The girl from the boat! He had come to her house and then made love to her. He raised his wrist and shot a narrowed glance at his watch. Pretty fast, too.
He flicked his gaze back to her. ‘Ciao, bella,’ he said softly.
Ella tensed as some indefinable quality changed him from the man who had said her name on that broken note at the height of passion. Suddenly he looked forbidding—no, maybe it was more than that. Unknown. A darkly erotic stranger she had just made love to.
‘We ought to move,’ she said awkwardly.
‘Move?’
How stupid to feel shy after what had just happened. ‘Upstairs,’ she elaborated. ‘To bed. Just in case…’ She shrugged as she pointed towards the windows. ‘Well, I would hate it if someone saw us! You know…’
Nico froze.
Oh, yes, he knew all right. He knew people who would pay countless amounts for information about just such a damaging scenario. His mouth tightened. What had he been thinking of? Carefully he moved her away from him and sat up, shaking his head in disbelief and anger at himself as he became fully aware of their disarranged clothing.
‘Do you have a bathroom?’ he asked tersely.
The bubble burst into a myriad of rainbow droplets. How dared he use that tone of voice to her? ‘What do you think?’ she snapped.
He saw the look of anger on her face and wanted to applaud her for not bothering to mask it behind a smile. But why should she? he asked himself. She doesn’t know who you are!
Without warning, Ella moved off him and got to her feet, automatically reaching for her camiknickers until she remembered that he’d ripped them apart. ‘I’ll show you where it is,’ she said furiously, ‘and then you can go.’
But he was on his feet in an instant, mesmerised by the sexy thrust of her bottom, and even more by the peremptory way she was dealing with him.
He caught her by the waist and lifted her hair to nuzzle the back of her neck with the rasp of his chin. ‘Do not be angry with me, Gabriella, cara mia.’
‘Then don’t make me angry.’
He nuzzled at her neck again. ‘Am I making you angry now?’ he murmured.
She shut her eyes. ‘You’re scratching me, actually,’ she said weakly, as his chin scraped against her.
‘But you like it?’
Oh, yes, she liked it all right—but then she liked just about everything he had done since he had first rung on her doorbell. And yet if she stopped to analyse it they had behaved like two…two…
She spun round to face him. ‘Do you make a habit of this kind of behaviour?’
‘Do you?’ he countered.
‘Of course I don’t!’
‘Well, you should,’ he mused thoughtfully. ‘You really should. You are exceptionally talented at getting the very best out of a man—’
She lifted her hand to slap him, but with lightning speed he captured her wrist before it could make contact and levered her towards him.
‘You dare to strike me?’ he questioned, outraged.
She realised what she had almost done and her face crumpled. ‘Oh, God, Nico—I’m sorry! I’ve never tried to hit a man before! Never!’
He stared at her. ‘So what is it about me that makes you behave so differently?’
She shook her head distractedly. ‘Maybe I’m really angry with myself—for behaving in such an outrageous manner. For letting you…. For wanting you…’she finished, in a voice that was shaking.
‘For wanting me?’ he echoed, and pulled her back into his arms, burying his face in her hair to hide his smile of sheer delight. ‘Is that it? Is that all?’
And that really told him everything he needed to know. She liked sex; well, so did he. They had clicked in a way that was little short of dynamite, and they could click again. A beautiful, captivating woman whose appetite matched his. Two bodies in total harmony, with the added spice of distance between them that would keep hunger alive and boredom at bay. Yes, she would make a perfect lover.
Sooner or later he was going to have to reveal his identity, but he didn’t anticipate a problem with that—for when had it ever been anything but the ultimate turn-on? And he would not tell her yet. For this freedom he should surely cherish while he was able to.
He reached down to pick up the crumpled and discarded dress and handed it to her, splaying the other hand proprietorially just below her belly. The tips of his fingers tangled in the damp cluster of tawny hair, and his eyes glittered with anticipation as she sucked in a shuddering and helpless breath.
‘Weren’t you going to show me where the bedroom is?’ he drawled.
CHAPTER SIX
THE telephone began to jangle and Ella jumped.
Let it ring, she told herself. Because if it is Nico—if it is—then nothing is sadder than someone who is just sitting around waiting for it to ring.
‘I will call you, cara mia,’ he had murmured, after a protracted kiss that had taken her breath away.
And then he had left, with half the buttons of his shirt missing. He had paused at the door and looked down at them, a mocking expression curving the sensual mouth. ‘Good thing I’m not going straight to an appointment,’ he’d murmured.
‘Just where are you going?’
‘To London. I have an early start.’ And then, because he had needed to work out exactly how he wanted to play this, he had kissed her again. ‘I’ll call you.’
Up until now he hadn’t. He was probably busy—at least, that was what Ella kept telling herself, trying to be cool about it, still believing that he really would call. Because the alternative was just too much to contemplate. That it was just a line he’d spun in order to leave without having to endure a scene. She had fallen into his arms with almost shameful ease, and maybe he’d done that typically masculine thing of wanting her and then despising what came too easily.
But it wasn’t just pride that made her hope he had been telling the truth—it was the fact that she was aching to speak to him. She had believed him when they had lain there, with Nico stroking her skin, telling her that she was the most fantastic lover ever, because she had wanted to believe him—needed to believe him. As if that in some way justified the rampant way in which she had behaved. And the words had almost made up for the fact that he had left before midnight, with the mocking murmur of, ‘Ciao, Cinderella’, ringing in her ears.
She snatched the phone up. ‘Hello?’
‘Ella?’
She very nearly wept and slammed it down again, for the voice was not deep and sexily foreign and she recognised it instantly, although she pretended that she hadn’t.
‘Speaking,’ she said guardedly.
‘Ella, it’s Mark.’
‘Oh, hello.’ The frost crept into her voice quite naturally. She had hoped she’d heard the last of him, after that disastrous boat trip. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘How come you managed to avoid getting put into jail along with rest of us?’ he demanded.
‘I was the only one who was sober, if you remember! And I was sick.’
‘So I gather.’
‘Look, Mark, I’m a bit busy—’
‘Not too busy to hear what I have to say.’
Ella frowned at the phone, something in his tone alerting her to trouble. ‘What?’
There was a pause full of undisguised excitement.
‘You know the guy who called the police?’
She couldn’t let this one pass. ‘You mean the man who rescued us?’
‘Yeah, whatever. Well, you’ll never guess what his name is?’
She didn’t need to guess. She knew his name, just as she knew that his kiss had taken her to heaven and his tongue had guaranteed her a permanent place there. Ella shivered, pleasure mingling with the nagging feeling that she might never hear from him again. ‘Nico,’ she said. ‘His name is Nico.’
‘That’s not his real name!’
The first feelings of foreboding began to prickle at her skin. ‘What are you talking about?’
/> ‘His real name is Nicolo!’
‘So he abbreviates it,’ said Ella coldly. ‘Lots of people do. I do. So what?’
‘Nicolo of Mardivino,’ he emphasised carefully.
She still didn’t get it. ‘Yes, that’s where he lives.’
‘Prince Nicolo!’ he declared triumphantly.
‘Mark, have you been drinking again?’ But even as she asked the question the import of his words finally struck home, and Ella very nearly dropped the phone. ‘What did you say?’ she hissed.
‘He’s a prince!’
‘Of course he isn’t! He’s… He’s…’ But her words tailed off, instinct telling her she had to believe the unbelievable. But sometimes you fought instinct when it told you something you didn’t want to hear. ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Check it up, then! He’s the youngest Prince—there’s three of them! Bit of a playboy, as you’d expect.’ He gave a crude laugh. ‘A daredevil and a ladies’ man!’
Ella’s fingers bit into the receiver. ‘Was there anything else, Mark?’
A sly note was injected into his voice. ‘So just what happened after we’d gone? Did you sleep with him?’
Ella slammed the phone down with a shaking hand.
Of course he wasn’t a prince! Princes didn’t rescue you and nurse you and then turn up at your front door and…
And make love to you.
Scarcely aware of what she was doing, she went straight back to her computer and tapped the words ‘Mardivino + Prince Nicolo’ into a search engine, licking her dry lips in horror as she saw that there were 36,700 entries. She clicked onto the first one and waited for what seemed like an eternity, until suddenly there it was—a picture of Nico who, it seemed, was not just Nico at all, but His Serene Highness Prince Nicolo Louis Fantone Cacciatore.
There were details about his schooling, in Mardivino and France and Italy, and pictures of him with his family—except that this particular family happened to be sitting in a throne room decked with ornate gold and precious jewels.
Ella honestly thought she was going to be sick.
The powerful car nosed its way like a silver predator along the narrow lanes and once again Nico glanced into his driving mirror, but the road behind him was still empty.
Should he have rung her?
No, better this way. Face to face and person to person.
He was clever with words and good with women. He would explain why he hadn’t told her and make her understand. And then he would kiss her again, in a way guaranteed to have her forgive him anything.
He felt the deep ache of desire, tempered only marginally by his awareness that their lovemaking had been too…
The dark brows knitted. Too what? Too intimate? Intimacy was dangerous and misleading and to be avoided. It weakened you and it gave women expectations. Expectations that could never be met—particularly for someone like Ella.
But she had been everything. Tender. Passionate. Warm. Provocative. And maybe the most potent of all those had been the tenderness, because for Nico it was an unknown quantity. He never allowed people close enough for tenderness, and he hadn’t been expecting it. It had crept up on him unawares—like the feeling of gentle torpor after just a mouthful of especially good wine.
Maybe it was because he hadn’t felt the need—or had the need—to put up the usual barriers to protect himself. For once he had been able to pretend that he was just anyone, and she had responded to him with a passion that had taken him unawares.
And he wanted more of that passion.
He parked in the lane leading up to her cottage and slowly locked the car, pocketing the keys thoughtfully, aware of the lush green froth of the leaves on the trees and the sunshine that dappled the dusty ground. He could hear the sweet, soaring sound of birdsong and that surprised him, too—had his senses suddenly come alive?
It’s just the power of new and different sex, he told himself. His appetite had been jaded and she had simply been something fresh on his tastebuds. And, oh, how he wanted to taste her again…
He rang the doorbell.
Standing out of view in the kitchen, Ella heard the bell above her thundering heart and thought about ignoring it. Surely that would be best? Presumably he would go away and that would be that. She couldn’t see him standing waiting patiently all day—because that wasn’t the kind of thing that princes did, was it?
But if she let him walk away then there would be no sense of closure. Realistically, she knew their paths would never cross again and she would never get the opportunity to say what she wanted to say. Or rather, to tell him what he needed to hear. The conniving, deceiving snake!
How would he be expecting her to react?
It nearly killed her, but Ella fixed a look of delighted surprise on her face as she pulled open the door. Well, even that wasn’t completely false. He might have deceived her, but that didn’t stop her responding to him on a purely physical level.
And as a man, he was utterly magnificent. The endlessly long, muscular legs were encased in dark faded denim, and he wore a black T-shirt that clung to every sinew of his impressive torso. His black hair was ruffled, as if he had been driving with the roof down, and his dark eyes were set like precious jewels in his olive skin.
But the thought of jewels made her remember, and she only just stopped herself from slamming the door shut again.
‘Nico!’ she breathed, in what she hoped was the manner of a smitten woman talking to her new lover. ‘I wasn’t expecting you!’
‘I should have rung.’
She let the mildest reproach enter her voice. ‘Well, you did say you would.’
He unconsciously relaxed, the tension leaving his body as he acknowledged the undramatic greeting. So she didn’t know! Which meant, of course, that he was going to have to tell her.
But not yet.
Later…
First let him have one more heart-stopping afternoon of unburdened lovemaking in her arms. ‘May I come in?’
For a moment Ella’s nerve almost left her. It would be easier and less distracting if she told him here, now. And then she steeled herself. Surely she wasn’t so weak and wimpish that she would let his overpowering presence influence her in the light of what she had discovered?
She set her mouth into a glassy smile. Such a practised master of deceit! Let Prince Nicolo of Mardivino have a taste of his own medicine!
‘Of course,’ she said lightly, and whirled off towards the kitchen, leaving him to follow her. ‘Come through.’
Nico frowned, because now he really was surprised. Surely this time she should have melted into his arms? Was she regretting what had happened? Deciding that maybe it had been too easy last time? The frown became a smile as he acknowledged yet another facet of this unknown world. He could wait…it would do him good to wait…and the waiting would fuel his already sharpened appetite.
She was standing beside the fridge, looking as if she was starring in an old-fashioned commercial, with a bright smile on her face.
‘What can I get you, Nico? Champagne?’
He began to grow uneasy. They had been to bed, yes, and it had been pretty damned wonderful—but it was hardly a cause for celebration, was it? He racked back through his memory, trying to recall what he had said to her in those incredible few hours in bed. No, nothing to give her the idea that this wasn’t anything other than a brief affair.
‘Do you want champagne?’ he questioned.
And Ella knew then that she could not maintain this façade a moment longer. ‘Actually, I think it would choke me.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Then why did you—’
‘But that’s probably because it’s fairly ordinary champagne.’ She cut right through his words, noting his fleeting look of surprise. He probably wasn’t used to that, she surmised. People interrupting him. ‘And I expect you’re used to drinking only the finest stuff, aren’t you? Nicolo.’
His heart beat with the dull, heavy thud of something that felt a little lik
e disappointment—if only he was sure how that felt. But one thing he was sure of was his own stupidity. He had been living in a fantasy all of his own making. ‘You know?’ he said dully.
‘Yes.’
Of course she knew. His thoughts whirled round like a child’s spinning wheel. When? When she had opened her eyes after her fever? Or even before that? Maybe she had known all along. Maybe he had completely misjudged her and she was an avid reader of those tacky tabloid newspapers that delighted in printing snatched photographs of him.
Maybe she hadn’t been able to believe her luck when she had opened her eyes to discover just who it was who had rescued her.
Had all this been planned and his first instinct the right one? That she was nothing more than a beautiful decoy, groomed to capture a prince? His body tensed. ‘When did you find out?’
With a mounting sensation of disbelief she stared at him, hearing the cold shot of accusation in his voice. ‘When do you think?’
Now he began to wonder whether their innocent and frantic coupling on the sofa had not been so innocent, after all. What if there had been photographers lurking in the undergrowth? Photographs now in existence that might now find their way onto some sick home-movie site on the Internet? The realisation of just how foolhardy he had been made his blood run cold.
‘I don’t know,’ he said icily. ‘That’s why I’m asking.’
She had gone in on the attack and now she felt stung to defence. How dared he? How dare he? ‘You think I knew all along, don’t you?’
He hid his turbulent thoughts behind the icy mask that was second nature to him. ‘Did you?’
Her eyes opened very wide. ‘And you think that’s why I went to bed with you?’
‘Was it?’
If she had thought that she felt sick before, then nausea had just entered a whole new dimension. He could think that of her?
But why shouldn’t he? She had behaved like a tramp! She had nearly slapped him before, but she could not and would not attempt to do so again. Why, in the light of what she now knew, he might have her arrested for some kind of treason!
The truth came babbling out of her mouth like a hotspring. ‘I didn’t have a clue who you were, if you must know! I thought you were just some guy who worked for a rich man.’ Her eyes shot emerald fire at him. ‘Why wouldn’t I? Princes aren’t exactly thick on the ground.’
The Mediterranean Prince's Passion (The Royal House 0f Cacciatore Book 1) Page 5