Prince Xander

by Cardello, Ruth

  He suddenly wanted her to like him. Not because he was a prince. Not because once he took her into Rubare Collina her life would depend on her loyalty to him. He wanted her to always look across the room at him the way she just had.

  He frowned and reminded himself what he wanted didn’t matter when it came to what he needed to do. His path had been chosen for him a long time ago. As it had been for his father before him, and his father before him.

  Now that he had chosen Reanna, he needed to win her trust and then her heart. She needed to be willing to announce her loyalty to him and to his country before the royal council. And she needed to do it before his thirtieth birthday.

  If she didn’t, she would be sentenced to death. It was a brutal law, born in a desperate time, but it had been honored by every generation of his family. In the three hundred years since it had been decreed, only two women had met that awful fate. No one spoke of either. Xander only knew because Simon had wanted him to understand the seriousness of his task and the severity of the punishment if he failed.

  Foolishly, Xander had imagined winning a woman’s heart would be easy. It might have been had he chosen one of the nine he’d met before Reanna. Some had already known who he was, and although no one outside of the royal family knew the darker side of the marriage law, they had imagined themselves queens and would have been willing to do whatever he’d asked.

  Reanna would not be as easy to convince. As he watched her pause from typing to peer at him shyly before returning to her task, he considered walking away from her.

  What if she didn’t fall in love with him in time? Could he stand by while she was put to death? The very idea sickened him.

  So, what do I do? Choose a woman I don’t care for at all? Would that woman’s life mean less?

  No, I chose Reanna. I will be good to her. She will not refuse me. She will not run from me. My sons will not be raised by a miserable woman as I was.

  “Are you bored?” Reanna asked softly. “You don’t have to keep working on this with me. You probably thought it would be interesting. This stage isn’t. Not really. It’s just logging the data and writing up a summary. I’ll understand if you want to leave.”

  “Do you want me to go, Reanna?” he asked and hated that he held his breath while waiting for her answer.

  She smiled at him shyly. “No. It’s nice to have someone to do this with.”

  And there it was. Even though, Reanna didn’t know it, she had just decided her own fate.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  That’s it! It’s done,” Reanna said several hours later, as she attached her summary spreadsheets along with her findings to an e-mail and hit send. She closed the laptop, but didn’t look at Xander. Without the buffer of the project between them, she wasn’t sure what to do next.

  To fill the awkward silence, she said, “Now all I have to do is drop off the samples and hardcopy files, then I don’t ever have to go back to Biostern.”

  Reanna jumped when Xander threw the file he was holding onto the kitchen table beside her. He asked, “You’ve worked at that company for three years. Why would you leave it now?”

  Reanna’s eyes flew to his. “How do you know how long I’ve worked there?”

  He folded his arms across his chest again and calmly said, “I am a man of influence, Reanna. I don’t have the luxury of taking people at their word. I have to know who I’m dealing with.”

  “You’ve had me investigated?”

  “Extensively.”

  Reanna clasped her hands before her on the table and parried, “Then you already know why I don’t want to work there anymore. Why ask?”

  “Because I want to hear the reason from you.”

  She didn’t want to tell him. The look he gave her reminded her of Kendra. Reanna wanted to run and hide, but he wouldn’t let her. There was something scary, but also exciting, about that realization. “It’s humiliating.”

  His jaw tightened visibly as did the muscles in his broad shoulders. “An idiot can only hurt you if you give him the power to.”

  Although she barely knew the man standing in her kitchen, part of her trusted him. “You can say that, but I doubt anyone has ever laughed at you. I doubt you know how it feels to be powerless, to know no matter what you do, no matter how you try, you’ll lose.”

  His expression remained carefully controlled. “But you do?”

  She nodded, and looked away.

  For a long moment, a silence fell between them. Then he said, “Do you know when you are most beautiful, Reanna?”

  Reanna kept her eyes glued to one of her chipped fingernails. She never considered being perfectly groomed important, but just this once, just for one night, she wished she were. “No,” she said softly.

  “When you look at me.” He said the words so simply, so matter-of-factly, but they rang sincere.

  She met his eyes again. Nothing she was feeling made sense to her. She should be afraid of him. But more than anything else, she wanted to continue to feel the way she did around him. He made her feel safe—special.

  “Come here,” he said in a soft command.

  Reanna froze in her seat. She wanted to go to him, but it didn’t make sense. She had told him when the project was done she would ask him to leave. That’s what she should do. Whatever he was offering her couldn’t be real.

  In a voice that was a temptation all by itself, he asked, “What holds you back?”

  Reanna looked down, hating her habit of doing so, but unable to stop herself.

  “Look at me, Reanna.”

  She did, and her breath caught in her throat. In all of her twenty-five years, no man had ever looked at her as if he already owned part of her soul. She whispered, “I’m scared. You could be here to hurt me. I’m comfortable with things I can measure and predict. I don’t know what you want from me.”

  “Turn the question around, Reanna. What do you want from me?”

  Possibly for you to call 911 because I might pass out if you keep looking at me that way. “What do I want?” She repeated his question, stalling as she tried to gather her scattered thoughts.

  “Everyone wants something. Are you content with your life as it is?”

  Reanna hunched her shoulders, unable to voice how he made her want what she’d stopped allowing herself to hope for. She wordlessly stared into his remarkable blue eyes, sure he would soon say something to break the spell he had cast over her.

  “Let’s play a little game,” he said so softly she almost didn’t hear him. “I’ll tell you something about yourself, and if I’m right you must do one thing I ask you to do.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a fair game, considering you’ve had me investigated.” Nor did it sound like a wise game. She should tell him to leave. Instead, she bit her bottom lip and waited for his response.

  “Do you consider me more intelligent than you?”

  Reanna’s back straightened with pride. Her high IQ was the one area she had always prided herself on. “No.”

  “Then consider this a challenge.”

  “The odds are stacked against me.”

  “As they are in life. From the moment we’re born, Reanna, we are engaged in a battle for survival. A fight to hold on to what we have, to protect what we love, and to leave our mark on history.”

  Even though he spoke in a formal manner, he was delivering a message Reanna had heard often from her friend. Okay, maybe not the part about leaving a mark on history, but the rest of it was painfully familiar. Reanna stood, but kept the table between them. “I’ll play your game, but only if I can add two rules.”

  “Name them.”

  “Facts you’ve read about me don’t count. And if you’re wrong, you have to do one thing I ask.”

  His eyes sparkled with increased interest. “Agreed.” He studied her for a few minutes, then said, “You like chocolate.”

  Reanna laughed and rolled her eyes. “Such a high percentage of people would say yes to that; my response shouldn’t count.�
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  “Level of difficulty was not a criteria for a statement. Do you, or do you not like chocolate?”

  “I do.”

  “Then remove your shoes.”

  “Excuse me?” Reanna’s mouth suddenly went dry.

  “You heard me.”

  “I’m not taking off my shoes. You never said anything about getting undressed.”

  “You agreed to do whatever I asked. Are you already quitting the game, Reanna? Are you that afraid you’ll lose? They’re just shoes.”

  Reanna stepped out of her shoes. She met his eyes defiantly. “I should be able to say facts about you, too.”

  “You should’ve thought of that before we started the game. Now the next one: you are allergic to cats and/or dogs.”

  “That’s an odd statement.”

  “Not really. You live alone. You seem to like company, but you have no pets. An allergy is a reasonable guess.”

  Reanna licked her bottom lip nervously. “I don’t have any allergies I know of. So you’re wrong.”

  The corners of his eyes crinkled. “Then I must do as you say.”

  “Take something off,” Reanna blurted. She instantly had second thoughts as a smile spread across his face, and he began to unbutton his shirt. Her last sane brain cell warned her she should tell him to stop—tell him to leave. But all she could do was stand there mesmerized as he removed his shirt and dropped it on the floor.

  Reanna was familiar with the male body, at least as familiar as a person became via the medical courses she had taken as an undergrad. Features of the human body were a natural part of her research. She recently read a fascinating article about some scientists who were close to predicting exactly how a person would look based on DNA. It held many possibilities in the forensic field. But none as exciting as this.

  Reanna swallowed hard and took in the sheer perfection of Xander’s exposed chest and arms. Like appreciating a piece of art hanging in a museum, ogling Xander’s flat abdomen and well-defined pectorals had no scientific value. Unless Reanna considered looking at him as an experiment on how the female body responds to a visibly strong and healthy potential mate.

  “You sing in the shower,” Xander said, once again leaning back against the counter, but this time with his hands beside him.

  He knows he’s beautiful, Reanna thought. On many, that would be unattractive conceit, but Xander wasn’t showing off for her. He was merely comfortable with who he was. And that made him a hundred times sexier. And for the first time in her life, she felt sexy, too. “How did you know that?” Reanna asked.

  “The shower is the one place where you feel no one can see you. Where you feel safe to be more spontaneous, more passionate. I doubt you’ve allowed yourself to masturbate there, Reanna, but you’ve been tempted to. Am I right?”

  Reanna nodded and blushed, unable to believe she’d admitted to him something she’d never been comfortable admitting to herself.

  “Then strip naked for me, Reanna.”

  Reanna’s legs shook, and she almost sat. She whispered, “I thought this was one article of clothing at a time.”

  “I never said that. Nor did you. I was right, and therefore you must do as I ask. Strip.”

  Reanna wrapped her arms protectively around herself. “Letting you in here tonight may have given you the wrong impression. I really am a virgin. I don’t believe in casual sex. I mean, for other people it’s okay, so I’m not judging whatever you’ve done. I’m talking about me.”

  “There is nothing casual about what I want to do to you, and with you, Reanna.”

  “Okay, now you’re freaking me out again.”

  “What scares you? That I want you? Or that you want me?”

  “How about I didn’t know you before yesterday?”

  “I judge a person’s character by what I see in their eyes. What do you see in mine, Reanna?”

  Reanna continued to stand with her arms around herself, but she searched Xander’s face carefully. “I see someone who is used to getting what he wants. Someone who wants me, but I don’t know why.”

  “Strip, Reanna. Let me show you why. Trust me.”

  With hands as cold as ice, Reanna whipped her shirt upward, held her T-shirt over her head then dropped it to the floor. She snapped her bra and dropped that as well. Without looking away from his face, she stepped out of her yoga pants and underwear. Her hands instinctively covered the areas she had never shown anyone beside a doctor before. How does this man have the ability to make me want to obey him? I’ve never submitted to a man before. I’ve never trusted one enough to do that. Yet I feel I can trust him, be bare before him. Why? Why him? How is he making me into someone I don’t even recognize, and can I be that woman?

  I want to be.

  Xander pushed off the counter and came to stand within inches of her. “You are lovely.” He ran a caressing hand down her jaw and across her collarbone. Very gently, Xander caressed her bare arms, then the curve of her neck. With the back of one hand, he grazed the curve of one of her breasts. “Breathe, Reanna. There is nothing to be afraid of.”

  Reanna shook with anticipation. She wasn’t scared. She was about to give to him what she’d always told herself she could only give out of love, but it felt right somehow. No, she wasn’t afraid where he wanted to take this, but rather how empty she would feel if he left now.

  Xander buried a hand in the back of her hair and bent her neck back, bringing her face up closer to his. “I want you, Reanna,” he whispered in her ear, his hot breath sending flames of desire through her. “I want your hands on me. Your mouth on me. I want to make love to you again and again until there is nothing you crave more than being with me again. But I won’t take you, Reanna. You have to give yourself to me.”

  Even as Reanna swayed and her body shivered beneath the pleasure of his touch, Reanna resisted. “I want to say yes, but . . .”

  His mouth hovered above hers. “You’re beautiful. You’re brilliant. But my partner must be strong. She must know what she wants and be willing to risk whatever it takes to get it. That’s who I am, Reanna, and I will settle for nothing less from another. Are you that woman, Reanna?”

  Partner? “This is crazy.”

  “No, this is your chance to have everything you’ve always wanted. And it starts right here, with me. If you want me to go, tell me now. But if you want me to stay, you need to be brave enough to make your choice clear.”

  Reanna searched his face again and made a decision. She went up onto her tiptoes and with one hand behind his neck pulled his mouth down onto hers. He moaned his approval and pulled her against him. She felt his erection press against her stomach and sighed with pleasure.

  Thankfully, he didn’t give her time to question her impulsive decision. His tongue coaxed hers into a heady dance. He continued to hold her by the back of her head with one hand while his other moved behind and possessively kneaded her ass.

  He lifted her and carried her up the stairs to her bedroom. Reanna buried her face in his chest all the way. She wanted him in a way that defied reason. She just didn’t want to be given time to second-guess her decision.

  When they reached her bedroom, he put her back on her feet, freeing his hands to explore her body again. And they did. As he kissed her deeply, he ran his hands over every inch of her.

  He cupped her sex, and Reanna held her breath. With confident expertise, he slid one finger between her folds and lightly circled her clit. He stroked it softly, then more firmly. His other hand came up between them and lightly pinched her hard nipple. Reanna gasped with pleasure. He kissed his way down her neck, over her shoulders, and to her other breast. His mouth brought tender warmth with the soft laving of his tongue. His hands were rougher, more demanding. He lifted her again, tossing her gently onto the center of the bed. “I don’t want to rush your first time, Reanna. Relax and let me show you how good it can be.”

  In a haze of desire, Reanna did as he asked. She should have felt self-conscious, laid out like a fe
ast before a man she hardly knew, but she had given in to the experience, given herself to him. She wanted to go where he wanted to take her that night.

  He stepped out of his pants then joined her on the bed and began to caress her slowly, from head to foot. Everywhere his hands explored came to life beneath his touch. He took his time, appreciating every inch of her. His hands led, and his mouth followed until Reanna was humming with anticipation each time his fingers grazed a new area.

  That mouth. Reanna hadn’t expected a man’s lips to feel as good as his did. Just when she thought it couldn’t get better, he caressed her in a different way. She didn’t want to think about how someone became as talented as he was. She didn’t want to think at all.

  Self-consciousness fell away beneath his adoring attention. When he gently traced her nipple with a fingertip, Reanna shook with anticipation and unfettered desire. She didn’t feel like the socially awkward geek she had been since childhood. She was simply a woman, experiencing what it was like to be worshipped sexually by a man. It was freeing. She faced the unknown boldly, wholeheartedly. There in Xander’s arms, she felt invincible.

  Several times Reanna’s eyes dropped to his cock, which waved at her like a ready sword when he moved. Kendra had shared the details of enough of her sexual exploits for Reanna to know nature had been generous to Xander. And to Reanna because, at least for one night, Xander was hers.

  She couldn’t keep her hands off him. He was solidly muscular everywhere she could reach. And there was so much she wanted to touch. She took him tentatively in her hand and loved his audible indrawn breath and the way he momentarily closed his eyes with pleasure. She was enjoying how he filled her hand, how he throbbed with need for her.

  She didn’t hide her disappointment when he removed her hand. He brought it to his lips, kissed it and said, “Not this time, Reanna. I’ll show you later how to please me, for now, just enjoy.”

  Oh, yes.

  He moved down the bed and positioned himself on his stomach between her legs. Reanna gripped the bed sheets on either side of her. He brought her knees up and spread her legs wider, exposing her most intimate parts to him.