A Royal Engagement: The Storm WithinThe Reluctant Queen Read online

  Which made no sense when all he had wanted last night was have that woman bucking beneath him.

  Why was she doing this to him? And how?

  He dragged in air. Damn her. He was hard as a rock, his loins aching with need and another woman waiting naked in bed for him. Why was he even thinking about her?

  He growled and approached the bed, shucking off his robe and tossing it to the floor, already half dizzy with the heady anticipation of release. His erection rocked free, heavy and hard. He steadied it with one hand to don protection and felt his searing, throbbing heat against his palm. Dio, he needed this.

  He pulled back the covers and stared down at her in the dim light. She was smiling knowingly, even though her eyes were dreamily closed, her head tipped back as if she was already in ecstasy, her hands busy at her breasts, tugging at her nipples, making them hard for him. Usually he’d spend some time with those breasts, but today his need was too great.

  ‘Open your legs,’ he commanded, and if she wondered at his brusque manner she didn’t show it in the way she acquiesced without a murmur. And why shouldn’t she do what he asked she when she was going home with the equivalent of a month’s wages in her pocket? She’d do anything he asked and more.

  He gazed down at her, took in the glossy hair splayed over the pillow, her olive skin with its satin-like sheen in the half-light, her breasts plump and peaked. He was rock-hard and wanting and he wondered why the hell he was hesitating and not already inside her.

  Until he realised that there was somewhere else he’d rather be.

  With a cry of frustration he snapped on the light. ‘Get dressed,’ he ordered. ‘Bruno will take you to the boat.’

  ‘Did I do something wro—?’

  He was reaching for his robe and tugging it on, but not before she’d opened her eyes to plead, no doubt worried she would not be paid. He caught the exact moment of change, when her eyes moved from protest to revulsion, and she pulled the covers back over herself as if to protect herself from his hideousness.

  With a roar he ripped the covers straight back off. ‘Just go!’

  He could wallow in them if he wanted. He could let those black waves rise up and swallow him whole, sucking him back to that dark time and those dark nights when there was no respite, no relief.

  Or he could deal with the problem, get rid of the source of his aggravation, and be able to breathe in his own space again.

  He would not be sucked back.

  He would deal with the problem.

  Because everything had been fine until she had come along. She would just have to leave.

  Now.

  He headed to her office to tell her exactly that. After all, it wasn’t as if the pages were in terrible condition and too fragile to be shifted. They looked fine as far as he was concerned. And besides, the longer she was here, the more chance someone would talk, someone would stumble on the news of the discovery, and the sharks and parasites of the media world would descend en masse. The story could break somewhere else—anywhere else; he didn’t care—and then the media attention would be someone else’s problem.

  So he would tell her. And then she would go.

  Nothing could be simpler.

  The door to her office was slightly ajar. He pushed it open, still rehearsing his speech. It wouldn’t be a long one. Pack your things and be ready for the next boat, was about the size of it. Still, knowing Dr Hunter and how she liked an argument, he was mentally preparing for a fight.

  He was also preparing himself to win.

  She was sitting at the desk, so intent on one of the pages she was studying and on the notes she was typing in the notebook computer alongside that she didn’t hear him enter. She looked younger today, even with the frown puckering her brow, or maybe she just looked fresher. She’d dispensed with the ponytail and instead had twisted her hair behind her head so the blonde tips feathered out, and she’d swapped the khaki shirt for a white tank with straps so thin he wondered how they covered her bra straps.

  Assuming she was wearing one…

  Breath whooshed from his lungs. His blood rushed south. She muttered something, still oblivious to his presence, and jumped out of her chair, wheeling around to the briefcase on the credenza beside her, rummaging through its contents. It would be rude to interrupt now, he thought, when she was so intensely involved in her work. Besides, the view from the back was no hardship to endure either. A well-worn denim skirt lovingly hugged her bottom and made his hands itch to do the same. But it was the length of the skirt he approved of most, or rather the lack of it, showcasing the surprisingly long legs beneath.

  He sucked in air, desperate to replace what he had lost. She was nothing like the woman from the village. That woman was olive-skinned and dark-eyed, lush with curves and sultry good-looks. Whereas this one was blonde and petite, blue-eyed and more than slightly bookish. It made no sense.

  Except for one more difference that made all the sense in the world.

  This woman he wanted.

  She pulled something from the briefcase then, a sheaf of papers, and looked up, blinking warily when she saw him standing in the doorway. ‘Count Volta. I wasn’t expecting you.’

  He nodded. ‘Dr Hunter,’ he acknowledged, moving closer, searching his mind, certain that he’d been intending to say something but knowing only that he needed to get closer—maybe then it would come to him. And maybe he might even find an answer to his earlier question. But before he could latch onto his reason for coming, or work out whether there were telltale lines under her singlet after all, her face broke into one of those electric smiles. He felt the charge all the way to his toes, felt the jolt in his aching length.

  ‘You picked the best time to drop by. Come and see.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I translated the first of the pages. It’s a prayer, a midnight prayer, beseeching the coming of dawn and an end to the darkness of night.’

  He looked at the page and then at the translation she had up on her screen. ‘And that’s important because…?’

  ‘Don’t you see? The Salus Totus was revered—no, more than that, almost worshipped in its own right—as a book of healing. But little of the book remains to explain why. Remnants talk of eating and drinking in moderation, of taking fresh air, and while that is good advice, scholars have always felt there must have been more to warrant such a reputation for miracle cures and saved lives. Speculation has existed for centuries as to what might be in the missing pages and why they were removed.’

  He didn’t understand what she was getting at. He couldn’t honestly say he cared. But her face was so animated with whatever she’d discovered that he could not help but join in the game. He shrugged. ‘Because the pages offended someone they had to be destroyed?’

  She shook her head. ‘That’s the most common theory, I agree, but I don’t think it’s right. Not now. I think they were sliced from the book not to destroy them but to save them.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because they’re secular. They’re prayers of life and living that talk about the earth as mother of all. Nothing offensive to us now, in these times, but for all their gentle truths and wisdom they would have been seen as blasphemy then. The only reason we have what remains of the Salus Totus is because these pages were removed from inside its covers. With them gone there was no risk of offending anyone and the book could live on in more than memories. If they had stayed, the Salus Totus would surely have been thrown into the fires. So you see, by removing them from the book someone was trying to preserve them. Someone was trying to ensure their survival.’

  Colour was high in her cheeks. Her blue eyes were so bright they had a luminous quality. He didn’t know anything about ancient texts or book-burning, but he knew he was burning and if he didn’t do something soon he would self-combust. His hand found its way to her shoulder, scooped around to her nape, his fingers threading into the upward sweep of her hair. She blinked up at him, questions in her clear eyes to which he had no
answers.

  Except that he wanted her.

  CHAPTER SIX

  SHE trembled slightly as he dipped his mouth and brought her close, but it was not fear he sensed under his hand but an answering tremor of need. And then his lips touched hers and she sighed into his mouth. It was all he could do not to crush her to him. It was all he could do to remember to breathe. And when he did it was filled with the tantalising fresh perfume of her set amidst the coiling scent of desire.

  He drew her closer, her lips soft under his own, pliant, her body close enough that they touched, chest to chest, her nipples hard against him. No bra, he registered with that small part of his brain still functioning, aching to fill his hands with her sweetness. Aching to fill her. Aching…

  His hand cupped her behind, angling her back towards the desk, deepening the kiss as he lifted her.

  She should not be doing this. She should have told him no. She had felt his warm hand slide around her neck, seen his mouth descend and known she should stop him.

  Except she hadn’t.

  Just one taste, she’d foolishly thought, before she’d insist they stop. One taste of a man who could turn her inside out with just one heated glance. One taste of a man who made her feel more acutely aware of her gender and her innate femininity than she’d ever felt before.

  And now, with his lips on hers, coaxing, bewitching, one taste wasn’t enough. One taste led to a hunger for more. He was addictive. Compelling. Impossible to deny.

  Her body was his accomplice. Her skin rejoiced at his touch. Her mouth revelled in his mastery and his mystery.

  Even when his hand slid to her behind, squeezed her and caused every muscle inside her to contract and then bloom, even when she felt a moment of panic and knew this was dangerous and foolhardy and reckless and so many of those things she had never been, she could not stop herself. For whatever he was awakening in her, whatever madness he was unleashing, she wanted more.

  She gasped into his mouth and found no respite, for he claimed her lips in a savage kiss that fuelled her desires and quenched her now wafer-thin resistance. And, whatever he was doing, she knew it was well worth the price. For his kiss was a drug, pulling at her sensibilities, his touch on her flesh a sizzling brand.

  Divorced from reality, she was his for the taking—almost. For when she felt his hands beneath her, lifting her, when she felt herself settled somewhere he could so deliciously insinuate his legs between hers, there came the tiniest glimmer of doubt—almost as if she’d lost hold of something she should remember in the firestorm of their mutual desire.

  But no rational thought could find a way through this forbidden haze of primal need, and she gave herself up to the wanton pleasure of his hot mouth at her breast.

  Until she reached back to steady herself against his pressing weight and felt her hand brush something aside—something featherlight that fluttered from the table.

  She wrenched her mouth away from his, turned her head to see the centuries-old page flutter to the floor. With a mighty shove born of panic she pushed him away. ‘What the hell are you thinking?’

  The words were directed as much as to herself as to him. She was madder with herself, because she should have known better. What a fool! She swiped a glove from the box on her desk, pulling it on as she knelt down. If her actions had compromised the page’s condition she might as well give up her job now. She would never forgive herself. Maybe she should give it up anyway, given she’d so easily disregarded her first responsibility. A paper that had survived for centuries only to be destroyed by a thoughtless couple behaving on top of it like hormone-driven teenagers—and one of them the person charged with ensuring its preservation. That would look good in her report. If she wanted to make a name for herself in this industry, a name nobody would ever forget, there would be no faster or surer way.

  What the hell had she been thinking?

  That was an easy one. Clearly she hadn’t been thinking—not beyond her own carnal desires.

  ‘It looks fine.’

  Maybe to him. Nothing looked fine from her angle. Everything was off-kilter. Everything was wrong. She swiped sudden tears from her eyes, not sure if they stemmed from what had just so nearly happened on the desk or from relief that the page appeared to have survived its ordeal intact. But she was not about to risk dripping salty tears all over the page and add insult to injury. ‘Just go, will you?’

  She slid a folio beneath the page, lifting it gently back to the desk, using the opportunity to take a few more steps and put the desk between them at the same time. She would have to check the page for materials and fibres picked up from the rug, but pulling out her tweezers and microscope would have to wait until the Count had gone and her hands had stopped shaking.

  ‘Dr Hunter…’

  ‘Haven’t you done enough? I asked you to go.’

  His jaw firmed, his eyes grew hard edged. ‘You’re blaming me?’

  ‘I certainly didn’t kiss you!’

  ‘No? I distinctly remember there were two of us there. And I sure as hell don’t remember anyone complaining.’

  She squeezed her eyes shut, remembering only too well her lack of resistance. ‘I think we both made a mistake. And now, if you don’t mind, I have work to do.’ She curled her hands into fists, willing the shaking to stop, trying to make sense of this unfamiliar recklessness and get her scientific self back together while he loomed there, her very own dark cloud.

  ‘Have dinner with me tonight.’

  Her breath caught. Dinner—and what else? Why the sudden hospitality? Unless he was looking to finish what he’d started?

  ‘I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.’

  ‘You have to eat.’

  ‘I’m very good at eating alone. Luckily, as it happens.’

  ‘If that’s a dig at the way you’ve been treated here—’

  ‘Take it how you like. But I live alone. I’m good with it.’

  He regarded her coolly from under hooded lids. ‘You’re afraid.’

  ‘I’m not afraid of you. It’s just that I don’t see the point. Every time we’re together we end up arguing or—’

  His chin lifted, a spark glinted in his eyes. ‘You are afraid we will not argue?’

  ‘Should I be?’

  ‘I think whether or not we argue is something that is as much up to you as it is to me.’

  And that was exactly what she was afraid of. One kiss and she’d forgotten who she even was. How could something as mechanical as the meeting of two mouths do that? She’d had lovers before, and neither of them had come close to making her feel anything like this man did. Okay, so maybe her first time had been more clinical than exciting, and borne of desperation that she would be the sole virgin in her university graduating class, and the second time had been grief sex with a colleague after a child she’d nursed for days in the refugee hospital had died in her arms. It had been bitter and sweet and life-affirming and exactly what she’d needed at the time, but it had been nothing to rival the impact of even this man’s kiss.

  Dared she dine with him? If he kissed her again, how would she resist? And with what? She had no defences against such an onslaught. If she even wanted to stop it. She hadn’t before, and if that paper hadn’t fallen to the floor what would they be doing now? She shuddered and squeezed her eyes shut, but it didn’t stop the images dancing in her mind’s eye. Right there, on the desk.

  ‘You can tell me more of your theories,’ he prompted, clearly sensing her waver, ‘and perhaps I can share mine about why the pages might have ended up here under the castle.’

  He had a theory? She looked up. She wanted to hear that. She just wasn’t certain about the you-show-me-yours-and-I’ll-show-you-mine subtext. ‘Or,’ she countered, ‘you could just tell me now.’

  ‘But you have work to do, my dear Dr Hunter. And I have already disturbed you enough.’

  True, but he would continue to disturb her whether or not he was here—now more than ever. ‘Look,’ she said,
shaking her head, knowing it would be crazy to expect they could dine together and pretend that kiss had never happened. She gestured down at her casual singlet and skirt. ‘I didn’t expect to be entertained. I brought nothing—’

  ‘On the contrary,’ he interjected, ‘you look charming. But if it pleases you I’m sure we can find you something you will be more comfortable in.’

  She sighed, knowing she was fighting a losing battle. Of course he was sure to have an entire women’s wardrobe at his disposal. Or maybe Bruno was also a fine seamstress. ‘Fine,’ she said in resignation, just wanting more than ever to get back to her work. There was an outside chance she could finish up the translations today, and if she did that, given the excellent condition of the pages, there was no reason why she couldn’t leave early and finish the rest of her report elsewhere. She had contacts in any number of universities across Europe that had the right facilities and who would be delighted to play host to such a famous text. And he wanted her gone. Surely she could survive just one meal together? ‘Fine. In that case I’d be delighted to join you for dinner.’

  His eyes glinted with victory. ‘It is a long time since I had the pleasure of a beautiful woman as my dinner companion.’

  ‘You don’t have to resort to flattery, Count Volta. I have already said I’d come.’

  ‘Alessandro,’ he said, with a nod and a smile at her acquiescence. ‘And I shall call you Grace. I think we can drop the formalities, don’t you?’ He bowed his head and finally headed for the door. ‘Until dinner, then.’

  She nodded absently, turning back to her work, knowing she should be concentrating on that rather than replaying the sound of his name in her head.

  Alessandro.

  Oh, no. She didn’t like that. She didn’t want to give him a name. She didn’t want to think of him as Alessandro. She preferred to think of him as the Count. It made him sound remote. A little unreal.