The Throne He Must Take

by Chantelle Shaw

  ‘How incredibly beautiful...’ Holly murmured.

  ‘Yes.’

  But Jarek did not glance at the sunset. He only had eyes for her, and the heat inside him blazed like a wildfire—fierce and uncontrollable.

  She turned to look at him and he heard her catch her breath when he removed the clasp that secured the knot on top of her head, so that her hair fell like a curtain of silk around her shoulders. She whispered his name and it was the sweetest sound he had ever heard. A siren’s song that he could no longer resist.

  He had spent three weeks on a paradise island feeling as miserable as sin. He’d missed her soft smile and her sharp wit. And if he did not make her his soon he thought he might die.

  Her eyes widened when he leaned towards her, and he felt a quiver run through her as he brushed his lips over hers. She tasted divine, and what little restraint he had left cracked when she opened her mouth to him with a willingness that drove him over the edge.

  With a low growl he hauled her into his arms and slid one hand to her nape, to angle her head so that he could kiss her deeply, hungrily. And somewhere in Jarek’s mind was the thought that he had come home.

  CHAPTER NINE

  JUST ONE KISS, Holly promised herself. What harm could there be in one kiss?

  The raw emotion in Jarek’s voice when he had told her that he remembered Asmir from his early childhood had swept away her defences against him. Asmir’s story that Jarek was in fact Prince Jarrett, heir to the throne of Vostov, was almost too astounding to be believable. But if a DNA test proved it to be true then Jarek would be desperate to regain his lost memories about his parents, and he would need her help in the form of therapy sessions.

  Holly was aware that it was vital to set boundaries between a psychotherapist and her client. In fact, before she’d left Austria, she had explained to Professor Heppel that her relationship with Jarek had become personal, and she had taken unpaid leave from the Frieden Clinic in order to visit him in the Seychelles. Even so, she knew she should not be allowing Jarek to draw her into his arms and hold her so close that she could feel the hard thud of his heart beneath the hand that she had placed on his chest, intending to push him away.

  But he filled her senses, and she could not resist sliding her hands to his shoulders, stroking her fingers over his satiny skin before moving them up to trace across his rough jaw. And all the while his mouth was fused to hers. And he pushed his tongue between her lips as he deepened the kiss so that it became intensely erotic.

  She kissed him back because she could not help herself. Because she had missed him the same way that she would miss drawing oxygen into her lungs after he had left the clinic in Austria. When he lay back on the sun lounger and pulled her down on top of him she pressed herself against his hard body and felt a quiver of feminine satisfaction at the feral sound he made.

  He took his mouth from hers, and she should have seized that moment to end the madness and lift herself off him. But he trailed his lips down her throat and lower, to the valley between her breasts, and it was then that Holly discovered he had untied the wraparound dress. He pushed the edges of the dress aside, and when he smoothed his hand over her stomach she burned at his touch and every sensible thought flew from her head, leaving her mindless with desire.

  In a fluid movement Jarek reversed their positions and flipped her over, so that she was lying beneath him. She ran her fingers through his silky hair and then cradled his face in her hands and kissed him with a hunger that she had never felt for any other man. He had fascinated her from the start, and she was helpless to deny her desire for him when he tightened his arms around her as if he never wanted to let her go.

  The soft shadows of the gathering dusk stole around them, enclosing them in their private world, and Holly simply surrendered to the thunder of her heart and the increasing urgency of Jarek’s passion. He pulled her bra cup aside and gave a husky laugh when he flicked his tongue across the hard peak of her nipple and heard her catch her breath.

  A flame shot down from her breasts to the molten place between her legs and she forgot who she was—forgot that her body was flawed. Jarek used his hands and his mouth to caress her with such artistry, such reverence, that she forgot everything but the heavy pulse of her need that was centred right there, where his hand rested on the lacy panel of her knickers.

  She lifted her hips towards him when he pressed his palm down hard, and gave a startled cry as the tight band of need inside her snapped and her body shuddered with the intense pleasure he had created simply with his touch.

  ‘Holly...’ Her name was a raw growl and his eyes glittered with a feral hunger that belatedly awoke her to the realisation of where this was leading.

  ‘Jarek—’ she began, but her voice was smothered when he captured her mouth once more and kissed her with a desperation that tugged on her heart.

  She wanted him more than she had ever wanted anything in her life, and the stark look on his face warned her that he was barely holding on to his control.

  He rose up onto his knees, and yanked down the zip on his shorts. ‘I have to have you,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I can’t wait, angel-face. You’re driving me out of my mind.’

  With one hand he began to tug her knickers down, and he used his other hand to free himself from his shorts.

  Until that moment Holly had told herself that this time it would be all right. She was so turned on that surely her body would allow Jarek to penetrate her. But one look at the hard length of his erection brought her crashing back to reality. For her, having sex had to be a gradual process. If she rushed it would be bound to end in disappointment for Jarek and embarrassment for her.

  He stood up to pull off his shorts and kick them away. Truly he was a work of art, his muscle-hard body as beautiful as any marble figure sculpted by Michelangelo. But Jarek wasn’t made of stone. He was a hot-blooded male in his prime, and when he moved purposefully towards Holly it broke her heart to know she had to deny them both the satisfaction of the desire that burned like a white-hot flame between them.

  ‘No!’ she said frantically, holding out her hand to stop him lowering himself down onto her.

  Taking advantage of his stunned expression, she rolled off the sun lounger and pulled her underwear back into place. Her hands shook as she refastened her dress.

  ‘No?’ There was disbelief in his voice. His eyes narrowed and she sensed he was struggling to control his angry frustration. ‘What is this, Holly? An attempt to pay me back for rejecting you?’

  She swallowed. ‘I’m allowed to change my mind.’

  ‘Of course.’ His ice-blue eyes glimmered. ‘But I’m curious to know why, exactly. You wanted me.’ He swore, and then said with heavy self-derision, ‘I’ve had enough experience of women to be able to tell if you were faking it.’

  His casual reference to the fact that he had slept with countless women felt a knife in her heart. She was sure that none of his beautiful mistresses would have had an imperfect body like hers.

  ‘We can’t. I... I can’t. I’m sorry,’ she said in a choked voice, before she whirled away from him and tore across the beach.

  Dusk fell quickly in the Seychelles, and the path up to the house was illuminated by fairy lights that glowed as bright as fireflies. Holly ran inside and up the stairs to her bedroom, and after locking the door she curled up on the bed and wept tears of frustration.

  On the beach she simply hadn’t felt confident that she would be able to make love with Jarek, or that he would want her when he discovered she had a medical condition which meant spontaneous sex was a problem for her.

  ‘Holly, are you all right?’

  Jarek’s voice sounded through the door, and the doorknob rattled as he tried to turn it.

  ‘Will you let me in? We need to talk.’

  ‘There’s nothing to say.’ She sniffed. ‘Stop harassing me.’

  She heard him sigh. ‘What happened, angel-face? You were with me all the way.’

  She swa
llowed a hiccup. ‘You think I led you on deliberately?’

  ‘No, I don’t. I said a stupid thing in the heat of the moment, but I know you’re not a sexual tease.’ His voice deepened. ‘I know you, Holly. I guess you called a halt because maybe you’re not on the pill, and you were right to be concerned that we were about to have unprotected sex. I promise you I have never been careless about contraception before,’ he said gruffly.

  She gulped. Jarek had no idea that she would never have to worry about an unplanned pregnancy. ‘It wasn’t that. You...you don’t know me at all.’

  ‘Are you crying?’

  The doorknob rattled again and she heard him swear.

  ‘Let me in.’

  ‘Go away—please.’ Her voice trembled. ‘Just leave me alone.’

  After a few minutes she heard his footsteps move away down the corridor. Holly didn’t know how long she lay there, feeling sorry for herself, but after a while she decided she might as well go to bed and try to sleep, aware that in the morning she would have to face Jarek and somehow try to re-establish her role as his therapist.

  She took off the badly creased silk dress and hung it up. Then realised the brushed cotton pyjamas she wore in Austria would be too hot here in the Seychelles, where the temperature at night only dropped a couple of degrees from the searing heat of the day.

  Searching through a drawer for a T-shirt to wear in bed, she found the shirt Jarek had lent her when they had been stranded for the night in the mountain hut. She had packed the shirt so that she could return it to him, but it was the nearest she was going to get to sleeping in his arms, she thought as she slipped the shirt on and hugged it around her.

  A noise from over by the sliding glass doors made her swing round, and her heart crashed against her ribs as she watched Jarek climb over the rail and drop down onto the balcony outside her bedroom.

  ‘Are you crazy?’ she demanded. ‘It must be a ten-foot drop at least down to the ground. If you’d fallen you might have broken your neck.’

  He ignored her protest and strode across the room, catching hold of her shoulders before she could back away from him. ‘Why were you crying? Did I do something to hurt you or offend you?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Then why did you run off like that?’

  She looked away from his piercing blue eyes and shrugged. ‘Is your ego so big that you find it hard to accept I didn’t want to have sex with you?’

  He spread his fingers wide on her shoulders and drew her closer to him. ‘It has nothing to do with my ego. I know you are as hungry for me as I am for you.’

  Oddly, considering his words, there was none of the old arrogance in his voice, and he spoke in a low, intense way—as if his emotions were on a knife-edge.

  ‘If I demand that you give me back my shirt right here and now, I’m certain your body won’t lie. Shall I put my theory to the test, Holly?’ he said softly.

  She swallowed when he unfastened a button on the shirt, and then another. The hard gleam in his eyes told her it was not by accident that his knuckles brushed over the upper slopes of her breasts. She felt her nipples become tight and hot and she was powerless to prevent her body from betraying her.

  ‘Say it,’ he muttered, and there was something strangely vulnerable in his rough voice. ‘You are the most honest person I know. Tell me the truth, Holly.’

  She put her hand over his to stop him unbuttoning the shirt any lower, and gave a defeated sigh. ‘All right, yes. I wanted to make love with you on the beach. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t—not easily. Can we leave it at that?’ she whispered.

  He moved his hands up from her shoulders and cradled her face in his palms. When he spoke, the unexpected tenderness in his voice brought more tears to her eyes.

  ‘I have stripped my soul bare to you, angel-face. You know every one of my deepest, darkest secrets except for the ones I don’t even know myself.’ He rubbed his thumb-pad over the trembling of her mouth. ‘I would never betray your trust in me, just as I know here—’ he thumped his fist over his heart ‘—that you would die rather than reveal something told to you in confidence.’

  Jarek’s faith in her was humbling, and it made her want to cry even more.

  Perhaps he could tell from the way her shoulders drooped that all the fight had gone out of her, because he scooped her up in his arms as easily as he had on the mountain after she had been injured in the avalanche and carried her over to the sofa. He sat down and settled her on his lap—as if she were a child in need of comfort instead of a highly qualified professional woman of thirty-one, Holly thought ruefully.

  Before he had climbed up to her room he’d changed into jeans and a black T-shirt that clung to his muscular chest and felt soft against her cheek when she rested her head on his shoulder. She felt drained after her storm of emotions. Jarek stroked her hair, and her sense of being comforted and cared for by him was dangerously beguiling.

  After a moment she began to speak. ‘I have a rare syndrome which means that I was born with a gynaecological abnormality. As a teenager I had to have surgery which would enable me to have sex when I was an adult, and I was also advised by the doctor to use dilators regularly.’

  Holly tensed as she waited for Jarek’s reaction. In the past, when she had told a couple of boyfriends about her condition, they had reacted with varying degrees of shock. Their main concern had been that her imperfection might affect their enjoyment of sex with her. In each case she had decided not to take the relationship any further.

  ‘That must have a tough experience to go through,’ Jarek said, with no hint of shock or horror in his voice. ‘Puberty can be a difficult time anyway.’

  She nodded. ‘I was fifteen when I was diagnosed, and I found it horribly embarrassing to have to discuss very personal details about my body with medical staff. I couldn’t talk to my parents about my feelings, but inside I felt I was a freak and a failure as a woman.’

  She was embarrassed, telling Jarek such intimate things about herself, but when she attempted to slide off his lap he tightened his arm around her.

  ‘It was even worse when I started modelling,’ she continued after a moment. ‘Men desired me for the way I looked, but I knew I hid a shameful secret.’

  ‘Why shameful?’ he murmured. ‘It’s not your fault that you were born with a medical condition.’ He continued to stroke her hair gently. ‘Was the surgery you underwent to enable you to have sex successful?’

  ‘Yes, but since my last relationship ended over a year ago I haven’t had sex, I have used the dilators, but not as often as I should have done.’

  ‘Did the relationship end because of your condition?’

  ‘It was a factor,’ Holly admitted.

  In fact, when she’d first met Stuart she hadn’t explained about her MRKH because she had used her dilators regularly. Sex with him had been uneventful—and unexciting, a little voice in her mind whispered. Stuart had finished with her after she had told him she was infertile, but there was no reason to explain that to Jarek.

  ‘Were you in love with your ex?’ Jarek frowned. ‘I assume you must have been, as you’ve remained single and celibate for a year since your relationship finished.’

  She hesitated. ‘I believed that Stuart and I had a future together. I haven’t dated anyone else because...’ She halted, feeling utterly miserable.

  It was all hopeless. She had no idea why she was telling Jarek so much about herself. How could he possibly understand? He probably regretted risking serious injury by climbing up to her balcony like a latter-day Romeo, only to discover that his Juliet was a dud.

  His brows lifted. ‘Because?’

  ‘I can have sex, just the same as any other woman,’ Holly burst out defensively. ‘But it takes time for my body to be ready and most guys are too impatient.’

  She stared at him—at the hard, beautiful face that made her heart twist. He was a golden, gorgeous playboy who could have any woman he wanted.

  �
�Truthfully,’ she whispered, ‘what man would want to make love to me?’

  ‘This man,’ Jarek said softly.

  He lifted his hand and brushed the tears from her cheeks. Holly turned her head away, afraid she would see pity in his eyes that would make her feel worse. But he slipped his fingers beneath her chin and steered her gaze back towards him, and the fierce gleam in his eyes set her foolish heart pounding.

  ‘I told you the truth when I said you were driving me out of my mind, and nothing you have said has lessened my desire for you.’

  He stared into her eyes with an intensity that made her tremble.

  ‘I wanted you the minute I set eyes on you in Austria. You blew me away then and you blow me away now. The only difference now is that I know your beauty is not just skin-deep. You are brave and honest, compassionate and infuriatingly stubborn.’ Jarek’s mouth crooked. ‘You are also the sexiest psychologist I’ve ever known.’

  Despite everything, Holly melted at his smile. ‘Have you known many psychologists, then?’ she murmured.

  ‘Only you, angel-face.’ He still smiled, but his tone had become serious. ‘I would like to make love with you—but this isn’t about me...it’s about what you want.’

  ‘I want you,’ she whispered. ‘But I’ve told you... I have to take things slowly...you might get bored.’

  Jarek stroked his fingers through her hair, but it no longer felt as if he was comforting her when he slid his hand to her nape and gave a gentle tug to angle her face towards his so that his mouth was a whisper away from hers.

  ‘I promise you that neither of us will be bored,’ he said softly. ‘Forget those guys who were impatient, and your ex-boyfriend who is clearly a jerk. Your body is beautiful and unique to you, and if it takes a little time for you to become fully aroused and ready to make love what does it matter? We can take as long as we like. Anticipation adds another dimension to the overall pleasure,’ he murmured, his voice very deep and very soft, like the caress of plush velvet across her skin.