Royal Lockdown

by Rebecca York

  He stood by the table, staring down at the top of her blond head, thinking how much he’d love to run his hand over the same territory she’d traveled. Then he reminded himself that she was hurt.

  “How bad is it?” he asked, hearing the thickness of his own voice.

  “I don’t know. Maybe you’d better check it out.”

  He crossed the sisal rug and sat down beside her on the chaise, then circled her ankle with his fingers. Her bones were so delicate, her skin so smooth that he forgot for a minute what he was supposed to be doing. Even when he told himself the contact was entirely innocent, he couldn’t prevent himself from getting aroused as he carefully probed the ankle.

  “It feels okay,” he finally said. “Maybe you can walk now.”

  He heard her swallow before she raised her head toward him. “It’s fine. I told you I hurt it to get you in here.”

  He reared back. “What are you doing? It sounds like you’re the one playing games.”

  “No.”

  When he started to stand, she grabbed his wrist.

  “Maybe you’d better explain yourself,” he ordered.

  “I wanted to be alone with you,” she answered.

  “Not a good idea.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  He gave her a hard look. “Nothing. You’re the one who should be worried.”

  She raised her chin defiantly and looked him in the eye. “I’m not afraid of you. I’m afraid of what I’ve turned into. A woman who is all about responsibilities. To my country. To my father. And there’s nothing left over for myself.”

  “You have to find a balance.”

  Ignoring him, she went on, “I’ve always been a good little girl, doing everything I was supposed to do. Tonight, I want to escape from that. I want to be with you. We’re a man and a woman who want to make love with each other. I don’t want to walk away from that. I don’t want to walk away from you.”

  Shane was still struggling with his own desires and reality. “You’re going to have to walk away from me. After tonight, you won’t see me again.”

  “I thought you wanted the contract for Beau Pays security.”

  In frustration, he ran a hand through his hair. “I did. But that was before I met you and we…”

  “Developed a personal relationship?” she asked.

  “Yes. Which means I can’t accept a contract from your father now even if he offered it to me.”

  “Why not? You went to a lot of trouble to get it.”

  If she wanted him to spell it out, he would. “What would happen when I went to your country? We’d see each other, and we’d want each other. And you wouldn’t cheat on your husband. Or at least, I don’t think you’re that kind of royal.”

  She ignored most of what he’d said and zeroed in on the basic issue. “You’re admitting you want me?”

  “You know I do,” he answered.

  “Well, I’m not married now.”

  “And you’re supposed to be a virgin when you marry,” he snapped back.

  “But I’m making a different choice.” She laughed. “One of the hard choices you told me a ruler has to make.”

  “What’s your bridegroom going to do if he finds out you’re not…untouched?”

  “I’ll tell him about it first. If he rejects me, I think there are other men who would apply for the job of consort.”

  “You’ll tell him about us?”

  “No, I’ll tell him I have a past. But enough arguing. Do you really want to waste the time we have together?”

  Leaning forward, she pressed her lips to his. Earlier, he might have had the strength to pull himself away, but he’d lost the will to deny her—or to deny himself what he wanted so badly. The pressure of her lips against his felt as if someone had completed an electric circuit. Current leaped back and forth between them, sparked around them, stole the breath from their lungs. When she raised her head, they were both gasping for air.

  “It’s like the smoke but a lot more potent,” she whispered. “And a lot more pleasurable.”

  “You’re forgetting a major problem. I have no way to protect you,” he forced himself to say.

  “From pregnancy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think they’ve invented something called Plan B. I can take it tomorrow.”

  “And what about an STD?”

  She gave him a direct look. “Are you telling me you have one?”

  “No.”

  She smiled. “Thank God.”

  BACK AT THE HANCOCK TOWER, Special Agent Wolf was still on the scene, although it was long past time for his shift to end.

  He kept hoping that someone would come running up and tell him they’d found Vice President Davis alive and well.

  No such luck. And the same was true for the princess from Beau Pays.

  When one of the Secret Service agents came dashing up, his expression was grave.

  “Now what?” Wolf snapped.

  “We got a police report that the princess may have been in a street fight.”

  “What?”

  “A woman matching her description was spotted by a home owner in the Back Bay—in a fight with two punks and another man.”

  “She was fighting all three of them?”

  “One of them seemed to be on her side. She and the guy fought the other two off.”

  “The informant watched all that and didn’t go out to help?”

  “He says he’s in his eighties.”

  “Okay. Where is she now?”

  “The old guy went to get his cell phone. When he came back, she’d vanished.”

  Wolf answered with a curse. “She couldn’t have vanished, unless she’s a witch as well as a princess. Maybe the man she was with abducted her. Do you have the street address?”

  “Yes.”

  “She may not be the princess at all, but we have to find out. I want a team dispatched there. As soon as possible.”

  “We can’t spare a team of Secret Service agents. And we can’t send just one guy on his own.”

  Wolf controlled the urge to vent his frustration. He’d come up through the ranks, and he’d learned to hate supervisors who shot the messenger. “Ask the Boston PD to help us out.”

  “I can ask. But they have their hands full with incidents around the city. Traffic accidents. Robberies.”

  Wolf sighed. “Tell them we’d be extremely appreciative if they found the princess.”

  “It would help if we had a picture of her.”

  Wolf thought for a moment. He’d seen a picture. Now where the hell was it?

  “There was a briefing folder on the guests attending the party.” He started riffling through the papers spread across the desk at the security station. By some miracle he was able to put his hands on the folder. And when he pawed through the contents, he found a picture of her royal highness.

  “Here,” he said, handing over the photograph. “Take it to the watch commander at the closest police station to the location mentioned.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Shane watched Ariana shake her head. “Don’t try to talk me out of this night with you because you think it’s for my own good. Or are you saying you don’t want me?”

  He couldn’t hold back a curse.

  Helpless to hide his feelings, he gathered her close. Bringing his lips to hers, he ravaged her mouth, hungry for the taste of her, the texture of her lips, the sweetness of her.

  She held on to him, her mouth fused to his, as she lay back, bringing him down to the horizontal surface of the chaise so that he was half-sprawled on top of her. She’d been bold with her verbal request. This was even more explicit.

  Lifting his head, he looked down into her eyes, so large and luminous in the flickering light from the candles.

  “You’re awfully bold for a virgin princess,” he murmured.

  “What fun is being a princess if you can’t issue commands?” She gave him a wicked grin. “Like…undress me.” The statement and
her expression were brazen, but he heard the quaver in her voice.

  He knew she was fighting raw nerves. So was he. Making love with the heir to the throne of Beau Pays was more responsibility than he’d bargained for. Yet at the same time, he was awed. She was offering him a precious gift. A gift that he ached to accept. But with acceptance came responsibilities.

  “I’ve read about how to do this,” she said.

  He grinned. “Oh yeah?”

  “First you undress me. You arouse me by kissing me and touching me. My breasts. My…Between my legs. You make sure I’m wet and slippery so you know I’m ready for you. Then we have intercourse.”

  He made a strangled sound. “You’re being pretty direct.”

  “I decided I have to be.”

  She reached for his hand and pressed it over her right breast. The warmth and softness of her was incredible. When he felt her hardened nipple stab into his palm, his own degree of arousal went up several notches on the hardness scale.

  She was pushing him toward the edge of a precipice, and as he thought back over the past hour, he suspected she’d been planning her strategy since they’d been sitting in the car. If the two punks hadn’t attacked them, what would she have done—pretended to trip so she could manufacture a twisted ankle?

  “There’s more to it than breasts and your…” He fumbled for a good word and came up with “Lady Jane.”

  She laughed softly. “Lady Jane? Is that what you Americans call it?”

  “Sometimes,” he answered. “When we don’t want to come across as uncivilized in the eyes of European royalty.”

  “Never.”

  “Don’t tell me you weren’t thinking of me as an American upstart.”

  “Just at the beginning. But don’t change the subject. Lady Jane is waiting for your attention.” She kept her gaze on his face as she took his hand and moved it down her body, pressing it to the vee at the top of her legs, her breath hitching as she absorbed the caress.

  He couldn’t hold back a soft curse. “Too much too fast.”

  “I’m trying to make sure you don’t chicken out.”

  “Nobody ever called me a chicken.”

  “Good.”

  She had told him very vividly what she wanted. And it was the same thing he wanted. Exactly the same.

  Yet he knew her behavior was as much a charade as an act of boldness.

  IN A SECRET LOCATION NEAR the Hancock Tower, Colin Shea clicked off his police scanner and called a special number on a secure cell phone.

  “Are you all right?” one of his brothers asked.

  “Yeah. And I know where to find the princess. I got the information off the police frequency,” he said, his tone smug to hide the relief he was feeling. He’d lost her royal highness. Now he had her back again.

  “Good going,” his brother answered, and Colin was thankful that Finn didn’t mention the previous screwup.

  “She’s still in the Back Bay. Some old guy saw her and a man—I assume it’s Peters—in a fight with two street punks. Then he lost sight of her. But they can’t get far.”

  “The trouble is, the FBI is sending the police to that location, so maybe I’d better get there first.” Colin checked the clip on his Glock. He’d checked it before, after the fiasco at the church, but he was too nervous to trust his memory.

  “Take one of the cars.”

  “I will. And I’ll be back as soon as I kill her.”

  SHANE KEPT HIS GAZE ON ARIANA as he unbuttoned his shirt. When he’d tossed the garment aside, her expression was a good deal more tense.

  “You’ve never been close to a naked man. Right?” he asked.

  She swallowed. “No.”

  The edge of nerves in her voice told him he’d better keep his pants on for a while, even if the fabric stretched across his crotch was causing him pain.

  As she had done earlier, he lifted her hand and brought it to his chest. She closed her eyes, moving her fingers against his skin and through the mat of hair she encountered there.

  “But you’ve seen guys in bathing suits,” he said. “What kind of chest do you like?”

  “This kind,” she said, stroking some more, then flattening her hand over the left side. “Your heart is pounding.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I like knowing that I can do that to you.”

  “My heart started pounding the moment I saw you.”

  “Mine, too,” she whispered.

  “Ariana.” He breathed her name as he bent to stroke his lips against her jaw, then slid lower, caressing the elegant column of her neck with his tongue, nibbling with his teeth, pushing her shirt collar aside so he could feather kisses on her collarbone.

  He wasn’t modest about his lovemaking abilities. He knew he was good at pleasing his partners. But pleasing this woman had become the most important thing in the world.

  As he nibbled at her silky skin, he opened the buttons down the front of her shirt, following the progress of his fingers with soft kisses. When he’d opened the shirt all the way down, he pushed back the fabric just enough so that he could press his lips to the side of one breast and then the other.

  He heard her breath quicken, felt her stir restlessly against him. Smiling against her skin, he pushed the front panels of her shirt fully open, pausing to admire the treasure he’d uncovered before cupping her breasts, lifting them gently in his hands so that he could lightly kiss each coral nipple.

  “Your breasts are so warm and soft. And so beautiful,” he murmured.

  “Are they?”

  “They’re perfect.”

  “I’m not…a Playboy centerfold.”

  “Right. You haven’t spoiled them with a trip to the plastic surgeon.”

  Still smiling, he bent to kiss each inner curve, then turned his head so he could lick at one nipple.

  “Oh! That’s good.”

  “Very.” He raised up enough to suck the nipple into his mouth, gratified by the way she arched into the caress. As he used his lips and tongue on her, he took the other nipple between his thumb and forefinger, plucking and twisting it, judging from her response how much stimulation she liked.

  “I want to feel your chest against me,” she whispered, sitting up and lifting her arms around his neck, pulling him close, then moving her breasts against him, the contact making him catch his breath.

  “That’s wonderful,” she gasped.

  “Over here, too.”

  He helped her pull her arms out of her sleeves, then tossed the shirt aside before laying her back down, so that he could kiss his way to the waistband of her jeans, where he opened the snap with his free hand and lowered the zipper.

  As he watched her face, he eased his hand inside her panties, playing with the crinkly hair he encountered, then gliding lower to slip into her slick folds.

  She made a low sound, lifting her hips toward his questing fingers, showing him with her little cries and sounds of approval what she liked best. Watching her face, he dipped his finger inside her, then slid it up to her most sensitive flesh.

  “You’re going to push me over the edge,” she gasped, reaching down to still his hand.

  He kissed her on the mouth, then because he wanted her busy while he pulled off his pants, he said, “Can you take your jeans off for me?”

  They were both naked when he came down beside her on the mattress again, his erection pressed to her thigh.

  “You’re going to do it now?” she asked, her voice a little shaky.

  “When you’re ready.”

  “I am.”

  He grinned at her. “We’ll see.”

  He began to kiss her again, her mouth, her shoulder, her breasts, while his hand found her center, teasing and stroking, and urging her upward until she was crying out for him to finish it.

  He moved between her legs, his eyes on her face, and his throat tight. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Maybe you won’t.”

  He entered her quickly, in one smooth stroke, his
breath stopping as she cried out.

  “Are you all right?” he whispered.

  “I will be.” She clasped her arms around his shoulders, holding him close. He kissed her cheek, her lips, keeping very still, then moving slowly, judging her reaction as he increased the pace. “Put your hands on your breasts. Play with your nipples,” he murmured.

  She looked shocked.

  “I want to see that,” he whispered because it was the truth and because he knew it would help tip the balance for her.

  She did it, tentatively at first, and then gave herself over to the added pleasure.

  Soon she was clutching his shoulders again, her hips rising and falling urgently in rhythm with his. He slipped his hand between them, pressing against the spot where he knew her orgasm centered.

  She cried out his name, her inner muscles contracting around him in wonderful spasms as she took him with her over the edge of the world into ecstasy.

  He felt complete, more complete than he ever had in his life. But not peaceful. This interlude with Ariana had been magical. But he’d known from the beginning that it could never last for longer than a few hours.

  The beginning must be the start of the end.

  They both lay panting on the chaise. When she reached to brush back a lock of his hair, he kissed her cheek, then rolled to his side and cradled her against himself.

  “I knew that would be wonderful with you,” she whispered.

  “And with you.” He raised his head and saw moisture shimmering in her eyes. “Did I hurt you?” he asked urgently.

  “Just a little, right at the beginning.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I wanted to do that for the first time with you. And I’m so glad I did.”

  How was he going to give her up? He didn’t know. But he understood that he couldn’t keep her with him for much longer.

  She reached to touch his face. “That was so much more than I ever could have imagined.”

  “Yes.” Making love had never meant so much to him. He wanted to share everything he was feeling. But he knew that telling her he’d fallen in love with her in this one long night would only make their parting more painful. So he brought her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers.