Playing the Royal Game

‘It was your plan to shame my family… to make sure that tomorrow there’d be no question that I wasn’t suitable.’

‘Your family took care of that all by themselves,’ Alex said, but that knot of guilt tightened. ‘Come on.’ He took her hand to lead her, but she was not about to be dismissed. At the end of the hall they would turn off, would separate, him to his royal suite, she to her guest room, and there was just too much to be said to leave things here.

‘I want to talk.’

‘We will talk.’

‘I don’t want to leave things till tomorrow.’

‘We won’t,’ Alex said, and then, because he had no choice but to tell her, he did. ‘Now that we’re officially engaged we’ll be sleeping together.’

‘We bloody well won’t!’

‘Not sleeping together…’ he said hurriedly, and at least managed to look a little shamefaced. ‘I had an argument with my parents. I was trying to point out how archaic things are, how ridiculous it is…’ He watched her face, watched her eyes widen, her mouth open to speak; he could feel her tension, like a can of fizzy drink being shaken and shaken and any moment now she would explode, just fizz out her anger all over the corridor. ‘I was talking more about the chosen-bride thing,’ he tried to placate her. ‘This is my parents’ attempt to show me they’ve moved into the twenty-first century. Now that we’re officially engaged we can share a bed.’

‘No…’ Her reaction was instant, there was absolutely no question, but as she spoke he heard a noise behind him, turned and saw the Scandal photographer about to come into the corridor, just as Allegra exploded. ‘If you even think for one moment that I’m going to share—’

He had no choice—there was but one way to silence her. He pressed his mouth to hers, but she was having none of it, and jerked her head away, her protest about to continue. So he pinned her to the wall, took her face in his hands and just pressed her right in.

And pushing him off with her rigid lips wasn’t working. Alex was tall and strong, so she opened her mouth instead to shout, except he kissed her harder; his hands moved faster than hers and captured her wrists as they moved. He wedged her to the wall and she was furious. Yes, he’d paid her, but not for this!