Lord, she was shaking so hard she was likely calling Venezuela. One touch from that man and it was as if she’d been dormant in some cryonic stasis for five years and he’d plugged her into the national grid. Twenty minutes later her body was still burning; incinerator-hot, making her feel like a living, breathing flame.
Dangerous. That was what he was.
Worse still, when she’d literally crashed into him for a split second she’d thought she was dreaming again. That she’d conjured up his memory to save her from the nightmare her return had condemned her to. So often she slept with him in her bed, his fingers a ghost-like touch drifting over her body. Caressing, devouring with a fervour she longed for. And during that breathless moment in that hallway suddenly, shockingly, she’d wanted to cry. Weep in sheer relief that he was here. Holding her once more. Wrapping her in his ferocious unyielding strength.
That body… Such inordinate power that he vibrated with it. She’d met some powerful men in her time but Thane… No comparison. None. His every touch was a jolting shockwave of acute pleasure and pain. And it had been so long since she’d been touched. She’d almost begged him to crush her against his hard, muscular chest for one blissful second, just so she could live in the illusion that he was here and she was safe.
But that was all it was—a fantasy. A fallacy. She would never be safe in Thane’s arms.
So why did a part of her still crave him? Even knowing what and who he was?
Luciana moaned out loud. Her father was right—she was an absolute disgrace.
She’d do well to remember that invariably her dreams turned dark and his hands turned malicious and she woke in a cold, clammy and anguished sweat. That in actuality he was the most lethal, autocratic man in Europe, who co-ruled his country and his people with a merciless iron fist.
And that look in his glorious dark eyes when he’d gazed at her… As if she was his entire world… A lie. Her cruel imagination. If she needed proof to substantiate that theory all she had to do was recall his blistering disgust and anger as he’d ground out her title. Realised her true identity.
His granite-like countenance hadn’t broken her heart. Certainly not. The man was rumoured to be a mercenary, for pity’s sake.
Imagine that man getting hold of your son and using him as a pawn in his power-play?
Over her dead body.
That hypothesis was akin to someone upending a bucket of cold water over her head and she calmed enough to hit the right keys.
‘I need a car outside in five minutes and a private jet waiting at the Altiport to take me to Arunthia. Can you do that?’
‘Yes, madame.’
‘Thank you.’
Depressing the call button, she flipped the lid of her case and yanked the zipper all the way around.
She had to get home. Get Natanael out of the country until she was sure Thane wouldn’t come after her. The savage vehemence pouring off him as she’d left had scarred her for eternity. That was not a man you messed with.
The tap on her door flung her heart into overdrive and she crept up to the door to peek into the security viewer.
Shoulders slumping, she unlatched the lock and allowed the porter in to collect her bag. ‘Thank you. I’ll meet you downstairs.’ Luciana pulled a two-hundred-euro note from her jacket pocket and conjured up a sweet smile. Feminine wiles and all that.
‘The back door, okay?’
His boyish grin told her she was in the clear and she grabbed her handbag and scarpered from the room.
Down in the private elevator she went. Out through the back exit and into a frosty evening that nipped her cheeks.
The door of the limousine was an open invitation and Luciana sank into the plush leather, not wasting one vital moment. ‘Can you take me to the Altiport, please? Fast as you can.’
The door slammed shut with a heavy clunk.
The locks clicked into place.
‘Sure thing, lady.’
Lady? Frowning, she glanced up into the rearview mirror to see a peculiar pair of deep-set titanium-grey eyes staring back at her.
Luciana’s blood curdled in her veins.
Then that voice—as brutal and vicious as the thrash of a whip—sliced through the leather-scented cabin, its deadly effect severing her air supply.
‘We meet again, Princess of Arunthia.’
Vaulting backwards in her seat, she crushed herself into the corner and scoured the dim recesses of the car, her heart thudding a panicked tempo.
Black sapphire eyes glittering as starkly as the stars in the Courchevel sky, he raised one devilish dark brow and said, scathingly, ‘Did you really think I would allow you to turn your back on me a second time, Luciana? Disappear into the night once more? How very foolish of you.’
Dressed from head to foot in a bespoke black Italian suit, he lounged like an insolent predator—a sleek panther perusing his kill.
‘Well, let us get one thing perfectly clear right now. This time you will not walk away from me.’
CHAPTER TWO
SHE COULDN’T MOVE. Not one muscle.
‘This time you will not walk away from me.’
What did he mean by that? Did she have to wait until he walked away from her? How long was that going to take? An hour? A day?
If she didn’t start breathing she’d never find out.
Luciana yanked her focus dead ahead in order to stitch up the tattered remnants of her composure. She couldn’t do that and look at him at the same time. It was futile. The mere sight of him, dangerous and dominating, skewed her equilibrium and turned her brain to mush.
The privacy glass rose up before her, sending her heart slamming around her ribcage. For a second she toyed with the idea of launching herself from the car, but then remembered the locks had snapped into place. A moment later the limousine began to rock down the steep incline from the lodge and the risk of hyperventilating became a distinct possibility.
Breathe, Luce, for heaven’s sake breathe. He probably just wants to talk on the way to the Altiport.
Why, oh, why hadn’t she looked at which car she was getting into? She was supposed to be avoiding trouble. Being good. The refined, beyond reproach, virtuous Queen she was born to be. She could already hear her mother… So reckless, Luciana. So unthinking.
She let loose a shaky exhalation, then took a deep lungful of air. And another. Then seriously wished she hadn’t. His audacious dark bergamot and amber scent wrapped around her senses like a narcotic, intensely potent and drugging as it swirled up into her brain, making her vision blur. Her entire body wept with want.
How did he still do this to her? After all this time? How? It was as if he engulfed her in his power, lured her in with his black magic. Well, any more of his lethal brand of masculinity and she’d be done for.
Clearing her throat, she straightened in her seat. With far more sangfroid and bravado than she felt, she said, ‘Why am I here? What exactly is it you want from me?’
Seconds ticked by and he didn’t so much as murmur. Merely allowed the atmosphere to stretch taut. And, since she was hanging on to the very last fraying threads of her control, it didn’t take her long to snap.
Up came her head—big mistake as she realised too late it was exactly what he’d been waiting for, what he wanted: her full attention, total control over this…whatever this was. His gaze crashed into hers. Unerringly. Mercilessly.
Oh, Lord.
Overwhelming anguish held her in stasis as her every thought fled and she allowed her treacherous heart to devour the dark beauty that was Prince Thane.
Devastating—that was what he was. Bewitching her with that breathtaking aura of danger. Those high, wide slashing cheekbones and obsidian eyes framed with thick decadent inky lashes. That chiselled jaw that was smothered in a seriously sexy short beard. On anyone else it would be labelled designer stubble. But this was Thane and he wasn’t vain in the least. Or he hadn’t been. In truth, she’d been amazed at just how clueless to his gorgeous looks he
was.
His hair was longer, she noticed. Dishevelled was a ridiculously romantic word for the mussed-up glossy black hair that fell in a tumble to flick his shoulders, one side swept back and tucked behind his ear. Unkempt, maybe. Hideously long… But she kind of liked it. Craved to run her fingers through it. Had to fist her hands to stop herself from doing just that.
The dim interior lighting camouflaged his facial scars but she remembered every one. The slash in his top lip, just shy of the full cupid’s bow. The second, enhancing the sensuous, kissable divot in his chin. Another slicing into the outer corner of his left eyebrow.
Her throat grew tight, swelling in sadness and hurt for him. Just as it had five years ago. Not that he’d ever talked to her about them. The one time she’d asked he’d shut down so hard it had taken her sitting astride his lap wearing nothing but lace panties to tease him out of it.
Ah, Luce, don’t remember. Don’t.
His tongue sneaked out and he briefly licked his lips, but otherwise he remained still, watching…waiting…his sensationally dynamic body vibrating with dark power. And she clutched her handbag tighter still, fingers burying into the leather—
Whether it was the feel of her phone poking through the side of her bag or the sudden realisation that the car was at a standstill she wasn’t sure, but she crashed back to earth with a thud.
The car had actually stopped!
Luciana shuffled on her bottom to peek out of the window and saw the huge security gates of the lodge swing open in front of the car. Electronic operation. Unmanned. Drat.
Twisting the other way, she grasped the cushioned leather and peeked out of the back window, her eyes widening as she spied her bellboy, still at the top of the drive, waving for her attention, with her case in his hand.
Oh, my life!
Her speech faculties finally deigned to kick in. ‘You have to turn around,’ she said, with her best do-it-or-else regal intonation. ‘You’ve left my case back there.’
And as soon as they pulled up back at the lodge she was making a run for it.
‘Really?’ he drawled, mock astonishment lifting his brows high above his vivid eyes. ‘How unfortunate.’
Luciana narrowed her gaze on him. That was it? Unfortunate?
‘Well? Aren’t you going to go back for it?’ she asked, her tone pitched to an ear-splitting squeak.
‘And give you the opportunity to run again? I think not, princesa. Consider yourself under lock and key.’
The limo turned right onto the main road and picked up speed. But not nearly as fast as her temper.
Anger sparked. Revving up to be free of its leash. And she let it take hold. Uncoil deep inside her. Unravel at a breakneck pace. It was wonderful. Glorious. Just what she’d hankered for all day. All day? No. Since she’d stepped off the plane from Hong Kong, thoroughly powerless, with her façade firmly in place.
‘Just who do you think you are? You can’t just take me like this.’
Cool as you like, he simply said, ‘Watch me.’
She sucked in air through her nose. ‘Are you playing with me? You’re taking me to the Altiport, right? I have a plane to catch.’
‘We are going to the Altiport, si.’
‘Good. That’s good.’
Though he hadn’t really said what was happening when they got there, had he?
Warily, she ventured, ‘And you’ll let me get on my own plane to Arunthia, yes?’
‘No.’
Mouth falling agape, she coughed out an incredulous laugh. ‘Are you serious?’
‘Deadly,’ he said, as sharp as a blade.
His eyes were as cold and hard as steel. Where once they’d been tender and warm. Had she known him at all? she wondered, fighting a miserable flare of anguish. Even a little bit? Or had the last few years killed any ounce of decency and compassion he’d possessed?
Icy fingers of dread curled around her throat. ‘So where are you taking me?’
‘Galancia.’
The world tilted as if the car had skidded down an embankment with a five-score gradient and she went woozy. Galancia? No, no, no!
Luciana scoured his expression, desperate to find even a flicker of his dry humour, and came up blank. Galancia… She shuddered in her own skin.
‘No way. You haven’t got a hope in hell of getting me to that place. I have to go home.’
He pursed his lips and cocked his head in faux contemplation. ‘Not today. Today you will go where I ordain.’
‘But…but that’s tantamount to abduction!’
‘I suppose technically it is. Yet during the several minutes we’ve been in this car I haven’t heard you call for assistance once.’
It didn’t bode well that he was right. But, honest to God, the man was so distracting. Still, why wasn’t she petrified out of her mind, screeching her head off?
‘Give me a second and I’ll scream blue murder. Though let’s face it,’ she said, gesturing to the luxurious car. ‘There’s no one to hear me, is there?’
‘Not now, no. You are seven minutes too late, princesa. Though Seve may help you.’
‘Who on earth is Seve?’
‘The driver.’
She almost shuffled to the edge of the bench seat and raised her fist to knock on the glass partition. Almost. Frankly, she knew better.
‘Friend?’
‘Cousin,’ he drawled, a flicker of a devilish smile playing about his mouth.
It was obscene how relieved she was to see that tiny flirtation with humour—that hint of the man she’d fallen for on a raucous, cluttered muddy field in Zurich. Particularly since it suggested he was enjoying her discomfort. What was all this? Payback for her walking away? Some kind of twisted revenge?
‘You can’t go about kidnapping people. It isn’t civilised behaviour.’
Lord, she sounded like her mother. And, honestly, only a dimwit would put ‘civilised’ and ‘Thane’ in the same sentence. It had been his untamed earthy savagery that had attracted her in the first place. Obviously she had a screw loose.
Blasé, he gave her an insouciant shrug that said, try and stop me, and it made her anger boil into lava-hot fury until she felt like a mini-volcano on the verge of eruption. What was it about men trying to govern her life? She’d just escaped one control freak and run headlong into another.
Smouldering with resentment, she decided she wanted him to erupt too. It was as if he’d switched off his emotions. He was far too cool and collected over there. While she was sitting here losing it!
Look at him, she thought. Sitting at an angle, one leg bent and resting on the bench seat, he sprawled like a debauched lion, taking over half the enormous car—and all of the oxygen—in that outrageously expensive Italian suit. It should have oozed elegance and debonair refinement, but it made him look like pure wickedness and carnal sin.
And she detested him for making her hormones whisk themselves into a deranged frenzy over him. Wasn’t she in enough of a mess?
Which reminded her… Woman on a mission, here. She wanted the playing field levelled.
‘So the rumours are true, then?’ she said, with as much chilly, haughty daring as she could muster.
Thane arched one arrogant brow. ‘There are so many I’m at a loss as to which particular falsehood you refer to.’
‘That your men steal women. That your father took your mother from her bed—stole her from her intended.’ And by all accounts made her life a living hell in Galancia Castle. Rumour had it she’d thrown herself to her death to end the torment. Not that Luciana had ever believed that bit. No mother would do that to her son, surely?
Luciana waited him out. Expecting some kind of reaction. Something. Anything. What she got frustrated her even more. Nothing. Not even a flutter of his ridiculously gorgeous lashes.
‘Ah, that one. Perfectly true. Indeed, we take what is rightfully ours.’
She was going to slap him in a second. ‘And where, pray tell, do you get the idea that I am rightfully yours
?’
Aha! As if she’d flipped a switch emotion stormed through his eyes. The dark variety. But right now she’d take what she could get.
‘What is rightfully mine, Luciana, is an explanation. Answers.’
‘That’s all you want from me. An explanation?’ It seemed a bit too easy to her, but she could answer fifty questions before they got anywhere near a plane. It was a thirty-minute drive at least. ‘Fine,’ she bit out. ‘Ask away, Prince Thane. What do you want to know? Why I bolted in the dead of night?’
‘Ah…’ he said, with an affable lilt that belied the fury now emanating from him. ‘So you do acknowledge that we have a history. Yet not thirty minutes ago you denied we’d ever met.’
Blast her runaway mouth. She should have known that would antagonise him.
‘Yes, well, I don’t want Augustus knowing about my personal life.’
‘Worried, Luciana? That the prissy Viscount will not wish to bed you or wed you any longer when he discovers you’ve been tarnished by our depraved association?’
She huffed. ‘Hardly.’ That would only be a good thing. And, absurd as it was, she suddenly had the strangest compulsion to thank her kidnapper for rescuing her from tonight’s unpalatable proposal. Clearly she’d lost the plot.
As for his darkly intoned question—she’d lied through her teeth because all she cared about was making sure Augustus never put two and two together if he was ever faced with Natanael.
Natanael… Oh, Lord. She’d wanted to text him before he went to sleep. But it was far too risky to fish her phone from her handbag right now. The bag she clutched to her stomach like a lifeline. Thank goodness she’d carried it and not left it with her case.
More to the point, thank heavens she hadn’t brought Nate to the Alps with her. The thought of Thane discovering him…carting him off to Galancia… No, that could never happen. Never. Thane was descended from a long line of militia. Royal males trained in guerrilla warfare. The best fighter pilots in the world. Some said all the boys were taken to the barracks to learn how to become soldiers at eight years old. The mere thought of Nate holding a weapon in four years’ time made acid rise and coat her throat. Plus, she really had no idea what Thane was capable of. Considering abduction was his modus operandi for their reunion.
To Claim His Heir by Christmas Page 3