To Claim His Heir by Christmas

by Victoria Parker

  Scepticism vied with his obvious desire to believe her.

  ‘What job or mission did you refuse to do, anyway? What would anger him so much that he’d delay your taking the throne for so long?’

  That had to have been ten years ago…

  A shadow swarmed over his face and in that moment somehow she knew.

  Foreboding crackled down her spine and she stumbled back a step. ‘Go on. Say it.’

  He shoved his hands through his wind-tousled raven-black hair and his chest swelled as he hauled in air. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I wasn’t sure until right this moment. But rumours have a way of reaching the right ears and poisoning minds.’

  A muscle ticked in his jaw as he gave a short nod. ‘I disobeyed a direct order and refused to kill your father.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  LUCIANA CURLED UP on a cushioned recliner on the beach and gazed up at the midnight sky, wishing on a billion twinkling diamond stars that Thane’s business calls would take all night. But, as she already knew, burying her head in the sand would help no one—least of all herself.

  The drive back down to the coast had been taut with tension, and by the time dinner had been served on the upper floor balcony Luciana had been strung so tightly she’d barely eaten one mouthful of the delicious seafood paella Hanna had slaved over. Which had only made her feel guiltier still. And she wouldn’t have thought that was possible.

  Closing her eyes, she recalled their brief conversation in the car.

  ‘I didn’t want to tell you,’ he’d said. ‘I thought you’d hold it against me.’

  ‘I’m glad you told me. You saved his life in the end. It must have been a horrendously hard call for you. Thank you…’

  Thane had saved her father’s life. Paid an extortionate price for disobeying his tyrannical King. All for a man he hated. His enemy.

  And how is he being repaid? His son is being kept from him. I didn’t know. I didn’t know any of this.

  The guilt and pain tearing through her in one relentless lash after another wouldn’t cease. Not for a second.

  One day. She’d been here one day and the enormity of what she’d discovered had her reeling. In truth, she wasn’t sure she was taking it all in.

  The rush of the ocean lapping over the shore was broken by the sound of bare feet padding down the deck, sending her heart trampolining to her throat and her stomach vaulting with a hectic tumble of dread and anticipation.

  Thane straddled the recliner in front of her, one long-stemmed glass of ruby-red liquid in his large grip.

  With a wriggle, she edged back to give his broad frame more room, and rested her head against the mocha cushion to drink him in.

  He was breathtaking. His dark, fathomless eyes pulled at her like a hypnotic suggestion pressing against her mind. A constant murmur of want that was becoming impossible to ignore. But fight it she would.

  ‘You are very quiet since we got back,’ he said, his voice low and warm with concern.

  ‘Just thinking.’

  ‘No more thinking of the past tonight, hmm? Let’s focus on the future. On us.’

  She wasn’t sanguine enough to believe there would be an ‘us’ come the dawn.

  You don’t know that for sure, Luce. He might listen to you. Try to understand.

  It was a sliver of hope she clung to.

  Raising her arm, she brushed his hair back from his gorgeous face and his decadent sable lashes fluttered as if weighted in bliss, as if he adored her touch. It broke her heart.

  ‘Relax, Luciana. You seem brittle enough to shatter.’

  Smooth as silk, his voice caressed her skin—a tangible touch of his magnetic heat and power that lulled her to calm.

  ‘Here—take a taste.’

  Glancing at the glass of red wine he’d promised earlier, she tried to swallow past her raw, swollen throat. Heavens, no. Thane was intoxicating enough. Half a glass and she’d be the centrefold in the tawdriest scenario her imagination could conjure up.

  ‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Thane.’

  Truly, she was way out of her depth, lying here as he towered above her, dominating her world. Thane on a sensual mission was a demonic tidal wave to be reckoned with. But she wasn’t convinced sleeping with him would do either of them any favours in the long run.

  Still, the yearning pushed at her soul. Stronger in force since the revelations of the afternoon. ‘You’re about the only thing in the world I do feel…’ That must be why he’d brought her here. Right? She made him feel and he was chasing it. Why else would he go to the lengths he had? And more than anything she wanted to bring him pleasure in any way she could.

  Those devastating eyes fixed on her as he swirled the wine around the crystal, giving it air, then took a sip before dipping one of his sinfully adroit fingers into the ruby depths.

  Memories of the debauched passion those hands could wreak made the briny ocean breeze stutter in her lungs and she panted out, ‘Thane…I think maybe I should turn in for the night. I’m tired and I…’

  I’m petrified I will give in, and it would be so reckless, so stupid, no matter how much we both want it.

  She inhaled deeply, grappling for strength, only to be drugged by his dark, delicious scent. It infused her lust-addled mind and corrupted her veins. It blazed a firestorm through her midriff that eventually simmered low in her abdomen in a searing burn.

  Venturing to eradicate that hot, dark pulse at her core, she squirmed to sit upright in the recliner. ‘Thane…I should go to bed.’

  By morning she’d have figured out what to do. What to say. How to explain.

  ‘I—’

  ‘Do you think I don’t know what I do to you, Luciana? Do you think I can’t hear and see your body crying out for mine? Stop fighting this, angel. It’s inevitable.’

  Claret drizzled down his finger in red droplets as he reached up and painted her lips with the lusty juice, let the rich flavour flow over her tongue, where it blossomed into an ecstasy of ripened grapes, aged wood and sunlight.

  With a whimper she flicked her tongue over the very tip and sucked it into her mouth, loving the underlying saltiness and texture of his skin.

  A feral groan ripped past his throat and he stared at her glistening lips, where her tongue swirled around his finger… Then he whipped it out, swooped down and captured her mouth in an erotic devouring kiss.

  Push him away, Luce. Do it now…

  Can’t. Impossible.

  Luciana laced her fingers through his hair, fisting tight so he couldn’t escape, and slanted her mouth over his, licking between his lips, duelling with the sinful lash of his tongue in total surrender.

  She’d missed this so much. Kissing. Being held close. The amazing feeling of intimacy with a man—her man. Being a sensual woman, someone who was desired. Cosseted. Craved with a burning urgency that rendered her almost weak. It was heady and powerful and she’d missed it.

  The robust richness of the wine blended with the potent dominant piquancy that was uniquely Thane—something that exuded vice and sin and seduction—and annihilated her every thought until she was trapped, entangled in his wicked snare.

  They tore apart to breathe and yet he never stopped the cherishing ardour, only brushed kisses along her jaw and down her neck in a slow, wet slide that made her shiver and arch in a sinuous serpentine wave beneath him. Begging for his touch. Which he gave by brushing his knuckles down over her breast, teasing her nipple into a stiff peak.

  Her wanton moan rent the air, and in reward he rained kisses over her cleavage where it spilled over the top of her low-cut dress. She pressed him in close to her, never wanting to let him go.

  ‘I want you writhing for me, Luciana.’

  His hot breath gushed over her skin.

  ‘I want to make love to you, feel you cling to me, hear you beg for release. And then I’ll hold you and kiss you in the dark, watch you fall asleep. Only to wake you by sliding down your body and devouring you
with my mouth.’

  Her lower abdomen clenched and turned achingly heavy, dampening her panties with wet warmth. And she wrapped her legs around his waist to grind against his thick erection in a silent plea for him to do all of that and more.

  Gyrating, he ground back against her with long, animalistic groans. ‘Just…’ He scraped his teeth over the throbbing vein in her neck. ‘Just make me feel again, Luce. Please.’

  Oh, God. ‘You’re about the only thing in the world I do feel…’

  The last wave of doubt drifted away as a tide of longing swept over her. To give him pleasure where she could. To take his pain away while he’d allow her to.

  Cupping his jaw, she lifted his head to meet her gaze.

  ‘I’ve missed you,’ she whispered.

  It was a shockingly dangerous thing to confess, because it left her so exposed and vulnerable. But in that moment the need for him to know how deeply she felt outweighed any sense of self-preservation she had left.

  He eased back, his brow creased as he studied her face. ‘Truth?’

  ‘Absolute truth. I’ve missed you so much. So much I ached with it.’

  Ah, Luce, you never had a hope of resisting him. Of keeping your heart locked away.

  Farther back he moved, withdrawing from her, and her stomach hollowed. Mind twisting, she wondered why he vibrated with rancour. And his touch…

  He stroked up her thigh, burrowing beneath her floaty blush-pink sundress, his touch riding the line between pleasure and pain as if he were in the throes of anger. Suspecting she lied. His other hand roamed the curve of her waist, slid up to her midriff, where his thumb brushed the heavy underswell of her breast.

  ‘You’ve missed me?’ he said, flat and cool. ‘Yet how many men have touched this body since I took it, Luciana? Since I made you mine?’

  Staring into his turbulent eyes, she shook her head gently. ‘Only you, Thane. There has only ever been you.’

  Bizarre as it sounded, even to her own mind, she watched his barriers crumble and fall before her. Saw the floodgates to his emotions flung wide and time reversed. They stood still in the past. And there she was—his only focus, his entire world, the moon and the stars beyond. As if everything she’d convinced herself had been merely a dream was now a thrilling, breathtaking verity for her eyes only.

  Her heart cracked wide open and she knew he could take it from where it lay, weak and defenceless outside her chest.

  ‘Luciana, I…’

  He cupped her face and she could feel his hands tremble as he rubbed his nose alongside hers, faltering, as if he feared what he truly wanted to say.

  Instead he murmured against her lips, ‘I…I need you.’

  ‘Have me,’ she choked out. ‘Take me. However you want.’

  One night was all they were likely to have and she would give him everything he desired. Everything in her power to give.

  Tenderly he pressed his mouth to hers, then slanted his head and thrust his tongue into her mouth in a slow, languorous lick.

  Luciana parried right back, glorying in his devout advance and retreat, the touch of his tongue against hers, as he took them both to passionate heights. And higher still into oblivion as he rucked her dress up and broke their lip-lock to tear it from her body. His hands were suddenly everywhere and nowhere. Big and clever, strong and capable hands. Leaving a trail of rapture in their wake.

  She trembled all the while and let loose a pleading sob. ‘Thane…I want you.’

  ‘You have me, angel.’

  ‘I want you naked. I want to feel you.’

  He smiled wickedly as he stood tall, framed by the moonlit ripple of the ocean like a bronzed demigod. ‘You always did,’ he said, his voice raspy with lust.

  The back of her head dug into the cushion as she craned her neck to stare up at him. Unable and unwilling to look anywhere else as inch by delectable inch his burnished skin was revealed.

  Thane grabbed the hem of his T-shirt and with a sleek twist of his mighty fine torso, ripped it up and over his head.

  Luciana had to slick her dry lips at the sight of his arms stretched high, thick with muscle and threaded with veins. The sculpted perfection of his ripped chest, the ridges of his twelve-pack and the sweat-slicked super-sexy V of muscle on his pelvis. The arrow that teased and tormented its way down to the thick ridge that burst past the waistband of his low-slung board shorts.

  She wanted them off too.

  His long fingers went to the fastening and he cocked one brow, faltering—no, teasing, tormenting until her heart beat in her throat, thump-thump-thumping in excitement and exhilaration. Waiting. Wanting.

  He unpopped the button. Excruciatingly slow.

  Her impatience spiked. Two could play at that game.

  She unclipped the front of her bra, but held it closed.

  He growled.

  She smiled.

  And then he shoved the material down his densely corded legs.

  Oh, wow.

  Lord, she’d forgotten how big the man was. Thane—naked in all his rock-hard, battle-honed glory, frosted by moonlight—was a mind-bending orgasmic pleasure all on its own.

  ‘You like, angel?’

  ‘I absolutely love,’ she breathed. ‘Far more than any angel ever should.’

  His dark eyes zeroed in on the lacy confection veiling her breasts, which were rising and falling under her laboured breathing, and he dropped back to the chair and unwrapped her as if she were a precious, delectable gift, slowly tugging the lace free. Then with splayed hands he smoothed down her midriff, watching, enraptured, as her flesh shimmied and pimpled in delight.

  He’d always used to look at her that way. Fascinated. Glorying in what he could do to her. Just as his restraint had always evaporated when he reached the satin that shrouded the tight curve of her femininity, sending her torn panties somewhere over his left shoulder.

  ‘This is better,’ he rasped thickly, leaning down, closing in, teasing his tongue along her bottom lip. ‘Much better.’

  Possessive and heated and bruising in his intensity, he ravished her mouth, her throat, winding his way down to where he moulded her breast and thumbed her tight nipple. And when his tongue glossed over the plum-coloured peak her sex clenched around thin air, desperate for him to fill the aching void she’d languished in for years.

  Arousal at fever-pitch, she hooked her legs around his back and ground against the erection that lay snug over her folds, the sinuous movement pulling a deep groan from his chest and making him suck harder, drawing the tight bud into his mouth. The responding tug in her core ripped an inarticulate cry from her throat.

  ‘Thane…’

  Feverish, she felt her pulse rocketing into the stratosphere and…heck, she was seconds away from hyperventilating. Had to remind herself to breathe.

  ‘Patience, Luciana,’ he growled, coercing her legs wide, lifting one up and over the chair-arm, then the other, until she was splayed for his depraved enjoyment.

  ‘I’m going to kiss you until you can’t breathe,’ he said as he nuzzled down her stomach, grazing her skin with a day’s growth of stubble and glancing up to meet her eyes through the sable fringe of his lashes. ‘Lick you everywhere. Touch you everywhere. And you, Luciana, are going to lie there and take it.’

  Oh, yes.

  He crawled backwards, like the sleek, rapacious predator he was, dipping his head to drop a hot, open-mouthed kiss to each of her inner thighs. Luciana moaned and lifted her arms above her head to grip the top rail of the chair. Knowing he was about to blow her sky-high. Just the sight of his dark head bent, the feel of his hot breath teasing her throbbing sex, already pushed her to the brink.

  ‘Oh, God, Thane. Come on—do it, please.’

  She was sure he laughed. The callous brute. Though he did make up for it by parting her and raking over her folds, lavishing her with the velvet stroke of his hot tongue. He blew against her, then lashed his tongue once more.

  ‘You’re so aroused, angel. I for
got how sweet you taste—like honey. I could eat you alive, Luciana.’

  She whimpered in shameless pleasure and thrust her hips in a rhythm that matched his tongue. He found her nub unerringly, sucking it into his mouth, and the cords of erotic tension inside her pulled tighter and tighter, until she was a boneless, quivering mass of desire.

  ‘Thane. I can’t…hold…on…’

  She gasped for air. Then cried out when he pushed two thick fingers deep inside her saturated channel and stroked her to a splintering crescendo so magnificent her mind blanked with sensory overload.

  Every muscle in her body stiffened and seized for one, two, three beats of her heart—then she exploded. Screamed as hot, hard sexual pleasure short-circuited her every nerve, shocking her into ecstasy so powerful she levitated off the lounger…suspended on an erotic plane, eyes locked on the midnight sky, the stars glittering above her…then literally slammed back to earth.

  When she roused herself from delirium he was leaning above her and her heart fisted. She adored the way his damp hair hung around his face, making him look wicked. A perfect picture of debauchery.

  He licked his lips and let rip a feral growl that seemed to come from the depths of his chest. ‘I’m going to take you, Luciana. Fill you up. Pour myself into you. But I’ll be damned if I’ll do it on a beach. I want you in my bed.’

  He lifted her up effortlessly and she wrapped her legs around his waist as he strode up the deck into his bedroom, kissing her all the while, never leaving her mouth even when they tumbled onto the bed, hands everywhere as they desperately tried to touch as much of each other as they could reach.

  She tore her lips from his. ‘Thane, please. Don’t make me wait.’

  Pushing his arms beneath her shoulders, he cupped her head in his hands, pinning her completely as he trapped her in his dark hypnotic gaze. ‘You’re mine, Luciana. You’ve always been mine.’

  And then he pushed inside her in one long, deliciously hard thrust.

  The stupendous clash of their cries filled the air, caromed off the walls.

  Lord, the relief. The screaming, delirious relief and joy and rightness. The inordinate power they created was so all-consuming she slipped into that boneless delirious state once more.