Page 39 of Off-Limits To The Crown Prince

Her pupils flared as she rose to his challenge and climbed over him, straddling his body. Rocking on the hardness between his thighs. He sat forward to wrap his arms around her but she planted her hands flat on his chest and pushed. He fell back, enjoying her new assertion far too much. Hannah took his face in her hands, rubbed her thumbs over his cheeks. He didn’t need to see in the mirror to know that she was marking him with the charcoal on her fingers. As if she were claiming ownership. His blood rang in a furious roar as he enjoyed her possession, as if with each stroke she were writingmineon his skin. She leaned forward, her lips touching his. Her mouth open, lush. Claiming him. He let her. In this fantasy, for these few days they could be anything they desired. He took what she gave, his hands at her hips as she moved against him. The sheet between them an interruption, a distraction, but necessary. How he wanted to slide into her with no protection, forget they were the Prince and his artist.

She broke the kiss and he almost thrust his hands into her hair and dragged her to him once more, but the way she leaned back with a subtle smile on her lips suggested she was admiring her handiwork.

‘Condom,’ she said, as she cupped his jaw and traced her thumb almost lovingly in another stripe along his cheek.

He didn’t need to be asked twice, reaching to the bedside table where he’d left a number rather than fumble for a packet and interrupt these fleeting moments. Hannah sat back as he grabbed a sliver of foil, tore it open.

‘You’re going to have to move,’ he said. His hands trembled with the desire to be inside her. She shifted back as he shoved down the sheet and rolled the protection in place. All the while she watched him, her fascination with his body addictive, her attention on him complete.

She placed her hand on his chest again. ‘Now lie back and relax.’

He almost laughed. How could he relax when he was wound so tight he wanted to snap? His thighs shook. The whole of him quivered with barely restrained desire. It was like nothing he had ever experienced. She positioned herself over him and lowered slowly. He watched her body take him, the shock of the feeling, coupled with the vision, electric. Her head thrown back, hair tumbling over her shoulders, nipples tight and beading with arousal. Such an erotic picture she painted for him. Hannah rode his body as he thrust up into her. Lost in her heat. The sounds she made. Her pure, erotic abandon had the tight, bright sting of arousal crack and shatter with one hard, sharp thrust and shout. Then Hannah tightened around him and broke as well, falling forward onto his heaving chest as he wrapped his arms round her.

‘You’re well messed-up now,’ she said with a shaky laugh, which told him she was probablywell messed-upherself. And there was nothing he could say or do because she was right. The problem was, he might never wish to go back to his tidy, perfect, righteous life, ever again.

CHAPTER TEN

TWONIGHTSANDthree days of bliss and it was now over.

Hannah sat in the front of an anonymous-looking grey car with Alessio at the wheel. They’d spent the early morning swimming in the deep, cobalt waters of the Mediterranean. Avoiding the inevitable. Pretending the world couldn’t touch them. It touched them now. Everything tightening, tensing.

As they drove towards the outskirts of Lasserno’s capital, where they would return to the palace, Alessio began to change the most. It was like watching the ground freeze over by degrees. As if the cold chill of winter were creeping up on them, slowly and relentlessly. Where once he’d been loose and relaxed, all of him seemed to be on high alert. Their easy conversation on the yacht dried away, his grip on the steering wheel almost white-knuckled.

She settled back and tried to relax into the seat. The fantasy of the weekend was well and truly over, those few days where they ate, slept, made love, soon to be but a precious memory. She’d thought this would be enough, that she’d be unaffected by it all. But what she hadn’t banked on was how much changed when you got to see a real person. And Alessio had become real to her. Not a prince like he was on paper but a magnificent, kind, self-deprecating man who could make her laugh and would soon make her cry, of that she had no doubt.

She wanted to cry for him now. She didn’t know how he’d marry some princess in a cold, practical relationship, when their own days had been full to the brim with passion. She couldn’t see him as surviving with anything less than what they had had. She could barely take in any air at those thoughts. Of Alessio married, with children. Without her. The idea of him in any other woman’s arms thrust through her with all the brutality of a sword to the heart. She looked over at him. His jaw was set, as though he was steeling himself for a life he didn’t want.

As if he knew she was looking at him, Alessio turned his head a fraction. ‘You’ve had a touch of the sun. Your skin’s pink.’

She shrugged, blinking away the burn in her eyes. His concern and notice could undo her, and she wasn’t sure there was thread enough in the world to stitch herself together again. ‘I’ll be fine. It’s a little sunburn.’

‘I should have paid more attention.’ She couldn’t see his eyes, hidden behind sunglasses as they were, but his voice was filled with care. ‘Remembered the sunscreen. Your beautiful skin is so pale.’

‘Too much time indoors, painting.’ She’d never felt like that before, but there’d been a blissful sense of freedom to being in the sunshine, the breeze in her hair. Something other than standing in her studio surrounded by solvent and paints. The same way she’d forgotten the joy of being on horseback, not practising her showjumping, just the pleasure of the ride. All the small things she’d shoved away from herself over the years. Perhaps when she returned home, she could buy a little horse. Take some time to ride again. If she could afford to, because even with Alessio’s commission, funds would still be tight. But there was a kernel of hope there, for something more, even if she couldn’t have him.

Hannah let out a slow, even breath. She’d not be here much longer and time seemed to be speeding up and careening away.

‘I’d like to do a bit of sightseeing in the capital before I leave. I should get a souvenir for Sue.’

She had many things to thank her agent for. Many things to curse her for as well, with this commission. It had shown her life had possibilities again, whilst also snatching them away.

‘I’ll arrange security for you. A list of places to go.’

It sounded as if he was making himself responsible for her, and that was something she didn’t need when they should be pulling apart rather than meshing even further.

‘I hardly think I’ll have a problem buying a snow globe or something similar. Who’d be interested in me?’

His hands flexed on the steering wheel, though his focus remained resolutely on the road ahead.

‘I want you to be safe. I want that for you.’

The words were loaded because she was sure he meant far more. Hannah squashed down the lick of heat running through her. He was a good man. He cared. The way he did with the children at the hospital, that was all. It meant nothing more.

It couldn’t.

He was not safe, not for her. Not ever. With him, she found herself wanting things she’d not contemplated for years, and those things could crack her in two. Because love meant leaving the door open to your own destruction and inviting the destroyer in. She could never give her whole heart because then she’d lose all over again, and she wasn’t sure she’d survive it when she barely had last time.

‘I’d like to go on my own. Having security would be strange and take the fun away from things. But I’ll take a list of places to go. Thank you.’

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