Princes of Castaldini: The Once and Future Prince

Now was the same. She didn’t know when she’d taken his hand, or how she’d reached the dance floor. All she knew was that he surrounded her like an extension of her own body, all her missing parts, moving with her, moving her, as if she shared his nervous pathways, as if he was in control of hers.

Suddenly her whole body shuddered on a shockwave. His whisper.Against her temple. “You learned to dance the guadara.”

The guadara. That unique dance born of the inextricable Moorish,Amazigh and Italian folklores that formed Castaldini. She’d seen it performed in rural areas on romantic occasions and at celebrations. She’d never danced it before. She’d never tried.

She was dancing it now, the sensuous rhythm turning her body into a malleable instrument that merged with the demands and vitality of the beat, flowed into the power and beauty of his body, rode the grace and fluency of his movements.

But soon the dance morphed into something else —syncopated footwork, a full-body embrace, entwining legs, a creation of his own invention, and she suspected from the intensity coming off of him in waves, his own improvisation. And that she managed to follow his spontaneous lead, move as one with him…magic.

Suddenly he spooled her away, whirled her back, gathered her, back to chest, in a off-the-ground hug that had emotion blossoming into pain behind her eyes, threatening to burst into an outpouring of pent-up longing and heartache.

Before she could bring herself to struggle, he swept her around and into an embrace that no longer pretended to be about dancing.

She began to shake. Recollections of his possession were brutal, accomplices to his passion, to his eyes as they bore down, burned down on her. She needed a reprieve. She needed…Needed. “Leandro, I—I…”

He wouldn’t let her find words. He lifted her, making her feel weightless, soaring. His arms fused her to his chest, where she’d once nestled for hours, under which she’d writhed in ecstasy, where she’d dreamed of being again every day of the past eight years.

She moaned her greed, her welcome. His eyes grew voracious. Volcanic. She wanted him to devour her, destroy her.

But he only watched her, singed her with the emotions fast-forwarding across his face. Why wouldn’t he give anything to her? His lips, his breath, his possession? Did he want more than surrender?

She succumbed, gave him more, clutched his hair and pulled with all she had. A growl revved inside his chest, driving her to her toes, reaching for his half-open lips. She sealed them, took his scalding “Phoebe” and breath inside her.

He still didn’t respond until she whimpered, “Please…”

The broken entreaty seemed to shatter whatever was holding him back. His lips crashed down on hers, wrenched hot, dark, desperate kisses from her depths. Yes…yes…Leandro…

Leandro. From the first moment, everything about him, everything with him, had been beyond reason, out of the bounds of right and wrong. He’d warranted one-off rules. Still did. And it had been so long without this…without him. No reason was good enough for that kind of deprivation. Had he suffered too? Tell me…

One of his hands answered in spasms of passion in her hair, the other pressing her where contact was a necessity. His legs continued the confession, rough, urgent, spreading hers for the relentlessness of his arousal. Her core wept, remembering, ready. His mouth told her the rest, every molten glide, every invasive thrust showing her how much, just how much…she’d lost.

Suddenly he tore away. She cried out as if he’d ripped her flesh off, surged up, needing his breath so she could breathe, his heartbeat so her heart wouldn’t stop. He let her drag him down, only to bury his face in her neck, her breasts, growling jolts of molten agony to the very depths of her. Then he groaned, “I will do it.”

She jerked as he pushed away, left her swaying without his support. “You—you mean you’re accepting the succession?”

“We will have to wait and see if I’ll accept it. But I will go back to Castaldini. On one condition.”

Tremors wracked her. “I…knew you’d make demands.”

“One demand. Do you also know what it is?”

She bit her lip, trepidation and temptation turning her body into their battleground. “Something concerning me.”

“And what would that be, do you think? From the man who ‘muddies the professional with the personal’? Come on, guess.”

“You want me to…to…” She couldn’t say it, damn him.

“What?” he prodded, a huge cat nudging its exhausted catch to entertain him some more. “Sacrifice your virtue for Castaldini?”

That turned her stone-cold steady. “How can I, when my virtue is something of the past? As you’re best equipped to testify.”

His face turned to stone, too. “Virginity is not virtue, Phoebe. Or have you been on Castaldini so long that you’ve subscribed to its dated, narrow-minded views of morality?”

Her temperature fluctuated from a furnace’s to a freezer’s. “So what do you want? Me, as your secret lover again?”

His smile had her heart thundering with arousal…and dread.

Then he whispered, soft and annihilating, “Nothing so simple. Until I decide to accept the succession or not, I’m staying in my ancestral home in El Jamida on the western shores of Castaldini. My condition is that you live with me there.”

Five

“Live with you?”

Phoebe was stunned to realize that squeak had issued from her. Her speech center was still functioning. Incredible.

Leandro was moving away. He stopped at a waist-high round quartz table sporting another buried-in-ice bottle.

He filled two flutes and flowed back to hand her one. “You object to the condition? Or is it only to the term ‘live’? If so, I wonder why. We’d both ‘live’ while we’re staying there. What would you rather call it? Exist with me? Survive with me? Occupy the same space-time continuum with me?”

“Okay. I’ll call on you when I’m brainstorming my stand-up comedy routine…” She stopped, exclaimed, “Live with you…openly?”

The mockery in his eyes leapt a few notches higher. “You’d rather be my secret lover?”

“That was a question, not an offer.”

He pressed the flute into her hand, engulfed the other in his and swept her to the table, where he hoisted her up on the gleaming metal and red-satin stool, had her feeling he’d perched her at the edge of a skyscraper. He dragged his own stool to touch hers, seared her left side with his body heat as he mounted it. She stared at him with the same fascination that people watched catastrophes in progress.

He gestured to someone, and lazy, sense-soaking music flowed over them. He took her hand, tilted his head at her. “How about being my guest and guide? I’m seeing no more than necessary of those who exiled me. You understand that I don’t harbor nostalgic feelings toward them. But I am out of touch with Castaldini, and I’ll need updates on its current situation. You know, the pulse of the street, the daily worries, the existing public opinions on everything from sports to politics. You are the perfect liaison to reconnect me with it all.”

This was what he meant? What he wanted from her?

She wouldn’t examine the jumble of relief and letdown.

Lobbing this ball back in his court was her only way out of dissecting her stupidity. “Why am I the perfect liaison? I can give you a list off the top of my head of a dozen people who’d be far better at it, born and bred Castaldinians who’d be only too eager to provide you with whatever you need.”

“I want you.”

She choked. On her heart. On his intensity. On longing for what had never and would never be. He’d always wanted her for the wrong reasons. She’d bet he still did.

Instead of arguing against the far deeper wrongness of his reasons now, all that came out was a stifled, “Why?”

“Because most people think nothing of embellishing or outright lying to steer me to the decision they want me to make. Your bluntness proves you’re the only one who’ll give me unbiased reports, that you’ll tell me only the truth. And I need that to come to a decision.”

That didn’t sound like a wrong reason. It sounded very good. Too good to be the truth? At least, the only truth?

Only one way to find out. Only one way to be with this man from now on. Head-on, full-blown confrontation.

“And besides needing my insights and whacks of candor upside your head, do you also want to pick up where we left off?”