‘Was it lonely for you growing up without a mother?’ Sebastian asked, hardly realising the question had fallen from his lips until the sea-washed silence was broken by it.
Her eyes moved upwards to meet his, a shadow of something dark and mysterious lurking in their startling emerald depths. ‘I’m not sure it is possible to miss something you have never had,’ she said in an offhand tone that didn’t quite do the job of convincing Sebastian she meant it. ‘I had a series of nannies who looked after me when my father was at work. I had toys and entertainment, more than most kids have, or at least certainly more than the kids I deal with now.’
Sebastian surveyed her features as he cradled his wineglass in his hand. ‘You didn’t answer my question, Cassie,’ he said.
Cassie shifted her eyes from his and inwardly frowned. Why was he doing this? In the past he had hardly ever asked her about her life as a child. They hadn’t had that sort of relationship. Their love affair—strike that—sex affair—had had nothing to do with getting to know each other as people. It had been lust that had driven them into each other’s arms, a forbidden lust that had made it all the more exciting. Cassie’s body quivered as she thought of the things they had done and where they had done them. The thrill of being discovered had been part of the adrenalin rush.
Cassie shifted in her chair, her face averted from the all-seeing gaze of Sebastian’s. ‘I guess it would have been nice to have had a mother…especially during adolescence,’ she said, absently fiddling with the edge of the tablecloth. ‘I try not to think about it too much. Lots of people don’t have mothers and survive. I am hardly unique.’
‘No, that is true, but you have never really talked about what it was like for you as a child,’ he said. ‘I guess I should have been more mature back when we were involved and asked you. But then like a lot of young men with hormones on their mind I didn’t get around to it.’
Cassie wasn’t brave enough to meet his eyes. She knew in any case what she would see there: desire, hot and strong, perhaps even stronger than what he had felt for her before. What she couldn’t understand was why. She was the last person he should be considering associating with. She had a black mark on her name that would never go away, no matter how far away from Aristo she travelled. Her life was never going to be the same again. Not that it had been all that crash-hot to start with.
Cassie had spent years of her early childhood desperately trying to please her father to no avail. She couldn’t quite recall how old she had been when she had changed her tactics and begun to rebel against him instead. All she could remember were the fights, the vicious slanging matches that had nearly always ended with her being—
‘Cassie…’ Sebastian’s deep voice jerked her out of her torturous memories.
Cassie blinked at him, trying to recall what they had been talking about, her mind still back in her bedroom with her father’s puce features glaring at her, his mouth a tight white line of livid rage, spittle pooling at the corners, his teeth audibly grinding together as his closed thick fist had raised, ready to strike…
She swallowed a painfully tight swallow that tore at the tender lining of her throat, her eyes skittering away from Sebastian’s. Nausea roiled in her stomach, her blood pressure dropped so low she could feel the sensation of fine grains of sand shifting in her extremities. She was going to faint…No…hang on a minute…she was holding on…but only just…Breathe…deep and even, that was the way to do it. It had been years since she’d had a panic attack. She knew the drill; it just took a little discipline and focus to pull it off.
Breathe…in…out…in…out…in—
‘Caz?’ Sebastian leaned forward across the table and took her ice-cold hand in his, his brow furrowed in concern. ‘What’s going on? You’ve gone as white as a sheet. What is wrong?’
Cassie forced her lips into a smile but it made her face feel strangely disconnected from her mind. ‘Nothing,’ she said in what she hoped sounded like an offhand manner. ‘I forgot what we were talking about. I was thinking about something else.’
He was still frowning at her. ‘Whatever you were thinking about must have been distressing for you,’ he said. ‘Was it something to do with your time in prison?’
Cassie sat back in her chair and crossed her legs. She was as close to crumbling as she had ever been, but some tiny rod of pride kept her spine upright. ‘You seem to be rather fascinated with my prison life,’ she speculated. ‘Is that because you harbour some sort of fantasy about an ex-criminal? Sex with someone from the slammer. It has a sort of ring to it, don’t you think?’
Sebastian felt his desire for her rise in his body with the force of an earthquake. It rumbled through him, it shook him, and above everything else—it challenged him.
He would have her.
It didn’t matter how far apart their worlds were now. He would have her again to assuage this achingly tight need in his body that refused to go away. After all, wasn’t that the way she had played it with him in the past? She had teased him, led him on and on until he had been out of his mind with lust. It had all been a game to her, but he was going to play it by his own rules this time around, not hers.
Sebastian knew how her mind worked. She was as good as penniless now. Sure, she seemingly enjoyed working at the orphanage, but the Cassie Kyriakis he had known six years ago would have turned her nose up at such menial, poorly paid work. He just couldn’t imagine her soothing sobbing infants or wiping dripping noses, much less changing dirty nappies. He even remembered her telling him at one point how she never wanted to have children, that she intended to spend her life constantly partying, making the most of the wealth her father had accumulated.
Sebastian hadn’t let it bother him too much at the time; he had dated plenty of rich young women with exactly the same mindset. And he had been well aware of his royal duty when the time came to find an impeccable wife who would willingly bear his royal heirs. Not for a moment had he thought Cassie Kyriakis a likely candidate…and yet…
Sebastian gave himself a stern mental shake. So what if his physical relationship with Cassie had for all these years since been unsurpassed? That did not necessarily mean there was no other woman out there who could not meet his needs in the same way or better. Anyway, it was only the deluded romantic fools of the world who claimed there was only one perfect soul mate for each person.
What utter nonsense!
Sebastian would show how misguided such a philosophy could be. He was even prepared to bet he would be disappointed in a repeat performance with Cassie. Memories did that to you. They glorified the past until the real thing was often a let-down, making you wonder why you had craved it so assiduously in the first place.
God knew how many men she had opened her legs for since him. It coiled his gut with writhing, vicious vipers of jealousy to think of the men she had been with during the time they had been secretly conducting their affair. How could he know how many men she had given herself to?
Yes, it was perhaps sexist of him to judge her by different standards from his own, but she had lied to him, damn it! She had told him making love with him was the most amazing, out-of-this-world experience, and fool that he was he had believed her. How many other men had she gazed up at with those shining emerald eyes of hers, her lips swollen with passion, and said the very same thing?
‘Would you like some more water?’ Sebastian asked with no hint of what he had been thinking evident in his polite, solicitous tone.
‘No…thank you…’ Cassie said, placing her napkin down on the table. ‘The meal was delicious. Thank you for going to so much trouble. It has certainly raised the bar on any future picnics I might have in the future.’
‘It was nothing,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘I didn’t lift a finger. I wouldn’t know how to make a canapé if you paid me.’
There was a stretched-out silence with only the raging sea below to break it. Boom…crash…boom…crash…
‘What about coffee?’ Sebastian asked over
the suddenly deafening sound of the waves against the shore. ‘Stefanos has arranged coffee and chocolates inside. I wanted to make the most of the sunset but the breeze has stiffened now the sun has gone down. You have goose bumps—would you like my jacket?’
Cassie didn’t like to tell him the pinpricks on her skin were from apprehension rather than cold, even though, as he had said, the breeze from the rough water below had only recently picked up its pace. She could see the galloping white horses of the waves, each one racing to crash against the shore in a foamy, almost angry wash against the rocks and sand. But before she could refuse the offer of his jacket he was on his feet and behind her chair, covering her shoulders in the warm citrus-scented folds of his coat.
Cassie felt as if she had just stepped into his skin, so intimate was the gesture, the light but firm touch of his hands on her shoulders as he set the jacket in place rendering her speechless with longing for more of his touch. She breathed in the spicy fragrance, all of her senses suddenly hypervigilant, and her heart in very great danger of making the same mistake it had made six years before.
Sebastian escorted her on the short trip to the private royal residence, a massive villa with views from every vantage point. Stefanos was nowhere in sight, but Cassie assumed he had been given instructions to make himself scarce. She couldn’t help wondering with a jab of pain how many other times he had been issued with the same orders while Sebastian entertained other women.
As if Sebastian had read her thoughts, he said as he led the way into the opulent foyer, ‘I think you should know at this point you are the very first person I have brought here. This is the private holiday residence for my family, off limits to everyone except only close family and closely trusted friends.’
Cassie raised her brows at him as he closed the heavy door behind him. ‘So, Sebastian,’ she said. ‘Which category do I fall into? Surely you do not consider me a close friend or a future member of the royal family?’
Tension travelled all the way from his darker-than-dark eyes to his chiselled jaw and then to his thinned-out mouth. ‘Given our history, Cassie, you are not eligible for either of those positions,’ he bit out tightly.
Cassie wished with all her heart she could reveal Sam’s identity and throw the truth of their situation in his face to make him realise how much she was a part of his wretched royal family whether he liked it or not, but some remnant of self-respect and self-preservation prevented her from doing so. Instead she smiled up at him, a cool, calculating smile that gave him no clue to the turmoil going on inside her. ‘I consider myself deeply honoured, Your Royal Highness,’ she drawled with a bow of her head that deliberately fell short of the mark, delivering the insult she had intended. ‘It is indeed a privilege to be considered worthy of gracing the highly esteemed private residence of the Karedes family, considering the lower than low background I come from.’
‘Your background was nothing to be ashamed of until you took it upon yourself to degrade your father at every opportunity,’ he said. ‘His public role was made a hundred times worse by the way you behaved.’
Twenty-four years of Cassie’s suffering threatened to come to the surface, like a volcano silently brewing until the temperature of the lava became too hot to contain. A catastrophic explosion was imminent, but somehow she was able to contain the emotion she felt to remind herself no one knew her father as she had known him. No one had heard the soul-destroying words he had flung at her in one of his many out-of-control tempers; no one had seen the bruises his hands, not to mention any other objects within his reach, had left on her body.
Sebastian had not seen the jagged scar low on her back her father had scored into her flesh that fateful day. It was like a tattoo of torment, the brand her father had left to remind her of how he had demanded total control of her, a control she had not given willingly and had fought every inch of the way as each strike of his belt had bitten cruelly and cuttingly into her flesh.
Cassie had been so proud that she hadn’t cried. She had gritted her teeth until she was sure they would crack under the pressure. She had taken every vicious cut of the strap like a convict bracing for the cat-o’-nine-tails.
That had been her victory.
Her father could blame her for her mother’s untimely death, he could blame her for having been a small, needy and insecure child, and he could even blame her for being an out-of-control, wilful teenager, but he could not blame her for reclaiming her life and that of her child. That had been her only solace. Her father had not known of Sam’s existence. Her tiny precious son had been even to Cassie, unknown in her womb at the time of that dreadful scene. Whether her father would have acted differently if he had known she was carrying a royal baby was something she would never know.
But Cassie knew she had choices now and one was to keep a cool head. Sebastian’s presence admittedly made that task difficult, but she had to keep a lid on her emotions, at all times and in all places.
She had to.
Cassie lifted her gaze to his, her spine not quite so rigid, her shoulders going down beneath the sheltering warmth of his jacket. ‘My father was not a good father,’ she said. ‘He might have been a brilliant mayor and an astute businessman, but he didn’t love and protect me the way he should have done. You didn’t know him personally, Sebastian. You knew of him from what your father and other palace officials told you.’ Her eyes misted over suddenly as she added in a choked up voice, ‘But you didn’t know him.’
Sebastian let out a rusty sigh and, taking one single step, gathered her to him. He rested his chin on the top of her head and wondered why the hell he still felt this way about her. She could go from a shrieking shrew to a lost little girl within a heartbeat. Then, to make things even more confusing, she could turn on the heat and turn into a sensual goddess, that pouting mouth of hers making him want to press his down on those blood-red lips and never stop kissing her, devouring her taste, the essence of her body, to feel the convulsions of her feminine muscles around him, making him pour himself into her. He could feel the movement of his blood in his veins; he was already hard against her and wondered why she hadn’t moved back.
He felt her take in a breath, the brush of her breasts against his chest making him shudder with the need to fill her as he had done in the past.
He lifted her chin and looked into the sea-glass-green of her eyes, fighting not to drown in them. ‘You are right,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know him personally. He seemed very affable but I know from personal experience that what goes on in public is not always representative of what happens in private.’
She looked back at him, her gaze as unfathomable as the ocean pounding below. ‘I’m cold,’ she said and he felt her shiver under the touch of his hands.
Sebastian took one of her hands from where it was clutching at his jacket to keep it in place, and brought it up to his mouth. He kissed each of her knuckles in turn, a soft-as-a-baby’s sigh caress that made her pupils grow darker than the sea raging below. ‘Then let’s go inside and warm you up,’ he said, and, taking her by the hand, he led her inside the villa.
CHAPTER SEVEN
CASSIE stepped into the private study Sebastian opened a short time later, her senses heightened by his light touch as he took his jacket from her shoulders and laid it over a chair.
He came back to stand in front of her, his dark gaze meshing with hers as he took both of her hands in his. ‘Not so cold now?’ he asked.
She shook her head, her tongue darting out to moisten her lips. ‘No…not cold at all…’
He settled his hands on her waist and brought her up against his body. ‘I should pour you a cup of coffee,’ he said, looking down at her mouth.
Cassie felt her lips start to tingle the longer his gaze rested there. ‘Should you?’ she asked.
He smiled lopsidedly. ‘You do not fancy a coffee right now, agape mou?’
Cassie drew in a shaky breath, her stomach feeling hollow with a combination of nerves and anticipation. ‘That�
��s not really why I am here, is it, Sebastian?’
He placed his palm at the nape of her neck, his fingers warm and tempting on her sensitive skin. ‘You still want to deny what is between us, Cassie?’ he asked.
How could she possibly deny it? Cassie wondered. What would be the point? Saying no to Sebastian Karedes had never been easy for her, now even more so. They both knew she was here because she wanted to be here. By stepping over the threshold of the villa she had stepped into his arms and would stay there for as long as he wanted her to. ‘No,’ she said, placing her hands on his chest as she met his gaze. ‘I am not going to deny it.’
He brought his mouth down to hers in a slow-moving assault on her senses, waiting until she opened her mouth on a whimpering sigh before he began to stroke her tongue with his own. The erotic caress loosened her spine, her legs swaying beneath her as he deepened the kiss, each slow thrust and stroke of his tongue fuelling her desire until all she could think about was how it would feel to have him possess her again.
His kiss changed its tempo as soon as her hands pulled his shirt out of his trousers, his mouth grinding against hers. Tongues of flame licked along her veins as she responded by rubbing up against him, her hands going to his waistband, unbuckling him and uncovering him with her searching fingers.
Cassie swallowed his gasp of reaction as her fingers danced along his length, the satin strength of him so potently male, so aroused he was seeping with moisture. She played with him, squeezing, rubbing and stroking him while her mouth was being plundered by his, her heart rate soaring, her body slick and wet with need.
The Future King's Love-Child (The Royal House 0f Karedes Book 6) Page 8