Page 3 of Claiming His Virgin Princess

Like the others she was privileged and easy on the eye. But she seemed totally absorbed in the music, uncaring of who was watching. Her body moved to the beat in a way that dragged his gaze back again and again.

It wasn’t just her absorption and apparent disinterest in the A-list crowd that set her apart.

In a short glittery dress of cobalt blue, her lips red and her gilt hair flying loose around her shoulders, she was Temptation incarnate.

Just watching her sinuous movements made his body heavy and tight with hunger.

Noah hadn’t been able to get her out of his head since yesterday, when he’d deliberately kept his distance.

Ilsa of Altbourg, the alpine kingdom renowned for its ski fields, banking, robotics and quaint royal traditions.

PrincessIlsa.

Noah often dated rich women. He was a billionaire now and met his fair share. But he had a deep-seated prejudice against snobby ones who believed inherited privilege made them superior. Surely a princess would be one of those.

Yet at the charity lunch yesterday he’d wondered.

She’d been chic, composed and gracious, all the things you expected of a royal. Beautiful too, if you liked blonde snow queens. But something else had snagged his interest. Her aura of calm seemed, somehow, fragile.

Which was nonsense. She was at ease with the entitled crowd, confident and able, graciously agreeing to step in at the last minute to conduct the charity auction when the MC was taken ill.

Yet instinct told him she was more than a gilded royal.

He’d spent the lunch watching her, captivated despite himself.

Interestingly, Princess Ilsa had watched him too, though she tried to hide it. Again and again their gazes had met across the room. Each time he’d felt something ghost down his spine. A primal awareness that dragged at his belly, and lower.

Yet her glances hadn’t been flirtatious.

She’d been...controlled. Contained. While those around her had grown louder and more laidback as the champagne circulated, Ilsa of Altbourg was as serenely composed at the end of the afternoon as at the beginning.

Tonight she wasn’t composed. Noah watched her long, pale gold hair swish around her shoulders as she moved and felt everything in him tighten. His blood pounded a primitive beat that had nothing to do with the music and everything to do withher.

The woman who didn’t even notice him.

A woman who should definitely not be his type.

‘Mr Carson? If you could spare just half an hour somewhere quiet, I could explain properly. With some start-up funds I could—’

Noah swung round. ‘Iaminterested in hearing more.’ Just not now. ‘Email a full proposal this week and I’ll have staff look out for your message.’ Then, nodding at the other’s effusive thanks, he headed inside.

Noah Carson wasn’t a man to ignore gut instinct.

It was time to meet the woman who’d haunted his thoughts for the last day and a half.

He was watching her. She felt it like the track of a laser across her bare arms and legs and even through the fabric of her dress, making her nipples peak and her flesh tingle.

She’d slitted open her eyes a minute ago, registering the strange frisson shivering across her skin, and glimpsed him in the distance. The broad-shouldered man with the enigmatic stare from yesterday.

She’d deliberately not asked her lunch companions about him because she didn’t want to know. Yet her eyes had sought his time and again.

The music stopped and Ilsa’s hair swirled into stillness around her shoulders as she dragged in deep breaths.

Her brief, precious interlude, losing herself in the mindless throb of music, was over. Time to return to the real world. Even if shefeltdifferent. Maybe it was just from wearing her hair down and a dress that ended halfway up her thighs. She tried to imagine her father’s face if he could see her, then wiped the thought from her mind.

‘Dance with me?’ The dark voice, low and rich, curled around her like a silken rope, drawing her lungs tight.

Slowly Ilsa turned, knowing who she’d see.

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