His Undercover Princess (Tempt Me) (2 page)

Chapter Two

Dominick Rasmussen tucked Princess Eloise closer against his chest as the elevato
r whisked them down to the subterranean garage and then opened its doors. He did a quick visual sweep of the space before stepping out, but it wasn’t necessary. His team had been on surveillance duty for hours while he suffered through playing dress-up until a well-executed phone call sent Eloise’s coworker on a wild goose chase to her child’s school. Everything had gone perfectly, just as they’d planned…and that was the problem.

The kidnapping had been too easy, and it pissed him off. His anger beat against him in time with his footsteps, echoing against the concrete walls and parked cars in the nearly vacant space. The whole store had been a security nightmare. Getting up to the private personal shopping area required a special key card to open Dylan’s main elevator on the eighth floor, but stealing one from the concierge on the main floor would have been child’s play. Once on the showroom floor, there were surveillance cameras, but they were only angled to capture movement around the designer clothing, especially the pieces of couture displayed like artwork. There was a sideboard filled with snacks and drinks but no register to warrant another camera. That would be too uncouth for the überrich, who had their bills sent to their accountants, he supposed.

Then there was the employee-only area. Sneaking back there had taken the skill of a toddler on a mission to grab the last chocolate chip cookie. All he’d had to do was, literally, take a single step beyond a curtained wall. There weren’t any surveillance cameras in the employee area, the elevator leading to the garage, or the roped-off parking area for eighth-floor shoppers. There wasn’t even a damn valet waiting, because anyone who shopped on that exclusive floor had their own driver.

If the Fjende had gotten to her first, she’d be dead and his country would be lost forever. By staying away from her so long, he’d nearly guaranteed the violent coup that had allowed the Fjende to steal the throne would go unanswered. The Resistance would have sacrificed so much for nothing. Dom would do whatever it took to make sure that never happened. The royals would return to Elskov and retake the throne.

Princess Eloise sighed in his arms, her soft breath tickling the sensitive skin along his neck and sending a shot of lust straight to his cock. Without thinking, he tightened his hold on her. It was the wrong choice. She was small, only five feet, six inches, according to her file, but her curves filled his hands, pressed against his chest, and imprinted on his mind.

The flirting earlier hadn’t been necessary for his mission, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself. The Elle Olsen he’d met upstairs was a woman who needed to be flirted with, fucked hard, and satisfied completely. For a few minutes, he’d let himself believe he was the man for the job. Thank God he’d come to his senses and remembered she was pretending to be someone else just as much as he was. He could flirt with the shopgirl; he couldn’t even make eye contact with the princess without her prior approval.

Pulling himself back from the brink again, he punched the button on his key fob and unlocked the Mercedes. She stirred in his arms and clutched the lapels of his suit as he lowered her into the passenger seat. The weakened chloroform he’d soaked the handkerchief in only needed to keep her knocked out until they made it to his secure compound in the mountains a few hours outside Harbor City, but already she struggled against it. Good. Elskov needed a strong ruler who’d fight, because the Fjende weren’t going to give up power willingly.

He clicked her seat belt closed and shut her door before circling the silver coupe and getting in on the driver’s side. The motor purred to life, and he pulled out of the garage, waving to the parking attendant as he did, making sure his raised arm and partially turned body blocked the man’s view of the passed-out woman in the passenger seat. After merging into traffic, he pressed the button on the comm unit hidden in his tie clip. “The package is secure. See you at rendezvous point.”

His cell rang exactly sixteen minutes later. The caller ID read “unknown number.” Of course, he didn’t need a name to know who was on the other end. He was surprised the Resistance’s leader had waited this long. Dom put in his Bluetooth synced to the coupe; if the princess woke up on the drive, there would be trouble enough without her hearing the voice on the other end of this call. He hit the answer-call button on his steering wheel. “Good afternoon, sir.”

“Is she okay?” the other man asked in his signature wheezy half croak, which was all that was left of his voice after the assassination attempt.

“Yes, everything went as planned.” This operation had been in the works for a year, slow and steady to make sure the Fjende weren’t alerted to the princess’s whereabouts. They’d planned so far ahead that they’d hacked into Dylan’s internal server six months ago and put in a two-week vacation request for one Elle Olsen so her disappearance wouldn’t cause concern. The timing for this had to be perfect.

“Did you have to get physical?” the other man asked.

Dom tightened his grip on the steering wheel. As if he’d hit a woman, let alone the one about to wear Elskov’s royal crown. “No, sir. The chloroform eased the process.”

“You better not have given her too much, dammit. Everything rides on her.”

“I’m well aware of that.” He reached across to her and pressed his fingers to the pulse point in her throat. Electricity singed his skin where he touched the smooth column of her neck, making his lungs tighten and his cock thicken against his thigh, but he held on long enough to confirm what he already knew. “Her breathing is steady and her heartbeat strong. She might have a headache when she wakes, but that should be it.”

“Does she have an inkling about what’s at stake?”

“We didn’t get into that with her yet, sir.” No, instead he couldn’t stop flirting with her to see the light pink blush that climbed its way up from the sliver of cleavage visible above the scoop neck of the white sweater that clung to her, outlining every delicious curve. “I thought it would be prudent to get her out of Harbor City and have that conversation in a more private and secure location.”

“Don’t tell me where. The fewer specifics I know, the better. I thought we could risk a face-to-face prior to the Kronig, but that can’t happen now. The Fjende are getting too close.”

That was all it took to get his mind zeroed back in on what mattered. “Any sign that they discovered her location?”

“Nothing our spies have reported. Make sure it stays that way.”

“It will,” Dom said without hesitation.

“Don’t get cocky with me. You lose focus, and everything goes straight to hell. We have one shot at this. You have a week to get her prepped and ready. No fuckups, Rasmussen.” Per usual, the Resistance’s leader hung up without a good-bye.

Dom clicked off the Bluetooth and pressed the gas pedal harder. After the violent havoc they’d caused in the coup during which most of the royal family had been killed, the Fjende had become the power behind the throne in Elskov. For ten years they’d plotted and planned, but with the Kronig coronation celebration in seven days, victory was within the Resistance’s grasp, and he’d do whatever it took to make sure nothing interfered with the big day. The sooner he got the princess to his well-guarded compound, the better.

A couple of hours later, he passed through the gate guarded by two well-armed Resistance members and turned onto the half-mile drive. The entire twenty-acre compound covered the top third of Mount Livingston. The defensive position provided a perfect way to guard against intrusion. Motion sensors, surveillance cameras mounted at strategic locations, and enough armed muscle to take out a small army protected the rest of the property. He parked the car in front of the log château that had once been a vacation home for the Du Ponts. With fifteen bedrooms, servants’ quarters, and a bunkhouse, it had acted as the Resistance’s headquarters for the past ten years, but they’d be abandoning it soon, all thanks to the slip of a woman sleeping peacefully in the passenger seat.

Her skirt had worked its way up during the drive, showing off miles of long, muscular legs that made his mouth dry. He shouldn’t look—she was his sovereign—but he was a man, one who’d dedicated his adult life to her whether she’d known it or not. Unable to resist, he looked. His gaze traveled over her tight body from her killer legs to the thin strip of creamy flesh at her narrow waist exposed by how her sweater had climbed up her body, to her full lips partially open in a relaxed O that made him wonder what they’d look like wrapped around his dick.

Fuck, he hadn’t been this hard from looking since he’d been a teenager. He shook his head and forced himself to turn away. There was too much at stake to get lost between a pair of smooth legs, even if the stems in question didn’t belong to the woman destined to rule his country.

He turned off the engine and exited the vehicle. No one appeared, but they’d been ordered to keep their distance and only approach if necessary. Spooking the princess any more than she probably already had been was not on the agenda. He rounded the car and opened the passenger door; she didn’t move, and her breathing didn’t change. Doubt tickled the back of his neck. He’d doused the handkerchief himself; the chloroform should be working its way out of her system by now. If she wasn’t awake in the next half hour, he’d have to call in the medic on staff to help.

Scooping her up, he tried to ignore the way her head fit perfectly against his shoulder and how even in sleep she curled an arm across his chest as he strode across toward the château’s front door. The slight hitch in her breath was his only warning. She snagged the nine-millimeter from his shoulder holster and pushed out of his arms in one fluid move before planting her feet shoulder width apart, holding the Glock in a comfortable grip that spoke of a woman who knew her firearms, and then aiming at his head.

“Put the keys in the ignition and then drop to the ground, face pressed to the driveway.” A strand of reddish-blond hair flopped down onto her forehead, dipping down toward one brown eye. Without taking her steady gaze off him, she let out a hard huff of air and blew it out of the way. “Don’t move after that and I won’t have to kill you.”

He brushed his fingertips across his tie, activating the comm unit. “Stand down and stay back.” Then he took one step closer, putting the gun within reach of his long arms. “No offense, Your Highness, but that’s not how things will be going down.”

If she was surprised at him using her title, it didn’t show.

She pushed the Glock’s safety down with a smooth stroke of her thumb and slid back the top of the barrel to load a bullet in the chamber. “So you know who I am.”

“I know everything about you.” Right down to the fact that she slept in a ratty Fashion Institute of Harbor City T-shirt and wool socks pulled up to her knees.

One side of her mouth kicked up, curling her pouty pink lips into a smirk. “I doubt that.”

He lunged for her right as she pulled the trigger.

Chapter Three

Elle knew guns like she knew the contents of her shoe closet. When it came to survival, she didn’t mess around, but she hadn’t planned for Dom. How co
uld she? For such a big guy, he moved fast. In the half a heartbeat between tugging the trigger tight and the bullet clearing the chamber, he grabbed her wrist, wrapping his strong fingers around her tightly. Despite the adrenaline giving her an extra boost of strength, he managed to shove her arm up. The shot went wild.

He spun her around, slung his free arm around her waist, and yanked her to him. Her ass hit his iron-hard thighs. Fuck, those things were tree trunks in suit pants. The side of her head slammed against the unrelenting muscular slab of his chest. He kept her gun pointing at the cloudless sky.

Every nerve in her body was on high alert and tuned in to him—the steady
thump-thump
of his heartbeat against her cheek, the confidence in his stance as he wrapped himself around her as if he was protecting her instead of kidnapping her, the warmth of his body despite the fast-dropping temperature as the winter sun set early. He was bigger, stronger, and had already gotten the drop on her twice.

Third time’s the charm. Get ready.

“I’m not the enemy.” His hold loose but tight at the same time, Dom exerted only enough strength to keep her anchored to him and the gun pointed away from them both.

Dammit, she didn’t want to believe him, but her survival instinct honed by ten years of hiding in plain sight told her she could. If he was with the people who had decimated her family, he could have killed her a thousand times over. He might not be the enemy, but that didn’t mean she trusted him. She’d learned two important lessons when her father was murdered in that bloody coup: one, never trust anyone, and two, running was the key to survival.

“I’m with the Resistance.” He curled his pointer finger and thumb together and straightened his middle, ring, and pinkie fingers in the Elskov royal guard’s secret signal. “I’m here to help.”

The Resistance. Made up of a mix of Elskovians and others, they’d sworn to never stop fighting to restore the monarchy and were rumored to have unlimited funds. Well, if a billionaire like Dom was behind them, that would explain their lack of money problems. Still, the instinct to run was stronger than her loyalty to a country that had killed her father. She twisted and squirmed against him, which accomplished nothing other than rubbing her sensitive breasts across his sinewy forearm. “Help who?”

“You.”

The strain in his voice could have been from her escape attempts, but she doubted it. The bastard wasn’t even breathing hard. Time to switch tactics. Instead of sinking her nails into the steel band he disguised as an arm, she inhaled a deep breath. As her lungs expanded, her boobs pressed against his forearm. He went perfectly still. Interesting. Now this was something she could work with. He could overpower her in a heartbeat, so she had to use whatever tools were at her disposal to distract, disarm, and defend. If Mr. Hard Body got a hard-on, that could very well be her ticket to freedom.

She lifted her chin, letting her left cheek rub against his hard pec as she tilted her face upward, and tugged at her bottom lip with her teeth as if she was a little slow and trying to work out all of the confusing details when in reality she was already ten moves ahead. “So while the world thinks of you as a real-life Bruce Wayne with hundreds of millions in the bank and models draped across your arm, you’re really Batman, aligned with the Resistance, and you kidnapped me for my own good?”

“Exactly,” he said.

“Isn’t that what an assassin would say in such circumstances?” She batted her eyelashes.

He narrowed his gaze, but his lips twitched as if he were fighting off a smile. Shit. That might have been a step too far. Sometimes dialing down the drama proved harder than expected, but it was too late to pivot from her course now. She needed a second or two to break free—after that she’d figure it out.

“If you were on my hit list,” he said, his voice low and soft, “you’d have been dead before you even got to ask me my inseam.”

Thirty-four.
The number popped in her head faster than an appropriate response.

“And if by ‘such circumstances’ you mean totally under my control…” His fingers brushed her hip as he dipped his head lower so his lips almost brushed her ear. “If that was the case, then I can’t say I’d really be looking for talk.”

His words tickled her sensitive skin, heated her flesh, and made her mouth go dry. Then he shifted his stance and something hard, long, and thick brushed against her ass before moving away. She dropped her gaze and bit her lip for real this time. It was either that or moan in protest. The man had a smart mouth, a hard body, and questionable motives. In short, he was exactly what made her panties melt.

“Are you sure you really want to play this game with me?” Dom asked, his lips so close to her ear she could practically feel them. “I promise, I’m much better at it than you.”

She couldn’t blame the frost in the air for the state of her nipples or the liquid heat curling in her belly. Dammit, this was not the time for her body to go all gooey and pliant. Or was it?

She let herself go slack. The two seconds when shock made him loosen his hold were her opening. She slipped underneath his arm and bolted forward. She had to get a few steps ahead of Dom’s extralong wingspan, pivot and fire while on the run.
One. Two.

Something—or, more exactly, someone—grabbed her by the hair and jerked her back. Pain shot through her, and she lost focus for a heartbeat. It was all the time Dom needed. He grabbed her gun arm and swung her around until the Mercedes was at her back and he blocked her in from the front. With an embarrassingly little amount of effort on his part, he twisted the Glock out of her fingers and flung it across the drive. Her scalp ached, but she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of rubbing it.

“Going so soon?” he asked.

“The company isn’t to my liking.”

Dom raised one eyebrow, a smirk tugging up the edges of his full lips. Bastard. He knew. He knew she was pissed off, determined to escape, and so fucking turned on at the same time that just looking at him had her clenching her thighs together. It was official—she’d finally cracked. Ten years on the run, and her brain picked this moment to break. He crossed his arms, the move accentuating his thick biceps straining against his suit jacket.
Sweet mama.

He glowered down at her. “Let’s get one thing straight. You’re not going anywhere without me. It’s not safe.”

“And you’re safe?” He radiated danger the way her stove emitted heat.

“Without a doubt.”

He wasn’t here to hurt her, she believed him there. The Resistance were the good guys. They had been instrumental in getting her out of the country when the Fjende took power in the coup, but after they got her on the plane to America, she’d been on her own. Why had they come for her now? What had changed? “Who are you?”

“Dominick Rasmussen, international financier and playboy.” He smiled, but there wasn’t any joy in it. “I spend most of my time in London but have homes in Harbor City, Los Angeles, Sydney, and Madrid.”

“No, who are you really?” Was he the Resistance’s leader?

“Batman, remember?”

Frustration spilled over. This was her life, not a war game. The men behind the coup had killed her father and had their sights set on her, the next in line, when her father’s aide had thrown himself in front of her, saving her life. She wouldn’t dishonor their memory by just following along like a sheep. “If you can’t give me answers, I’m not staying.”

She’d find a way to survive on her own. She always had.

“You’re staying,” he said. “You don’t have a choice.”

“I always have choices.” Sure, they were usually shitty, but after what had happened to her father, she made sure of it.

“Not in this case. This is bigger than you or me. Let’s go inside. I’ll tell you everything.”

The temptation to follow his lead nearly overpowered her, but once she walked inside the massive château, she’d lose her best chance to escape, and escape had always meant survival. Her gaze flickered down at the Mercedes.

He took a step closer, angling his body so she’d have to go through him to get to the door handle. “Don’t even think about it.”

“Can’t blame a girl for having thoughts.”

Dom’s eyes darkened, and his gaze dropped to her lips. “Depends on what kind of thoughts.”

And there it was, that zing of attraction that put her at the corner of insanity and desire. The man radiated confidence, strength, power, and even in these circumstances he made her body purr with want. If she couldn’t ditch him, at least not yet, why not a little mental excursion that ended in Orgasmville? It was, after all, her favorite escape.

She closed the gap between them. “Why don’t you show me what you’re thinking?”

The vein in his temple throbbed, and he gulped. “That’s not a good idea.”

“Then stop thinking.”

She did for the both of them. Acting on instinct and the need to find a little distance from the crazy turn her life had just taken, she lifted herself up onto her toes and kissed him.

It started out soft, an easy touch meant to tease as she parted her lips and sucked his bottom lip into her mouth, letting her teeth graze the tender flesh. He tasted of dark coffee, expensive chocolate, and knee-knocking, naughty talents that took her breath away.

The next thing she knew, his tongue was tangling with hers and his fingers were wrapped around her hair, pulling it taut and forcing her head at a better angle for him to devour her. It was hard. It was intense. It was a preview of how this man would be in bed, and she couldn’t wait for that to happen. She squeezed her hand between their bodies and cupped his hard cock.

Dom let loose with a half groan, half growl before grabbing her by the hips and pushing against her from the front. He released her hair and snagged her wrists and held them out to the side, her palms pressed against the Mercedes, so she couldn’t touch him as he rocked against her.

It was good—fuck that, it was amazing—but not enough. She needed more. She needed to feel him against her core. What she wouldn’t give to wrap her legs around his lean hips. Whoever had invented the pencil skirt should be shot. She broke the kiss and grabbed him by the tie. “We need to get inside and lose the clothes unless you want to strip me naked and fuck me against your car. Either way, decide now.”

A tiny, high-pitched squeal, almost like feedback, emitted from the silver clip on his tie. Dom froze against her before quickstepping it several steps away. He waved his hand over the tie clip, and the noise stopped. They stared at each other, both panting.

“What the hell is on your tie pin, Dom?” Anger and confusion mixed with regret and frustration inside her, twisting her gut and sucking out the last of the oxygen from her lungs.

Everything about him was hard and tense as he fisted his hands at his side. Lust made his blue eyes hazy, and for the first time since they’d met, he was breathing heavily.

He flicked his gaze from her to the driveway and to the sky before bringing it back to her…but not her eyes. His attention stayed firm on a spot below her eyes, and then he bent at the waist in a deep bow.

“Your Royal Highness, Princess Eloise, please accept my most sincere apologies for my most inappropriate behavior.” Gone was the cocky billionaire, replaced with a more formal man of the royal court she remembered from before the coup. He straightened, but he didn’t meet her eyes. “I’m the Resistance’s second in command. We’ve been watching you since after you arrived in Harbor City ten years ago. We were hoping to never disturb you, as was your father’s final wish. However, we have solid intelligence that the Fjende, who led the coup on your country, are coming for you.” His icy, determined gaze met hers. “They mean to marry you off to your cousin Alton before killing you as soon as you produce an heir, but you shouldn’t worry. We’re going to stop them and take back Elskov.”