by Jane Porter
“Come here,” he growled. “Kneel over me.”
She’d wanted to be daring; she’d wanted to take risks but this was terrifying. “I’m not sure—”
“I am. I want you. I want to taste you again. Last night was not enough.”
Heat rushed through her, heat and need and fear that perhaps this was all a dream and once she opened her eyes, he’d be gone.
And then his mouth touched her there, and his tongue found her between the slick folds, and she cried out as he stroked her and sucked on her, drawing the sensitive nub between his lips and then his teeth, tugging and licking until she felt as if she’d explode out of her skin.
He slipped a finger inside her, finding more sensitive spots as he sucked on her, and she couldn’t fight the intense waves of pressure and pleasure building. She screamed as she climaxed, and the orgasm shuddered through her, making her body writhe and bend.
He lifted her up and turned her around so that she lay in the sand, and he stretched out over her. She stared up at him, so dazed she could barely focus.
“You liked that,” he murmured, pushing her hair back from her face.
“You could say that,” she whispered, reaching up to tug on his shirt. “But I’m feeling greedy. I want you. I want what we did last night. That was heaven. Please take this off. Your shorts, too.”
“We have to be careful,” he said. “I wasn’t careful enough last night. I didn’t pull out fast enough.”
She struggled to follow what he was saying and then she understood. Careful as in careful not to get her pregnant. Careful as in birth control. “Oh. Right. Smart.” Why hadn’t she thought of any of that?
But then, there was no time for thinking about anything, not when he was settling over her, handsome and naked and beautiful. She’d never met anyone half so beautiful. And then he was kissing her again and lowering himself to cover her before he entered her, his thick shaft stretching her and filling her so that her breath caught and she had to relax to accommodate him.
But then when he began to move, slowly, the uncomfortable sensation eased, and the pressure became a good pressure as he found the spot inside her that liked being touched. “Again,” she said, lifting her hips. “Do that again and again.”
He laughed softly against her neck. “My pleasure.”
And then she didn’t want to talk anymore, not when she was feeling so much heat and sensation and emotion.
With him, like this, she felt beautiful. Together with him, like this, everything was perfect.
* * *
The days passed, one after another. The sun shone brightly every day, long hot days that only cooled in the late afternoon as the wind blew. They spent most of their time together. He felt guilty that she wasn’t working very much, but he knew that it was just a matter of time, too, before her father would return and everything would change. Maybe that was why he couldn’t get enough of Josephine, craving her body and warmth. Or maybe he couldn’t get enough because she felt like sunshine and life—so open and warm and affectionate. Her smile did something to him, creating strange pain and pressure in his chest. He feared what he didn’t know, and yet it only served to make the present even more important. It made her more important. He wasn’t going to lose her, either. She was his. She belonged with him. He knew that much.
“My father should be back very soon now,” she said, curling up against him late one afternoon, her hand on his chest, her fingers lightly caressing his skin. He loved the way she touched him. It felt right. She felt right in his arms, in his bed. “Just three days, and when he returns, he will know who to contact,” she added, “and what to do.”
The news should please him. Obviously, he knew they could not remain like this forever. But he dreaded reality, unable to fathom the future or the truth of it all when he was so removed from it here with her.
She misinterpreted his silence, because she looked up at him, giving him one of her radiant, reassuring smiles, which never failed to put an ache in his chest. “My father will like you. Very much.”
He couldn’t answer her smile, not when there was so much heaviness within him. “There is a whole world out there that we don’t know.”
“But we will discover it together, yes?”
He kissed her brow and then the tip of her small, straight nose and then, finally, the lushness of her lips. Almost immediately desire flared, the warmth of the kiss sparking hot cravings. He pulled her closer, wanting to lose himself in her rather than at the edge of the unknown. The unknown wasn’t his friend. But she was. Here on Khronos, she was his world. She was his everything.
“I love you,” she whispered, as he entered her, thrusting deep.
He didn’t say it back, but then, he didn’t think she expected him to.
* * *
Later that night, he woke up and glanced toward the windows, looking to see if it was light. But there wasn’t a wall of windows where he expected glass to be. The window was on a different side of the room, and it was a simple square window with a simple grid in the middle.
He frowned. This wasn’t his room. This wasn’t his home.
He swung his legs out of bed. The ground was very close. It jarred his knees. His bare feet arched against the roughly cobbled floor. Why was he here? He didn’t belong here. He lived somewhere grand. He lived somewhere...
His throat worked. He swallowed as the past returned, colliding with the present, because he knew.
He knew his name. Alexander.
He knew who he was. He knew what he was.
Alexander glanced around the room, understanding where he was. Not in Aargau but in Greece, on this island with Josephine who’d rescued him.
He looked over and there she was, still sleeping in the bed. Her bed. Her cottage. Her island, not his.
Her long honey hair spilled across her bare shoulder. Her thick lashes rested on her cheek. She was stunning even in her sleep. His very own mermaid.
She’d saved him. He would have died—drowned—if not for her, and then when he was still weak, she’d taken care of him. And then last night she’d told him she loved him, and he hadn’t answered her with words, but he’d shown her how much her faith in him mattered to him by making love to her for hours, worshipping her body since something inside him kept him from giving her his heart.
He’d thought that maybe he couldn’t give himself to her fully because he didn’t know who he was. It was what she’d said, and he’d hoped maybe it was true, but now he knew why he couldn’t love her. Because she wasn’t his, and he wasn’t free.
He was Prince Alexander Julius Alberici of Aargau, and he was betrothed to another.
CHAPTER FOUR
HE NEEDED TO tell her.
Alexander needed to tell her that his memory had returned, that he knew who he was.
But he also knew that once he did, everything would change. Forever.
He wasn’t ready to lose her. He wasn’t ready to lose the warmth of what they had. He’d never felt like this with anyone, and he’d never been wanted like this by anyone. She didn’t even know who he was, or what he was, and yet she wanted him.
And so that day, all day, he watched her, paying attention to everything, committing to memory the sunlight on her hair and how it illuminated her stunning profile. He watched her walk and that way she’d almost skip because of the joyous bounce in her step. She was so buoyant, so happy, she radiated light and goodness.
Hope and strength.
He hadn’t been raised with women like her. He hadn’t ever known that women like her existed. His mother had been born a princess and had been raised strictly, taught to be conscious and vigilant about the image she presented, conscious of her elevated place in society. Lovely Josephine was nothing like his mother. She was free and lacked conceit and arrogance. She was humble and practical and so quick to smile and laugh.
&nbs
p; He’d dated many women over the years but there had never been anyone like Josephine.
And his fiancée, Princess Danielle, was nothing like Josephine, either.
The heavy rock returned to his stomach, the weight reminding him that his past and future were about to collide and it would be painful and ugly.
No, he couldn’t think of the future now—it wasn’t here. And he couldn’t dwell on Princess Danielle, either.
He didn’t want to think of anything but Josephine, acutely aware that they were on borrowed time and that the real world would intrude soon, and once it did nothing would ever be the same.
“What’s wrong?” Josephine asked, coming up behind him to wrap her arms around his neck. She leaned against him, kissing his cheek, her body so warm against his back. She smelled of sunshine and lavender and the honey-vanilla-scented shampoo she used on her hair. “Is your head hurting again?”
Not his head, he thought, but his conscience.
He’d spent the past week making love to her, promising her the future, even as another woman counted down the weeks, anticipating their wedding in the Roche Cathedral across from the Alberici palace. He was going to end up hurting one if not both of them. He reached up to cover one of Josephine’s hands. “My head is fine,” he answered quietly. “I just keep thinking about the future.”
“It won’t be so bad,” she said, her voice gentle.
She was always so gentle with him, so patient. As if he deserved tenderness and patience when he was anything but tender and kind himself.
She wouldn’t like who he was, he thought.
She wouldn’t like Prince Alexander Julius at all.
The emotion was intense and uncomfortable, so uncomfortable that he couldn’t allow himself to go there. Instead, he pulled her down onto his lap and kissed her, his hand fisting in her thick hair, warm from the sun.
But kissing her only made the emotion hotter and fiercer. He didn’t want to let her go. There was no way in hell he wanted to lose her—she was the first woman he’d ever needed, ever craved—but at the same time, Alexander didn’t know how he’d reconcile his duty and responsibility to his kingdom and Princess Danielle with his feelings, and Alexander knew too well that in his world feelings didn’t matter. Feelings, in fact, were inconsequential. What mattered was fulfilling one’s duty.
He’d tell her tomorrow, he vowed, breaking off the kiss. Her green gaze met his and held. She looked at him with such trust, such love. His chest tightened, guilt pummeling him. He’d never been dishonest with anyone before. How could he hurt her? How could he do this to her?
She wouldn’t stand in the way of his wedding to Danielle, either. She’d tell him to do the honorable thing. She wouldn’t ask for anything for herself.
Her hand rose to lightly skim his cheekbone and then his mouth and finally his jaw. “What’s wrong? Tell me.”
He wanted to. God, how he wanted to, because there were still things he didn’t remember and things that weren’t clear. Like the trip on the yacht with his friends. He wasn’t even sure which friends had been there. Shouldn’t he remember that? And he didn’t remember the beach, and he didn’t remember a fight, and he didn’t remember going overboard.
If his memory had returned, why were those details still blank?
“I just want to remember the yacht,” he said after a moment, hating the turmoil within him. He’d always known himself. He’d always been confident. No, he didn’t like this new version of himself. “I want to remember my friends and the circumstances that brought me to you.”
She rubbed the line of his jaw and then lightly dragged her fingernails across the stubble of his beard. “I do, too. And then when I know what happened, I will find your friends and give them a piece of my mind because how dare they treat you so shabbily! How dare—”
He stopped her words with a kiss, and as he kissed her he felt a shaft of pain through his chest. She was, without a doubt, the very best thing he’d ever known, and soon he’d break her heart. And just maybe break his, too.
* * *
Josephine woke with a start, a familiar sound puncturing her dreams. It was a boat.
Her father’s motorboat. She flung back the covers and practically jumped out of bed, trying to absorb the fact that her father was home two days earlier than expected.
A strong muscular arm reached for her. “Where are you going?” he murmured sleepily.
“My father’s home,” she answered, heart hammering, trying to imagine her father’s reaction if he walked into the cottage and found her in bed with a strange man. Her father was tolerant but it would have been too much for him. She dragged her hair into a ponytail. “You stay here. I’ll go speak with him.”
“I’ll go with you.”
He stood unashamed before her, tall, muscular, tanned, naked. Heat rushed through her, and her hands shook as she pulled on a sundress, covering her nudity, suddenly aware that she wasn’t at all prepared for this moment. She’d convinced herself that her father would like him, but would he?
“Let me talk to him first, and then I’ll bring him inside and introduce you two. I think it’d be better if I tell him what’s happened—”
“Why are you upset? Will he be angry to find me here?”
“Not if you’re dressed. But he’s a father. I’m his little girl.”
“Understood.”
She pulled up the covers and then, glancing at the bed, realized how it would look. She took one of the pillows and a quilt and carried them to the living room, where she made a second bed on the ground.
He’d followed her into the living room, brow lifting quizzically. “My bed, I take it?”
“Yes.” She shot him a desperate look. “Do you mind?”
“Am I really to sleep there?”
“If you’d prefer, I can sleep there—”
“Don’t be foolish. I love sleeping on the floor.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“True. But for you, I’d do anything.” And then he pulled her into his arms and kissed her hard, the kiss hot and possessive. When he lifted his head, his blue gaze scorched her with its heat. “And I do mean that.”
He released her and Josephine slipped out of the cottage and ran down to the beach where her father was anchoring the boat. He was just reaching for the second line when he saw her. “Perfect timing,” her father called.
She took the line from him and attached it to the mooring buried deep in the sand. He jumped out to give her a hand.
“You’re back early,” she said as he finished attaching the heavy chain through the iron loop.
“I was worried about you. I couldn’t reach you on the radio.”
“It broke a few days after you left.”
“And you couldn’t fix it?”
“I dropped it, smashing too many parts.”
“I bought a new one, just in case.”
“Smart thinking.” She pushed her hair back from her face, feeling ridiculously nervous. She wasn’t used to feeling this way, not around her father. “How was your trip? Everything go all right?”
“Everything went well. Had some good news while at the university. Picked up some more grant money, which is always nice.”
“Money pays bills.”
“Also necessary when restocking supplies.” He waded back into the water and climbed into the boat and began dragging boxes and crates forward. “How have things been here? Anything exciting?”
She darted a glance toward the stone house. “Actually, yes. Far more exciting than usual.” She took a quick breath. “We have a visitor.”
Her dad stopped in his tracks, slowly straightening. “A what?”
“A visitor.” She smiled brightly. “It’s quite the story, too. You see, he went overboard and I saved him.” She gulped more air, needing courage. “He was injured in the
accident. He’s lost his memory. Can’t remember anything, not his name or where he’s from.”
“He’s been alone with you this entire time?”
“Not the entire time. Just a week or so.”
“A week or so.” He paused, his weathered forehead creasing even more deeply. “Here? On the island?”
“Yes.”
“Where is he now?”
“Inside the house. I asked him to stay there while I told you about him. I knew it’d be a shock. It was a shock to me—” she broke off as her dad jumped over the side of the boat and started for the house. “What are you doing?”
“Going to tell this fellow to pack up—”
“Pack what?” she cried, running to catch up with him. “He went overboard. He has nothing!”
“Great. It’ll make it that much easier to ferry him to Antreas and hand him over to officials there.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know nothing about this man. He could be dangerous.”
“If he was dangerous, wouldn’t I know it by now?”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“Dad, stop. Listen.” She grabbed his coat sleeve, tugged on it hard, stopping him. “He has amnesia.”
“Which would make him all the more unpredictable. You’re lucky he hasn’t hurt you—”
“Why would I hurt her when she saved my life?” Alexander said, his deep voice catching them both by surprise. He approached her father and extended a hand. “I’m grateful for your daughter’s bravery, Professor Robb.”
Her father warily shook his hand. “I understand you’ve had an accident.”
“I did.”
Her father stepped back, still studying him, his expression shuttered. His closed expression worried her. Her father was a professor—his career had been filled with young people, students—and he was usually affable, friendly. He wasn’t now. What was wrong?