Royals: Claimed By The Prince: The Heartbreaker Prince / Passion and the Prince / Prince of Secrets

Hannah struggled to her feet imagining the headlines. ‘Don’t hurt him!’

The plea caused Kamel’s attention to swivel from the man he held to Hannah.

‘Please?’

A muscle along his jaw clenched as he stared at her. Then, with a nod that caused two invisible figures to emerge from the trees, he stood aside and the trio walked away.

‘Sure you don’t want to go and hold his hand?’

‘I wasn’t protecting him. I was protecting you.’ Why are you explaining yourself to him? she wondered. It’s not as if he’s going to believe you and it’s not like you care what he thinks.

A look of scowling incredulity spread across his face. ‘Me? You are protecting me?’ He had no idea why her caring about someone who was clearly an abusive loser bothered him so much, but it did.

Her eyes moved slowly up the long, lean length of his muscle-packed body. It was hard to imagine anyone who looked less like he needed looking after.

‘The press could dub you something worse than The Heartbreaker Prince.’ She paused and saw him absorb her comment. His anger still permeated the air around them but it simmered now where it had boiled before. ‘Rob likes to play the victim. I can just see the headlines now...’

‘I wasn’t going to hit him, but if I had he wouldn’t have been running to any scandal sheet,’ he retorted, managing to sound every bit as sinister as Rob had implied he was. While Hannah believed Rob’s comments were motivated by malice, there was no escaping the fact that she knew very little about the man she had married and what he was capable of.

Unwilling to release his image of her as a cold-hearted, unapproachable ice bitch, he asked, ‘What the hell were you thinking of meeting him out here?’

What the hell had she been thinking about getting involved with him to begin with? The man had been mentally filed in his head as a victim. Stupid, but a victim, and now he turned out to be a... His fists clenched as he found himself wishing he had not shown restraint.

Temper fizzed through her body, sparking wrathful blue flames in her eyes. ‘Are you implying that I arranged this? Rob followed me!’

‘And I followed him.’ It was an impulse that he had not checked even though it was a situation that had not required his personal intervention. In fact his abrupt departure had probably caused more speculation than Hannah’s.

‘Why? I thought you delegated all that sort of thing.’

‘There are some things that a husband cannot delegate.’ She might not be wife material but she was definitely mistress material. She might be the sort of woman he would normally cross the road to avoid, but there was no denying that physically she was perfect.

‘So you thought it was your duty to rescue me.’ She had about as much luck injecting amusement into her voice as she had escaping his dark, relentless stare. It was becoming harder to rationalise her response to his strong personal magnetism, or control the pulse-racing mixture of dread and excitement whenever he was close by.

‘Little did I know you had it all under control.’

Her clenched teeth ached at the sarcasm. ‘My hero riding to the rescue yet again.’

‘I thought I was rescuing your...’

‘Victim?’

He dragged his smouldering glance free of her cushiony soft lips and found himself staring at her heaving bosom. ‘The man is...’ He said a word that she didn’t understand but it was not hard to get the drift. ‘What is your ex doing at our wedding party?’

The accusation made her blink. ‘The word party suggests celebration. Tonight has felt more like a punishment. And yes, we all know this is my fault, though I have to tell you that line is getting a bit boring. I’m willing to take my medicine and make nice and pretend you’re almost as marvellous as you think you are, but if this marriage is going to last, and I’m talking beyond the next few seconds, it won’t be on a speak-when-you’re-spoken-to, walk-two-steps-behind-me way. I am not willing to be a doormat!’

She released a shuddering sigh and warmed to her theme. ‘So from now on I expect to be treated with some damned respect, and not just in public!’ Oh, God! Overwhelmed with a mixture of horror and exhilaration, she could not recall losing control of herself quite so completely in her life. Hannah brought her lashes down in a protective veil as she gulped in several shallow breaths while her heart rate continued to race.

The ice queen is dead! Long live the princess of passion! His mental headline tugged the corners of his mouth upwards, but the curve flattened out as he felt his body stir lustfully. It wasn’t the physical response that bothered him; it was the strength of it and the fact it kept intruding.

Mentally and physically, discipline and order were important to Kamel. He had never made a conscious decision to compartmentalise the disparate aspects of his life, but he took the ability for granted and it enabled him to combine the role he had unexpectedly inherited and any sort of personal life.

It had not crossed his mind that being married would lead to any overlap. Tonight came under the heading of duty, with a capital D. Such occasions were more than useful, they were essential, and he definitely shouldn’t be thinking about how she’d look naked, and how soft and inviting her mouth was. Had she just said what he thought she had? He clenched his teeth and struggled to regroup his thoughts. Focus, Kamel—but not on her mouth.

‘Would I be right in thinking that was an...’ he spoke slowly, winged brows drawn into a straight line, and shaking his head slightly as though the concept he was about to voice was just so off the planet as to be unreal ‘...ultimatum?’

Hannah didn’t pause to analyse the weirdness in his voice. If he wanted to call it that it was fine by her! Like an angry curtain, the protective veil of her lashes lifted, but her militant response was delayed as their glances connected and the subsequent sensual jolt caused her brain to stall.

‘I if...I...?’

The nerve endings in her brain might have stopped sending messages, but during that long, nerve-shredding pause those elsewhere had stepped up to fill the vacuum. She could almost feel the blood racing through her veins—it felt dark and hot like the ache low in her pelvis. She snatched a breath, let it out in a quivering sigh, and lifted her chin.

‘Yes, it is, and,’ she added, wagging her finger as she took a squelchy step towards him, ‘if you want to know about the damned guest list why ask me? Ask Dad. I probably know half a dozen people here by first name. You’re the one in the loop. I’m here to smile and take one for the team.’

‘Take one for the team?’

‘What else would you call it?’ His outrage struck her as the height of hypocrisy. ‘Apologies to your ego, but don’t expect me to pretend I like the situation when we’re alone!’

‘No. You’ll just pretend you haven’t thought about what it will be like.’

‘What what would be like?’

His slow predatory smile sent a pulse of sexual heat through her body.

‘Oh, that.’ She faked amusement to cover her embarrassment. ‘Now? Here?’ She laughed a high-pitched laugh. ‘Has anyone ever mentioned your awful timing?’

‘Actually, no.’

She swallowed hard, thinking, That I can believe. ‘Silly me! Of course, even if you were lousy in bed they’d still tell you how marvellous you were because you’re—’ She broke off and finished lamely, ‘You’re...a prince.’

‘You’re a princess.’

‘What?’

‘You’re a princess.’

As in dignified, serene, gracious, aloof...qualities that when she’d been plain old Hannah Latimer she’d had in abundance. Now she was the real deal—a real princess—she’d turned into some sort of fishwife!

It isn’t me, it’s him, she thought, levelling a look of breathless resentment up at his impossibly handsome face. He was the one who was making her act this way, the one who was making her feel...out of control. Because of him she was saying the first thing that popped into her head. She’d lost every vestige of mental censorship; she was saying things she didn’t know she felt...

‘Oh, God!’ Without warning, the adrenalin wave that she’d been riding suddenly broke and she started shaking.

Watching her wrap her arms around herself, an action that didn’t disguise the fact she was shaking like a leaf, Kamel felt a sharp stab of guilt. ‘You’ve had a bad experience.’ A fact he was a little late acknowledging.

She slung him a look. Anybody hearing him would think he gave a damn. ‘I’m fine. Look, it was handy you turned up when you did.’ He was the last person in the world she would have wanted to see her in that position, but that didn’t alter the fact she had needed saving. ‘And if the opportunity ever arises and some ex-girlfriend of yours comes to scratch your eyes out I’ll return the favour.’ By the time the last syllable had left her lips Hannah was utterly drained; her ironic smile was not weak, it was non-existent.

‘So you will rescue me?’ He was torn between amusement, astonishment and an uncharacteristic impulse that he firmly quashed. Comforting embraces were so not his style.

She felt the colour rush to her cheeks. ‘You think that’s funny because I’m a woman.’ Hopping on one foot while she bent to try and retrieve the shoe that had been sucked into a patch of mud, she turned her head and threw him a look of frowning dislike. ‘You going to stand there and watch?’