She bucked against his hand—wanting faster, deeper, more. He groaned in approval, kissing her harder, letting her feel more of his weight. She wanted to take it all. Her hips rocked, undulating in an increasing rhythm, matching the stroke of his fingers and tongue. She wanted to force him to break free of his control. She wanted him to stop holding back. She wanted him to just take her.
But he didn’t relinquish his restraint for one second. He kept kissing her. Kept touching her where she needed him most. Stirring, rousing, until she was almost out of her mind with desire, until she was moaning a song of need into his mouth, her body trembling beneath his, her nails clawing into his skin as she hurtled towards the peak. Finally he broke the passionate kiss, letting her gasp as the rest of her arched, utterly rigid in that unbearable moment before release. Oh, it was here. He’d pulled her through the burn and made her feel it. Her eyes closed, she cried out as the wave of pleasure hit, sweeping her away in that powerful turbulent crest. She clutched him fiercely as the sensations tumbled within her, drowning her in almost unendurable bliss. He pressed hard against her as she convulsed, not letting her pull back from the intensity he’d stirred. His fingers rubbed relentlessly, ensuring she received every last spasm of pleasure from her orgasm.
Finally she fell back on the desk, limp as the warmth spread along her veins, sending her into a lax, dazed state. Raggedly she gasped, trying to recover her mind, but it was impossible to catch her breath. Impossible to wipe the smile from her face. Impossible to believe what had just happened.
Never had a man made her feel so good. It wasn’t just the orgasm, it was the heat and vitality he’d seemed to pour into her. He’d made her feel wholly alive, here and now. Twin tears escaped her closed eyes before she had the chance to brush them away but she was smiling at the same time, because it was so good and such a surprise and she was so happy.
Yet even now, despite that mind-blowing pleasure, the ache within burned anew. Suddenly she felt empty even with that elation still zinging around her. She wanted all of him. And she wanted him now.
Shocked at her surging hunger, she opened her eyes and looked into his.
‘Antonio,’ she whispered, shocked when she read what was so obvious in his unguarded expression. Torment—desolation and desperation. Feelings she understood all too well.
‘Please.’ She reached out to cup him—to make him feel as good as he’d made her feel. But he gripped her wrist and stopped her, his hand painfully tight.
‘Don’t touch me,’ he ordered through clenched teeth.
His words hit like physical blows. It was utter, raw rejection.
She closed her eyes but his spurn had already slammed the lingering sense of pleasure from her. Emptiness ripped her open. Now their imbalance struck her forcefully. She was almost naked. He was fully clothed. She was vulnerable and exposed. He was sealed and silent.
But they were both angry.
He released her wrist, pulling away to put three feet of distance between them. He stopped and stood with his back to her, his hands on his hips, his head bowed. She could see the exertion in his breathing, as if he’d run a race to the death. He was trying to slow it, regulate it and recover his equilibrium. Well, so was she. But she was failing.
She sat up, yanking her top down to cover herself, confused and lonelier than ever. ‘Maybe it’s time—’
‘I behaved like—’ he interrupted her harshly, then broke off. He twisted to face her. Tall and proud and formal. Icy again. ‘I behaved inexcusably,’ he said in those remote, clipped tones. He bowed stiffly. ‘I apologise.’
For a long moment she couldn’t speak. Couldn’t believe he’d become this remote statesman again. Did he feel guilty? Was he upset that he’d sullied the memory of his dead lover because he’d felt up the tart from the nightclub? Was that what this was?
Fury burned but oddly pity was entwined with it. She felt sorry for herself. Sorry for him. Sorry this whole moment had started.
But she only had to look at him to know any attempt at conversation would be futile. He’d scorched any sense of connection or compassion. There was simply nothing left. Yet he remained standing like a statue in the middle of her room, staring at her with that damned unreadable expression.
In the end she could only whisper, ‘You behaved like a human.’
His nostrils flared but he didn’t reply. He swiftly turned and strode to the door.
‘You didn’t want to be seen,’ she called scornfully as this next rejection scalded her all over again.
He still didn’t hesitate. He just walked out without a word, rapidly descending the stairs.
Bella closed her eyes until the sound of his footsteps receded completely. She understood anyway. He’d rather risk being seen leaving her club than staying another second in her company.
He didn’t want to be near her ever again.
CHAPTER THREE
CARS ROARED: a relentless mass of humming metal and fuel. Distracted, Antonio almost forgot to applaud when the first passed the chequered flag. He’d not been looking at the finish line because she was down with the winning team’s pit crew, and she was dressed not to be seen, but to stun.
Photographers called and clicked constantly, like seagulls incessantly circling a kid with an ice-cream cone. Bella paused long enough to send them a glittering smile, then turned to snap a selfie with the winner of the race. Doubtless she’d upload it once she’d filtered it to her satisfaction.
I don’t need any man.
Her vehement denial replayed in his mind, but the vulnerability that the harsh-edged words revealed echoed loudest of all. Those tears after she’d come apart in his arms haunted him. He’d broken past that slick, sophisticated façade and found her to be tender and he’d been a jerk. Because he hadn’t reciprocated. He hadn’t been as honest with her as she’d been with him. And she’d been mortified.
But now, only hours later, her façade was back—beautiful and bulletproof. Grimly he fought the urge to take her somewhere isolated and break her walls down to get to that genuine, emotional response again. As if she’d allow him to now.
While he’d returned to the palace without detection that morning he was in no way pleased. He was a leader of not just an army, but a nation, and he never ran from a situation. Yet he’d run from the desire she’d aroused in him. Now regret and anger burned alongside it.
For the best part of a decade he’d staved off sexual want, using extreme exercise to gain self-control; his honed physique was a by-product of that intense discipline. Because he refused to hurt anyone the way he had Alessia and he refused to use women to satisfy purely physical desires. Discipline had become habit. It had almost become easy.
Until today.
Maybe his apparently uncontrollable desire for Bella had been a reaction to tiredness and stress. Or maybe it was because it had been so long since lust had burned him, it had been able to slip his leash like quicksilver...
He could come up with reasons, but they still didn’t excuse his actions. And they didn’t explain why he was unable to look away from her now.
She was ravishing, putting on a performance for more than the thousands in this crowd and her online audience of millions. This fortnight on San Felipe was packed with festivities and events, ones he had to attend while sandwiching in the vital trade talks and tax-exemption debates with the foreign politicians who’d come to work during the day and party at night.
Bella would use this fortnight to build her brand and define her club as the most ‘it’ venue on the island—if not the world. This was the reason for the glamour, the smiles and selfie-central behaviour. All those society events that he had to attend, she would be present at too. There would be no avoiding her. Not in the immediate future.
His jaw ached with the effort of holding back his frustration.
As soon as the race formalities had concluded, he returned to his large office in the palace. He listened to the requests of his aides, read through the official pap
ers in the scarlet box on his desk and braced himself for the celebration reception that evening.
As he’d figured, she was there, draped in an emerald-green silk dress that skimmed her curves before falling in a dramatic swathe to the floor. He was even less talkative than usual, preferring not to circulate at all. It would hammer home his icy reputation even more, but so be it. If only Eduardo weren’t away—his brother had more social patience. Antonio just wanted to get back to the paperwork and the important decisions.
Except that wasn’t quite all he wanted.
He endured her presence three more times over the next two days. At a charity brunch, at the unveiling of the plans to redevelop the marina, at the opening night of the new exhibition in the national art gallery...
Every time he saw her, the craving bit harder.
He avoided speaking directly to her, but more than once he met her gaze. Across the crowd in the gallery, during speeches, every glance seared, stopping that breach in his armour from sealing shut again.
Three days since that morning in her office, he seethed at his inability to wrest back his self-control. His mind wandered every chance it got. When he should be focused, when he should be listening to someone else, when he should be thinking about things so much more important than himself, he thought about what he’d do to make her writhe in his arms until he heard her soft cry of release again.
That cry had made him harder and more wanting, yet more satisfied than he’d ever been in his life. He’d revelled in it for one incredible moment. Then he’d remembered. He couldn’t have any kind of relationship.
Then he’d run.
But that cry had tormented his dreams day and night since. Now it was all he could think of.
He glanced at the valet pointlessly polishing Antonio’s already buffed-to-brilliant shoes. He had a performance at the opera house to attend tonight and there was no way Bella Sanchez wouldn’t be there.
‘Leave me.’ Abruptly he dismissed the man.
‘Sir?’ The servant looked nonplussed at the sudden command.
Varying from his schedule was impossible, given how crammed it was, but Antonio needed to pull himself together and cool this burn with a reality check. He needed to see through Bella Sanchez and remind himself she was merely a woman. And he’d refused hundreds, if not thousands of women. It was in their best interests that he had.
‘I need ten minutes alone,’ Antonio ordered.
His valet swiftly bowed and left. Antonio picked up the tablet he used to scan newspaper headlines. With a couple of swipes he opened up a video channel. The simplest of searches retrieved an endless list of clips. He clicked on the first. Lifted from a performance at one of the US’s most prestigious ballet theatres, it had been viewed millions of times.
Bella Sanchez dancing the title role of Carmen. In this scene she was seducing a soldier to get him to do her bidding. Antonio watched, his gut tightening, as Bella sent the man a smouldering look over her shoulder—alluring, enthralling, practised. It was a move she performed on stage night after night after night, yet she made it utterly convincing. At the end of her solo the audience exploded, chanting her name over and over, stomping their feet, delaying the rest of the performance for a full five minutes while they called for encores. He stared at the screen, as spellbound as everyone in the audience had been, watching as she didn’t break character for even a second. Haughtily she waited, accepting the adulation and keeping them in her sexual thrall as if it was only to be expected.
But when she’d lain before him, warm and exposed, she’d not been at all practised or polished. She’d been unrehearsed and real and what had happened had taken her by surprise as much as it had him. And the raw emotion in her eyes when he’d pulled away from her?
He’d hurt her. He regretted that. He regretted touching her.
Yet all he wanted was to do it again.
He tossed the tablet back onto the desk. Reduced to watching her like this, like some unbalanced stalker, was no way to find relief.
Why couldn’t he end this aching awareness of her? The slow burn threatened to send him insane. He’d resisted already, hadn’t he? He’d stopped before taking the pleasure he’d wanted so badly. He’d proven himself.
But he was tired of having to prove himself, tired of devoting every minute of his life to his crown. Maybe resisting had been the wrong action.
Why shouldn’t he have something for himself for once? He’d been restrained for so long. Every other damn prince took lovers. His younger brother had been a total playboy. In other countries princes, politicians, people with power and wealth indulged their desires. Ordinary people did too. It was normal.
But not for Antonio.
Not when he knew the heartache the inevitable intense media coverage would cause. Nausea churned in his gut from guilt as he remembered. He was sure Alessia’s parents knew the truth of what he’d done to their daughter. They never discussed it, but they knew. So the least he could do was protect and honour both them and the memory of her. It was his duty. Having a public affair with a woman like Bella Sanchez would destroy everything he’d worked so hard to maintain. And an affair would become public.
Slaking this haunting lust was impossible.
But still his blood burned.
At the theatre he saw her immediately. She’d made that unavoidable. A scarlet petal in a sea of black suits, she wore the colour of seduction and vampishness, unapologetically sensual and attention stealing and a bold choice given the red highlights in her hair. Held up by thin straps, her dress was cut low over her generous breasts, their size and shape accentuated by her slender waist. Her strappy sandals made her almost tall enough to look him in the eye. Except tonight she refused to look at him at all.
Her shoulders were very square, her spine ramrod straight, her chin lifted. She knew every single man in the audience was salivating over her. That was the point, was it not?
She was here to be noticed, coveted, prized, but not claimed. This was a costume. Which was the real Bella Sanchez—the cotton-pyjama-clad woman stretching before six in the morning, or this carefully made-up temptress?
His heart drummed a fast, heavy beat. He kept his hands at his sides and didn’t even try to smile. Unfortunately she was seated in the box to the left of the stage. Of course she was—it meant everyone in the audience could see her. As the royal box was in the centre of the dress circle, he could still see her even as he stared hard at the stage.
A violinist performed a haunting adagio, a choir sang, a soprano dazzled. But it was when a couple performed a pas de deux in the first half that he caught the first reaction in Bella. He studied her closer and saw the heartache in her expression as she watched them dance—was that the sheen of tears glistening in those blue-green eyes?
The downturn of her mouth arrested his heart. He gripped the armrests of his seat. He would not stand and go to her. He would not press his lips to hers. He couldn’t let lust ignite again. But his imagination danced on, teasing him with the fantasy of her beneath him, smiling now as she looked up at him. How hot she’d feel, how she’d drink him in—
He gritted his teeth and glared back at the stage.
By the time the house lights came on for the interval she’d composed herself and was smiling again as she engaged with the city councillors she was seated with. The look she’d just sent one of them was straight from the stage. Antonio had seen it on that video clip only a couple of hours ago. It made sense. She’d spent most of her life studying how to entrance and entice and tell stories and emotions with her body. Her appearance tonight in the audience was just as much of a performance as any she’d done on stage. Just as he was performing as ‘Prince Antonio’ and masking the unruly battle swirling within.
He paced ahead of his aides, desperate to burn the energy building up inside, glancing at some of the other women present. They were as beautifully attired, but he felt nothing. It wasn’t clothes, jewels, hair or make-up attracting him. It was that indefina
ble, unique essence. Lust. He grimaced. Why couldn’t he just shake it off?
A throng waited for him to receive them during the interval. He listened and asked a few courteous questions. He’d got through five guests when Bella walked in alone. A murmur rippled across the room as people reacted. The crowd parted, giving her a halo effect as she moved into the middle of it. She didn’t look to where he stood at the farthest end, but he was certain she knew exactly where he was. Her ‘not looking’ was too deliberate.
Now the crowd’s attention was divided—half watched him, half watched her. The flamboyant Spanish entrepreneur who’d financed her club scurried over to speak with her. But it was the wolfish man trying to manoeuvre his way towards Bella who snagged Antonio’s full attention—and animosity. Jean Luc Giraud was a predator out to amass as much money, and seduce as many women, as possible. But the man barely got five paces before his path was stopped by another, equally predatory-looking male.
Antonio stilled and watched closely. The ability to communicate was vital to his work and long ago he’d learned to lip-read. It was a useful skill, never more so than now.
‘Don’t even bother.’ The taller man blocked Jean Luc’s path.
Antonio couldn’t see Jean Luc’s response, but the blocker was facing him, and every word was clearly drawled with arrogant laziness as he answered.
‘She won’t give you what you want.’
Antonio’s gut clenched. He waited while Jean Luc responded. The blocker shook his head in mock pity.
‘Go ahead and try. She’ll flirt, but won’t follow through.’
Jean Luc turned, enabling Antonio to see the last of his response.
‘...a tease.’
‘Exactly. Looks hot, but is colder than an icicle. When you get her alone she drops the act and refuses. She’s a fake. Like her injury was fake. She couldn’t handle the demands of the company. The second she got hurt she was out of there so she could become the club queen.’
The Mistress That Tamed De Santis Page 4