His words pushed all the air out of her lungs. Logically, she knew that their time together was only fleeting, but somehow she had expected the pleasure to last a little longer than this before the pain kicked in.
‘Are you expecting me to count the minutes?’ she said in a bitter undertone as he turned his back on her.
It was one tiny act of defiance, a kick against the tomorrow she could not avoid. She didn’t expect him to either hear, or care. When he turned and pierced her with a look, she froze. She could do nothing but watch as he prowled back across the courtyard towards her. Her thudding heart counted down the seconds until he was towering over her, his eyes brilliant with something she had never seen in them before. Ice ran through her veins as he leaned close … and then closer still. The warmth of his breath rippling over the delicate skin of her face and neck caressed an unwilling excitement over her body. A flush suffused the pale skin of her cleavage as she became aware that he was awakening her nipples to hard peaks all over again. Dimly aware of his hand moving past the corner of her eye, she tensed. Extending one lean, tanned finger, he pushed a stray skein of hair back from her brow. From there, his finger traced a leisurely path around the curve of her cheek. When he reached her chin, he lifted it so she was compelled to meet his eyes again. ‘Yes.’
CHAPTER NINE
LYSANDER’S voice was low and rough, but this time he studied her lips with cool, professional interest. Alyssa held her breath. Her heart pounded on. She wondered if he could hear it, amplified as it was by the powerful surge of desire thundering through her body. As he brought his head nearer and nearer to her, she watched until she was dizzy with desire. Then her eyes closed. She waited one … two seconds, but the kiss she was aching for never came. Instead she felt him take her hand. Her eyes flew open again. She saw his dark head bent over her fingers at the moment his lips brushed her skin in the lightest of formal gestures. Alyssa was so aroused, a little moan of longing escaped from her lips. A heat far more powerful than all the strength of the sun turned her body to a molten mass. It was frightening—almost as frightening as his smouldering gaze.
The memory of everything they had shared brought her straight back into the present. All that pleasure had been swept from his face and his manner, and now he was preparing for business as usual. He looked every inch the king. Alyssa couldn’t imagine what had possessed her to tell him to concentrate on Ra’id rather than his own chances for the crown of Rosara.
‘Yes … you must go, Lysander,’ she told him, but the meaning in her voice was far more powerful than her words.
He let her hand slip from his grasp. As his expressive dark eyes held her captive he placed one finger on the soft cushion of her lips. Tracing their outline with a touch as light as thistledown, he watched her fight the temptation to reach out and start caressing him again. She still wanted him, and her attraction grew like a flower. She might try to hide it, but her unsteady breathing and dilated pupils told Lysander everything. His own perfectly sculpted mouth fluctuated into a smile.
‘I’m sorry,’ he drawled. ‘Duty must come first.’
Kiss me! Alyssa’s body sobbed silently.
She reached up, wanting to ruffle her fingers through his soft dark curls once more before he left. He responded by pulling her close, moulding her body against his own so she could feel how much he wanted her, how much his body would like to stay.
‘Take care, my love,’ she whispered.
His hands had been running over her back, shoulders and hair. When she said that, he stopped and drew back. His eyes were now filled with a watchful look that frightened her.
‘I’m always careful. Very careful.’
Cupping her shoulders with his hands, he interrogated her with a long, cool look. Alyssa returned it with a smile. She knew he could read her mind, but this time his expression was closed to her.
‘Lysander? What is it?’ She put her hands up to his face again, but was too slow. He had already broken contact with her and was turning towards the car.
‘Nothing. I hope.’
He dived into the four-by-four and rapped on the dashboard as a signal to the driver. In a crash of gears, Lysander was swept away from her in a squeal of burning rubber.
Alyssa waved as the vehicle became a comet at the head of a dust cloud, but he never once looked back.
A bleak, black mood enveloped Lysander. He was used to playing dangerous games, but now he had been ambushed into doing something unforgivable. He had planned the perfect seduction to cure his gnawing need for Alyssa. Instead, raw emotion had overwhelmed them both and made the situation much, much worse. Alyssa’s silent, hidden vulnerability touched him. Her tears had been an unexpected tidal wave, washing away all his defences. What else could he have done, but take her in his arms and make everything all right again in the only way he knew how?
He watched her image in the nearside wing mirror. It shrank until it was hidden by the swirling dust thrown up by his vehicle. He could only hope she was every inch the woman he believed her to be. She was so unlike all the others … she was bound to understand, wasn’t she? Like him, she knew from hard, horrible experience that long-term relationships were impossible.
They were both free spirits. That would help. When she had burst into tears last night, it had been only a simple mistake on her part—he had put that right and solved his own problem, too. The last thing he should have done was start to feel genuinely sorry for her. That was his mistake, but it was understandable.
When he thought about it like that, his lapse didn’t feel quite so bad. He dropped his hand onto his thigh and relaxed his shoulders. All he had intended was a quick tumble in a beautiful place. Offering Alyssa sympathy had been delicious, but he had never wanted to get in so deep. Sex was supposed to be fun, not serious. That was why this call back to the palace was such a godsend.
Uneasily, he realised abandoning Alyssa this morning for anything less would have been impossible. That made things tricky. An affair wouldn’t be right for either of them. Lysander was certain of that, in the same way he knew he would have to get Alyssa right out of his life as soon as possible—to save his sanity.
Alyssa ran back up the steps to the lookout point on top of the castle walls. From there she could watch Lysander’s car and its thread of dust fade from sight across the plain. When it had disappeared into the low jumble of buildings making up the palace, she turned and headed for the spa. There, she stripped off and slipped beneath the warm waters. Her spirits soared up to the clear blue sky, exhilarating, yet terrifying. She had wasted so much time mourning her broken engagement, it had blinded her.
It was far more than simply desire she felt for Lysander.
When Lysander got back to the palace he blazed his way through the corridors of power. I should never have abandoned my work. I should have come straight back here last night, he told himself, but it was hopeless to deny the attraction that had held him prisoner at The Queen’s Retreat for so long. He had been bedding Ra’id’s nanny when he should have been putting his country first. Now his past and future were on a collision course. A rowdy faction of hill tribes was on its way to the palace, ready to proclaim their own King of Rosara, rather than wait for his nephew to grow up.
Lysander’s word was already law to them. He was confident that he could control the situation, but that didn’t make it any easier. When Alyssa got to hear of this, she was bound to be scared. He already knew how good she was at hiding her feelings, but he had just spent a whole night breaking down her resistance. This situation meant he had to focus. It was time to let her go, like all the others.
But she wasn’t like them. And what if Ra’id picked up on the atmosphere this was bound to create? How would that affect their working relationship? If they still had one … His veins ran with ice water as he remembered how Alyssa had mentioned the L word—love. He knew what that meant. Seduction might not have slaked his thirst for her, but when a woman used words like that it had to mean the end of
everything. There was no question about it. When love came in the door, common sense flew out of the window. He had too much experience of that, and it was a painful experience. It had condemned his mother to death, and broken his brother’s heart. Lysander had to prove he was bigger than either of them. There was only one way to do it—make a clean break from Alyssa while he worked things out in his mind.
He would double the guard on Ra’id and go to intercept the rebels on their own ground. He was interested in results for Rosara, not in honour for himself. Alyssa would understand that. He could tell that the country was beginning to hold almost the same importance for her as it did for him … Suddenly, he realised it wasn’t going to be easy to prise his thoughts away from her. If her voluptuous image could haunt him while he was preparing for a council of war, he didn’t know how it could be exorcised. He had to send her away.
The Queen’s Retreat was a beautiful place to idle away her day off, but Alyssa soon got restless. After Lysander’s lovemaking, everything else was second best. Life felt almost impossible without him now. Lounging in a swing seat beneath the rose arbour, she hummed to herself. A billow of single pink daisies flounced around the trellis. Picking one as she rocked gently to and fro, she began pulling off the narrow petals one by one.
‘He loves me, he loves me not …’
Going through the old rhyme felt deliciously wicked. Princes weren’t supposed to carry their staff away into the desert. Nannies ought to concentrate on the next generation, not fool around with men of their own age.
She went on reciting the rhyme until there were only six petals left.
‘He loves me …’
A commotion far away in the palace’s gatehouse made her stop. She listened, and then suddenly a guard was running across the courtyard, calling to her. She couldn’t understand what he was saying, but recognised the sound of her own name.
Whatever the news, it wasn’t good. She looked down at the flower in her hand, with its half-dozen remaining petals.
‘Miss Dene! You are recalled to the palace!’ the man called to her in broken English. ‘Prince Lysander insisted that you were sent for. Your day off is cancelled! You must take the child back to England immediately!’
‘Isn’t Prince Lysander coming back to fetch me himself?’
‘No, he’s far too busy!’ The guard sounded shocked, as if Alyssa was the last thing on the Prince Regent’s mind. She tensed.
‘Why? What’s happened?’
‘The time has come. Prince Lysander is going to confront the rebels and Prince Ra’id’s household is all going back to England, where they’ll be safe.’
Alyssa took the news like a blow to the stomach. The queen’s garden was suddenly full of people. They swarmed around her like ants, emptying the observatory of all the lovely things she had enjoyed with Lysander. She stood in the eye of the storm, her mind already a maelstrom. Opening her hand, she looked down at the daisy that had been giving her so much innocent pleasure.
A quick calculation told her everything she didn’t want to know. She pinched five petals together and pulled them off. That left only one.
He loves me not … So there it was. Not even a child’s game worked in her favour any more. She couldn’t manage to keep that final, fragile petal, either. It was snatched out of her fingers by a chill breeze rippling across the garden.
For a moment, all the birds fell silent.
Lysander had been so understanding about Georgie’s death and Jerry’s treachery, but his silver tongue had lured her into making another mistake. Alyssa shut her eyes, trying to blind herself to the truth in the same way he had done. It was impossible. She was as big a fool as ever. Bigger, as experience should have taught her not to be so stupid a second time. She had allowed herself to be seduced, knowing all the time that Lysander’s lifestyle and morals were totally different from her own. Her ex-fiancé had cheated on her while she was still grieving for Georgie, and when she had needed him most. Why should she be shocked when ruthless, single-minded Lysander Kahani did exactly the same?
She stood up. The remains of the daisy, already wilting in the warmth, tumbled from her lap. She didn’t notice. All she could think about was the way she had made a fool of herself over a man—again.
A car came for her, eventually, but there was no sign of Lysander. When she got back to the Rose Palace, it was in chaos. Lysander was nowhere to be seen but she couldn’t block out the sound of his voice, calm but loud, echoing through the building. Staff scurried about all day relaying his instructions, and she picked up the story bit by bit. Lysander was leaving with the army for the hills. His plan was to make contact with the rebels who had sent an ultimatum about Ra’id. To keep his nephew safe, the royal household was being shipped back to England. Alyssa didn’t want Ra’id upset by all the tension, so she kept him in the nursery, but the last thing she wanted to do was merge into the background.
For once, she was determined to stand up for herself. She had to talk to Lysander. Although her attention didn’t waver from Ra’id, she made sure they always played close to a window where she could keep a watch on the courtyard below. Lysander didn’t appear. She texted him. He didn’t reply. All day she watched and waited, but it was no good. Finally, with Ra’id packed and ready, she had an excuse to go and find out what was happening.
The palace’s grand foyer was stacked with travelling boxes and crates. Alyssa spotted Lysander instantly. The sight of him stopped her dead, halfway down the stairs. He was always impressive, but in combats instead of his usual designer suit and tie he was daunting as well. In contrast to his staff, he moved around with cool assurance. They rushed backwards and forwards in a panic while he tried to keep the situation calm by giving each one a few reassuring words.
Alyssa waited for him to turn his head so she could attract his attention. He didn’t so much as throw a glance towards her. When anger overcame her shame at being fooled twice in her life, she started down the stairs. Each step was heavier than the last. When she finally thumped to ground level, Lysander was heading towards the door.
‘I’d like a word with you, please, Your Royal Highness.’
The staff stopped, guessed what was going to happen and then put their heads down to carry on with what they were doing.
All except Lysander. Hands on hips and without any sense of urgency, he strolled over to where she stood.
Alyssa’s face barely came up to his breast pocket, but that didn’t stop her standing up to him.
‘I want to speak to you.’
‘I know. I saw you leave the nursery wing.’
That surprised her. ‘You didn’t make any effort to come over while I was waiting on the stairs,’ she snapped, feeling awkward that she had misjudged him. Only hours ago, she had felt there might be some kind of mystical link growing between them. Fat chance, when I can’t even notice him looking at me, she thought.
‘Is it something about Ra’id?’ His eyes were guarded.
‘No.’
‘What, then?’
‘You mean you don’t know?’ Alyssa burst out.
He stood before her, tall, proud and very still. ‘I hope I can’t guess.’
Now that she was face to face with him, Alyssa couldn’t think of how to begin. Eventually, she said in a quiet voice, ‘I thought you were coming back to The Queen’s Retreat.’
‘I was needed here.’
‘Of course you were.’ Alyssa had heard about threats to Ra’id’s future from the driver sent to collect her. The country was unsettled, angry, looking for a strong leader. There were bound to be those who might want to take a short cut by removing any opposition. That put Ra’id quite literally into the firing line.
She fought to keep calm. Only twenty-four hours ago the three of them had been having a wonderful time, picnicking without a care in the world. Now her universe had contracted to a tiny bubble that wasn’t large enough to keep both Lysander and Ra’id safe at the same time. Bubbles were so easily burst. She woul
d have to let one of them go, and Lysander wouldn’t allow her to keep him. This was the job he was born to do, after all. She understood a sense of duty and how he felt about it, but this situation was so dangerous her feelings burst out in spite of herself.
‘Please don’t go, Lysander. Send someone else—’
A tiny muscle twitched as he clenched his jaw. ‘Are you suggesting I should hide away, just so you aren’t worried about my safety, when the future of both my country and my nephew are at stake?’ The bitterness in his voice and his assumption that she was thinking only of herself cut through Alyssa like a whip.
‘Don’t flatter yourself—or me,’ she struck back. ‘Obviously my opinions aren’t of any interest to you. How stupid of me to forget that for you women are nothing but playthings! Well, I’m worth more than that, and I’m not trying to save you for myself. See sense. If you’re going to keep your country in one piece, Lysander, you have to keep yourself out of harm’s way.’
‘My country needs me to be strong, and I have to set an example. This is how it must be.’
‘You idiot, Lysander!’ Emotion made her throw her hands towards him but he stepped smartly out of her reach.
‘Speaking like that to me at a time like this is treason.’
They stared at each other, his look becoming a glare.
‘This will be my life from now on, Alyssa. There are times when I have to leave everything—and everybody—behind. I can’t do my duty to my people if I have you to worry about as well. There isn’t room in my life for any distraction right now.’
Breath caught in her throat, almost choking her. ‘So that’s all I am to you—a distraction.’
He stared at a point somewhere over her head and far away. ‘Don’t take it to heart. If anything, you should be glad I’m leaving before things go any further. I’ve had so many other women, Alyssa. I’ve abandoned them all sooner or later—’ He tore his eyes away from the middle distance but still refused to meet her eyes. ‘I don’t want to hurt you like that. You’re too good …’
Weight of the Crown Page 12