CHAPTER SIX
LOTTIE HAD GROWN up surrounded by wealth, and was certainly no stranger to private jets and helicopters and luxurious hotels and palaces, but the Chatsfield Monte Carlo was one of the most stunning hotels she had ever set foot in. It had an old-world grandeur about it that made her feel as if she was stepping back in time to an era when glamour and style were paramount. Crystal chandeliers dripped like diamonds from the ceiling; the plush dark blue velvet sofas and chairs in the reception area were set on ankle-deep Persian rugs to soften the polished marble floors. Scented flowers adorned the reception counter as well as on a centre table in the foyer where a massive display of summer blooms sat in a glorious fountain of colour. Attentive uniformed staff moved purposely about the area, seeing to the needs of the designer-dressed and jewellery-clad guests.
Which kind of made Lottie regret her choice of clothes...
The passive-aggressive streak in her nature had made her wear her oldest faded denim jeans and a boring white cotton shirt, and seen-better-days-and-pavements black ballet flats that made her look like a midget next to the driver of the limousine, let alone Lucca, who towered over her like a skyscraper. She had her tortoiseshell glasses on and her hair was in a tight knot at the back of her head. So tight it had given her a headache, which had been amply magnified by the stomach-churning dread that had accompanied her on every agonising second of that flight. Fortunately it had been a smooth crossing but even so her fingernails were chewed back to her elbows. Not that Lucca had noticed. He’d spent the whole time flirting on social media. Damn him.
Beautiful people were everywhere. Male and female, young and old, dressed in designer clothes, the air pungent with the scent of expensive perfume. It made Lottie feel like a small brown moth in an exotic butterfly house.
She didn’t belong.
Lucca glanced down at her once their luggage had been taken care of by a bellboy. ‘You okay?’
Lottie gave him a pained smile that didn’t reveal her teeth. ‘Headache.’
A flicker of concern passed over his features. ‘You should’ve said something on the way over.’ He gently touched her forehead with the back of his hand like a parent would do a small child checking for signs of a temperature. ‘I should’ve guessed you weren’t well. You weren’t snipping and snarling at me with your usual form. You barely uttered a word.’
‘I’m not keen on helicopters.’ Lottie wanted to kick herself for confessing it. She waited for him to laugh or make a joke of it but instead he looked at her with a tight frown.
‘Why didn’t you say? We could have come by ferry or hired a private catamaran.’
She gave a helpless shrug. ‘I don’t like confined spaces. They make me feel ill.’
‘Come on.’ He tucked her arm through one of his. ‘You can have a lie-down until you feel better.’
‘Lucca Chatsfield?’ A voice called out as footsteps click-clacked towards them as they waited for the penthouse suite lift. ‘Lucca or is it Orsino? No, it’s Lucca, isn’t it? Can I have a quick word?’
Lottie mentally rolled her eyes. Here we go. The first of no doubt dozens of bimbos who wanted to burrow under the covers with him. She turned to see a woman of about thirty-five carrying a camera with a telephoto lens and a mobile phone.
The woman’s eyes opened a little wider when she saw the way Lucca had Lottie’s arm looped through his. ‘Princess Charlotte? I mean, Your Royal Highness. Are you here with Lucca Chatsfield?’
The incredulity of the woman’s tone irritated Lottie. Was it so unthinkable that a man—even a man as unprincipled and promiscuous as Lucca Chatsfield—would be interested in her? She tried to slip her arm out of Lucca’s but he anchored her there with a firm press of his hand. ‘No, I’m—’
‘We’re here on official business,’ Lucca said with his customary charm. ‘Princess Charlotte isn’t feeling well. I’m taking her up to bed.’
The journalist gave an I-just-got-the-scoop-of-a-lifetime smile. ‘I’m sure she’ll enjoy that.’
Lottie wrenched out of his hold once the lift doors had pinged to a close. ‘Have you gone completely mad? What the hell are you playing at? She’ll tell everyone we’re dating!’
‘So?’
‘So?’ She glared at him. ‘So? You don’t date. Remember? You have sex with women, then dump them before they get their clothes back on.’
He scratched at his jaw, the sound of his stubble rasping against his fingers loud in the silence. ‘Mmm, you may have a point there. This could be very bad for my reputation.’
Lottie spread her hands, glaring at him furiously. ‘Your reputation? What about mine? It’ll be over every newspaper by morning that I was whisked up to your penthouse like some silly little floozy who can’t wait to get naked with you.’
His eyes ran over her jeans and cotton shirt, wrinkling his nose as if she were wearing a bin liner. A used one. ‘Nah, they’ll never buy it.’
She folded her arms across her chest and scowled at him. ‘What? I suppose my breasts aren’t big enough.’
His eyes went to her breasts, lingered there for a moment like a warm caress. ‘Your breasts are fine.’
‘Is it because I’ve got a working brain between my ears?’
‘On the contrary. I find your intelligence a big turn-on.’ His eyes smouldered as they went to her mouth. ‘But then, I don’t think there’s a man alive who doesn’t get off on a smart mouth and a quick tongue.’
Lottie felt a lava-hot blush creep up over her face. Heat flowed through her body like a flood of fire, igniting her core so that it pulsed and throbbed with a hollow ache that was shockingly primitive. Her mind had any number of reasons—literally thousands of reasons—to keep her distance from Lucca Chatsfield but her body had somehow lost connection with Ground Control. It was running on autopilot, wired to some primal frequency that had no relation to common sense.
She found herself wondering what it would be like to taste him intimately. To run her tongue down the length of him, to taste the male essence of him. To feel him shudder and convulse and flood in ultimate pleasure. To feel his skin slick with sweat against her own.
He moved a step closer and brushed against her cheek with a fingertip. ‘You really are burning up, aren’t you?’
His pelvis was just inches from hers. She could feel the cold metal buckle of his belt against her belly through the thin cotton of her shirt. She could feel her pulse revving like a Formula One car on the starting line. Broohm. Broohm. Broohm.
Lottie didn’t dare lock gazes with him. She kept her eyes trained on the V of his shirt where some dark curly hairs were showing. She knew she should step back. Why wasn’t she stepping back? Her feet felt like they were stuck to the floor. ‘Maybe I’m coming down with something.’
‘Hope it’s not catching.’
She looked at his shirt button. His chest hair was too much of a heady reminder of the potent hormones that were surging around his body. ‘I’m sure your immunity is far superior to mine.’
He gave a light chuckle and stepped back as the doors of the lift opened. ‘This is our stop.’
Lottie stalled outside the penthouse and eyed him warily. ‘I thought you said separate rooms.’
‘There’s a separate suite off this one.’ He held the door open. ‘All the Chatsfield hotels have multiple-suite penthouses.’
‘Do the doors have locks?’
‘What?’ He flashed a grin at her. ‘Are you worried you might be tempted to gate crash one of my orgies?’
She gave him a gelid look. ‘I hope my suite has a pair of industrial-size earplugs.’
‘I don’t snore if that’s what’s worrying you.’
‘You probably aren’t asleep long enough between switchovers of bedmates to get to the snoring stage,’ she muttered.
He laughed as he tossed his jacket over the back of the nearest sofa. ‘You’re really good for my ego, cara mia. You make me sound like some sort of go-all-night superstud.’
She forced herself to look him in the eye. ‘How many would you do in one night?’
He did that little lip-shrug thing again. ‘Depends.’
‘On?’
He undid another couple of the buttons on his shirt. ‘Chemistry.’
‘I guess we’re not talking about the periodic table of the elements.’
His smile crinkled up the corners of his eyes. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll try and tone it down. I might even abstain for the night.’
Lottie gave him a look. ‘Long service leave?’
He screwed up his forehead as if mentally calculating the years. ‘Yep, I reckon I more than qualify.’ He scratched at his chin stubble again. ‘Let me see now...my first time was when I was—’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Please spare me the details.’
He scrubbed a hand through his hair, making it all tousled, which somehow made him look even more lethally attractive. ‘You want something for that headache?’
‘I don’t— I mean, I think I’ll just have a little rest,’ Lottie said, backing away towards the adjoining door. ‘What time will you be finished with your business appointment?’
‘That’s not until tomorrow morning.’
‘But I thought you had to be here by today?’ She frowned as she tried to recall the conversation with her sister. ‘I’m sure Madeleine said you had to be in Monte Carlo by Wednesday.’
‘That’s because I didn’t want to leave anything to chance.’ He rolled back the cuffs of his shirt over his forearms, focusing on the task with what seemed to her a rather pointed concentration.
‘So this appointment is pretty important to you?’
He looked at her then but his expression was difficult to decipher. ‘It’s just something I’ve had my eye on for a while. No big deal.’
‘Is the something you’ve had your eye on female?’ Lottie wished she hadn’t asked but the words had tumbled out before she could stop them.
A light of amusement twinkled in his chocolate-dark eyes. ‘How’d you guess?’
* * *
Two hours later Lottie was led by Lucca into his friend’s exclusive lingerie boutique in one of the cobbled side streets in the centre of Monte Carlo. The friend was female—of course—but at least fifteen years older than Lucca, which somehow made Lottie feel a little less peevish, but only just. He probably routinely slept with women old enough to be his mother. Maybe even old enough to be his grandmother.
Once the introductions and pleasantries were out of the way, Rochelle Talliarde brought out a range of items for Lottie’s inspection. ‘Did you have something particular in mind?’
‘Um...’ It was hard for Lottie not to blush surrounded by such intimate garments, especially with Lucca standing there watching her every move. ‘Something white or cream, I think.’
‘How about this?’ Lucca held up a black lace corset with red bows and leather lacing.
‘It’s not very bridal,’ Lottie said with a note of reproach.
‘Not for Madeleine,’ he said. ‘For you.’
‘Me?’ Her voice squeaked in horror. ‘I would never wear something like that.’
‘I reckon you’d look smoking hot in it.’ His eyes danced with mischief. ‘Why don’t you try it on?’
‘I will do no such thing.’ She turned and picked up the first thing her hand touched and then blushed to the roots of her hair when she realised what it was. She dropped the skimpy scrap of lace as if it were a tarantula.
‘Wow, now we’re talking,’ Lucca said as he picked them up again and dangled them from one of his fingers. ‘Crotchless panties. A bridegroom’s wet dream.’
‘Will you stop it?’ she hissed at him, conscious of Rochelle Talliarde looking on with obvious amusement.
‘We’ll take these and the corset and that oyster-pink ensemble over there,’ he said to Rochelle. ‘Now, let’s get your big sister sorted. What about this? And this? And this?’
By the time every garment was tissue-wrapped and placed in the boutique’s pink-and-black signature bags Lottie had gone way past embarrassment to outright mortification.
‘Madeleine is going to kill me,’ she said once they were out on the street. ‘Poor Edward will probably drop dead with a heart attack as soon as he sees her in that get-up. We’re supposed to be buying a royal wedding night outfit, not an S and M costume for a brothel.’
He grinned down at her. ‘Where’s your sense of fun, mio piccolo?’
She flicked him a disparaging look. ‘You’re utterly shameless.’
‘I know.’ He said it as if it were a badge of honour. ‘It’s my trademark. My brand. Cool, huh?’
She stopped walking to look at him. ‘Wouldn’t you rather be known for something other than a salacious scandal magnet?’
‘Wouldn’t you rather be known as something other than a prudish little goody-two-shoes who doesn’t know the first thing about having fun?’ he countered.
The mockery in his gaze stung her pride more than she expected it to. More than she wanted it to. Her entire body stiffened, like a porcupine extending its needles in self-protection. ‘I’m not a prude.’
‘Yes, you are. And a coward. You got burned once so you’ve locked yourself away up in your princess tower where no one can reach you.’ His mouth lifted in a cynical, teasing curve. ‘You’re scared. That’s why you hide behind that priggish exterior because passion frightens you. Life frightens you. You frighten you.’
Lottie hated that he knew so much about her—the real her—on so little an acquaintance. ‘Oh, and I suppose you think you’re the one I should let my hair down for, do you?’ She poked a finger to his sternum. ‘Well, let me tell you something, Lucca Chatsfield.’ Poke. ‘You’re the last man I would ever get messed up with.’ Poke. ‘Because that’s what you do.’ Poke. ‘You mess people up.’ Poke. ‘You play with them and then you dump them. I don’t think that’s anything to be crowing about. You should be thoroughly ashamed of yourself.’
He brushed her hand away as if it were an annoying mosquito. ‘I’m not. So get over it.’
Lottie nailed her feet to the pavement. ‘You think I’m scared, but what about you? When are you going to grow up? You’re just a shallow Peter Pan playboy who hasn’t even got the maturity to live off his own means instead of sponging off his family’s fortune like some pathetic blood-sucking parasite.’
The silence was so intense it grew teeth.
‘Are you done?’ His gaze was steely, his jaw like concrete, all except for a nerve that ticked in and out on his left cheek like the flickering of a faulty switch.
Lottie refused to back down. There was something incredibly invigorating about finally getting under his skin. He was always so charming and laid-back. Laughing at life. Mocking it and everyone as if he didn’t care what they thought of him. But underneath that party-boy facade was a proud and angry man.
A bitterly angry man.
‘No, I’m not done,’ she said. ‘It’s time someone told you the truth instead of dancing around you and feeding your ego the way that bunch of social-climbing sycophants you surround yourself with do. Who are your real friends? Who knows you? The real you? Who cares about you more than your money? Who cares about you more than anything else in the world? No one, that’s who. You’re nothing without your family’s money and you damn well know it. That’s why you want it so badly.’
He drew in a breath that widened his nostrils like a thoroughbred stallion facing a challenging opponent. He took her arm in a grip that was iron-strong and marched her along the street through the knot of people who had stopped to stare at them. ‘Keep moving and keep your mouth shut,’ he said through tight lips.
She pulled at his grip. ‘Stop it. You’re hurting me.’
He loosened his hold but not enough for her to tug free. ‘I said, Shut the freaking hell up. You’re causing a scene.’
‘You’re not the boss of me.’ Lottie knew she sounded about three years old but she was beyond caring. She even had the toddler pout down pat and the leaden dragging feet.
His eyes cut to hers in a derisive glance. ‘Now look who’s acting immature.’
‘Jerk.’ She poked her tongue out at him. It was probably a bit over the top but it felt so good to spar with him. Her body was zinging with exhilaration. It was like being injected with a heady drug. She didn’t want it to stop. She had never told anyone off in her life. Maybe she should do it more often. It felt good to stand up for herself for a change.
His eyes were like black flint. ‘Don’t get me started on the insults because I bet I know a hell of lot more colourful ones than you.’
He pulled her through the hotel foyer, rudely ignoring the obsequious staff member who spoke to him on the way past. He stabbed at the lift button, and as if they dared not disobey him, the doors instantly sprang open. He pulled her in with him and the doors hadn’t even closed again before he pressed her roughly back against the nearest wall as his mouth came crashing down on hers.
It was nothing like his first kiss. It was not a kiss of seduction but of punishment. It wasn’t meant to induce pleasure but pain. It was as if the fury that was buried deep inside him had finally found a leaky outlet. It was gushing forth like a blown pipe, pouring into her with blistering heat.
Somehow her arms ended up around his neck, her body pressed so tightly against his she felt the swollen length of his erection pounding with want against her belly. She tasted blood, somehow knew it was her own, but instead of trying to escape she kissed him back, using her teeth and her tongue and her lips as if this was the last kiss she would ever have.
The passion that rumbled through her was a scary, out of control entity. It was a wild primitive side of herself she was terrified of letting loose but there was nothing she could do to restrain it. Desire streaked along her veins like a river of fire, making her flesh feel vigorously alive.
His hot breath and his sexy coffee-scented saliva mingled with hers as his mouth devoured hers with primal purpose. The faintly musky and erotic scent of arousal haunted the air. Goose bumps of pleasure prickled out over her skin as his tongue tangled with hers, driving deeper into her mouth, making her whimper breathlessly in pleasure.
One of his hard thighs came between hers, rubbing against her intimately, ruthlessly letting her know what he could do to her with just a single stroke of hard male muscle against her throbbing need. She gasped as she felt the tingling of her inner core, the exquisite tightening of her flesh, the greedy desperate little ache of her tissues that were already wet and weeping with want.
But then he suddenly pulled back from her with a muttered imprecation, putting the width of the lift between them. He swiped the back of his hand across his mouth and then frowned when he saw a small smear of blood on his tanned skin.
His eyes met hers, his expression dark and tight with self-disgust. ‘I’m sorry.’ He grimaced as if it physically pained him to say the words. ‘That was unforgivable.’
Lottie tentatively passed the tip of her tongue over the tiny split in her lower lip. She saw him follow the movement with his gaze, saw the convulsive rise and fall of his throat that signalled his regret even more powerfully than his gruff apology.
But she wasn’t quite ready to forgive him.
Not for kissing her so soundly. But for demonstrating how pathetically weak her resolve was against his practised seduction techniques.
Resolve? Ha! What resolve? Armour smarmour. Going into battle with him was like going into a fencing match with a soggy noodle instead of a sword.
Pathetic.
She was pathetic.
The lift doors opening gave her the perfect exit cue.
Lottie turned and walked out with her back stiff and her shoulders neatly aligned, her head at an angle even her overly strict childhood deportment tutor would have been proud of.
It would have been a textbook I’m-having-the-last-word-by-saying-nothing exit if she hadn’t stumbled over the carpet on the way out.