A Prince's Ransom: Kidnapped by the Billionaire (19 page)

Turning away from him and fighting an instinct to pull away altogether, she stared out over the beach again, no longer paying any attention to Tara and Élise. “Eric, I’ve told you how I feel. We’ve only known each other a few days but there is a part of me that desperately wants the best parts of you—the way you look at me, the way you are when you’re trying to impress me—to be the things that are real. Because if they were, there wouldn’t be a guy on earth who would be better than you. You’d give Superman a run for his money that way…I guess he’d really only beat you on the whole flying thing.”

Eric paused, regarding her skeptically. “You’re afraid of heights but you desire a boyfriend with the ability to fly?”

She glared at him slightly. “Shut up, that’s completely not the point.” Eric chuckled, and she sighed, looking away from him again. “If those good parts of you were one hundred percent real, then I would have no problem abandoning my entire life to be with you. But if those parts of you were actually real, you never would have chosen me to begin with.”

“How can you say that? About yourself, let alone about me?” he asked, horror in his voice.

“Because you know we would never be having this conversation if you weren’t flawed and looking for someone to accept those flaws. You don’t really believe you’re good enough for some royal woman, so you went slumming with the ditzy college tourist instead of trying to make yourself worthy of a princess. But the fact that you’re so goddamn great and don’t even know it is your greatest flaw, you know? Because it can’t be real. It
isn’t
real. And it’s definitely not going to be real for me.”

Before she’d finished talking, he reached out and grabbed her wrist just forcefully enough to turn her toward him, his eyes flickering with something indescribable as he looked down at her. Katherine couldn’t take her eyes off his.

“The parts of me that you wish were real,” he started after a long moment, “I don’t know if they are or not. But you are wrong about something, Kat. You are wrong to think they cannot exist for you. If they are going to exist at all, they exist just for you.”

She felt as though a hand clenched around her heart sharply. She tried to pull herself free of him. “See that? That stuff right there? I don’t
believe
that!”

He refused to let her go, his eyes clouding as he reached out, capturing her waist and tugging her closer to him. His other hand let go of her wrist, and instead brushed back a few strands of her short blond hair.

“Katherine, do you not believe such things because
I
am the one who is saying them or because
you
are the one they are being said to?” She stopped, unable to find the words to speak as his eyes searched her face. “Ever since I have met you, it has been one self-degradation after another. You are so convinced that you are a slut or not worth my time, or not princess material—not worth being treated right by someone you are in a relationship with. It is almost always said in jest, trying to laugh it off, but it comes up continuously, refusing to be subdued. I am not blind, and I know you are not either. I have spoken of this before, and I am not… why don’t you believe me when I say something like that?”

Her breath trembled against her lips, and then she looked away from him. She already knew she couldn’t pull free of his grasp, but oh how desperately she wanted to.

“While I was growing up, my parents—or my mom, mostly—well, my dad worked out of town all the time, so I barely ever saw him. But my mom would go out every night and we lived ten minutes from the Las Vegas strip. She would stay out for hours, leaving me alone. Even when I had something I wanted to talk to her about or a good grade to show her or when I had broken my arm at school one day and she still went out that night and wasn’t there when the pain medicine wore off…” Katherine swallowed hard, and let out a harsh laugh at the bitter memories. “She never paid attention to me until I stopped caring about school. Until I got in trouble for wearing a skirt too short or got caught kissing under the school bleachers at a football game, or…” She shut her eyes tightly, trying to force the pain from them.

“And you gained a reputation around school for such things,” Eric supplied softly, his voice concerned. A wry smile twisted at her lips.

“Yeah. They only started paying attention to me when… it’s the worst goddamn cliché ever, but I was tired of being ignored. When I got the chance to go out of state for college, I jumped at it because it meant I was free and could put it all behind me with a fresh start. But I was just so used to being
that
girl by then.”

Eric frowned at her, holding her closer. “It isn’t a crime to want attention from those who should make you the center of their world—or to want attention from your peers in ways that are more flattering,” he murmured, his words brushing tenderly against her hair and her temple.

She opened her eyes again. “But that doesn’t change a few things, Eric. It doesn’t change that I am not at all the right girl for you to pick, that I am prepared for any of this, that I am…”

“It changes what you deserve,” he countered without hesitation. “You have said it yourself that you deserve better than someone who will lie to you and hurt you. And you do. I imagine you had quite enough of that growing up with a mother who all but neglected you and boys who only cared when there was something in it for them. You deserve the prince you want me to be, Kat. If you let me, I would at least try. I promise you I would. I cannot promise that you will be free of pain, but I doubt anyone could. I can promise that the happy moments with me will be so much better than the happy moments you’d get elsewhere.” With every word, he leaned closer and closer to her ear and she swallowed hard, her brow furrowing faintly.

“Eric…”

“Do you imagine I would be wrong, about that?” he asked, interrupting her before she had a chance to interrupt him. “That the moments of joy would be worth having to spend them with me?”

“But the pain will hurt so much more when it’s coming from you! I already know to expect it from other guys, so it doesn’t hurt so bad.”

“And you do not expect it of me?”

“Not from the guy you pretend to be. Just the one you actually are.”

His eyes grew hard, staring down at her, then he suddenly moved towards her, his lips colliding harshly with hers. Eric’s hand laced through her hair, and before she realized it, her lips gratefully clung to his, glad to stop talking about all of this when it just felt like it made it worse. Her arms wrapped around his neck and she stood on tiptoe to reach him, holding the kiss out for as long as she could.

He was the one to end it, though, to gaze down at her while her body molded against his. “I will try to be that man for you, Kat. Give me the chance to try—truly, absolutely
try
. I may yet surprise you. I may surprise myself. But you deserve better than those who look at you only for what you can give them, just as I deserve better than a woman who only desires me for the power I represent.”

Katherine swallowed. “Brigitte will never let us have peace, never. And that alone, when I don’t have the ability to deal with politics or court in-fighting—”

“No, enough,” he interjected sharply. “Enough of what you can do, of what you can’t do. You say such things when I have seen you do quite well in the world to which I have unfairly dragged you, navigating it with more grace than some who’ve been a part of this environment their whole lives.” His lips crashed down on hers again, and she whimpered faintly. Every time he kissed her, there was this whirlwind that careened through her thoughts and made them scatter into oblivion. What did those thoughts matter while she was kissing him?

But she pulled away herself this time. “You make it really easy to just grasp onto your words and accept them as the truth. Especially when you do stuff like that,” she breathed, her fingers skating long the edge of his jaw. “And it makes it really unfair, because I would really love to be able to think around you.”

Eric laughed, and a genuine smile touched his lips for a long moment, a moment that still ended too shortly when he scooped her up, bridal style, making Katherine squeak in surprise. “Eric!” she cried with what was almost a laugh, but he merely lifted a mischievous brow at her and carried her away. She only noticed belatedly that his bodyguards had still been close by, just out of range to overhear their conversation. She blushed a little bit as the prince carried her inside the mansion.

As if the palace wasn’t already a place to undoubtedly get lost in, the villa seemed like an actual maze. A beautiful maze, admittedly, nothing but marble
everything,
along with busts of old people lining the hallways, staring back blankly at the people who walked past. Every room somehow had an amazing view of the ocean, one way or another. Eric’s footsteps were quick and sure, knowing exactly where he was going as he carried her off—and she let him carry her, her head resting against his shoulder. He leaned down and nuzzled against the top of her head, and she smiled faintly, leaning up to press a kiss to his neck; Eric shivered against her.

Not trying to know the path they were taking—there would be no escaping from this place when she would have to take a train back to get her stuff and get to an airport anyway—Katherine only opened her eyes again when they stopped. He shifted her just long enough to reach out and open a door, and then close it behind them with his bodyguards waiting outside.

The room he had taken her to was obviously his. She had never seen his room in the palace, so she had nothing to compare it to, but this was large and lavish with a spectacular view of where the sun would set in a few hours. The decorators had matched the crisp clean style against the bluffs of the hills, because every inch of the room was white as well: white marble fireplace, white bed sheets, white wood bed frame. The only splashes of color were his personal items. The royal family didn’t spend enough time here for there to be more than that.

Eric set her down inside the doorway, turning her so that she could see the ocean out the window as his arms went around her again, pulling her back against his chest. “I will not be able to assist with your desire to be able to think around me,” he growled seductively into her ear. “And I cannot say that I actually want you possessed of the ability to think around me. But I will make it worthwhile that you are unable, at the very least.” His fingers had been plucking at the edge of her shirt, starting to lift it higher as his lips brushed along the curve of her ear, and she trembled.

“You’re absolutely terrible,” she pointed out softly. “Won’t Tara and Élise wonder where we’ve gone?”

“I think they will manage to entertain themselves for a little while, at the very least,” he breathed against her skin, his voice rolling against her like molten chocolate. She shivered, biting her lower lip while she shifted against him. “And besides, this is a vacation home. In my estimation, such activities are well suited to vacations…”

Katherine laughed slightly in amusement, shaking her head; “Whatever it takes for you to convince yourself that this isn’t absolutely ridiculous.”

He grinned. “
Merci beaucoup, mon ami
…” His fingers slid beneath the hem of her shirt, the warm tips of both hands slowly caressing the soft skin of her stomach and idly working up higher across her ribs and midriff. She trembled and shut her eyes, tilting her head slightly and only too gladly letting his lips trace along the pounding vein in her throat. Something about the way he moved this time was different than the last time she had slept with him—something more intimate, more poignant, even while she bit her lip and rubbed her hips back against his crotch. The prince grunted slightly, and moved his lips to nip on her earlobe. She cried out slightly, and she chuckled.

“Now, now, Kat. I think you can manage to go slow for once, no? I imagine it’s an unusual sensation for you to begin with, never mind the fact that I owe you a bit more careful affection…”

She lifted a brow. “You know, for a guy who calls me out every time I call myself a slut, you don’t seem to have much problem implying it yourself.”

“Only when I’ve got you right where I want you, my Kat. Only then…” Eric pushed against her, guiding her further into the room and toward the side of the bed, without his lips fully lifting from the side of her neck. If anything, he burrowed deeper against the cropped edge of her blond hair, finding the nape of her neck and suckling against her. Gently, she moaned, and let him take over in his touches. It felt damn good, and he
did
rather owe her for all the other crap.

She yelled out softly in surprise as she was turned around to face him, then pushed back onto the edge of the bed. Katherine fell into it without much fuss, even as she looked at him in confusion. The prince only smiled at her, stepping back, and reaching for the buttons of his shirt, making her heart beat quicker. She was good with him doing a striptease to start this off. He had invaded her shower before, but she had been rather flustered at the time and hadn’t really had the opportunity to actually look at him properly.

So she watched as he slowly undid his shirt button by button, revealing more and more of his smooth, carefully sculpted chest—definitely not a body builder, but with more than enough definition to stir an awakening sensation between her thighs. Katherine chewed on her lip, leaning back on her elbows as she examined the fine, inverted-V of black hair just above the hem of his low-slung trousers. Eric shrugged out of his shirt entirely and let it drop to the floor, before quickly stepping on the heels of his shoes to pop them off, along with his socks.

Somehow, he was even slower as he tugged at the length of his belt, freeing it of the belt loops on his trousers and letting the buckle hit the floor with a loud ping. Only then did he undo the button and zipper, hitching his thumbs on his boxers as well, and pushing everything else he wore down all at once. Katherine shuddered, looking at him in proper light for once, and she swallowed hard; he was already half-erect, and only growing firmer every moment as she looked at him. After a long, long moment, he stepped out of his pants entirely and drew nearer, moving to crouch in front of her.