Victoria Parker – To Claim His Heir by Christmas (страница 7)

She shuddered where she sat, swelling until she felt she might burst with the need to protect Nate at all costs. She hadn’t kept his identity a secret all this time to lose him now. Her little boy was having a long, happy and healthy life even if it killed her.

At this rate, Luce, it just might.

When she realised Thane was speaking again, she turned to face him and watched the soft skin around his eyes crinkle as he narrowed those black sapphire peepers on her.

‘So you do not care? You do not care that your fiancé may no longer want you—?’

‘He is not my fiancé.’ Not yet anyway. And she’d rather bask in the fantasy of freedom a while longer, thank you very much.

‘Now, are you sure about that, Luciana?’ he jeered. ‘Because he seemed to think you are. Or is your word now as empty as it was five years ago?’

She made a tiny choked squeak of affront. ‘And what exactly do you mean by that?’

Brooding and fierce, he leaned forward, attacking her brain with another infusion of his darkly sensual scent. ‘You made a promise to me. That you’d stay another week. That we would talk.’

She could virtually feel how tightly reined in he was, and Luciana delved into his turbulent stormy eyes because…was that hurt in his voice? Surely not. How could she possibly hurt this man? No. If anything she’d bruised his male ego. A man who wielded his kind of power likely wasn’t accustomed to being deserted.

Though either way, to be fair, she had promised him she would stay. Hadn’t she?

Yes. She had. They’d become hot and heavy so fast she’d wanted to tell him who she really was. Not to have lies whispering between the damp, tangled sheets. Because in her mind there’d been something so beautiful and pure about what they’d had together the dishonesty had shredded her heart.

She swallowed around the great lump in her throat. It was torture to remember. Utter torture. ‘I did promise you—you’re right. But that was before I found out who you were.’

With his bent elbow resting on the lip of the window, he curled his index finger over his mouth pensively and stared at her. ‘So you didn’t know who I was all along?’

Mouth arid, she licked over her lips. ‘No, I didn’t know who you were. Of course I didn’t.’

‘Are you telling me the truth? You swear it?’

‘Yes.’ Did he think she’d duped him? ‘I couldn’t have set up the way we met even if I tried, Thane. Don’t you remem—?’

Slam! She locked the vault shut before all the memories it had taken her so long to ensnare were unleashed. Escaping to create havoc in her soul. Best to forget. For all their sakes.

‘Let’s just call it an ironic twist of fate,’ she said, hearing the melancholy in her voice. ‘We were young. Stupid. Reckless. I didn’t know you at all. I’d fallen into bed with a stranger…’ And I awoke to a nightmare. ‘I found your papers, Thane.’

She’d never forget that moment as long as she lived. Standing in the dim light of their bathroom, feeling naked and exposed, his nationality papers for travel that she’d stumbled across quivering in her hand. The realisation she was sleeping with the enemy.

‘And after three, almost four weeks,’ he said fiercely, ‘of our being inseparable, spending every waking and sleeping moment together, your first instinct was to run? With not one word? Do you have any idea…?’

Veering away from her, he clenched his jaw so tight she heard his molars groan in protest. And she swiftly reassessed the idea that she’d caused him pain by leaving the way she had.

Remorse gathered in the space behind her ribs and trickled down into her stomach to merge with the ever-present pool of guilt that swelled and churned with her secrets every minute of every day. The painful struggle between truth and darkness.

But, looking back, she remembered she’d been consumed with the need to flee.

First had come denial and bewilderment. She’d been unable to match the dark, dangerous, merciless Prince with the somewhat shy—at least around women—rock music lover who’d held her cherishingly tight through endless nights of bliss. Then terror had set in, leaving her panic-stricken, contemplating how he’d react when he discovered who she was. And heartache, knowing she had to leave before he found out. Knowing that while she toyed with the temptation of staying in touch, meeting up again, suddenly another hour was too much of a hazard, a risk, never mind some far-off midnight tryst.

So she’d run. Taken the good memories instead of tainting them with bitterness and regret. Run as fast as she could with her heart tearing apart.

Glancing out at the snow-capped peaks of the Tarentaise Valley, she took a deep breath and then exhaled, her warm breath painting a misty cloud upon the window. If he needed closure in order to forget and let her go, then so be it.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t let you know I was leaving. Write you a note or something. I didn’t mean to hurt you that way. But it was over. We had an affair—that’s all. There could never have been a future for us.’

Chills skittered over her skin and she crossed her arms over her chest, rubbing the gooseflesh from her shoulders. She was so lost in thought she didn’t notice his hand reaching across the back of the bench seat until it was in her periphery and she flinched. Hard. Unsure what to expect from him.

‘Are you afraid of me now?’ he asked, his voice gruff as if she’d sanded the edge off his volatility.

Was she afraid of him? Genuinely?

No. Though she couldn’t really understand why.

Because deep down you know he won’t hurt you. Deep down you know the man who took your innocence with such gentle passionate persuasion would never physically hurt you in a million years.

But that didn’t mean he couldn’t emotionally destroy her. And Nate. That he was capable of.

So maybe she did fear him. Just not in the way he meant.

Luciana gave her head a little shake and he picked up a lock of her hair and rubbed the strands between his fingertips. ‘I wouldn’t have recognised you. How different you look this way.’

She had the ludicrous desire to ask him if he liked the way she looked. The real her. Or if he’d fallen for a black-haired hippy who didn’t exist. But the reality was it was best she didn’t know.

‘It was a lifetime ago,’ she said, immensely proud of her strong voice when she felt so weak when he was close. ‘Forget the person I pretended to be in Zurich. I was just…’ She had to swallow hard to push the words out. ‘Acting out. Letting loose. Having a bit of fun.’

Such a lie. But maybe if he thought their wild, hedonistic fling meant nothing to her he’d hate her. Let her go…

Et voilà.

Easing back, he created a distance that felt as deep and wide as the Arunthian falls.

‘Fun,’ he repeated tonelessly. ‘Well, that makes both of us.’

Her stomach plunged to the leather seat with a disheartened thump. Because it was just as she’d always suspected.

Stiffening her spine, she brushed her hair back from her face. ‘There you go, then. There really is no point in dragging this out.’

He said nothing. Simply leaned back and glared at her with such intensity she felt transparent.

Jittery, she shifted in her seat and rammed her point home.

‘Thane, you have to let me go back to Arunthia. To my family. They need me. I’ve got to get married soon. I—’

‘No.’

‘No? But haven’t I given you an explanation? What more could you possibly want from me?’

‘That is a very good question, princesa.’

And Luciana had the feeling she wasn’t going to like the answer. Not one bit.

CHAPTER THREE

THANE IGNORED THE EYES that were boring into his skull and riffled through the mini-bar of the limousine for some hard liquor. She was turning him to drink already—he was insane even to contemplate what enticed his mind.

Snatching a miniature of bourbon, he unscrewed the lid, then tipped the contents onto his tongue and let the fiery liquid trickle down his throat in a heavenly slow burn.

From the corner of his eye he saw Luciana pick up a bottle of sparkling water and commanded himself not to look, to watch. To devour all that beautiful, riveting bone structure—her nose a delicate slope of pure femininity, pronounced razor-sharp cheekbones a supermodel would kill for—those intoxicating brandy-gold eyes and that glossy, over-full wanton mouth as she drank.

Dios, she made his flesh and blood blaze. And it had been so long since he’d felt anything that he was consumed. By want. By hate. It was a terrifically violent and lethal combination that was taking all of his will power to control.

While she speared darts of ire or disbelief in his direction, poised and elegant in her glamorous couture black and white ensemble, all he could think of was her pupils dilated, her hair tossed over his pillow in gloriously messy abandon, and raw, primal sheet-clawing passion.

But it was more than that, wasn’t it? He’d thought his memories were long dead, murdered by the passage of time and the strife in Galancia, but since he’d touched her he’d started to remember.

Remember being held close against her bare skin, feeling truly wanted—a real man made from flesh and hot blood, willing to pay whatever price it took to sustain that feeling a while longer. And, while he wanted that back, he knew it was lost to him.