by Laurie Paige
He laughed again and saw Ivy’s mouth compress at the corners. Hunger surged through him. With her curls and baby blue eyes, she looked good enough to eat.
“It was rather funny, though, to see her reaction, don’t you think?”
Going to Ivy, he cupped her face in his hands, noting how young and innocent she seemed, not nearly old enough to be the mother of his child. But he was glad she was.
She tried to glare at him, but the gleam in her eyes gave her away. He kissed her nose, then tickled her ribs with one hand while slipping the other behind her head to prevent her from drawing away.
Finally she couldn’t hold the merriment in. Her laughter tinkled through the still room like wind chimes playing a fairy song. “You are terrible,” she finally scolded, but without heat.
“I know.” His voice dropped to a husky depth that he couldn’t disguise. “Ivy,” he said, an entreaty, did she but know it.
Her eyes widened slightly when she met his gaze. He couldn’t suppress the desire that blazed in him or the intensity of the need. Slipping his hand from her side, he touched her hip, then pulled her close.
“Seven weeks without you is a long time,” he murmured, wanting her as he’d never wanted another woman. “Too long.”
He tasted her lips, her throat while she stood still, trying to resist the pull between them. He could have told her it couldn’t be done. The attraction was like gravity, pulling them into each other’s orbits like double stars circling each other.
Inhaling sharply as the hunger increased, he was filled with her scent. She smelled of roses that basked in the sun and were kissed by the sea air. A light, fragrant aroma of shampoo and cologne teased his senses and further fanned the flames that were raging deep inside him.
“Ivy,” he whispered, urging her closer still, tucking her slender body into his, curves and planes fitting as if made for each other.
“Max…”
Her voice trailed off in uncertainty. He felt her nipples bead against his chest as he rubbed seductively against her, letting her know the strength of his passion and reveling in her response.
“I want you,” he said in total honesty. “Now.”
Without pausing, he scooped her into his arms and carried her down the short hallway to her room. The bed was neatly made, but, standing her beside him, he quickly took care of that.
“This is not wise,” she said.
She tried to speak firmly, but her manner was so hesitant it made his heart somersault. The heat of desire bloomed in her cheeks. He knew her breasts would be flushed, too. “I need to see you. I have to.”
Before she could protest, he had the pale-blue knit top slipped over her head and tossed to a nearby chair. Her bra was disposed of as easily. He threw his shirt aside and shucked his slacks and briefs.
“Max,” she protested, but softly.
To him, it sounded like a plea, the same as that magical night, a plea for him to come to her.
The buttons of her slacks were no barrier to the rampant urgency that pounded through him. Although she continued murmuring protests, she let him strip those and her lacy briefs from her long, shapely legs.
Once he had them both naked, he again scooped her into his arms and settled on the bed with her in his lap. He piled the pillows against the headboard and half reclined, her body curled against him in a way he found endearing.
“I don’t know how I’ve lived without you the past two months,” he told her, planting kisses all over her face, his hands fisted in her springy curls.
“Why didn’t you come sooner?”
He took her lips in a long, satisfying kiss before answering. “I wanted to, but there were things I had to take care of. Events unfolded that had to be resolved.”
Shaking his head slightly, he fell silent, not willing to discuss betrayal and treason at this moment. He noticed his fingers trembled slightly as he brushed them through her hair. He hadn’t felt this young and untried since his first experience with a woman during the freshman year at college.
“You make me feel like a newborn just trying the world on for size.” His smile admitted the foolishness of the thought, even though it was true.
Instead of mocking him, she touched his face, then finger combed his hair off his forehead. “Thank you for saying that. Since reading the tabloid, I’ve wondered about… Well, I wondered if you were acting that night, if it was a pretense. You must have had any number of women who wanted you and would never have refused you.”
“There was no one before you,” he told her. “No one who counted.”
Her eyes darkened, and she looked pensive. “Am I to believe that I count?”
The sadness in her expression hit him square in the chest. “Of course,” he chided. “You are the only woman who has conceived my child. I have never allowed that to occur with anyone else.”
She pushed herself upright. “We didn’t mean for that to happen. It…it was an accident.”
Her breasts, with their delicate rosy points, were more than he could resist. “Was it?” he questioned, bending to her and taking one of the rosebuds into his mouth. “Was it?” he asked again, his voice becoming huskier yet.
A tremor rushed through her as he teased her nipple into a tighter bud, first one, then the other. He groaned as hunger played havoc with his control. His body wanted total ravishment without talk or foreplay.
More than that, something in him demanded that he claim her, make her see that she belonged to him and him alone. She’d given her innocence to him that night. Her trust had been a gift he would never forget.
Holding her locked in his embrace, he turned them so he was on top. With lips and hands and body, he stroked her, feeding her desire as well as his own. When she opened her lips to him, when she gasped and clung to him, arms and legs wrapping him in a hot embrace, when she began to move against him, he was elated.
“Now,” he murmured, finding her ready.
Rising on one arm, aware of her gaze, he entered her, merging them with nothing between them but the need they shared.
He kissed her a thousand times and caressed her to his heart’s desire. She returned each caress, each kiss, until his senses were filled with her. Only her. When she cried out, he closed his eyes and held on, giving her every bit of pleasure that he could.
Her demands incited him past control as she writhed under him like a dancing flame. An incandescent glow filled his soul.
Together they sought the intense rhythm of release. Together they reached the bliss, her throaty cries a counterpoint to the deep groan of total satisfaction he found in her arms.
Seconds, minutes, eons passed while their breathing slowed to normal. He rested beside her, their bodies still intimately joined. Odd, but he didn’t want to lose the connection with her, as if, in doing so, he might lose her.
Which was likely true.
They connected completely this way, but when the passion was spent, reason would intercede, making her wary of him as a man and possible lifetime mate. He would show her—
From the kitchen came the sound of a timer. He raised his head and looked at her to see if she knew what it was.
“Lunch is ready,” she said.
The statement seemed so ordinary and so very, very right that he laughed, causing them to separate. He cupped her face and kissed her rosy lips. “Shall we eat, then? I admit I’m hungry for food now that the other, more demanding hunger is satisfied.”
She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “We shouldn’t—”
He laid a finger over her mouth. “It was the best thing I’ve ever known. I don’t regret it, not now nor in the past when we shared the same magic moments.”
“If we hadn’t met, if this—” she gestured toward her abdomen to indicate the pregnancy “—hadn’t happened, where would you have looked for a bride?”
“It did happen, so we don’t have to consider that.” He smiled to reassure her. “My security advisor assures me that an American heiress is quite acceptable.
”
“We don’t know each other.”
“Don’t we?” he demanded, impatient with her qualms. “I think we knew each other very well.”
“That was physical.”
“The physical union of a man and woman is one of the foundations the world is built on.”
Ivy knew there must be one final argument, one supreme bit of logic she could employ that would refute for all time his determination on marriage. Before the thought had hardly formed, she knew she didn’t want to find such an argument.
Despair gripped her. “I don’t know you, Your Highness. The man I met in Lantanya was Max Hughes, businessman. With that man, I found a thousand things we shared in common. What do I share with a king?”
His eyes roamed over her, making her aware of her nakedness. She felt so exposed, in more ways than one, as he considered her question. She saw his chest rise, then fall as he expelled a heavy breath.
Sitting on the side of the bed, he took her hands. “Even a king must be allowed his private moments. At those times he is only a man with a man’s needs and desires, with a man’s longing for a retreat from the world and its problems. For me, you are that retreat.”
His smile was solemn as she searched his face for the meaning behind the words. Was he sincere, or was this a ruse to get his way? He was a man of the world. He would have learned long ago the right words to use to bend another to his will.
“You want the child,” she began.
“Yes,” he said adamantly.
“And I come as part of the package.”
“A very lovely package.” He laid the tips of his fingers against her temples. “You Americans. You analyze everything to death. Can’t you see that some things are meant to be?”
She shook her head.
“Stubborn,” he murmured, then continued. “The fate that brought us together and gave us that one sweet night as lovers was predestined. It was written in the stars. We as humans need only accept what the gods have decreed.”
Ivy wanted to believe him, but a lifetime of caution, of observing what people do, not what they say, made it too difficult to believe in kismet and fate and predestination.
“Perhaps, like Romeo and Juliet, it was a time that was never meant to be,” she told him.
The timer dinged again.
Rolling to the far side of the bed, she rose and rushed into the bathroom, closing the door to signify her wish to be alone, although she didn’t lock it. After showering, she realized she’d forgotten clothing.
Wrapping the towel around her, she opened the door and peered out. The room was empty.
Going to the closet, she selected loose dark-beige slacks with a drawstring waist and a gold top with beige piping around the scoop neckline and raglan sleeves. She put on sunscreen, light makeup and coral lipstick. With brown loafers on her feet and gold hoops in her ears, she was ready to face the world.
Well, this little corner of it at any rate, she corrected, hearing Max in the kitchen. Her heart went into a swan dive before she could order it to straighten up.
His back was to her when she entered the room. His hair was damp, so he must have used the guest bath to shower. She watched him set the table, as competent at that as he was at everything else. Including making love.
No! She mustn’t think about that.
The roasted chicken and the vegetables she’d cooked with it were on a platter in the center of the pale blue tablecloth he’d found in the sideboard. After folding two matching napkins so that they resembled flowers, he placed them in fluted champagne glasses by each plate.
When he turned toward the kitchen, he saw her. His perfect smile appeared, a homing device for her heart like the beam of a lighthouse guiding a lost ship to safety. Longing rose in her. She wanted to go to him and rest in his arms and let him take care of her and the future.
He placed a hand on his chest and stared at her as if under an enchantment. When he spoke, his voice was soft, deep, beguiling.
“Be still, my heart, ’tis naught
But a vision, an earthly delight wrought
From the yearnings of a soul stricken
By loneliness of a most dismal sort.”
Ivy swallowed as emotion rose to her throat. “Very affecting,” she mocked gently because the words had moved her. “Did you make it up?”
He shook his head. “An obscure Lantanyan poet, lovesick for a woman denied to him.”
“Why? What happened? Did her parents refuse to let her marry him?”
“No. She was already married.”
“Oh.”
“To my father,” he finished. He pulled out a chair and gestured for her to be seated. With an elegant flourish, he snapped open the napkin and laid it across her lap. His hand touched her shoulder and lingered a second before he brought tall glasses of iced tea to the table and joined her.
“Did she love the poet?” Ivy asked, unable to contain her curiosity about his family.
Max laid his napkin in his lap, then gazed at Ivy as if weighing the answer. “As a friend,” he said. “My mother would never have allowed an inappropriate emotion to intrude between her and my father.”
Ivy mulled this over. “It was a love match? Your parents were in love?”
“They were devoted to each other.”
She wasn’t sure that answered her question. “Are love and devotion the same?”
Max looked up from buttering a roll. He spoke with great assurance, as if he knew exactly what he was talking about. “For a king and queen, yes. They were dedicated to each other, to their family and to the country. Together they worked toward a common goal for the good of all.”
“They shared a vision,” Ivy concluded, but still, that wasn’t the question. “But is that love?”
Max laid the knife across the edge of the bread plate and studied her. “It was enough to sustain them through forty-four years of marriage. What is it you want to know?”
“Were they faithful to each other?” she asked bluntly.
His handsome, somewhat arrogant face relaxed. “Ah, that is what bothers you,” he said gently. “Yes, they were faithful as far as I know. There were never any rumors about either of them, although the tabloids seized upon the slightest pretext to paint a different picture. That is something you will have to resign yourself to. As my queen, you will have your every word, every gesture interpreted in the worst possible manner.”
“Life in the public eye,” she murmured.
“Yes. But there will be private moments, ones we will share with no one but each other. Other times will be enjoyed with our children and friends. Those are the moments we will cherish and remember when the paparazzi print their lies and innuendoes about our lives.”
“I’m afraid of the lies,” she said quietly. “How does one separate them from the truth?”
Reaching across the table, he tilted her chin so he could gaze into her eyes. “I have no doubts about your loyalty,” he said. “So the question in your mind is about mine.” He paused, then said, “My word of honor, I will be faithful to my American rose.”
She hadn’t expected the pledge or the intensity in his voice as he spoke. The words blew through her like a gale, forcing her to hold her doubts up to a careful scrutiny in the face of his surety. Scenes from her stormy childhood darted through her inner vision.
“My parents—”
“We are not them,” Max interrupted before she could tell him about their turbulent marriage. “We are shaped by our past to a certain extent, but we have choices. We can follow a road of our own choosing.”
“How do we know which one is best?”
His sudden smile was teasing, but totally confident. “Let the stars be your guide.”
She gave him a severe frown. “First you say we do the choosing, then you advise letting fate or whatever make the choices for us. That makes no sense.”
“It does,” he said softly. “You spent a night in my arms. Was that fate or our own choice in answering the i
rresistible attraction between us? A child came of that night. We didn’t plan that, but it happened. Fate? Or a willing risk on our part?”
No answer came to her.
“Well?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” she said defiantly.
“In either case, the results are the same.”
The baby. She laid a hand on her abdomen, feeling a whiplash of emotion too strong to be denied. She wanted the child. Already the bonds of love formed a protective casing around the tiny life that bloomed inside her.
“I want the child,” she told him.
His nod indicated he had never thought otherwise. “So do I. Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“I didn’t know. The man I thought was the father turned out to be someone else.”
They were silent for the remainder of the meal. Max’s gaze was moody as he stared out the patio door. Ivy put the leftovers away and placed the used dishes in the dishwasher. When there was nothing left to do, she refilled their tea glasses and indicated she was going outside.
On the patio, she smiled and waved to the golfers who were searching the creek area for a lost ball, the same two men who’d nearly beaned her the other day.
Friday. Two days ago. And she’d already succumbed—again!—to the passion that boiled between her and Max at the slightest glance. What had happened to her common sense?
“Don’t beat it to death,” he advised, joining her. He, too, waved at the men.
“You know what I find odd?” she said after a moment.
“What?”
“From what I’ve read, royalty has had illegitimate children throughout history without a thought to their well-being or to their gaining the throne, so why are you concerned?”
A large, masculine hand closed over hers. His grip didn’t hurt, but she was immediately aware of the power there, and the fact that he was furious with her.
“I care about the child,” he said in a low, dangerous tone. “It is my flesh and blood as well as yours. Don’t ever question my motives about it again. Do you hear?”
She nodded slowly, her heart pounding a dull thud of fear throughout her body.