alexa Mytton.’
‘The Prince wishes to see you,’ he told her impassively, although the dark eyes that lingered on her face were shrewd and perceptive. ‘I’m sorry it’s such short notice, but if you could come with me…’
When she hesitated he frowned and said, ‘I am sorry.’ He drew out a card and presented it with some ceremony.
He was Dion, followed by a long Dacian name. Alexa turned the card over, her eyes scanning the writing on the back—Prince Luka’s writing.
Please accompany Dion, it said, the brief note followed by that same ‘L’.
She was probably being paranoid after last night, but she wasn’t getting into a car with a total stranger. ‘I’m going past the hotel in ten minutes,’ Alexa said. ‘I’ll call in on my way.’
He looked taken aback, but said politely, ‘Yes, of course. I will meet you at the elevators on the third floor.’
Secretly, shamefully glad she was wearing a sleek trousersuit in her favourite bronze, with a silk mesh tank top under the blazer-cut jacket, Alexa closed the door on him and scurried back into the flat to renew her lipstick, before scooping up her car keys.
Why did Prince Luka want to see her? Expectant, yet strangely apprehensive, she parked in the visitors’ car park and took the lift into the hotel.
Sure enough, Dion with the mile-long name was waiting. Although he greeted her cordially enough she sensed his reservation as he opened another elevator with a key and ushered her inside. Kites jostling in her stomach, she stared at the wall until the lift stopped at the penthouse, where a security guard opened the door and ushered them both into a foyer.
‘In here, madam,’ her guide said, opening another door for her.
He stood back as Alexa walked through. Stopping when the door closed behind her, she ignored the huge, opulently furnished room to fix her eyes on the man who turned from contemplation of a crimson sunset to look at her with dangerous metallic eyes.
From somewhere Alexa remembered that when confronted by royalty you waited until you were spoken to. So, although she had to bite back the words that trembled on her tongue as he surveyed her with comprehensive and intimidating thoroughness, she stood silently.
But her eyes sparkled at his unsparing scrutiny, and her mouth tightened as she jutted her chin at him.
‘Have you seen today’s newspaper?’ he asked in a deep, cold voice.
Frowning, she abandoned any attempt at formality and protocol. ‘No. Why?’
He gestured at one spread out on a coffee table. ‘Perhaps you should read it now. In the last section, page three.’
After a baffled glance she walked across to the table and picked up the paper. The conference had made the front page, but the part he referred to was a lifestyle pullout. And there, in the gossip column, someone had ringed an item with a slashing black pen—the same pen that had written the letter ‘L’ on the paper accompanying her flowers.
Incredulously Alexa read the item.
The Prince of Dacia, heaven’s gift to romantic royalists now that the Prince of Illyria is married, is clearly a connoisseur of more in New Zealand than our scenery and wine. Last night, a small but dedicated bird told me, he was seen driving one of Auckland’s busiest young photographers home after the opening banquet of the banking conference. And she was wearing his jacket. What, we wonder, can this mean?
With scornful precision he asked, ‘Did you leak this?’
Alexa’s head jerked upwards. Bitterly—foolishly—hurt, she transfixed him with a furious glare. ‘Of course I didn’t!’
‘Then how did it get into the newspaper?’
She didn’t know what intimidated her more—his anger, frozen and harsh as a blizzard at the South Pole, or his flinty control.
‘I don’t know,’ she told him, clinging to her composure. ‘Someone saw us at the police station, I’d imagine. Fortunately she hasn’t linked you with any specific person.’
‘Perhaps your name will be in the next sly little morsel,’ he said with a cutting edge to his voice.
Her head jerked around and she met the full shock of his gaze. Dry-mouthed, she asked, ‘Why should there be a next one?’
‘Because whoever fed this to the columnist will make sure of it.’
‘Look,’ she said, trying to be reasonable, ‘it’s irritating and naff, but it isn’t the end of the world. People will forget it.’
‘I won’t forget it,’ he said, watching with hooded eyes the way the light smouldered across her hair, loose now around her face. With silky precision he said, ‘I don’t like being used, Ms Mytton.’
In the face of his scornful arrogance she felt hot and foolish and furious. Covering a stab of pain with seething denial, she asked indignantly, ‘Why would I want to use you?’
‘Usually it’s for money,’ he returned caustically, killing Alexa’s jab of sympathy by adding, ‘But often for notoriety—and I imagine that a link to me, however tenuous, would help you advance in your profession. I hope you took no photographs of me last night.’
Pale eyes glittering, Alexa almost ground her teeth. Her quip to Carole about hiding a camera came back to taunt her, bringing colour to her skin—which he noticed. ‘Not a single one,’ she retorted crisply. ‘And I don’t leak titbits to the press. This rubbish—’ she gestured contemptuously at the newspaper ‘—is your area, not mine. And it’s totally without any foundation.’
‘Do you really believe that?’ He crossed the room in two strides, stopping her instinctive retreat by grasping her shoulders.
The previous night Alexa had noticed the strength and support of his hands; now, knocked off-balance by hurt and anger, she felt nothing but the promise of their power.
‘I wish I could believe that there is no foundation for the sly innuendo in that rubbish,’ he said, mockery gleaming in the frozen fire of his eyes, ‘but I am a realist above all else.’
And he bent his head and kissed her.
Afterwards Alexa tried hard to convince herself that it was the sheer unexpectedness that kept her locked un-protesting in his embrace.
But she lied. The second she’d seen Luka she’d been acutely, forcefully aware of him—and in spite of his steely control, she’d recognised a like response. Each time their eyes had met they’d exchanged hidden messages that bypassed logic to kick-start a flagrant hunger.
Fed by clamouring instincts, that secret communication—primitive and involuntary—had grown in quantum leaps, burning away common sense and caution.
Without realising it, she’d been waiting for this moment, all that was female in her knowing it would come. In mute surrender, she relaxed against his taut body.
At the first touch of his mouth something buried inside Alexa split and broke, as though she’d emerged from a chrysalis.
And then, after a kiss as short, brutal and impersonal as a slap, Luka lifted his head to survey her with chilling detachment, the hunger that prowled his eyes disappearing behind their opaque, enamelled surface.
It took every ounce of self-command she could summon to ask sweetly, ‘Had enough?’ letting contempt sharpen each word.
With a bleak, twisted smile he said harshly, ‘Unfortunately, no.’
This time the kiss was neither brief nor brutal. He kissed her with fire and purposefulness, as though he’d longed for her down the years, as though they were lovers who had only this kiss to exchange before bitter fate tore them apart for ever.
Alexa struggled to remain passive, but a terrifyingly raw, untamed force sprang up to meet his open hunger, and—to the shocked astonishment of the last rational part of her mind—match it. Flames rocketed through her, eating away everything but the sheer physical magic of the Prince’s flavour and subtle scent, and the heat and power of his warrior’s body against hers.
It was the increasing hardness of that body rather than the sharp knock on the door that broke into her sensual enslavement. In some dim recess of her brain she remembered that this man might have spent the night with another woman.
When she pushed against his chest he lifted his head and released her, stepping back. Alexa forced her lashes up and looked into eyes as polished and impersonal as the gold they resembled. Oh, he wanted her—he couldn’t hide that—but with nothing more complex than simple lust.