The Heartbreaker Prince

by Kim Lawrence

‘I think that Sarah deserves more than to be a secret...’ She gave a self-conscious shrug.

  ‘Maybe this Sarah is happy with just sex.’

  She looked away. Was there a message, a warning even, in there for her?

  ‘Maybe she is,’ Hannah agreed without conviction. She turned her head to angle a curious look at his face. ‘You expected me to be devastated to find my father in bed with the cook, didn’t you? Sarah has been my father’s mistress for the past five years that I know of. Probably longer.

  ‘The truth is I’ve no idea how Sarah is content to be treated like some sort of...’ She stopped, wondering whether that wasn’t exactly what she was doing. ‘We both worry about her.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Sarah’s daughter, Eve, and I. She’s a year younger than me.’ She noticed the airstrip below and pressed her face to the window to get a better view. ‘Is it far to the villa?’

  ‘Not by helicopter.’

  ‘Helicopter?’

  He nodded. ‘It beats being stuck in a traffic jam.’

  That, she thought, was a matter of opinion.

  * * *

  As the helicopter landed Hannah closed her eyes—but even with them squeezed tightly shut she retained the stomach-clenching image of them falling directly into the ocean.

  The pilot landed the helicopter smoothly but Hannah appeared oblivious, her eyes tightly shut, hands clenched into white-knuckled fists. Her lips continued to move, presumably in a silent prayer. Watching her silent but abject terror, he had felt like an inconsiderate monster for subjecting her to what had clearly been an ordeal. He wanted to be irritated with her but she looked so fragile, her big eyes reminding him of a scared child. But she wasn’t a child. She was all woman—his woman. The reminder should have made him feel resentful—after all, he was paying the price for her stupidity—but instead the thought came with an accompanying shaft of possessive pride.

  ‘You can breathe now.’

  Hannah opened her eyes and collided instantly with Kamel’s dark, intense stare. The feeling of falling into the abyss didn’t go away; if anything it intensified as, with a thudding heart, she fumbled with her seat belt.

  ‘What time is it?’ she heard herself ask.

  ‘You have somewhere you need to be, ma belle?’ His eyes drifted to the wide, full, plump curve of her lips and he felt the barely damped fires of passion roar into life.

  She was the most responsive woman he had ever had in his bed. He still couldn’t get his head around the fact that the cool, distant virgin had turned out to be a warm, giving woman who held nothing back. In the middle of figuring how long he could wait until he got her into bed again he found himself wondering about the sequence of events that had led her to hide her passionate nature behind a cool mask.

  He had never felt the need to look beyond the surface of a beautiful woman, and he had no intention of looking too far now.

  ‘Relax.’

  This struck Hannah as ironic advice from someone who, as far as she could tell, never totally switched off, someone who was never totally off duty. Duty always came first with Kamel. If it didn’t, they wouldn’t be married.

  While Kamel was speaking to the pilot she took the opportunity to look through the glass without fear of gibbering. The helipad was not, as it had seemed, positioned perilously on the cliff’s edge, but several hundred feet away, and screened from the villa by an avenue of trees. Hannah could just make out through the branches the terracotta roof, but the rest of the villa was totally concealed by the lush greenery.

  Above the whirr of the blades she could hear the men’s voices. She was struggling to catch what they were saying when it happened. Previously it had only occurred when she was in a small space—the lift between floors, or in the pantry in the kitchen—but now there were no walls to close in on her, just glass. Even so, the urge to escape and the struggle to breathe were equally strong.

  Her knees were shaking but Hannah was so anxious to get back on terra firma that she didn’t wait. She didn’t wait for Kamel, who was still deep in conversation with the pilot; she just had to get out of there.

  Hannah watched as her luggage was piled onto a golf cart by two men—one of whom she had almost flattened when she missed the bottom step in her anxiety to escape the helicopter. Both men nodded respectfully to Kamel and vanished through an arch cut in the neatly trimmed green foliage.

  Hannah could feel Kamel’s disapproval—she’d sensed it before but it had upped several notches.

  ‘You should have said that you have a problem with helicopters.’ Seeing the surprise in the blue eyes that flew to his face, he smiled. ‘Yes, it was obvious.’ He took one of her hands in his and turned the palm upwards, exposing the grooves her nails had cut into her palms. ‘Any tenser and I think you’d have snapped. Why on earth didn’t you say anything?’

  ‘Why didn’t you ask?’ she countered, wishing he would release her hand, while feeling an equally strong reluctance to break the contact. His thumb was moving in circles across her palm, and each light, impersonal caress sent wave after wave of disproportionate pleasure through her body. But then there was no sense of proportion in her response to Kamel when she thought about how completely and how quickly she had given up control, and it terrified her.

  She tensed as his eyes flicked from her palm to her face. ‘You have a point,’ he conceded. ‘Should I call them back?’ He gestured in the direction of the now invisible carts. ‘I thought you might like to stretch your legs, but if you prefer—?’

  ‘No, a walk would be good.’ A night of mind-blowing sex might be better, though. The reciprocal warm glow in his eyes made her wonder if underneath all the politeness an alternative dialogue wasn’t just going on in his own head too. But who knew what went on in the mind of a man like Kamel?

  She couldn’t begin to intellectualise her response to him. How could she be standing here, thinking about him ripping her clothes off?

  Shocked and more than a little excited by the thought, she lowered her gaze. ‘You don’t have to act as though this is a real honeymoon,’ she murmured. It was duty for him. And for her it was...all so new she had no name for what she was feeling. But the ferocity of it scared her. ‘I know it’s window dressing.’ It had never crossed her mind that she could want a man’s touch this badly, to the extent it was hard to think past it.

  ‘I like touching you.’

  For a shocked instant she thought she had voiced her secret longing. ‘Oh!’

  ‘The sex wasn’t window dressing.’

  Experiencing a wave of lust so immense she felt as though she were drowning, she closed her fingers tight around his hand. She swallowed, suddenly unable to meet his eyes, her heart thudding fast in her chest. She felt bizarrely shy. The emotion paralysed her vocal cords and brought a rosy flush to her cheeks.

  ‘We are expected to make a baby, so why not enjoy it?’

  The glow faded. Afterwards, with his duty done, would he seek his pleasure elsewhere? His life was all duty—he would probably be glad to escape it.

  ‘It’s not far to the villa,’ he said as they reached the top of the incline they had been climbing.

  Hannah gasped. ‘It’s beautiful, Kamel.’

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘So, you think you might be able to stick it here for a few days?’

  How few? she wondered. And what happened after that? But then she closed down that line of thought. Better to enjoy the here and now and not think too far ahead.

  ‘I might cope.’ She looked at the sugar-pink painted villa that seemed to cling to the edge of the cliff.

  ‘I even know where the kitchen is here.’

  She lifted her brows and tried to look serious but a laugh bubbled through. ‘I’m more interested in the pool today.’ She mimed a fanning gesture with her hand.

  �
��That sounds good.’ He withdrew the vibrating phone from his pocket and looked at the screen. ‘Sorry, I might have to take a rain check on that.’ You did not hang up on a king, even—or maybe especially—if that king was your uncle. ‘I really have to take this. Go have an explore.’

  Hannah nodded, lowering her eyes to hide the irrational stab of hurt. It was crazy to mind that she was not at the top of his priorities.

  CHAPTER TEN

  WHEN SHE SLID open the wardrobes that lined one wall of the dressing room and found they weren’t empty, Hannah thought she was seeing an example of Kamel’s famed forward thinking.

  The beginnings of a frown began to form on her brow as she lifted the top item on the stack of underclothes. Size-wise—not to mention style-wise—it was really not her! A few moments later as she flicked through the row of expensive garments the frown was fully formed and it had become obvious that even Kamel did not think of everything! She felt her self-righteous anger reach new heights as she picked up the faint but distinctive scent that clung to the garments. He thought it was fine to have his wife share wardrobe space with his mistress...maybe the economy appealed to him!

  She felt physically sick, but, in the grip of a masochistic urge she could not fight, Hannah stretched out a shaking hand to the neatly folded stacks of underclothes on the shelf. They were not items that could be classed utilitarian or, by any stretch of the imagination, tasteful.

  Hannah pushed the lot onto the floor and, with a vengeful cry, grabbed the most tacky, glittering thing she could see. It turned out to be a gold beaded dress with a designer label, and a split so low on the back the wearer couldn’t possibly have worn any underclothes.

  Had she been this angry when she discovered Rob’s multiple infidelities? Hannah was incapable by this point of questioning the degree of her reaction. She was incandescent with rage. Not only did she not want a second-hand G-string, she didn’t want a second-hand man!

  How stupid had she been to even begin to let down her guard with him, to trust him? Experience had taught her you couldn’t trust a man.

  Eyes flashing, back stiff, she stalked down the glass-roofed corridor that connected the more modern bedroom wing to the main house and into the open-plan living room where she had left Kamel. The room was empty but the echoing sound of her heels on the terracotta tiles drew a call from outside.

  ‘Come have a swim!’

  Responding to the invitation with narrow-eyed determination, she exited the patio doors just as Kamel levered himself from the infinity pool.

  Rising in one seamless motion, he stood with the towel he had retrieved from the pool’s edge in one hand, but he made no attempt to dry himself. The water continued to stream down his lean brown body, making his skin glisten like polished copper in the sun.

  She caught her breath. Not even a full-blown rage could protect her from her visceral reaction to the sight of six feet four inches of dripping-wet Kamel. She was helpless to control her quivering response to the image of earthy power in his broad shoulders, deeply muscled chest, and strong thighs. She swallowed, knowing she was staring but helpless to stop herself. The moisture clinging to his skin emphasised each individual slab of muscle in his flat washboard torso, and he didn’t carry an ounce of surplus flesh to blur the perfect muscle definition.

  Kamel was all hard, primal male; he represented a physical male ideal combined with an earthy sexuality that had made him a deadly combination—the perfect lover. As she stared at him Hannah could feel her anger slipping away, feel the heat build inside her. She sucked in a short shocked breath, her eyes widening in disgust with herself as she recognised what was happening.

  He looped the towel around his neck and she turned her head slightly to avoid the rippling contraction that moved across his flat torso as he lifted his arm to drag a hand across his wet hair.

  She would not turn into one of those women who put up with all sorts of crap from a man just because he was...well...good in bed. And Kamel was, in her defence. There were probably not enough superlatives to describe just how good he was! She smothered the internal sigh and thought that he’d certainly had enough practice at it. It was not by accident they had dubbed him The Heartbreaker Prince!

  One corner of his sensual mouth lifted in a lazy half-smile, but there was nothing lazy about the gleam in his eyes. She pressed a hand to her stomach—not that it helped to calm the fluttering.

  ‘I think you’re a little overdressed, angel,’ he rasped throatily.

  The same could not be said of him. The black shorts he wore low on his hips left little to the imagination—and hers was rioting as she raised the level of her stare.

  ‘There are some swimsuits in the pool house.’

  She closed her mouth with a firm and audible snap. Clutching the dress in one hand and her anger in the other, she slung him a contemptuous look that would have frozen a normal man stone dead in his tracks. The man she had married gave a here-we-go-again look and dragged some of the excess moisture from his hair with one hand, sending a shower of silver water droplets over her heated skin.

  ‘I just bet there are, but I’m not too keen on wearing other women’s cast-offs—or, for that matter, sleeping with them!’

  He responded to her hostility with a long, slow, considering look. ‘Right.’

  He didn’t add I see because he didn’t. When she had left him a few minutes earlier the sexual promise in her blue eyes... Well, if she hadn’t left when she had, he had been within an undiplomatic hair’s breadth of doing the unthinkable—slamming the phone down on his uncle with the explanation, I need to make love to my wife.

  Acknowledging the strength of that need had been what had driven him to the pool. He hadn’t spared his body—the relentless pace through the water should have left him incapable of breath, let alone lust, but the ache was still there, and now she was looking at him as though he had just been found guilty of waging a hate campaign against kittens!

  He ground his teeth at the sheer, unremitting frustration of it all. He tilted his head, a dark scowl forming on his wide forehead as he fished for a word that summed up his life before Hannah had come into it. Centred.

  At another time he might have appreciated the black irony of the situation, but at that moment, with frustrated desire clenched like a knot, the humour passed him by. He had married her, resenting both the sense of duty that made him step up and the woman herself. And now, days later, he wanted her so badly he could barely string a coherent thought together. He was utterly consumed by it.

  Not his type...well, that self-delusion had lasted about five seconds! Hannah was every man’s type and once you saw the woman behind the cool mask... He shook his head, his fine-tuned steel trap of a mind finding it impossible to rationalise the fascination she exerted for him, the all-consuming need he felt to possess her and to lose himself in her.

  It was just sex, he told himself, recognising an uncharacteristic tendency to over-analyse in his train of thought. Why try and read anything else into it? He’d married a woman he couldn’t keep his hands off. But there was always a flip side, no heaven without hell. Not only did she have the ability to stretch the boundaries of sexual pleasure, she also had the ability to drive him crazy with her mood swings.

  He forced his eyes from her face to the garment in her hand. Her mood seemed out of proportion with a wardrobe malfunction. He struggled to school his features into something that conveyed an interest he did not feel—he was more interested in peeling off her clothes than discussing fashion.

  ‘You want to show me a new dress?’

  Her brows hit her hairline. He actually thought she wanted to parade around and ask his approval!

  ‘I suppose you’ve never seen this before?’ Her voice shook almost as much as her hand did as she held out the backless, frontless, totally tasteless garment.

  Recognition cl
icked in his brain. ‘I have.’ He had little interest in women’s clothes but this one had been hard to forget—as was the evening that had gone with it.

  He hadn’t been the intended victim or beneficiary of the provocative number. Neither, it turned out, had Charlotte begged him to escort her to the glittering premiere for the pleasure of his company. He and the dress had been part of her revenge on her ex-husband. Bizarrely, although Charlotte had been glad to be out of her marriage, she had resented the fact her ex had moved on too—especially as the woman he had moved on to was a younger version of herself.

  ‘You’re angry.’ His eyes slid down her body, over the slim curves and long, long legs. She was, he decided, totally magnificent. ‘I know because your eyes turn from summer sky to stormy sea when you’re mad.’

  ‘It can work once, even twice, but I have to tell you, Kamel, that the staring-deep-into-my-eyes thing has a shelf life,’ she lied. ‘So don’t try and change the subject.’

  ‘What was the subject?’ he asked, continuing to stare deep into her eyes, causing major and probably permanent damage to her frazzled nervous system.

  ‘Your girlfriend’s choice of clothes. Oh, incidentally, I’m totally fine with sharing my wardrobe space with your harem, though I have to tell you that they are not my size!’

  ‘I know,’ he said, his fingertips twitching as he transferred his stare to Hannah’s heaving breasts. They fitted almost perfectly into his palms, soft, firm and... He took a deep swallow and lifted his gaze. ‘Charlotte has had help in that area. They were, I believe, an engagement present from her ex.’

  Her chin went up as she enquired in a deceptively soft voice, ‘Are you suggesting I need help in that area?’

  The icy question drew a low smoky laugh from him. ‘You are perfect in that area.’ The humour faded from his face, leaving a restless hunger. She was perfect. His perfect lover.

  The hunger in his stare as much as his flattering words brought hot colour flying to her cheeks. But this heat was mild compared to the surge of sexual warmth that settled deep in her pelvis and spread. Her mask of disdain was rice-paper thin as she gave a sniff and tossed her head.