“Not to me.”
“Then why else are you here?”
“I was invited to have dinner with my friend and her—her—”
“Yes?” Ash taunted.
“You’re an asshole!”
“And you’re repeating yourself.”
“If the name fits!”
He shrugged broad shoulders. “Strangely, no one’s ever called me that before tonight.”
“You surprise me!”
He gave a feral grin. “Now I really do want to fuck you.”
“In your dreams, buddy!”
“In my bed would be more comfortable.”
“Mr. Knight—”
“Ash—”
Anastazia’s and Alexandre’s protests went unheard as Lissa threw her napkin on the tabletop before standing up, cheeks flushed, her eyes glittering with either tears or temper. “You’re an arrogant fucking bastard!”
Ash was obviously completely unconcerned by the insult, or the interest of the other diners, as he relaxed against the back of his chair to look up at her. “And now we’re back to the fucking…”
“I wouldn’t fuck you if you were the last man on this earth.” Lissa picked up her champagne glass and threw the contents into Ash’s face. “Thank you for dinner, but I have to go now,” she said tightly to Anastazia and Alexandre before grabbing up her clutch bag and stalking across the restaurant.
“No.” Alexandre placed his hand over Anastazia’s as she would have stood to go after her friend, his eyes glittering darkly as he turned to Ash. “Follow her and apologize.”
“I’m the one who had a glass of champagne thrown over him.” Ash grimaced as he used his napkin to wipe the excess liquid from his face and the front of his dinner jacket. “Thanks.” He accepted the second napkin handed to him by the flustered maître d’ after he hurried over to their table. “That’s fine, thanks,” he dismissed the older man. “Nothing to see here,” he growled at the other diners gawking across at their table, glaring at them darkly until they all turned away to resume eating their meal or to talking softly under their breath.
Anastazia glared at Ash. “If you had spoken to me like that, I would have hit you over the head with the whole bottle, not just thrown a glass of champagne in your face. How dare you speak to my friend like that?”
“Go,” Alexandre instructed Ash tightly.
Ash sighed. “Is that my sometime employer speaking or my friend?”
“Both!”
The other man threw the wet napkin onto the table before rising slowly to his feet to glance across the restaurant where Lissa had disappeared. “Perhaps you might consider searching for my dead body in the morning.”
“If I find it, I’m more likely to trample on it,” Stazzi assured him, totally stunned by what had just happened. “Repeatedly,” she added with feeling.
Asher gave an unconcerned grin. “I have a feeling there may not be enough of me left in the morning to do that.”
“Good.” Stazzi glared at him as he nodded his good-bye before striding confidently toward the reception area. “I really should go after Lissa—”
“No. You really shouldn’t.” Alexandre’s hand on her arm prevented her from standing. “Give it a few minutes and then call her, by all means. But I doubt she will answer you, and I certainly wouldn’t advise following her.”
“Why not?”
He grimaced. “The sexual tension between Ash and Lissa was, is…explosive. So much so, I doubt they will get any further than Ash’s car before—well, before. The first time, at least.”
She gasped. “You’re wrong—”
“No, I assure you I’m not.” Alexandre turned in his seat, the length of his thigh now resting warmly against her own. “The fact Ash spoke of the morning, twice, tells me exactly what he and your friend will be doing tonight. All night.”
“Lissa hates him—”
“She wants him,” he corrected huskily, lifting a tress of her hair and curling it back behind her ear.
Was it possible? Stazzi wondered, still dazed by the way Lissa and Ash’s barbed conversation had exploded into such a violent verbal and then physical exchange.
Lissa had a temper, yes, but Stazzi couldn’t say she had ever seen her friend quite that agitated before.
“Ash wants her too,” Alexandre murmured, his breath warm against the ear he’d bared. “In the same way I want you.”
Every other thought went out of Stazzi’s head as she felt the sharp, arousing nip of his teeth against the lobe of her ear.
Chapter 6
Stazzi had no idea what she was doing sitting in the back of the limousine beside Alexandre, her hand held securely in his much larger one, as they were driven through the lamplit streets of London back to the Meyers Hotel. One of the bodyguards was sitting in the front with the driver, the other five following closely behind in a black SUV. Both vehicles had tinted windows so that no one could see the occupants.
Maybe part of the reason she had agreed to go back to the hotel with Alexandre was because she was still in shock?
Stazzi had done as he’d suggested and called Lissa instead of running after her. Three times. Each time, the call had gone to voice mail. Then she tried texting her friend, asking if Lissa wanted her to come home. Half a minute later she received the text back of “no.” Stazzi’s return of “why not” had eventually been answered with “not there.” She had almost been afraid to ask the next question ‘where?’ There was a much longer pause this time before Lissa replied “with Ash.”
How had she missed what Alexandre so obviously hadn’t, that the sniping between Lissa and Ash was actually a fierce sexual attraction? Lissa had been engaged once a long time ago and been badly stung when it didn’t work out. She never went home with any of the men she had dated since, and tonight, with Ash, hadn’t even been a date.
Come to that, how had Stazzi missed seeing that Will Granger was a two-timing bastard?
Her emotion radar was definitely off-kilter.
Which probably meant acting on her own equally fierce sexual attraction to Alexandre by going back to the hotel with him for his suggested nightcap was also a bad idea.
Probably?
It was a bad idea. If Daniel or any of the other hotel staff saw her—
“Maintaining a hotel guest’s privacy is the whole point of having the separate lift up to the penthouse floor.”
She turned to Alexandre in the semidarkness. “How did you know what I was thinking?”
He smiled. “Your face is sometimes like an open book.”
Really? Did that mean he’d seen the way she couldn’t take her eyes off him this evening? For instance, did he know how watching him eat, the parting of those sculpted lips and the placing of food inside, had made her think of having Alexandre eat her pussy with just as much enjoyment?
“Sometimes?” she repeated nervously.
“Most of the time.” His chuckle was husky.
Oh good Lord, he does know.
“Don’t say it.” Alexandre had turned to place gentle fingertips against her lips as she would have spoken, his face now only inches away from hers in the darkness, his glittering gaze holding her captive. “I promise you that nothing will happen tonight that you don’t want to happen. You only have to say no.”
Which was no help at all, when what Stazzi wanted right now was him. Both of them naked, on that king-size bed in the main bedroom in his hotel suite. She ached to have Alexandre’s hands and lips on her. Her mouth, her breasts, between her thighs. Especially between her thighs. Merely thinking about having his mouth there was making her pussy weep and her clit hard. She clenched her thighs together as she felt the hot flow of juices that dampened her panties.
Bad, bad, bad idea—
She gasped as Alexandre’s mouth replaced his fingertips against her lips. Not gently or questioning, but hard and demanding, his tongue running along the seam of her lips to part them before thrusting fiercely inside.
Oh God, y
es!
This was what she wanted, who she wanted, and to hell with everything else.
Stazzi pulled her hand free of Alexandre’s and turned in the seat to put her arms about his shoulders, fingers tangling in the hair at his nape as she pulled him in closer still. Lips devouring, tongues dueling, his chest like steel as he rubbed it against the aroused ache of her nipples.
She gave a low whimper as Alexandre continued to kiss her even as he maneuvered her onto her back on the leather seat, pushing her dress up to her waist before he followed her down to lie between her parted thighs. His cock was long and hard against the thin material of her panties and his trousers as he began to slowly thrust and grind that hardness against her pulsing clit to the same rhythm as his tongue thrusting inside the greedy heat of her mouth.
Stazzi had been in a state of half-arousal all evening as she sat next to Alexandre, and so very aware of everything about him. This overflow of sensations, his claiming lips and tongue, matched with those grinding thrusts against her clit, pushed her over the edge, and she half screamed against his mouth as her orgasm ripped through her and caused her body to arch up into his.
Alexandre continued to taste and lick and bite her lips as he rode her through it, his cock hot and hard against her clit, his hand caressing her waist before moving higher to cup and hold her bare breast, prolonging her orgasm as he pinched and pulled on the sensitive nipple.
“Again!” His eyes glittered down at her in the darkness when he pulled back to hold her gaze captive. His hand moved caressingly down her inner thighs before pulling the lace of her panties aside. “You are so fucking wet,” he groaned. His long fingers stroked that wetness over her swollen nether lips and clit, stroking, moistening, before two of those fingers plunged inside her.
Stazzi cried out even while she continued to arch up and meet those thrusts, the pleasure intense as his thumb pressed and stroked her oversensitive clit and those fingers stroked deeply inside her.
“I’m going to take you so hard once we get back to the hotel.” Alexandre’s voice was guttural, his expression dark and fierce as he looked down at her. He was every inch a demanding and savage lover, rather than the urbane and sophisticated Prince Alexandre. “I’m going to take you everywhere. Be so deep inside you, I’ll fucking own you.”
Stazzi’s breath was a gasping sob as she felt her release surging over and through her for a second time, deeper and more intense than the first, as Alexandre’s fingers curled inside her to touch and stroke a place she never knew existed, and causing her juices to flow more copiously. That elusive G-spot? Stazzi didn’t care what it was, could only scream with pleasure this time as the intensity and length of her second orgasm claimed her and she lost all sense of anything but that overwhelming pleasure.
She had no idea how much time had passed when she finally came back to an awareness of her surroundings. Of Alexandre as he now lay half on her and half on the car seat rather than having his whole weight on top of her.
On the car seat!
The two of them were in the back of his limousine, with a driver and bodyguard seated up front. Okay, so there was a tinted privacy glass dividing the front and back of the car, but that didn’t mean they hadn’t been able to hear her screams.
“You’re okay,” Alexandre soothed, his fingers gentle as he caressed away the tears of pleasure from the dampness of her cheeks. “It’s okay, Anastazia—”
“Of course it isn’t okay!” she protested. She wanted to sit up, to tell him to stop the car and let her out here, but unfortunately, her body still felt boneless, even her arms too heavy for her to lift them. The most she could manage was to put her parted legs together now that he was no longer lying between them. “What did you do to me?” Her vision blurred with fresh and mortified tears.
“I only pleasured you. Damn it, it wasn’t my intention to frighten you,” he said with soft self-condemnation, unmoving, as if he didn’t want to alarm her.
As if Stazzi wasn’t spooked enough already!
She had never— It had never been like that for her before. Never.
She was twenty-seven years old, and there had been other men for her. Not many, but some. Men she had cared about, loved for a short time. Like Will— No, not like Will. The men before Will had cared for her too. But none of them had affected her like Alexandre had. She had never passed out from an overload of pleasure as it seemed she might have done with him.
“Anastazia?” Alexandre frowned his concern as the tears continued to trickle down her cheeks. “Did I frighten you?” He sat up and took her with him, straightening her dress before lifting her onto his thighs to hold her tightly in his arms, his face buried in the perfumed silk of her hair. “Please tell me I didn’t hurt you.”
“You didn’t hurt me.”
“But I frightened you with my intensity?” He knew he’d lost control for a few minutes.
“Not exactly.”
Alexandre gave an impatient shake of his head. “I need you to tell me how you feel. Tell me if I did something wrong.”
Her eyes were downcast as she gave a shake of her head and trembled in his arms, causing fresh tears to fall.
For a moment, Alexandre’s heart ceased to beat at the thought of having frightened her so much she couldn’t even talk to or look at him. “I know I was out of control.” His arms tightened about her. “But I never want to hurt you, Anastazia. Please, stop crying.”
“I’m not crying because you hurt me, Alexandre.” She raised her head to gaze at him through tear-wet lashes. “I’m crying because that was amazing. Totally crazy too,” she conceded wryly. “Sensual overload.” One of her hands moved up to his clenched jaw, fingers a light caress to ease his tension. “But now I need for you to take me home.”
Alexandre’s gut clenched at the thought of not being with her tonight. All night. “I know you’re worried about Lissa, but I seriously doubt she’ll be back to your apartment until the morning, and we would be more comfortable together at the hotel.” He glanced pointedly at the bodyguard in the front of the car. “Where I go, they go,” he reminded her.
“I realize that.” Stazzi sighed, her cheeks burning at the memory of her screams. Screams those men couldn’t have helped but overhear. “But the same doesn’t apply to me. And I do really need to go home. Alone. This is all… It’s too much too fast, Alexandre,” she added as his expression darkened.
“I’m only in London for a week,” he groaned as she moved out of his arms.
Stazzi knew that. As she knew also at the end of that week, this ruling prince would return to his island, and she would never see him again. She needed time, away from Alexandre, to gather together her fractured thoughts and emotions—and her shattered and satiated body—because when she was with him, she couldn’t think beyond the moment, let alone what the consequences might be of falling for this man.
It was only twenty-four hours since she had believed she would be agreeing to marry another man. This attraction to Alexandre could merely be a reaction to that, on the rebound, because she felt so hurt and humiliated—
I was attracted to him before I knew what a bastard Will is.
Well, yes, she had been, but it was an attraction she had denied, out of misplaced loyalty to Will. And despite now knowing of Will’s betrayal, she simply wasn’t the type to jump into bed with a man after knowing him for only one day.
I don’t seem to have any problem with that in the back of his limousine.
Because Alexandre was like no other man she had ever met. On the surface so suave and charming, controlled, but underneath that was the dark and intense savage who had made love to her while telling her he was going to “fucking own her.”
She gave a shiver, unsure whether it was one of apprehension or anticipation. And if it was the latter, what did that make her? What would it do to her to be owned by this man, body and soul, and then discarded, forgotten, when he returned to his Mediterranean island?
Alexandre was a prince, unma
rried or even engaged, but she had no doubts that he would be, and not too far in the future. He was aged in his midthirties, a ruling prince, and one day very soon, he would need an heir. If she hadn’t been good enough for Will, she certainly wasn’t good enough for this rich-as-Croesus prince.
Nor, once Alexandre married, was she mistress material. It simply wasn’t in her to hurt another woman by sneaking around behind her back by having an affair with her husband. Her parents had brought her up never to do anything to another person she wouldn’t want done to her. Which meant she could never be any man’s mistress. Even more so when she could still feel the humiliation of knowing Will had cheated on her in that very same way.
And she was jumping way ahead of herself. Yes, there was no doubt that Alexandre wanted her now, tonight, maybe even for the rest of the week he was in London, but nothing he had said or done indicated he would be interested in continuing any sort of relationship with her once he returned to Androcco and his life there.
Better not to become involved in the first place—
“Have dinner with me tomorrow night. Just the two of us. At the hotel.”
“I can’t…” she groaned.
“You can,” Alexandre pressed, not touching her, but his proximity was overpowering nonetheless. “All you have to do is say yes. Say yes, Anastazia.”
“Ye— No,” she substituted with a decisive shake of her head. “This evening was…different,” she acknowledged ruefully as she thought of Lissa’s and Ash’s behavior, and the fact that her best friend was, in all probability, going to spend the night with the other man. That really was different. “I enjoyed this evening, I really did. But I’ve had a stressful couple of days and…and I don’t want to… Please understand, my last relationship ended only last night, and this—you and I, the attraction between us—could merely be a reaction to the abrupt ending of that relationship. I’m sorry.” She grimaced, heart sinking as that frown became even darker on Alexandre’s brow, his eyelids narrowing to slits over glittering eyes. No doubt as physical evidence he didn’t like what she had just said.
He confirmed that was the case by moving back to his own side of the car before pressing a button on a panel in the door. “Miss Carmichael’s apartment, if you please, Tomas,” he spoke into the intercom, giving the other man the address.
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