The Throne He Must Take

by Chantelle Shaw

  He finally let go of her wrist—but only so that he could wrap his arms around her and haul her against his bare chest. Her hands flailed wildly for a second, before she succumbed to temptation and placed them flat on his chest, running her fingers over the whorls of blond hair that grew thickly over his torso. She pushed his unbuttoned shirt off his shoulders and revelled in the feel of his satin-smooth skin beneath her palms. His body was a masterpiece of masculine beauty and she traced her fingers over the hard ridges of his abdominal muscles, fascinated by his toned hardness in contrast to her soft, feminine curves.

  In a seamless movement he rolled her over, so that she found herself lying on her back on the bed. He stretched out beside her and propped himself up on his elbow, cradling her chin in his other hand while he kissed her again, slow and leisurely this time, but no less heart-shaking.

  Holly ran her fingers through his hair. Her senses were inflamed by the heat of his body, the musky fragrance of his aftershave and the skilful flick of his tongue inside her mouth. She sank deeper into the soft mattress as he smoothed his hand down her body, over the firm mounds of her breasts covered by the stretchy material of her pyjama top. Her heart thudded when he gripped the hem of her top and in one fluid movement pushed it up to her neck, baring her breasts. The cool air on her heated skin caused her nipples to pucker, and the feral growl Jarek gave sent a shudder of response through her.

  ‘Your breasts are even more beautiful than I had imagined them,’ he said thickly. ‘I wish that I had followed my instincts when we returned from the ball, and undressed you in the firelight before making love to you in front of the fire.’

  The sound of his voice jolted Holly from the sexual haze that had clouded her brain. The inherent arrogance of his statement sent a chill through her.

  ‘Assuming I would have allowed you to undress me,’ she muttered.

  ‘Of course you would.’

  He laughed, and it felt like a knife through her heart.

  ‘Why else did you come to my room tonight?’

  ‘You were having a nightmare.’ She yanked her pyjama top down and sat up. ‘You can’t think I came for any other reason?’ Her face flamed when he looked amused. ‘I am your psychotherapist and I rushed to your room after I heard you call out to see if I could help you.’ She gave a ragged sigh of frustration. ‘The truth is that we can’t start a relationship while you are my client.’

  ‘Relationship?’ His brows rose. ‘I thought we were going to spend what’s left of the night together—not align our diaries for the next few months.’

  Holly welcomed the burst of temper that exploded inside her and which—for now, at least—stopped her feeling as if she wanted to cry. What a fool she was, she thought grimly.

  ‘I suppose the thought of being with a woman for even one month must seem like an eternity to the world’s most prolific playboy,’ she said furiously. ‘You shouldn’t have kissed me, and I admit I should not have responded. It was a moment of madness and I assure you it won’t happen again.’

  She swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood up, telling herself she was relieved that he did not try to stop her. To her utter shame she smelled the betraying musky scent of her arousal, and was sure Jarek must be able to smell it too. It was no wonder that he had assumed she was his for the taking.

  But if he had attempted to have sex with her he would have found her body unyielding, and she would have felt even more humiliated than she did right now.

  Feeling sick with self-loathing, she hurried over to the door. But she hesitated on her way out of his room and turned to face him. He was still sprawled on the bed, like an indolent sultan deciding which of the concubines in his harem he would summon to pleasure him.

  For a mad moment Holly wondered what would happen if she forgot her principles and walked back over to him, peeling off her pyjamas on her way to his bed. Her breasts ached for his touch, and there was a slick, molten heat between her legs. But the fantasy was ruined by the reality that it took time for her body to become fully aroused, and that if she rushed sex would be uncomfortable for her.

  ‘When I heard you shouting you sounded terrified—as if someone was trying to murder you,’ she told Jarek. ‘You are going to have to confront your past some time—and, although I feel horribly embarrassed about my unprofessional behaviour tonight, I want you to know that my only desire is to help you tackle your demons.’

  For a split second an expression flashed across his face that startled Holly. He looked lost—and vulnerable, as he must have been when he was an orphaned boy struggling to survive in war-torn Sarajevo.

  Her heart ached for him, but he wasn’t interested in her heart, she reminded herself as she stepped into the corridor and quietly closed the door behind her.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘I’M GLAD TO see you’ve made it down to breakfast for once,’ Holly said, coming to an abrupt halt in the doorway of the dining room when she saw Jarek sitting at the table, drinking a cup of coffee.

  She did not sound gladdened by the sight of him, he thought. Her usually melodious voice was at least two octaves higher, and the pink stain on her cheeks reminded him of when he had shoved her pyjama top out of the way and watched warm colour spread down her throat and over her perfect round breasts with their rosy tips that he had ached to taste.

  He still ached, he acknowledged. Sleepless nights were nothing new to him, but since Holly had left him last night he’d felt restless and dangerously out of control. Unexpectedly he’d found he wanted something more than the litany of meaningless liaisons that defined his life. But he should know better. He knew himself too well, and none of what he knew was any good.

  The headlines on many of the morning’s newspapers did not help to lighten Jarek’s mood.

  In Vostov, Asmir Sunjic had gone public with his story that he had been in the car with Prince Goran and his wife and children on the night of the fatal crash that had supposedly taken the lives of every member of the royal family. Asmir insisted that the crash had not been the result of a tyre blow-out, as had been reported at the time, but that in fact the car had been hit by gunfire. Even more astonishing was Asmir’s claim that when the car had spun off the road and crashed into dense woodland he had managed to smuggle the royal children away to safety. Moments later the car had exploded in a fireball, with the Prince and Princess inside.

  If the old Vostovian man’s story was true, the papers suggested, the royal children—who would now be adults—might be alive.

  It was a big if, Jarek brooded. He welcomed the distraction of watching Holly walk across the room and take her place opposite him at the table. Her colour was still high, and he was intrigued when she refused to meet his gaze and seemed to be fascinated with the toast rack.

  ‘I’ve drawn up a schedule of counselling sessions for you,’ she said, in a brisk tone that warned him she would not be distracted from her determination to persuade him to spill his guts. She was dressed as if she meant business, but he knew that her calf-length skirt and crisp blouse—buttoned all the way up to her neck this morning—concealed a voluptuous body. He felt himself harden as he recalled how soft her sweet curves had felt when he’d held her in his arms.

  ‘How very efficient of you,’ he drawled.

  He was tempted to reach across the table and remove the clasp that secured her hair in a knot on top of her head, so that the heavy mass of gleaming brown silk spilled around her shoulders. But if he did that he knew he would have to walk around the table and sink his fingers into her hair, so he contented himself with brushing his fingertips over the faint grazes on her cheek.

  ‘I left my mark on you last night,’ he said ruefully, rubbing his hand across the stubble on his jaw. ‘Perhaps it’s as well that things did not progress between us. Your skin is so fine that if I had put my mouth on your breasts I would have scraped you with my beard.’

  She stiffened, and he waited for her to slap him down with one of her sharp retorts. Instead her si
lence trembled with tension, and Jarek felt an odd sensation as if his heart was being squeezed in a vice when he saw her lower lip wobble before she caught it between her teeth.

  ‘You don’t need to remind me of my shameful behaviour last night.’ Her voice shook. ‘I will understand if you wish to make a complaint about my unprofessional conduct to Professor Heppel.’

  Even worse than the painful emotion in her voice was the dark luminosity of her eyes. ‘For God’s sake, Holly,’ he said roughly, ‘there is no reason for you to feel ashamed. Believe me, I should know. Shame is my middle name.’

  ‘I wonder why you think that. It will be a good starting point for your first counselling session.’ The determined look was back in her eyes. ‘I thought we could make a start straight after breakfast.’

  For twenty seconds Jarek considered telling Holly of his crazy suspicion that his amnesia about the early years of his life was somehow connected with events that had taken place in the Principality of Vostov more than two decades ago. But he was sure she would not believe him—and he did not really believe himself that Asmir Sunjic’s story could be true. If his parents had been a prince and princess, it seemed inconceivable that he had no memory of them—or of spending the first years of his childhood living in a royal palace.

  How, then, had he ended up in an orphanage in Sarajevo? There were so many unanswered questions. It was more likely that the old man in Vostov was a fantasist, or an opportunist hoping to make money by selling his bizarre story to the media, Jarek assured himself.

  He glanced at Holly and found her watching him with big dark eyes that reminded him of molten chocolate: soft and sweet and so very tempting.

  ‘I’ve decided to go skiing this morning,’ he said abruptly. ‘Heavy snowfall is forecast for the next few days, which means that today might be the only opportunity to hit the slopes.’

  She looked as if she wanted to argue, but perhaps she guessed it would be pointless because she murmured, ‘All right. I’ll come with you. Maybe spending the day outside in the fresh air will help you to relax and you’ll feel able to talk about your childhood.’

  ‘How can I talk about it when a chunk of my memory is missing?’ he growled irritably. ‘You make it sound simple, but presumably the reason my mind has blocked out certain memories is because they are disturbing.’

  She nodded. ‘But your lost memories surface in your nightmares. Whatever happened to you as a child is stored in your subconscious mind.’

  ‘What the hell is wrong with leaving those memories buried, instead of digging them up so that you can psychoanalyse them?’ he demanded, feeling that restless ache inside him when she smiled gently.

  ‘I hope I can help you to uncover your past so that you will be freed from the horrors that stalk your dreams.’

  ‘What if I am the horror?’ he muttered. ‘What if I am afraid to remember my early childhood because I did something terrible?’

  He saw her shocked expression before she quickly masked it. What had made him blurt out his secret fear to Holly, Jarek wondered grimly.

  She shook her head. ‘How old were you when you went to live at the orphanage and were told that your parents had died?

  ‘Six. But I have no memories of my life up until then.’

  ‘You were a child, Jarek,’ she said softly. ‘What can a six-year-old boy have done?’

  Killed his parents.

  The thought flashed into Jarek’s mind, along with that wisp of a memory he had seen before in his nightmares. He visualised a car with its engine running, heard a man’s voice speaking urgently.

  ‘Put the boy in the car, Dora. There is no time to search for Tarik. If we do not leave now we will all be killed.’

  Who were Dora and Tarik? Jarek wondered. And why did he feel that he had somehow been responsible for his parents’ death if they had been killed in a bomb explosion in Sarajevo?

  Frustration surged through him when a curtain fell across his mind once more and hid his memories. His inability to recall his childhood was something he’d had to live with all his adult life, but he realised that Holly had been right when she’d said he could not look to the future until he had dealt with his past. Before he’d arrived at the Frieden Clinic and met his beautiful psychotherapist he had been uninterested in what his future held. So why did it suddenly matter now?

  He glanced at Holly and his jaw clenched. He shouldn’t have kissed her, but now that he had he found himself wanting things he could never have. After his adoptive mother’s death four years ago he had vowed that no one else would suffer as a result of his destructive nature.

  Too restless to remain inactive, he scraped his chair back and rose to his feet. The gentle expression in Holly’s eyes felt like a knife in his heart. He did not need her sympathy and he was certain he did not deserve it.

  ‘How well can you ski?’ he asked tersely. ‘There are a couple of black runs at Arlenwald that I want to try, but if you are a novice you won’t manage them. I’ll leave you on the easier slopes.’

  ‘As a matter of fact I’m an experienced skier. I was taught by an ex-boyfriend who was a skiing champion. Brett had an amazing technique,’ she murmured, a smile playing on her lips.

  He must be losing his mind, Jarek decided. What other reason could there be other than madness for the acid burn of jealousy in the pit of his stomach when he pictured Holly with another man?

  ‘You said your skiing instructor was an ex-boyfriend... Was the break-up a recent event?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I dated Brett years ago—while I was at university and working part-time as a model. We met at a party and he invited me to his home in Colorado, which is where I learned to ski. The romance fizzled out after a few months, but I’ve continued to ski regularly—mainly in Europe.’

  ‘Why don’t you have a man in your life currently?’ Jarek hoped his idle tone disguised his curiosity.

  ‘What makes you think I’m not in a relationship?’ she countered.

  ‘You wouldn’t have kissed me if you were involved with another guy.’

  He did not know why he was so certain that Holly was a one-man woman, but it was a reminder that she was off-limits to him. He sensed that he could hurt her. What was surprising was that he cared.

  He watched her eyes darken and knew she was remembering the heat that had burned hotter than the fiercest flame between them when he had kissed her, and when she had responded with a sweet ardency that made his gut clench just thinking about it.

  ‘I thought we had agreed that what happened last night was a mistake best forgotten,’ she said tautly.

  ‘I don’t remember agreeing to forget it,’ he drawled. ‘Seriously, not only are you beautiful, but you are clever and compassionate—you must have to fight men off. I don’t understand why you’re not married.’

  ‘That’s rich, coming from a notorious playboy,’ she murmured, in that dry way of hers that so amused Jarek.

  He shrugged. ‘I’m shallow and easily bored. What’s your excuse?’

  She was silent for a moment, and when she finally spoke the huskiness in her voice scraped on something raw inside him that he hadn’t known existed until then.

  ‘The truth is that I have never met anyone who was prepared to love me for the way I am,’ she said quietly.

  He frowned. ‘And how are you?’

  ‘Flawed.’ She smiled faintly. ‘You are not the only one with secrets, Jarek.’

  ‘I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.’ He meant it, and it was then that he realised he was in grave danger of losing his sanity around Holly.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s not how psychotherapy works.’ Her tone became brisk once more. ‘It’s only fair that if we spend today skiing you agree to give counselling a fair chance tomorrow.’

  He couldn’t help but smile at her earnest expression, and his smile widened as he walked around the table and bent his head down to hers. She immediately stiffened, and the pulse at the base of the throat leapt frantically
beneath her skin.

  ‘You’re forgetting something, angel-face,’ he said softly as he angled his mouth over hers.

  The kiss was hard and fierce and unsatisfactorily brief. Desire delivered a sharp kick to his gut when he felt her lips part beneath his, and it took all his will power to lift his head and step away from her.

  ‘I’ve never claimed to play fair.’

  His voice was harsher than he’d intended: a warning to himself as much as to Holly, Jarek acknowledged as he spun round and strode out of the room.

  * * *

  The view down the mountainside was spectacular and terrifying. Holly felt a trickle of fear run the length of her spine as she stared at what appeared to be an almost vertical expanse of white snow, glistening in the late-afternoon sunshine. She had never attempted to ski down such a steep run before—although technically it wasn’t a proper ski run.

  Jarek had decided to ski off-piste, and she had felt that it was her duty to accompany him. The snow here, away from the main ski runs, had not been compacted by snowcat machines to flatten out the surface, and there were no coloured marker flags. More importantly there were no other skiers in sight—probably because no one else was crazy enough to want to ski on such challenging terrain.

  She must be out of her mind, Holly thought, conscious of her heart hammering in her chest. Although she had told Jarek the truth when she’d said she was an experienced skier, she had omitted to mention that prior to arriving in Austria she had not skied for more than a year. The two black runs at Arlenwald were notoriously difficult, and her nerve and skill had been tested when she had followed Jarek down the slopes.

  She had been feeling rather pleased with herself, and looking forward to a soak in the hot tub, knowing her muscles were going to ache like mad tomorrow—But...

  ‘I’m not ready to finish yet,’ Jarek had said when she’d suggested they return to Chalet Soline. ‘You go back if you want to. I’ll meet you later.’