The Prince's Pleasure

‘I imbibed it with my mother’s milk,’ he said, adding with cold distaste, ‘Literally.’

Shocked by the stark authenticity in his words, she muttered, ‘There’s someone at the door.’

‘They’ll wait.’

Possibly his staff were accustomed to waiting for him to finish with the woman of the moment!

Alexa turned away, paradoxically feeling safer now they were back in adversarial mode. ‘They won’t have to. I’m going.’

‘Perhaps you should comb your hair,’ he suggested in a voice that was a maddening mix of amusement and mockery. ‘You look—tumbled.’

Glaring at him, Alexa shook her hair back from her face, but the heavy copper tresses clung to her hot cheeks and temples. She pushed it back with her fingers, but when his dark gaze lingered on her shaking hands she gave up. With a crisp ‘Goodbye’ she walked abruptly towards the door.

Halfway there, she stopped. ‘Thank you for the flowers.’

‘Don’t throw them into the garbage just because I sent them.’ He sounded more than a little bored.

‘It isn’t their fault they came from you.’ She couldn’t resist adding, ‘Although I’ll bet you ordered a minion to send them!’

‘Alas, the days of minions are long past,’ he said, deadpan, adding, ‘Have you got your car back yet?’

‘Yes, thank you.’ Torn by a debilitating mixture of anger and resentment and desolation, she swept out past the man who waited on the other side of the door.

Luka’s eyes met Dion’s and he jerked his head. Obeying the unspoken order, Dion closed the door. He’d accompany her down to her car.

Alone once more, Luka turned away and walked across to the window, to stare at the elaborate terraced garden and pool outside.

Shortly after his seventh birthday he’d screwed his courage to the sticking point and dived through a waterfall to the pool behind it. He’d felt the way he did now—as though the gleaming darkness was a gateway into some other dimension, a place of perilous beauty where he risked the slow dissolution of his innermost self.

Every muscle clenched while he fought to leash an unwanted onslaught of desire. He understood the primitive strength of his own needs and instincts, and over the years he’d caged them in a prison of will-power and discretion.

Yet Alexa Mytton’s smile and the glittering promise in those pale, crystalline eyes had pushed him over the knife-edge of control.

He shouldn’t have kissed her, and once he’d done it he certainly shouldn’t have surrendered to that overmastering need to find out whether she tasted as good the second time as she did the first.

He tried to resurrect his anger, but primal impulses still raced recklessly through his cells. He had work to do.

He was leafing rapidly through papers when another knock at the door signalled Dion’s return. When the other man was inside Luka asked, ‘Did you see her to her car?’

Dion said abruptly, ‘Yes. Luka, the last sighting of Guy was a week ago, when he boarded a ship loaded with medical supplies for Sant’Rosa. I’ve checked, but no one seems to know where it went or what happened to it.’

Luka swore—low, virulent oaths that startled his companion.

When he stopped Dion drew in a sharp breath and said, ‘You’d better tell me what this is all about.’

‘Guy is a hostage,’ Luka said, only a thread of steel in the deep voice betraying his emotions.

Last night’s meeting had begun in an atmosphere that had reeked with suspicion, but he had thought he’d managed to convince the men from Sant’Rosa that he was an entirely neutral emissary. They had discussed the sort of peace they envisaged.

And then they’d produced their trump card in the form of his cousin.

‘In Sant’Rosa? We can spring him,’ Dion said instantly.

‘Without alerting the government?’ Luka shook his head. ‘He’s safe enough for the present. They really want an end to this war, and they’re convinced the rebels want it too. However, they don’t trust anyone—not even anyone from the other side of the world.’ His voice hardened into iron. ‘When Guy appeared they recognised him from the gossip columns and realised they had the perfect way to stop me from double-crossing them. According to the Prime Minister, he is quite safe.’

‘And you believe him?’

‘That far, I believe him,’ Luka said deliberately. ‘And I believe that if any word of this peace initiative gets out to the media Guy could be in serious trouble. Before anyone knows of any possible treaty, they want the deal to be signed and sealed, with a peace-keeping force already on the island.’

Dion frowned. ‘Why?’

‘Because,’ Luka said evenly, ‘the neighbouring state is poised to march across the border and take over. They’ll stay on the sidelines as long as they think the two sides are bleeding to death, but any hint of peace will see them invade. Guy is being kept three miles from the border on the main route to the capital city.’

Dion swore this time.

‘Exactly,’ his Prince said harshly. ‘He’s safe as long as no one knows anything about the possibility of a treaty between the Sant’Rosa rebels and the government.’

‘So what do we do?’ Dion asked, crisp and professional.

Luka said deliberately, ‘From what I heard last night, the rebels won’t be too hard to persuade—especially if they’re promised a place in the new order of things. The government has guaranteed this. I’ve put out feelers amongst the local refugees from Sant’Rosa—apparently there are several with direct links to the rebels.’ He looked at Dion, recognising the other man’s frustration and need for action. ‘Make sure the jet’s ready to fly—we may need to airlift them into Auckland and take them up to the beach house. Apart from that, you’ll do nothing—yet.’ He smiled ironically. ‘And before I start work on a peace plan that will satisfy both sides, I plan to swim.’

Dion said, ‘Guy is tough, Luka. He’ll probably get himself out of there.’

Luka gave a crooked smile. ‘I know.’ He paused and said abruptly, ‘There is something else you can do. Make sure Alexa Mytton is not permitted into the hotel until after the conference is over.’

Although he turned up the jets in the private pool to full power, swimming didn’t clear his mind. Instead of working out a way to free his cousin, or bring both bitterly divided sides to a neutral meeting place, all he wanted was to feel Alexa’s hair around him like some silken tent, each coiling tress caressing his skin into feverish ecstasy. He wanted her to look at him with her ice-clear dangerous eyes smouldering with desire, in the full knowledge of what she was doing. He wanted to feel that passionate mouth on his skin…

He hauled himself out of the pool and strode towards the shower, sweat gathering on his forehead as his body responded to the goad of his thoughts.

More than anything in the world he craved to take her, bury himself deeply in her strong slenderness, mark her by his possession so that any other man’s touch on her would be unthinkable—an insult, an unbearable horror.

Because he was fastidious—and circumspect—there hadn’t been many women in his bed, but without conceit he knew he was a good lover. Partly it was his true appreciation of women’s needs, his pleasure in their softness and their curves, his understanding that making love was an infinitely greater risk for a woman than for a man. But it was the self-mastery taught to him by the courtesan his father had summoned as a sixteenth birthday present that brought his lovers to sobbing fulfilment before he yielded to his own climax.

And it was that control that enabled him to keep himself emotionally distant from each one. He’d been trained in a hard school to think of his country before anything else.

Yet now he’d been ambushed by a hunger that clamoured to take a woman hot-bloodedly and without finesse, loosen control and let mindless white-hot passion ride him to satiety.

A photographer, for God’s sake! And sniffing around now, at the very worst of times. One hint of publicity and the desperate men he’d met last night would disappear out of New Zealand and back into their tropical jungle, and more people would die, more children would grow up uneducated, knowing only war and famine and disease.

And Guy, his younger cousin, could well lose his life.

With a quick, savage flick of his fingers he turned the shower onto full, and when that didn’t tame his rampant body he punched the palm of one hand with a clenched fist and fought the dangerous frustration with hard common sense.

Where had he seen those astonishing eyes before, so pale they were almost transparent, their colour a violent contrast to her warm Mediterranean colouring of creamy skin and copper hair?

A knock on the door brought his head up. ‘What is it?’ he asked with harsh precision.

‘A message, sir,’ his private secretary said urgently. ‘The one you’ve been waiting for.’