Temporarily His Princess

Five

“The airport?”

At her croak, Vincenzo’s smile widened. “We’re going to have dinner on the jet. We’ll fly to where the most exclusive collection of jewelry on the planet awaits you, so you can pick your ring, and anything else that catches your fancy.”

He was so pleased with himself for stunning her again.

She was more than stunned. She was working on a stroke.

“And it didn’t occur to you to ask if I’d agree to this harebrained scheme of yours?”

His lips twitched at her venom. “A man going out of his way to surprise his fiancée doesn’t tell her in advance of the details of his efforts.”

Her jaw muscles hurt at his mention of fiancée. “Do save your ‘efforts’ for when you have a real fiancée.”

“But you already said I can’t have a real one for all the money and power in the world.”

“Who knows? Lots of women have self-destructive tendencies. And I didn’t say you couldn’t get one, I said you wouldn’t keep her.”

His eyes twinkled with mischief before he turned onto a route she’d never seen into the airport, and she’d been here countless times. “Well, you’re real enough for me. And for as long as I keep you, I get to go all-out to surprise you.”

She harrumphed. “Save your energy. And save me from a stroke. I hate surprises. I haven’t met one that wasn’t nasty. Certainly never any from you.”

He sighed. “I assure you, this trip is anything but.”

“I don’t care what it will be like. It’s the concept I can’t stand.” She exhaled exasperatedly. “And to think I once thought you were part bulldozer.”

He slowed down as he took a turn, his eyebrows rising in amused query. “You changed your mind?”

“Yes. You’re the pure breed.”

And he did something that almost made her head explode.

He threw his head back and let out a hearty guffaw.

When she felt he’d scrambled her nervous system forever, he turned to her, chuckles still reverberating deep in his endless chest, his smile wider than she’d ever seen it.

“Watch it with the laughter, Vincenzo,” she mumbled, hating it that he affected her to extremes no matter what he was doing. “Doing something so unnatural to you can be dangerous. You’ll dislocate a brain lobe or something.”

His laugh boomed again. “Dio, I can get used to this.”

“Your highness hasn’t been exposed to sarcasm before? Figures, with all the syrupy ass-kissing you have everywhere you turn. Since you’ve been exposed to it from birth, you must have always had social juvenile diabetes.”

“I was wrong. I’m already too used to getting lashed with your delightful tongue. I hope you won’t ever hold it.”

“I think it’s a physical impossibility with you around.”

He chuckled again, this time doing something even more distressing. He reached out for her hand and brought it to his lips.

His lips. Those lips that had enslaved her with their possession, that had taught her passion and the pleasure her body was capable of experiencing. The moment they touched the back of her hand, her heart almost ruptured.

She snatched her hand back as if from open fire, agitation searing her insides. “I don’t know what you’re playing at…”

“I already told you my game plan.” His eyes turned serious as he brought the car to a stop and turned to her. “But I’ve also come to a new decision. I no longer care how this started…”

“I do.”

“…I only care that when I’m with you I feel…great. I haven’t felt like that in… I don’t even remember if I ever felt like that. You invigorate me. Your every word and look thrills me, and I don’t intend to keep holding back and not show it. If you tickle my humor, and you do, constantly, I’ll laugh. And I want you to do the same. Forget how we got to be here…”

“Because you blackmailed me.”

“…and just make the best of it. If you enjoy my company…”

“I’m not a fan of Stockholm syndrome, thank you.”

“…just allow yourself the enjoyment, don’t stifle it and don’t keep telling yourself why you should hold it back.”

“Easy for you to say and do. You’re not the one being threatened with your family’s imprisonment and taken hostage for a year. And being kidnapped right now.”

His eyes grew coaxing. “You are my partner in an endeavor I’m undertaking to serve my kingdom.” The word partner, the term he’d once said would never apply to her, scratched like a talon against her heart. “You will help me bridge its distance from the world to benefit its people and the coming generations. And you’re the fiancée I’m taking on a surprise trip. I will do everything in my power so you will enjoy it.”

The wish that all that could be true overwhelmed her, closing her throat. “That’s the facade hiding the ugly truth.”

“It is the truth, if you don’t dwell on the negative aspects.”

“Negative aspects? Now, that’s an innovative euphemism for extortion.”

He didn’t segue into a rejoinder this time. His gaze lengthened, grew distant, as if he was looking inward.

Seeming to come back to her, he exhaled. “Would you marry me if I took your family out of the equation?”

It was her turn to stare. “You mean I can say no and you wouldn’t report them?”

“Yes.”

He looked and sounded serious. Yeah. Sure.

“I don’t believe you.”

“Understandable. I don’t believe myself, either.” His headshake was self-deprecation itself. “But I do mean it.”

“Is this a ploy to put me at ease? So I’ll stop giving you a much deserved, not to mention much needed, hard time? So I’ll stop resisting and ‘come to your bed’?”

“Yes. No. Definitely.” At her frown, he elaborated. “Yes, I want to put you at ease, though it’s not a ploy. No, I don’t want you to stop bashing me on the head. With the way I’m relishing it, I’m realizing how much I do need it. And I’m definitely anticipating you in my bed….” His arm snaked around her, pulled her into his heat and hardness, enervating her with the delight of his feel and scent. “I’m willing to do whatever it takes to have you racing me there as you used to.”

Her head fell back as she stared at him, sounding as faint as she felt. “Even if it means not using your winning hand?”

“I already said it had nothing to do with our intimacies.”

“How can I be sure you won’t hurt my family if I say no?”

“How were you sure I wouldn’t after you said yes? I guess you’ll have to trust me.”

“I don’t.” She’d trusted him before. Look where it had gotten her.

“We’re even, then.”

What? What did that mean?

Before she could voice her puzzlement, he pressed her harder, cupped her face, and her questions combusted at the feel of the warm, powerful flesh cradling hers. “Don’t say anything now. Let’s forget everything and go with the flow. Let me give us tonight.”

Tonight. The word reverberated between them, sweeping through her, uprooting the tethers of her resolve and aversion. His lips were half a breath away, filling her lungs with his intoxication.

She hated that she yearned for his taste and urgency and dominance, but she did. How she did. The need screwed tighter, squeezing her vitals, strangling them. Everything that would assuage the craving gnawing her hollow was a tug away, on his lapel, his hair. Then he would give her everything she needed.

But she couldn’t do it. Literally. She couldn’t move a muscle. And he was giving her the choice of the first move. He wouldn’t take that out of her hands, too. When that was where she needed him to leave her no choice.

Leave it to him to do the opposite of what she wanted.

Annoyance spurted, infusing her limpness with tension.

With a look acknowledging that he wouldn’t get a cease-fire that easily, and with a last annihilating stroke across her stinging lips, he pulled back.

In moments he’d stepped down from the car and come around to her door. She almost clung to him for support as he handed her down. The coolness of twilight after the warmth of the vehicle sprouted goose bumps all over her, adding to her imbalance.

Then every concern evaporated as she gaped. Up.

They were beneath a massive jetliner that looked like a giant alien bird of prey. This was his jet?

The next moment left no doubt as he took her elbow and led her to the Air Force One–style stairs that led from the tarmac to the inside of the jet.

Once inside, her jaw dropped further. She’d been on private jets before, though never his. Another proof of how marginal she’d been to him, when he’d been the center of her universe. But any other jets she’d seen paled in comparison.

She turned sarcastic eyes up to him. “It’s clear you believe in going the extra hundred million in pursuit of luxury.”

He smiled down at her. “I wouldn’t say I go that far.”

She looked pointedly around. “I’d say you go beyond.”

His smile remained unrepentant. “I travel a lot, with staff. I have meetings on board. I need space and convenience.”

“Tell me about your need for those.” She waited until she got a “so we won’t stop dredging up the past, eh?” look, then added more derision. “And you must have yet another castle in the sky to accommodate both ‘needs,’ huh?”

“My family’s being the first one on terra firma?”

“And the third being the futuristic headquarters in New York. Next, I’ll find out you have a space station and a couple of pyramids. Hang on…”

She got out her phone.

He gave her a playful tug, plastering her to his side. “What are you doing now?”

Squeezing her legs tighter against the new rush of heat, she cocked her head up at him. “Just estimating how many thousands of children this sickeningly blatant status symbol could feed, clothe and educate for years.”

He tipped his head back and his laughter boomed, sending her heartbeats scattering all over the jet’s lush carpeting.

“Dio, will I ever come close to guessing what you’ll say next?” He still chuckled as he led her through a meeting area, where staff hovered in the background, to the spiral staircase leading to the upper deck. “So you consider this jet too pretentious? A waste of money better spent on worthy causes?”

“Any personal ‘item’ with a price tag the length of a phone number ranges from ludicrously to criminally wasteful.”

“Even if it’s a utility that I use to make millions of dollars more, money I do use to benefit humanity at large?”

“By advancing science, protecting the environment and creating jobs? Yeah. You forget how I started my working life. I’ve heard all the arguments. And seen all the tax write-offs.”

“But you started your working life with me, so you know I’m not in this to make money or to flaunt my power or status.”

“Do I? Solid experience has taught me that I know nothing about the real you.”

He didn’t answer that as he walked her across an ultrachic foyer and through a door that he opened via a fingerprint-recognition module. It whirred shut as he let her lead him into what had to be the ultimate in airborne private quarters.

The sheer opulence hit her with more evidence of the world he existed in. The world he now maintained she could choose to enter, or not.

He guided her to one of the tan leather couches by huge oval windows and tugged her down with him. She hit the soft surface and it shifted to accommodate her body in the plushest medium she’d ever sat on. Not that she could enjoy the sensation with his body touching hers, making her feel split down the middle, with the half touching him burning and the other half freezing.

She tried to ignore him and her rioting senses by looking around the grand lounge drenched in golden lights, earth tones and the serenity of sumptuousness and seclusion. At the far end of the huge space that spanned the breadth of the jet, a wall was decorated in intricate designs from the blend of cultures that made up Castaldini: Roman, Andalusian and Moorish. A double door led to another area. No doubt a bedroom suite.

A ghost of a touch zapped through her like a thousand volts. His finger feathering against her face, turning it to his.

“Regarding the ‘real me,’ as you put it,” he said, his eyes simmering in the golden lighting. “If you insist you don’t know him, let me rectify this.” He sank deeper into the couch, taking her with him until their heads leaned on the headrest, their faces close enough for her to get lost in the pattern of his incredible irises. “The real me is a nerd who happens to have been born in a royal family then inherited lots of money. He owes not squandering said fortune on his research and impractical ideas to the teachers he’s been blessed with, who tutored him in business practices, and directed his research and resources into money-making products and facilities. He, alas, never had the temperament or desire to become a corporate mogul.”

“Yet ‘he’ became one, and as ruthless as they come.” To her chagrin, her denunciation sounded like a cooing endearment.

“‘He’ basically found himself one. And I must contest the ruthless part. Though ‘he’ makes too much money, it’s not by adopting cold-blooded bottom-line practices. It just happens that the methods those people taught him are that efficient.”

Her own fundamental fairness got the best of her. “No one could have helped you make a cent, let alone such a sustained downpour, if you hadn’t come up with something so ingeniously applicable and universally useful.”

“And I wouldn’t have gotten any of that translated into reality without those people.”

Her heart hammered at his earnest words. At the memories they exhumed.

She’d once poured all her time and effort into providing him with a comprehensive plan for his future operations. He’d already had an exceptional head for business when he applied his off-the-charts IQ to it, but it hadn’t been his specialty or his focus. And he had had some unrealistic views and expectations when it came to translating his science into practice. So she’d insisted on educating him in what would come after the breakthrough, how his R&D and manufacturing departments would sync and work at escalating efficiency and productivity to streamline operations and maximize profit.

That had been another of the injustices he’d dealt her as he’d discarded her, evaluating her only based on her sexual role, as if she’d never offered him anything else. That had cut deeper into her the more she’d dwelled on it. It had taken her a long time to recover her sense of self-worth.

She bet he didn’t count her among those teachers fate had blessed him with.

A finger ran gently down her cheek. “You’re at the top of the list of those people.”

She blinked. He admitted that?

“I owe you for most of the bad decisions I didn’t make before the good ones I did make.”

Her heart stumbled, no longer knowing how hard or fast to beat, thoughts and emotions yo-yoing so hard she felt dizzy.

She shook her head as if to stop the fluctuations. “Is this admission part of your efforts to ‘put me at ease’?”

“It’s the truth.”

“Not according to you six years ago. Or forty-eight hours ago.”

His eyes misted with something like melancholy. “It’s not the whole truth, granted.” Now, what did that mean? “But I’m sick and tired of pretending this didn’t happen, that there were no good parts. There were…incredible parts. And no matter why you offered me this guidance, you did offer it, and I did use it to my best advantage, so…grazie mille, bellissima.”

This time she gaped at him for what felt like an hour.

What did this confounding man want to do to her? Was he truly suffering from a multiple personality disorder? What else could explain his contradictions?

But he’d already said he wouldn’t explain. So there was no use pursuing it.

Deciding not to give him the satisfaction of a response to his too-late, too-little thanks, she cast a look around. “I still think this level of luxury is criminal.”

His smile dawned again, incinerating all in its path. “Sorry to shoot down your censure missiles, but this isn’t my jet. It’s the Castaldinian Air Force One.” So her earlier observation was true! “Ferruccio put it at my disposal as soon as I told him of you, in his efforts to see me hitched…ASAP.”

As he grinned as if at a private joke, something inside her snapped.

She whacked him on the arm, hard.

His eyebrows shot up in surprise that became hilarity, and then he was letting out peal after peal of laughter.

“Had your joke at my expense?” she seethed.

“I was actually basking in your abuse,” he spluttered.

“Why didn’t you say you developed masochistic tendencies in your old age? You don’t need to manipulate me into obliging your perversion. The desire to shower abuse on your unfeeling head is my default setting.” She’d bet her glare would have withered rock. That hunk of unfeeling male perfection only chuckled harder. She attempted a harder verbal volley. “That this jet isn’t yours doesn’t exonerate you. You probably have your own squadron that puts it to shame. But apparently you’re so cheap you’d rather use state property and funds.”

“Damned if I do and if I don’t, eh?” He didn’t seem too upset about it, but looked like she’d just praised him heartily as he picked up her hand and brought it to his lips. “Sheathe your claws, my azure-eyed lioness.”

She gritted her teeth as his lips moved against her knuckles. “Why? Didn’t you just discover that you relish being ripped to shreds?”

He sighed his enjoyment. “Indeed. But it works better when you’re slamming me over my real flaws. Being pretentious and exploitative isn’t among my excesses and failings. If you think so then you haven’t kept abreast with my pursuits.”

That made her snort. “You mean you think it’s possible to avoid those? When your face and exploits are plastered everywhere I go? You even come out of the faucet when I turn it on. My building has turned to your services for heating.”

His laugh cracked out again.

In spite of wanting to smack him again, that sense of fairness still prodded her to add, “But among all that obnoxious overexposure, I do know your corporations have substantial and varied aid programs.”

That seemed to surprise him. “The world at large doesn’t know about this side of my activities. I wonder how you knew.”

Her smirk told him two could play at withholding answers. “It’s I who wonders what you’re after with all the discreet philanthropy. Are you playing at being Bruce Wayne? If you are, all that’s left is for you to don the cape, mask and tights…” She paused as his laughter escalated again then mumbled, “Since making you feel great is nonexistent on my list of priorities, I’ll shut up now.”

He leaned closer until his lips brushed her temple. He didn’t kiss her, just talked against her flesh. “I’d beg you not to. I don’t think I can live now without being bombarded by the shrapnel that keeps flying out of your mouth.”

She kept said mouth firmly closed.

To incite another salvo—she was sure—his lips moved to the top of her cheekbone, in the most languid, heart-melting kiss.

She jumped to her feet, nerves jangling.

He was somehow on his feet before her, blocking her way. “If you’re not going to abuse me, how about you use your mouth for something else?” He waited until her chagrin seethed and blasted out of her in a searing glare before adding in provocative pseudo innocence, “Eat?”

“It’s safer for you if I’m not near cutlery tonight.”

“Nonsense. I’m not in the least worried. What’s the worst you could do with disposable ones?”

This was beyond weird. Had he always had a sense of humor, but just hadn’t turned it on in her presence? Why did he have it perpetually on now?

Giving up trying to understand this baffling entity, yet refusing to give him an answer, she turned away, headed to the lavatory. She needed a breather before the next round.

When she came out, she faltered, trying to breathe around a lump that materialized in her throat.

He’d taken off his jacket. And had undone a few buttons on his shirt. And rolled up his sleeves.

It probably wouldn’t affect her any more if he’d taken off all his clothes. Okay, it would, but this was bad enough. The imagination that was intimate with his every inch was filling in the spaces, or rather, taking off the rest of his clothes.

He smiled that slow smile of his, no doubt noting the drool spreading at her feet. Then he extended that beautifully formed—and from experience, very talented—hand in invitation.

She covered the space between them as if by his will alone, unable to stop devouring his magnificence.

Reality again outstripped imagination or memory. The breadth and power of his shoulders and chest had owed nothing to tailoring. They were even magnified now that they were covered only in a layer of finest silk. His arms bulged with strength and symmetry under the material that obscured and highlighted at once. Those corded forearms dusted with black hair tapered to solid wrists. His abdomen was hard, his waist narrow, as were his hips, before his thighs flowed with strength and virility on the way down to endless legs.

Magnificent wasn’t even a fitting description.

He sat back down on the couch, patting where he wanted her to sit. On his lap.

She wanted to. To just lose her mind all over him, let him seduce her, own her, drain her of will and blow her mind with pleasure, again and again and again, for as long as it took him to have enough of her this time, and to hell with caution and the lessons of harsh experience.

Before she decided to take a flying jump into the abyss, he engulfed her hand in the warm power of his and gave a tug that was persuasion and urgency itself. She tumbled over him, her skirt riding up as her thighs splayed to straddle him.

The moment she felt him against her, between her legs, the rock hardness and heat of his chest and his erection pressing against her breast and core, arousal surged so fiercely she almost fainted. Then his lips opened over her neck, and she did swoon, melting over him.

His hands convulsed in the depths of her hair, harnessing her for his devouring as his mouth took pulls of her flesh, as if he’d suck her heartbeats, her essence into him. Her head fell back, arching her neck, giving him fuller access, surrendering her wariness and heartache to his pleasuring.

She needed this, needed him, come what may.

“You feel and taste even better than all the memories that tormented me, Gloria mia.”

She jerked and moaned when he said her name the way he used to, Italianizing it, making it his. It inflamed her to hear it, maddened her. The way he moved against her, breathed her in, touched and kneaded and suckled her…it was all too much. And too little. She needed more. Everything. His mouth and hands and potency all over her, inside her.

“Vincenzo…”

The same desperation reverberating inside her emanated from his great body in shock waves. Then he heaved beneath her, swept her around, brought her under him on the couch, bore down on her with all of his greed and urgency. Spreading her thighs, he hooked them around his hips, pressed between them, his daunting hardness grinding against her entrance through their clothes. Her back arched deeply to accommodate him, a cry escaping from her very recesses, at the yearned-for feel of him, weight of him, sight of him as propped himself above her, his eyes molten steel with the vehemence of his passion.

“Gloriosa, divina, Gloria mia…”

Then he swooped down and his lips clamped on hers, moist, branding, his tongue thrusting deep, singeing her with pleasure, breaching her with need, draining her of moans and reason. Pressure built—behind her eyes, inside her chest, deep in her loins. Her hands convulsed on his arms, digging into his muscles, everything inside her surging, gushing, needing anything…anything he’d do to her. His fingers and tongue and teeth exploiting her every secret, his manhood filling the void at her core, thrusting her to oblivion….

“We’ll be taking off in five minutes, Principe.”

The voice rang in a metallic echo, not registering in the delirium. It was only when he stopped his plundering kisses that it crashed into her awareness, that it made sense.

He froze over her for a long moment, his lips still fused to hers. He moved again, took her lips over and over in urgent, clinging kisses as if he couldn’t help himself, as if he was gulping what he could of her taste before he could have no more. Then muttering something savage under his breath, he severed their meld, groaning as if was scraping off his skin. It was how she felt, too, as his body separated from hers.

She lay back, stunned, unable to move. Dismay at the barely aborted insanity drenched her, even as need still hammered at her, demanding his assuagement. His heavy-lidded gaze regarded her in denuding intensity, as if savoring the sight of what he’d done to her. Then he reached for her, caressed and kneaded her as he helped her up on the couch.

He secured her seat belt before buckling his as the engines, which she realized had been on for a while now, revved higher and the jet started moving.

They were really taking off.

Everything was going out of control, too far, too fast.

And she had no idea where they were going. Figuratively and literally.

The latter had a definite answer. And in an existence that had no answers, past or future, she had to have at least that.

“Where are we going?”

At her unsteady question, he pulled her closer, his eyes blazing with unspent desire. “How about we keep it a surprise?”

“How about I go demand that your pilot drop me off?”

He tutted. “I see I have to surprise you with no warning next time.”

“Since you can’t take me somewhere without warning unless you develop teleportation, too…”

“Or kidnap you for real and keep you tied up and gagged on the way.”

“…then get a real surprise when you finally untie and ungag me. Something broken or bitten off or both.”

Looking even more aroused and elated, he gathered her tighter, put his lips to her ear, nipped her lobe and whispered, “We’re going to Castaldini.”