Arms folded across his wide chest, his foul temper exacerbated further still when every stable boy tripped over himself to attend her, but eventually she chose a deep chestnut thoroughbred named Galileo and Thane took his favourite black stallion, Malvado. The twinkle in Luciana’s eyes told him she thought ‘wicked’ a very apt name for his beast of a mount. He didn’t bother arguing. It was true that only Thane could dominate him.
Unsurprisingly, she rode like a pro and lured him into a race up into the vineyards, with the rich earth spraying in their wake, the fresh breeze whipping her bronze hair behind her and slapping her cheeks with colour.
Never had she looked more bewitching or more free. More real and more like his Ana.
Gradually she slowed to a trot, then an easy walk, and Thane pulled at the reins and drew up beside her.
‘Good?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Wonderful.’
Those pink-smothered breasts rose and fell with her every soft pant and a huge smile curved her lips. Lips he wanted to make love to until her breath was ragged for him.
‘I didn’t expect it to be so gorgeous here. Warmer than home for December.’
Thane felt the muscle in his jaw spasm as he ground his teeth hard. Galancia would soon be her home, and the sooner she accepted that the better for his state of mind.
‘Then again, you are closer to Africa here,’ she went on. ‘The air is hot and sultry. Everything just feels…’
‘Relaxed? Calm?’
‘Exactly. Maybe too calm—like the calm before a storm.’
A pensive crease lined her brow and she threaded the leather reins in between her long fingers, staring far into the distance as if she were a million miles away. Much as she’d done at breakfast. It vexed him because he was blind to the reason. He wanted her here. With him.
‘Penny for them?’
She fobbed him off with a rueful smile. ‘I doubt they’re worth that much.’
Thane didn’t believe her for a second, but let it go when she lifted in her saddle to twist and take in their surroundings. The endless rows of vines were heavy with juicy red grapes and lush dark green foliage.
‘So these are your famous vineyards? Never tried the wine myself.’
‘You should. In fact tonight I’ll pour you a glass of one of the best wines in the world.’
She arched one brow at the vainglory lacing his words but he gave a nonchalant shrug. Why shouldn’t he be proud of what they’d achieved? And moreover…
‘The northern terrain is home to our much-lauded olive groves too. Far better than yours.’
‘Now, now, Thane. Your head is getting a little too big over there.’
He grinned, amazed that they were joking about what had once been a life-threatening issue.
‘Once upon a time we grew the best oranges too. Arunthian oranges are tasteless in comparison.’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Of course they are.’
‘I’m serious. Our crops were said to be the best in Europe. But your great-grandfather didn’t like it that overseas trade demand was greater for ours, or that we made more money than he did. So he sent in men to disease our crops. Not one survived.’
Her head reared as if he’d slapped her. ‘That’s a lie! Nothing more than propaganda!’
‘It is not. I swear it. In many ways we continue to suffer from that loss now.’
‘But…but that’s terrible.’
‘Si. It is. Just one of the spats our countries—or should I say the houses of Verbault and Guerrero—have engaged in over the centuries.’
Her nose scrunched up as she grimaced. ‘Hard to believe we were allies—sister islands at one time. I have heard some gruesome and horrific accounts…’
‘And I bet we were always the villains.’
Thane didn’t bother to wait for her to agree; they both knew he was right.
‘I won’t lie—I imagine we committed many an outrageous act not to be proud of, but most were in retaliation. If you care to go back far enough it all comes down to Arunthia’s greed. Galancia has always been the richer in industry, and many an Arunthian leader has tried to take it by force. Almost succeeded two or three times too. But it just made us stronger. Hence we have an indomitable military presence. Now no one would dare to touch us.’
Those decadently long lashes swept downward, as if his words weighed heavily on her mind. ‘I can see why you wish to be feared, in that case. To protect what you have. No matter what it takes.’
Thane narrowed his gaze on her, sure there was a deeper meaning to her hushed words—which had been spoken in a cracked parody of her usual tone. When she failed to elucidate he ploughed on, riding the imperative desire for her to know. Understand.
‘We stop at nothing. Which has caused a whole new set of problems for us. Because to protect, to build an army, takes an obscene amount of money. More than you could ever imagine. So the crown hoards the land for revenue and taxes businesses until they can’t breathe—until we’ve suffocated our own. All to make us indestructible. More powerful than any other. While our children need new schools and our hospitals are in dire need of repair.’
Sadness crept over her demeanour, making her eyes darken. ‘That makes so much sense it’s scary.’
‘My uncle will never release those bonds on our people. Nor will he let the feud go—just like my father before him. His father before that. The hatred is inbred.’
‘I know. My father is the same. But what I don’t understand is why Franco Guerrero is in power and you’re not. Why haven’t you taken your throne?’
‘Must we talk about this now, Luciana?’
‘Yes, Thane, we must. You brought me here against my wishes. You talk about marrying me…which is ludicrous. We don’t even know one another. And basically all you expect me to go on is rumours and secrets and lies. So here I am blindfolded, smack-bang in the midst of a labyrinth, not knowing which way to turn. Can’t you see that?’
Disquiet hummed through his mind. He didn’t particularly want her to know how dark he was inside, how deeply twisted by it all.
They’d reached a shaded wrought-iron arbour often used by his workers and Thane swung his right leg over the saddle and dropped onto uneven ground, determined to tread carefully over the minefield that was the past.
He was too close to success to risk everything now, by admitting he’d been a trigger away from assassinating her father. Especially when some days he regretted not doing so, since his people had ultimately paid the price. Other days he accepted it would have severed the very last thread of humanity he’d been clinging to at the time. And today, looking at the man’s daughter—the woman he wanted as his wife, the woman who would give him his crown—he couldn’t help but wonder if fate truly did move in mysterious ways.
* * *
Vigilance tautened his striking features, telling Luciana she was trying to open a conversational door best left shut. Then an artful devious light shone in his dark eyes and he stretched out his arms, gripped her waist and lifted her down, dragging her body against his.
The friction charged her pulse and set off a chain reaction she was powerless against. Inside her bra her breasts grew heavy, aching to be touched. Those burning butterflies went wild, flitting in and around her ribcage, and her panties suddenly felt too damp, too tight.
‘Let’s have lunch in the shade,’ he murmured, his voice enriched with sin. ‘It’s stifling out here in the open.’
Translation: I’ll seduce you in the bushes until you forget your own name, never mind this discussion.
Er…no. She thought not.
Though her resolve would be less painful to stick to if she stopped gawping at the man. Thane in a pair of tall sepia leather boots, black riding trousers and a skin-tight red polo shirt—collar flicked up to tease his hair and short sleeves lovingly caressing his sculpted biceps—was a head-rush all on its own.
So she made a clumsy job of sidestepping outside his magnetic force field.
Out ca
me his arm, to snake around her waist, and she dodged like the netball champion she’d once been and shook her head. ‘Oh, no, you don’t. I know full well what you’re up to, Romeo, and you can forget it. Talk.’
Growling, he turned away. ‘Fine.’
Then, just as she breathed a sigh of relief, he came at her from another angle, as if he’d played her with misdirection and now…pounce…stole a tummy-flipping, bone-liquefying kiss from her mouth. Only to grin with acute smugness and walk away.
Her hand shot out and she found Galileo, to steady herself, even as she bit her lip to stifle a gurgle of laughter. He was incorrigible. Couldn’t stand being told no. Losing in any way. And, seriously, she shouldn’t laugh—because the man was dangerous with it. Kidnapping, stealing kisses… He was off-the-charts unpredictable, and that scared her more than anything.
And it thrills you just as much.
Thane grabbed the lunch bag and Luciana rolled a blanket across the grass beneath the leafy trellised ceiling, where it was blissfully cooler. Then she sat cross-legged and unpacked a tapas feast of cold cut meats, cheeses and rosemary-scented bread.
Throat dry, she drank greedily from a bottle of sparkling water, trying not to splutter or drool as Thane dropped to the red chequered blanket and lounged back on his elbows in an insolent pose, crossing one ankle over the other. She had the shameless urge to climb over his lap, sit on those muscular thighs and feel all that latent erotic power beneath her. And—just her rotten luck—he caught her staring and fired her the most indecently hedonistic smile she’d ever seen.
Luciana deflected his corruption tactics with a haughty sniff. ‘I’m waiting. So talk.’
‘I have the strangest urge to take you over my knee.’
She harnessed the shiver that threatened to rattle her spine. ‘And I have the strangest urge to get back on that horse and leave you to eat lunch by yourself.’
The brute actually grinned at that, then popped an olive in his mouth. Though when his humour faded, to be replaced by an aching torment, she almost let him off the hook, hating to see him in the throes of anguish. Oh, he banked it soon enough—but it was too late.
‘When my father knew he was dying I had only just turned seventeen…’ He paused, as if figuring out his next words. ‘He ordered me to do a job, and at the very last moment I defied him. I thought I’d seen and felt his fury before then. I had seen nothing.’ He shrugged blithely. ‘I deserved every blow for going against him, and I could have lived with that, or anything else he doled out to me personally. What I hadn’t expected was the depth of his wrath and the price my people would pay.’
Abruptly, he jerked upright and rested his forearm on one bended knee.
‘When I failed him he decided I was too cocky, too young…too free-thinking to rule. Too liberal. I had shown my true colours. My father and my uncle are of the same ilk. Dictators. Born and bred militia. So my punishment was a stipulation that said I couldn’t take power until I was thirty years old. Until I had learned my lesson.’
Outrage and the fiercest taste of bitter acrimony roiled in her stomach. To give his uncle time to work him over, no doubt. As if anyone could reshape Thane’s mind. The very idea was ludicrous.
‘I deserved every blow…’
The man didn’t even flinch or care that he’d been beaten. No, all he cared about was that he’d failed his people.
‘What made you break from the pack?’ she asked, awed. ‘Being of the same ilk and all.’
Luciana couldn’t begin to comprehend the strength it would have taken to set himself apart from such men. The stories she’d heard—the ones she had nightmares about, imagining Natanael embroiled in them—brought her out in a cold sweat.
In one graceful movement he was up on his feet, leaning against an iron post, focused on the rolling hills.
‘My mother, I think. It was her dream, and she used to talk about how her family would pray morning, noon and night for a better tomorrow. A tomorrow when the people could speak for themselves, have a say in how they lived. A day when they owned their own lands and could reap the benefits of what they sowed. When people’s lives would be that much richer and more fulfilling if they were given the chance to aspire.’
Heaviness encroached on her chest at the grief painting his words blue. ‘She sounds like she was a wonderful woman, Thane.’
Luciana knew he’d lost her young. And if the stories were true and his mother had been taken, stolen from her loved ones, his childhood must have been a war zone in more ways than one.
‘A tortured soul is a more apt description.’
She could hear the dark resonance of his painful past echo through him, distorting his voice, and her eyes flared as he grabbed hold of a tangled vine from above and ripped it down, its thorns spearing into his palm. Within seconds blood dripped from his fist.
Luciana scrambled to her feet. ‘Thane…?’
His eyes were the blackest she’d ever seen, and she realised he wasn’t even aware he’d hurt himself. Panic punched her heart.
‘Don’t do that, querido. Look what you’re doing. Thane? Thane!’
He blinked, over and over, refocusing on her. ‘Sorry, angel, what is it?’
‘G…Give me your hand.’ She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and wrapped the white cotton round his palm, biting her lip when deep red stained the cloth.
Thane searched her face with a confounded expression, as if no one had ever cared enough before to stop him hurting. And that made her aching heart weep for him.
Pointing up to the small scar on his chin, she asked softly, ‘Did that hurt when you did it?’
‘I can’t remember. I do not think so.’
Good Lord, his pain threshold had to be off the charts.
‘When did you do it?’
‘This one?’
Up came his hand and he rubbed over the thin white line with one fingertip.
A fresh stab of wretchedness almost struck her down. It was just like when Nate talked about falling out of the blossom tree at their apartment near Hong Kong. He would touch the scar on his arm when he recalled it. The likeness in mannerism was uncanny—and so bittersweet.
‘I was twelve, I think. I’d dropped a thirty-five-millimetre and shattered the casing.’ He smiled and shook his head ruefully. ‘Let’s just say I never once fumbled with the damn thing again.’
‘Twelve? And he punished you? He beat you for…?’ She swallowed thickly. ‘How could he do that?’
He shrugged off her empathy. ‘It’s not an issue. I was born to rule, just as he was. Raised to defend, not to feel. A honed weapon. He did what he had to do. Probably what had been done to him. I accept that.’
‘No. No, Thane. No child should have to accept that. Don’t you dare accept that. He didn’t have to be brutal or so cruel. Are you saying because you were raised like that you would do that to your children? Your son?’
Snatching his hand away, he stepped back as if she’d physically backhanded him. Anger, affront and hurt flooded the space between them. ‘How could you think me capable of that, Luciana?’
Oh, God, she’d had nightmares about exactly that. As her father had filled her head with tales—and yes, okay, some facts too—she’d fought her own instincts. Scared witless, out of her mind. Missing him so badly she couldn’t eat or sleep or breathe without hurting. So she’d written letters. What seemed like hundreds of letters. Only to burn them.
Tears splashed up behind her eyes. She couldn’t stop them. And he didn’t like it—not one bit.
Panic laced his voice. ‘Luciana, what is wrong?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so sorry.’
His riveting handsome face creased with confusion. ‘Why? Why are you sorry?’
Shaking her head, she forced a smile. She knew it wept with sorrow and dejection, so she made it brighter. Smoothed the damp hair from his brow.
‘Do you feel me when I touch you?’ she asked.
‘You’re about t
he only thing in the world I do feel, Luciana.’
Oh, God.
Out of control—as always with this man—she reached up in search of his mouth. Desperate to take his pain away. To take hers with it too. Because she now knew what she had to do and it would likely destroy them. Destroy this. Destroy any chance of happiness they would ever have.
As she lifted up on her tiptoes he surged downwards, closing the gap, pressing a frantic kiss to her lips.
She reached up and grabbed handfuls of his shirt, feeling the flex of his hard muscle beneath her fingertips. One kiss, she promised herself. Just one kiss so she could feel his lust and affection. Surely it would be enough to last? It would have to be enough.
Thane’s fingers speared into the heavy fall of her hair, cradling her nape, his grip fierce and exquisitely firm, and with one long, languorous flick and thrust of his tongue into her mouth her knees buckled underneath her.
His cat-like reflexes kicked in and he dropped his hands to her waist to keep her upright.
‘Dios, I crave you like a physical ache. Not here, though, angel. I can’t lose it with you here,’ he breathed in a rush of warm air over her cheek as he ran his nose up the side of hers and rested there for a gloriously intimate beat.
No. She couldn’t possibly sleep with him. It would make everything a hundred times worse. And what was more…
‘Thane, you have to stop calling me that, okay?’ It tore off another piece of her heart every time he did.
‘What…? Angel? Why? It’s what you reminded me of last night in the limousine, with your hair this colour. Darkly spun gold. Seraphic. Beautiful. As you are, Luciana. Inside and out.’
‘D…Don’t put me on a pedestal, Thane. I’m no angel. Sooner or later I’ll drop from a great height.’
And, like finely spun glass, she would shatter to the floor in a million pieces.
A rueful light flickered in his eyes as he hiked one broad shoulder. ‘Then maybe we will be equal.’
Guilt. So much guilt it seemed to suffocate his soul.
‘What your father did—giving control to your uncle—it’s not your fault.’
To Claim His Heir by Christmas Page 10