by JoAnn Ross
It was much, much later when she finally came down to earth. A brunette waitress, clad in a black Grecian-style gown, appeared at Burke's elbow, with two flutes of champagne.
"Dominique sent this wine to celebrate your guest's good fortune," she said with a smile.
"Thank you." Burke took the glasses with what Sabrina was beginning to recognize as his official royal smile. "Please tell Dominique that we appreciate the gesture."
He handed a glass to Sabrina. "I believe a toast is in order."
Wanting to share her good fortune, Sabrina was puzzled when she couldn't catch sight of her sisters or her mother.
"Where are the others?"
"They returned to the palace an hour ago."
"An hour ago?" Sabrina looked down at her watch, shocked to see that it was past midnight. "Why didn't they tell me they were leaving?"
"Your mother didn't want to chance breaking your lucky streak."
"Oh." That made sense, Sabrina admitted. Dixie had always been incredibly superstitious. "Well, we'd better be going as well. After all, you do have to race in just a few hours."
"Whatever you wish." His planned toast forgotten, Burke placed the untouched champagne on the tray of a passing waiter. "I'll cash in these chips."
While he went to the gilded barred window, Sabrina idly glanced around the room, surprised to recognize Burke's American chauffeur seated at the bar.
"Your chauffeur seems to be making the most of his time," she said when Burke returned.
"Drew never gambles while on duty," Burke said mildly. "Nor does he drink. Hold out your hand."
The chauffeur was immediately forgotten as Burke counted into her palm the stack of colorful bills vaguely reminiscent of Monopoly money.
"What in the world is all this?"
"Your winnings."
She stared down at the money. "How much, exactly, did I win?"
"About one hundred thousand Montacroix francs."
Shock waves reverberated through her. "What's that in American money?"
"Somewhere in the neighborhood of seventy-five thousand dollars. Actually, a bit more than that."
"That's some neighborhood. How in the world did I win so much?"
"It's not hard to do when you're playing with hundred-franc chips."
"Those were hundred-franc chips?" she repeated on a squeak. Fool that she was, she'd never thought to ask.
It was Burke's turn to look surprised. "Of course. What did you think they were?"
"I don't know. Five francs. Perhaps ten."
"In Montacroix?" Burke asked, clearly amused at her naiveté.
Sabrina thrust the colorful paper money toward him. "I can't keep this."
"Of course you can." He took the bills, unfastened the clasp of her evening purse and stuffed them inside. "If the idea of spending it on yourself is a problem, consider it my contribution to the Sonny Darling tax-relief fund. Besides," he added, "don't forget, you could have just as easily lost it all."
Her knees weakened at that idea. That had always been one of the reasons she never gambled. She'd accompanied her husband and his friends innumerable times on junkets to Atlantic City, where glitter brightened the night sky and the smoky air was static with expectation, desperation and tragedy.
Sabrina had already chosen a chancy career; that was all the risk she felt prepared to handle in one life.
Behind the casino, a man and a woman met in the shadows.
"You failed." His voice was coldly angry; his eyes resembled hard black stones.
"It wasn't my fault." She was trembling, not from the night air but from a very real fear. "He took the drugged champagne, just as you said he would, but then that American woman wanted to leave, and—"
The man's curse was quick and harsh. "You will forget everything about tonight." He reached into his pocket and took out a pair of black leather driving gloves. "You will erase from your mind the fact that you've ever met me."
"Yes. I will." Her eyes were riveted on his hands as he pulled on the gloves. "I promise. I will forget everything."
His smile flashed in the muted light with the deadly intent of a stiletto. "Yes," the man agreed as he ran one hand down her ashen cheek. "You will definitely forget everything."
His fingers trailed down her face, then her neck. Sensing his intent, the woman tried to flee, but she was too frightened to move quickly, and her attacker was too intent on his deadly mission. His black gloved fingers curled around her throat. And then he squeezed, strangling off her attempted scream for help. Her eyes grew wide and terrified, her face lost all its color. And then, she slumped to the ground.
The man stood there, eyeing her slender feminine body sprawled lifelessly on the wet dark cobblestones.
"Such a waste," he murmured. His fleeting expression of regret quickly faded, replaced with renewed determination. Then, pocketing the gloves, he disappeared into the Montacroix night.
Sabrina's mind was still spinning with thoughts of how Dixie was going to react to this unexpected windfall as they climbed into the back seat of the limousine. It had begun to rain; a steady drizzle that diffused the lights lining the street.
"I don't know how to thank you," she murmured.
"If you feel the need to thank someone, thank Lady Luck. I was just along for the ride."
His gesture was more than generous, she mused as she looked out the window. And the way he'd suggested she use her winnings to help pay off the IRS debt proved that he understood—and shared—her intense loyalty to family.
A lone man, clad in a black leather trench coat and slouch hat was walking briskly along the sidewalk. For a moment, when he glanced toward the passing limousine, Sabrina thought their eyes met. But that was impossible, she reminded herself. The windows of the limousine were heavily tinted. But that didn't prevent her from studying him as the limo paused at a red light.
His face was lean and angular, his mouth thin, his eyes sunken deep beneath protruding brows. There was something about those black eyes—something cold and foreboding—that made her shiver.
"Are you all right?" Burke asked, seeing her slight tremor. "If you're cold, I can have the driver turn up the heat."
"No." Sabrina dragged her gaze from the stranger's stony face. "A cat just walked over my grave."
"A cat?"
"It's an expression." As the light turned green and the limousine continued on its way, she shook off the strange, uneasy feeling and managed a faint smile that only wobbled slightly. "Describing a feeling…like ice up your spine."
"Ah. That I know," Burke agreed. "Was it something I said that brought on this feeling?"
"No," she said truthfully, deciding not to reveal her odd premonition. "It was probably just fatigue. And excitement from the gambling."
"Perhaps," Burke agreed. But he didn't look fully convinced. Instead, Sabrina considered, he looked genuinely concerned. She found such honest regard for her feelings even more dangerous than the fact that he was a dynamite kisser.
"You're not at all what I expected," she admitted softly.
Her scent—an erotic perfume suggestive of sex and sin—had been driving him to distraction all night. "What were you expecting?"
"I don't know," she hedged, not wanting to ruin a lovely night by admitting to her own prejudices. "It's difficult to put into words," she murmured, pretending a sudden interest in the scenery outside the window.
"Let me try," Burke suggested. "How about self-indulgent, egocentric, hedonistic. An unprincipled playboy. An oversexed libertine without conscience or scruples. Am I getting warm?"
Actually, he'd hit the nail precisely on its head. "Something like that," Sabrina mumbled, feeling increasingly uncomfortable. "Except I hadn't thought of 'libertine.'"
"Given a bit more time, I'm sure it would have occurred to you," Burke said easily. "So, with the danger of having my ego deflated even further, what do you think of me now?"
She turned toward him, surprised to find that he'd moved closer. T
heir faces were little more than a whisper apart.
"I think," she said slowly, "that you are a very complex man."
"A fairly accurate assessment," he agreed. "Which I suppose isn't all that surprising, coming from an equally complex woman."
"But I'm not at all complex."
He lifted a disbelieving brow. "Aren't you?"
"Of course not. Why, everyone has always said that I was the most extroverted of Sonny Darling's three daughters."
"You are the best actress," Burke corrected. "But while you are flamboyantly displaying whatever it is you want people to believe, you work overtime at keeping your true feelings hidden away, bottled up deep inside you. Which isn't always successful, because your remarkable eyes give you away."
Only with him, Sabrina could have told him, but didn't. Although she was, admittedly, an emotional person, others only saw what she wanted them to see. During the past four days, Sabrina had come to the conclusion that Burke was an intelligent man. Now she realized he was insightful as well.
"You should have told me that you inherited Katia's gift for second sight."
"I didn't. The truth is, Sabrina, that you and I are a great deal alike. We wear our public masks in much the same way my ancestors once wore those protective suits of armor you saw earlier this evening. Having both suffered feelings of abandonment as children, we've built walls around ourselves. But there is something I believe you have yet to learn."
She desperately wanted to argue. To deny everything he was saying. But she couldn't. Because it was all true.
"What's that?" she asked on a whisper.
His long fingers encircled her chin, holding her wary gaze to his. "The same walls so painstakingly erected to keep others out, also keep us in. And before long, we find ourselves in a prison of our own making."
He was so close. Too close. She put her palms against his chest, intending, if not exactly to push him away, to at least hold him at bay. "I'm not—"
"Oh, yes, you are," he insisted, cutting off her planned denial. His thumb stroked a line of sparks around her lips. "Lower the drawbridge, Sabrina." Bending his dark head, he brushed his mouth against hers, silkily, enticingly. "Let yourself feel again."
His lips were soft and warm and so exquisitely gentle that Sabrina felt herself melting into the glove-soft leather seat. Once again Burke had surprised her: she'd been expecting an instantaneous flare of dangerous passion. But instead his gentleness was shattering her defenses, crumbling her parapets, in ways that hot masculine demands never could.
Her hands clutched at his pleated white dress shirt, her head fell back in surrender, and her lips parted, inviting the sweet invasion of his tongue.
Kissing Sabrina was like falling into a sensual dream from which he never wanted to awaken. His hands tangled in her hair, scattering pins, ripping apart the artfully simplistic coiffure that had taken Ariel nearly an hour to create.
Burke sensed Sabrina's surrender, and instead of feeling victorious, he was humbled by her willingness to trust so completely. To give so openly.
With a pang of regret, he broke the leisurely kiss long enough to lean forward and push a button on the console. "We'll be taking the long way back to the palace, driver."
Drew Tremayne, displaying properly servile demeanor, did not even glance up at the rearview mirror. "Yes, Your Highness," he replied blandly.
Burke pushed another button, causing the thick tinted glass to rise between the front and back seats.
When he turned back to Sabrina, the sight of her momentarily took his breath away. Her golden hair was tousled from his fingers, her lips were parted invitingly, and her eyes were wide and clouded and, he noticed reluctantly, unsure.
For one brief, fleeting moment, his mind brought forth a picture of Sabrina lying in a sun-kissed bed of wild buttercups, her catlike eyes smiling up at him, her arms outstretched.
Forcing the evocative image away, Burke ran his knuckles down her flushed cheek in a slow, tender sweep. "I promise, chérie, I will not hurt you."
Even as she knew Burke honestly meant those gravely stated words, Sabrina knew he was wrong. Because he would hurt her. Oh, he wouldn't mean to. But whatever happened between them tonight, they would have no choice but to part. She would resume the tour designed to salvage her father's reputation while he would remain here, where he belonged, in Montacroix.
In six short days, Burke would become regent. And Sabrina had come to know enough about him to accept the fact that in time, he would do his duty to his family and country by choosing a proper wife capable of giving him the heirs necessary to ensure the continuation of the Montacroix principality.
Oh, he might think of her from time to time, she considered. But eventually she'd fade from his mind like a distant dream. Or a summer dalliance with an appealing American commoner.
Every ounce of common sense Sabrina possessed told her that she should back away from this temptation, now. Before it was too late for choice.
But as his caressing hand moved down her cheek, and then her throat, creating a terrible pitch of excitement in her blood, Sabrina knew it had been too late from the beginning. From that first moment she'd found herself drowning in his smoky dark eyes.
"I don't want to talk," she said, raking her hands through his crisp black hair and pulling his mouth back to hers. I don't want to think. Her avid lips plucked hungrily at his, her kiss hot and hungry. Her slender hands, naked of any jeweled adornment, clutched at his hair, bringing his mouth back to hers, again and again.
When her teeth plucked at the cord in his neck, need punched like a fist into his gut, surging through Burke's furnace-hot body. His tongue stabbed deeply into her mouth, his greedy hands moved over her, clutching pieces of gold-lame-covered flesh.
He was no longer gentle, but—for some reason she promised herself to think about, later, when her head ceased spinning and her body was no longer aflame— Sabrina did not want gentleness.
Her hands ripped at the starched shirtfront, sending black ebony studs flying. She pushed the material away, her fingers twisting in his black chest hairs as her mouth ate into his.
. Need pumping through him, Burke unfastened her gold dress, the zipper sounding unnaturally loud in the close confines of the limo. He yanked the clinging bodice of the gown to her waist, giving his hands access to her breasts.
When he lowered his head and took a taut rosy peak between his teeth and tugged, Sabrina made a low, deep sound in her throat that was half purr, half growl. Pulling her into his arms, he arranged her so that she was lying across his lap. Attempting to regain control, he forced himself to be satisfied with long, slow kisses. Her taste coursed through him like a roiling river, a roaring filled his head. Tension built, and as much as he wanted to bury himself deep in her moist warmth, Burke held back.
She was sprawled wantonly across him, her gold kid shoes on the seat of the car, her skirt riding high on her long legs.
"You are so beautiful." He slipped his hand beneath her skirt and trailed his fingers up her thigh, tracing a seductive pattern that left her trembling. "That first moment I saw you, looking like a ravishing blond gypsy, you took my breath away."
"I felt it, too," she admitted on a throaty voice that was half honey, half smoke. "I didn't want to. But I did."
His lips curved into a satisfied smile that only hours earlier would have irritated her. But now her own ravished lips returned his rakish grin. They smiled at each other for an exquisitely long time.
Underlying the aura of sensuality was a familiarity so strong Burke felt as if he could reach out and touch it. He'd dreamed about her—or someone remarkably like her—for so long that it seemed as if he'd been waiting for her his entire life.
He'd fantasized about horseback riding with her beside the diamond-bright waters of Lake Losange, imagined kissing her in a hidden Alpine grove, dreamed of making love in front of a blazing fire. During these atypical flights of fantasy, when she finally arrived, no words were needed. He'd simp
ly known.
Perhaps, Burke thought with a burst of self-directed humor, he had inherited a smattering of Katia's second sight. Because as a slow flame spread through him anew, it was as if he could read Sabrina's mind; as if their sensual thoughts had tangled.
Burke had never experienced anything like this with any other woman. Any other lover.
It would be so easy, he mused. Another kiss, a touch here, a long, lingering caress there, and he could have her in his arms crying out for release. But then what? What of tomorrow?
As his gaze swept over her softly flushed features, Burke admitted that he wanted a great deal more than a tumble in the back of a limousine.
Dragging his eyes away from Sabrina, he glanced out the steamed-up window. "We're almost at the palace."
"Yes." Her voice was breathy with anticipation.
With hands that were not as steady as he would have liked, Burke reluctantly rearranged her clothing, then nudged her back onto the seat beside him. "I'll walk you to your door. And then I must go to the garage."
"The garage?" She didn't even try to keep the surprise and disappointment from her voice.
"I want to check the car before tomorrow's time trial."
"Oh." His rejection, after the passion they'd shared, felt like a slap in the face. She felt embarrassed and ashamed and couldn't bear to meet his look. "I understand."
"Non, ma chère," he corrected gently, taking her downcast chin and forcing her to look up at him. "I don't believe you do."
"Really, Your Highness—"
"Surely we've progressed to a point where you feel comfortable using my first name."
When she didn't answer, he said, "I want very much to make love to you, Sabrina."
"Of course you do," she returned, her Darling temper flaring to rescue her from humiliation. "That's why you're rushing off to the garage the minute we get back to the palace." Sabrina hated the cold, petulant sound of her own voice. If she'd been reading for a play, the margin notes would have read: woman scorned.
"I want to make love to you," he repeated gently, but firmly. To prove his point, he took her hand, which had tightened into a clenched fist in her lap, slowly un-curled her fingers and pressed it against an aching part of his anatomy.