His Bride for the Taking (11 page)

A small smile, almost sad, played about her lips, but her eyes drank him in. He recognized that hunger—it was the echo of his own. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m only human, Lexie.”

She backed away, crossed her arms as she shook her head. “I wasn’t looking at you…like that.”

“Yes, you were. You want me.”

Her jaw dropped open.

“It’s nothing more than the truth. And if you’re looking at me like that, why are you marrying my brother?” The brother who liked and respected her, but who didn’t love her, not with the kind of love she deserved, the love she’d dreamed of for so many years.

She paused, didn’t quite meet his gaze. “Adam is a good, kind, honorable man,” she said, not quite answering his question.

“You forgot noble and sweet.”

“You’re right. Noble and sweet.”

“And nice.”

“Yes. Nice.”

“So, why do you think about me?”

“I don’t.”

“Yes, you do. You watch me and you think about me. You think about me touching you.” He lifted his hand, touched fingertips to her jaw. A tremor shivered over his skin and her eyelids fluttered closed. With a gasp, she turned her head and stepped away from his touch.

“You’re the last man on earth I’d think about.”

Who did she think she was fooling? Rafe took a step closer. She took another away from him, stopping as her back pressed against her door.

A sliver of air separated them, and it hummed with his need for her. “First and last, and all the ones in between.”

“No.” She whispered her denial through softly parted lips.

“Marrying Adam is a mistake. For you. For him.” He could see the rise and fall of her breasts as she drew in shallow, ragged breaths. “Don’t do it.”

“No. I’m not,” she whispered.

Her response didn’t quite make sense, but the pull of her overwhelmed him. He was leaving. For forever if he had to. But heaven help him he was going to kiss her.

Just once more.

One kiss to prove she shouldn’t marry his brother, one kiss to prove he was as depraved as the tabloids painted him.

He lowered his head, his face so close to hers that her breath caressed his lips. Whatever happened, whether he kissed her or not, he couldn’t win; he would regret the decision for the rest of his life.

Lexie closed her eyes. So young. So innocent.

Calling on reserves of strength he didn’t know he had, Rafe pulled away.

Her eyes flew open, locked on his for a timeless second. He tried and failed to back away. “I’m not marrying Adam.” Her words rushed out. And suddenly
it was her hands in his hair, pulling him down, and Lexie rising up to him, pressing her lips to his.

Her mouth fitted perfectly against his. She tasted of sweetness and sunshine. For long, exquisite moments there was just that simple joining, lips to lips and somehow soul to soul.

He broke the kiss. “Say that again.” He needed the words that made sense of everything.

“I’m not marrying Adam. We broke it off.” She reached for him again and her kiss was everything he needed and wanted in the world. She was his perfection.

Still kissing her, he moved with her into her room, shut the door behind them. Lexie sighed against him as she melted into him, an echo of his own surrender.

And he lost himself in her kiss.

Thought deserted him, overwhelmed by sensation.

“When?” he finally asked, minutes later.

“After I kissed you the last time. I knew then that—”

He pulled her against him, hip-to-hip, her yielding softness against his hardness. His hands desperately learning her shape, sliding beneath the silk of her blouse, touching heated skin smoother than the silk, tracing her contours, the flare of her hips, the curve of her waist, filling himself with the feel of her, her taste, her scent. Imprinting her against him, within him.

Her tongue danced with his, an erotic twining as they each teased and explored. Nothing sweet, all heated desire. He cupped the soft weight of her breast, his thumb caressing the lace-covered nipple.

“Why?” He heard his own doubt. Felt his desperation.

She hesitated. “Because I don’t love him. I can’t love him. Not the way I want to.”

Could it be the insanity telling him he heard the words he needed to hear? The relentless grip of his ungovernable need for her? He undid the top button of her blouse.

“He was very gracious about it.”

Showed what a fool his brother could be.

“I think he was secretly relieved.”

Not half as relieved as Rafe was. He undid the second delicate button. “Why are you still here?”

“For Adam.”

He frowned, his fingers stilling on the third button. “You do still have feelings for him?”

“No. I told him I’d stay and attend any engagements I’m expected at. If I left so soon it wouldn’t look good. There would be all sorts of speculation. I leave after the christening.”

Rafe’s hands resumed their exploring.

“It turns out he was mainly going through with this to please your father and the country. Apparently, a wedding, any royal wedding, will be good for the country’s morale. Funny how no one thought to mention that to me.”

“You’re not angry with him?”

She shrugged and he felt the movement beneath his fingertips. “I was hardly in a position to take the moral high ground.”

He undid the fourth and final button and, with a
profound sense of achievement and victory, pushed apart the sides of her blouse, revealing a strip of creamy skin and partially uncovering the swell of lace-covered breasts.

His breath caught in his throat.

He arranged the blouse to his liking and traced a finger along the edge of the lace. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“Because I didn’t want this to happen.”

He paused. “Why are you telling me now?”

“Because now…now I want this to happen. I can’t bear it any longer. The wanting you. I didn’t break up with him because of you. We’re supposed to be keeping it a secret, but…”

He didn’t need buts. She wasn’t engaged to his brother, and the realization filled him with euphoria, swamped any other thought.

He cupped her sweet face in his hands and kissed her again. He could no more have stopped himself than he could from taking his next breath. He wanted to know her, every inch of her.

She wasn’t marrying Adam. She didn’t love his brother. His brother didn’t love her. That was all he needed to know.

Wrapping his arms around her, he held her to him, drowning in the sensation of her, in the shape of her and how she fit against him, body and mouth and soul.

Her hands slid from his shoulders to his head, her fingers threading through his hair, her touch becoming fevered.

He kissed her lips, her eyes, her jaw, her throat. His
hands learned the exquisite shape of her body as he led her to the broad bed in the center of the room. He eased the sides of her blouse farther open, kissed her breast above the lace of her bra, moved lower till his lips covered the nipple beneath the lace.

Sweet Lexie arched into him.

He pushed her blouse from her shoulders. Her skin was so pale, so beautiful. He found the single button at the back of her skirt, a short zip, and the fabric slithered to the floor. She stood before him in delicate scraps of lace and her shoes.

Almost perfect.

He unpinned her hair, let it cascade over his hands as it came loose. He undid the clasp of her bra and her breasts spilled free. He tossed the lace aside and then drew her panties down her legs. Breathless, he looked at her, his fantasy complete.

Now she was perfect.

And Rafe was both honored and humbled.

Her lips curved into a slow, sensuous smile. With just a touch of hesitancy she reached for his belt. Urgency replaced the hesitancy as she worked the buckle and then the button and zipper behind it.

He pulled his top off, stepped out of his shoes and the pants she’d pushed down his legs. He held himself still while those pale, delicate hands of hers explored his torso, lighting sparks with her curious, reverent touch.

Demure Lexie was his siren. Bold, beautiful. Smiling. Her hair whispering over her shoulders.

He could bear it no longer. He scooped her up and lowered her down onto the bed. Where he’d wanted this
woman from the moment he saw her dancing in the nightclub. He raised her arms above her head, captured her wrists in one hand so that his other was free to caress and slide and cover and tease. And to claim. Every inch. Sliding his hand up one pale thigh to her apex, he covered her and she arched into his hand. She closed her eyes, as he’d imagined, as he’d dreamed.

He found her center and took delight in her pleasure and her growing need till her head swung from side to side, her breathing ragged.

The only thing he wanted was to give her pleasure.

He covered her lips again with his and moved his body over hers. She parted beneath him, welcomed him as he slid slowly into the depth of her, sheathing himself in her heat. She opened her eyes then, and her gaze locked on his as he began to move within her.

Slowly. He should take it slowly, but she moved beneath him, urging him faster, her hips rising to meet his thrusts, the hands he’d freed now clasping his hips, pulling him in deeper.

Little moans and mewls of pleasure escaped her, driving him out of his mind with need for her. Along with the spiraling need, a rhythm that was theirs alone grew and hastened. All the world narrowed down to this one joining. Her with him.

As she cried out his name, he lost himself in her.

Afterward, she lay within the circle of his arms, her hair auburn and beautiful spilling over the pillow, across his shoulder, its faint floral scent teasing his senses. As Rafe watched her, a strange sense of bliss settled over him.

L
exie stood between Adam and Rebecca in the royal enclosure, trying to enjoy the anniversary fireworks display. As per their arrangement, she’d stayed at Adam’s side through yet another formal dinner and for the last half hour out here. And still she’d been constantly aware of Rafe.

Rafe, whom she’d slept with.

She watched a series of starbursts of color and noise. As dandelions blossomed in the night sky, she heard the oohs and ahhs of the gathered crowd. But from the corner of her eye she watched Rafe. More riveting than the fireworks.

Among the royal guests were the young teens from Rafe’s polo team, whom he’d promised this treat to if they won their last match. They had. Convincingly.
He was great with the kids and they clearly idolized him, the boys and girls alike. They listened avidly to what he said and tried hard to impress him. And he seemed to give them just the right amount of attention and encouragement back. Not too much, not too little. For someone who didn’t want a relationship, he’d make a great dad. And that was not a thought she should be having.

As he crouched to speak with an older man in a wheelchair, her thoughts began to wander.

She hadn’t seen him since she’d left her bed yesterday afternoon to shower.

Sanity had returned after the desperation of their lovemaking. They’d agreed, as they’d lain together, legs entwined, Rafe stroking her hair, touching her face, that it couldn’t be allowed to happen again. That, in fact, they’d pretend that it had never happened in the first place.

It was the only sensible course of action. No matter how hollow the decision had made her feel.

A failed engagement with Adam was bad enough. A relationship with Rafe, the Playboy Prince, even if it never became public, could only be catastrophic, on so many levels.

He’d been gone by the time she came back out from her shower. Today she’d had back-to-back engagements. Mostly with Adam. During all of which she had thought about Rafe.

And missed him.

Rafe, who’d made no attempt to contact her. She knew he wouldn’t, because they’d agreed that was best.

And the fact that she’d wanted him to only made her a fool.

She’d half hoped, as she gave herself to him, that he would be a disappointment. Because there was no future in a relationship with Rafe. They wanted different things.

But he hadn’t been a disappointment. He’d been a revelation. An insanity. Ecstasy and bliss. He’d been overwhelming passion. Infinitely more than her meager imagination had conjured.

“How are things going with Adam?” Rebecca asked.

“Fine,” she said hesitantly. Not wanting to discuss Adam with Rebecca. Not wanting to carry the deception any further than she had to. “Who’s Rafe talking to?”

Rebecca followed her gaze and smiled. “Malcolm. He was our head groundsman for decades. Such a lovely man. It’s so hard to see him like this. He and Rafe had a really special bond. Rafe was so active, always needing to be doing something, and Malcolm had the patience to teach him practical skills as well as a love of the outdoors to share. It all started with the tadpoles and frogs he used to find for Rafe in the lily pond.”

Lexie smiled at the thought. “I used to call Rafe the Frog Prince. Ever since that time I was eight and he threw a frog at me.”

Rebecca laughed. “Rafe went through such a phase with them. And turtles. That particular frog was one of the last generation in a long line of frogs he’d had since he was a little kid. He even had a name for it. Arnold or something.”

“Arthur.”

“That’s it. Dad had told us to think of something nice for you on that visit. That frog was the best Rafe could think of. He wanted to show it to you. Thought that an eight-year-old girl would have been as interested as he’d been when he was eight. Adam and I tried to tell him it wasn’t the thing, but he wasn’t having it. Then Adam knocked him and it fell into your lap.”

“Adam knocked him? I thought Rafe threw it.”

Rebecca was still smiling. “I remember the pandemonium. Us all on our hands and knees searching for it. Dad had a fit. Rafe had to put it out in the pond after that. In fact, he was banned from frogs thereafter.”

Lexie had to rewrite the entire incident in her head. Her Frog Prince. It had been a small thing, but pivotal in her admiration of Adam and her dislike of Rafe. For an eight-year-old, she’d been able to hold a powerful grudge.

And she’d had it all wrong.

He hadn’t been trying to torment her. He should have been the one with the grudge. Because of her, he’d lost his pet. Though she couldn’t help thinking Duke was a vast improvement.

Rebecca looked back in Rafe’s direction. “It’s so nice that Adelaide, Malcolm’s granddaughter, is home for the summer now, to help look after him. She got back just a couple of days ago.”

Lexie looked at the woman behind Malcolm. She was the same woman she’d seen Rafe talking to in a doorway just a few nights ago. Her heart sank. This was the woman she’d more or less implied he was having an
illicit relationship with. Adelaide lifted her sunglasses from her eyes and Lexie realized just how young she was, still a teenager. A handsome youth approached and slung his arm around Adelaide’s shoulders and the girl blushed. And Lexie was racked with yet more guilt. She’d all but accused Rafe of having an affair with the young woman, thinking herself worldly as she did so. She was as bad as the tabloids. And Rafe had done almost nothing to defend himself or correct her assumption. He’d said there was nothing going on and she hadn’t believed him.

She’d done him such a disservice, thinking the worst of him, believing his tabloid reputation when she should have known better. There was so much more to him than the picture the press liked to paint of him. He let people believe the worst of him, when clearly he was so much better than that.

And here in public, with camera lenses trained on the whole royal party, she couldn’t go to him and apologize. Nor could she go to him in private. The risk there was entirely different and far graver.

She couldn’t go to him at all. It was her only option.

Lexie looked in horror from the newspapers spread out on her bed, to the card in her hand, to the phone beside her and then back to the papers.

Staying away from Rafe was not an option now. She had to do this. Taking a deep breath, she reached for the phone and slowly dialed the number.

Three rings. It was too early to be calling. But she
couldn’t leave it and risk missing him. Four rings. One more and she’d hang up.

“Rafe.” A single rough syllable.

Her throat dried up.

“Who’s there?” he asked, a little more gently, but still with a husky, sleep-filled inflection. “Lex?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. I can call again later.” She tried not to recall the image of him sprawled and slumberous in this very bed.

“I’m awake now. What’s wrong?”

“Aside from the fact that we slept together?” She looked again at the pictures in the papers.

Silence.

“Can I see you? It’s the papers.”

“To which you should pay no attention.”

“Please? You should see this. I don’t know what to do about it. I mean, I know I have to tell Adam, but I thought you should see it first. That was all.”

A ray of sunlight slanted through her window, highlighting the very picture she needed to show him. Outside, she heard the notes of the mockingbird whose bachelor’s song had disrupted her sleep throughout the night.

“You know where my office is?”

“Yes.” His office was relatively neutral territory, nice and official, not tempting.

“Can you be there in twenty minutes?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

When she got there, she waited outside the door to Rafe’s office and forced herself to stand still. She’d pulled on the first clothes to hand, jeans and a white
blouse, and come straight here. She was at least five minutes early, undoubtedly a mistake because now she was loitering in the corridor where any of the staff or family, if they were up, could see her and wonder what she was doing, why she was waiting for Rafe. Had gossip already spread through the castle? As far as she knew no one had seen them, but…

She clutched this morning’s San Philippe paper and yesterday’s American paper in her hands. Both had been delivered early to her room, as they had been every day she’d been here. The first had caused her to spill her coffee, the second to forget her coffee altogether. She’d only looked at each once before quickly closing them. And she hadn’t yet dared check the Internet.

Her first panicked impulse had been to call Rafe. Not only because her predicament involved him, but because he’d know what to do. He’d dealt with scandals before, and for the first time she could see some benefit in that.

And like her, he didn’t want his brother to be hurt.

She was on the verge of walking away, planning to come back shortly, when Rafe strode down the corridor. His hair was damp, and his white linen shirt revealed a vee of tanned skin. He wore black jeans and he looked masculine and earthy. The sort of man her mother had warned her about. She should have listened. But more important, she told herself, he looked calm and capable. Some of her anxiety eased. She’d made the right decision. He’d know what to do, how she should handle this.

“Lex,” he said by way of a greeting. She wasn’t sure
whether she imagined the same longing in his voice that she was unable to quell. For all the lectures she’d given herself, she still thought about him, dreamed about him.

His gaze traveled leisurely over her, and she had to hide the physical reaction, the leap of her pulse, that his presence inevitably caused. His eyes seemed to linger on her hair, which because of her distraction still lay loose around her shoulders. A frown creased Rafe’s brow and he swallowed. Clearly she should have taken the time to put it up. She remembered too well how much he loved her hair, how he had run his fingers through it, arranged it over her shoulders, her chest.

“I’m sorry about this,” she said, clutching the papers tighter. “I didn’t want to bother you. I just didn’t know who else to ask for advice. And you did give me your phone number and say to call. This isn’t about a fork or anything, but it concerns you, too.”

He turned from her and tapped a code into the keypad by the door. After pushing it open he stood aside for her to enter. “You can call me anytime, Lex. You don’t need to apologize.”

She stepped past him. She’d seen his office once before, a glance as she’d passed by, but she hadn’t had a good look at it, partly because her attention had been caught by the man who’d occupied it.

She looked now. It was a beautiful room, dominated by a massive, intricately carved desk, its surface clear of anything. The paperwork that had covered it the time she’d seen him in here working was nowhere in sight.

The walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling book-
filled shelves. Plush carpet cushioned her footsteps as she crossed to the window she knew to be bulletproof. A view over the palace grounds and beyond to the rolling farmland and forest greeted her. And in the distance, golden sunlight bathed mountaintops still capped with snow.

“How bad is this situation?” he asked. “Do I need to close the door?”

Lexie turned at the reluctance in his voice. He still stood by the door, watching her. She hesitated. “No. I don’t think so.” A closed door would be bad. That would suggest she—they—had something to hide. And it could also too easily lead to temptation.

“Sit down—” he gestured to one of the leather chairs in front of his desk “—and tell me what’s wrong.”

As he spoke he crossed to his desk and sat behind it. He looked remote and strained, not the friend she’d thought she had in him. But remote was good. Remote worked for her. She could have friendship with Adam and Rebecca. For now all she needed was to let Rafe know what had happened and get his opinion and his advice.

She’d be gone from here soon. He, on the other hand, would have to stay and deal with the fallout. Lexie put the newspapers on the desk. He smoothed out the creases her clutching had caused. And she remembered those hands on her body. To distract herself, she turned over the first page of the San Philippe Times. Rafe raised his eyes to hers briefly before scanning the page before him.

It was covered almost entirely in the story of her
supposed engagement to Adam. There was one picture of her unadorned left hand and some speculation as to the possible reason for the delay in the appearance of a ring.

“This was expected,” he said. “There’ll be more when the news that you’re going home—permanently—breaks, but then that, too, will pass. Something bigger always eventually comes along.”

As bothered as she was by all the talk of an engagement that no longer existed, that wasn’t why she was here. “Bottom right photo. The one of you.”

His gaze tracked to the photo in question.

“And…me. Together.” It had been taken in the nightclub in Boston. And it looked like he was holding her to him. His lips were close to her ear. It looked intimate. Nothing like what had really been happening. Although Lexie clearly recalled how it had felt, how even then her brain had fired off frantic warning signals that she hadn’t fully understood about the unfortunate chemistry Rafe caused to spark into life.

“And could an engagement be in the offing for our other prince?” he read the caption aloud. The small piece went on to answer its own question, speculating that this was just the latest dalliance for a man with more than his share of oats to sow. It asked when the second prince was going to grow up and settle down. It listed Rafe’s previous girlfriends and then went on to wonder at the identity of the mystery woman.

A tap sounded at the door and it opened slightly. Rafe nodded for a woman in the palace staff uniform, carrying a silver tray with two coffees, to come in.

He waited till she’d left again. “I didn’t know whether you’d had time for your coffee.”

“I started one, but I spilt it.” She pointed out the stain on the second paper.

Rafe passed her the coffee, made just how she liked it.

“Thank you.”

He sat and leaned back in his chair, swiveling to look out the window as he sipped his own coffee.