The Prince in the Royal Suite Read online

  ‘You certainly are a refreshing change.’

  ‘And maybe you’re tired of living a rigidly structured life, and having to put up with other people’s ideas about you. Maybe you like to escape your everyday life as much as everyone else.’

  ‘That’s very deep of you, Libby.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be. Don’t you like the high life?’

  She laughed. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  Lucaj had an ironic expression on his handsome face. ‘So your cousin never invites you to join her in her glamorous escapades?’

  ‘Lucinda always includes me,’ Libby argued heatedly, racing to her cousin’s defence. ‘We’ve been friends ever since I can remember, and we’ve lived together for most of our lives.’

  ‘Bravo!’ Lucaj’s smile put an attractive crease in his cheek.

  ‘It’s not Lucinda’s fault that she’s outgoing and I’m not.’

  ‘What happened tonight to change that? You don’t strike me as introverted.’

  ‘I assert myself every day on behalf of other people, but somehow, it’s different when it’s me,’ Libby explained. ‘And then I put this dress on – and these heels?’ She laughed. ‘These could never be described as the safe option. It was as if something magical happened – like putting on a costume and getting ready to go on stage to play a very different role from the usual me.’

  ‘So we can safely blame the shoes,’ Lucaj commented, almost managing to curb a smile.

  ‘Even if they are killing me,’ Libby agreed, kicking them off.

  What was she doing? Standing up, she turned around to give herself chance to think. This wasn’t just breaking the rules. Relaxing to this extent with Lucaj equated to throwing the rule book out of the window.

  Lucaj stood too. They were so close she could feel his heat warming her.

  She couldn’t let this continue. She shouldn’t lead him on. She had to come clean and spell out exactly what type of girl she was. One thing was certain – as bad girls went, she was a flop.

  ‘We can’t – I mean, you can’t – I’m just a –’

  ‘You’re just a woman,’ Lucaj interrupted. ‘And I’m just a man.’ His lips slanted and his eyes were warm. ‘And just for tonight, like I said in the bar, I think we should both forget the rules we live by.’

  Her gaze slipped to his mouth.

  ‘One rule in particular,’ Lucaj murmured, one corner of his mouth tugging up in the most engaging way.

  ‘And what rule is that?’ Libby murmured.

  ‘The rule that says a very bad man like me shouldn’t be allowed to kiss a good girl like you.’

  Libby swallowed deep. She didn’t feel like a good girl. In fact, she didn’t want to be a good girl tonight. She wanted one special night to remember, and then everything would return to how it was.

  ‘How can I be a good girl when I’ve got such a very bad man in my room?’

  Lucaj smiled as he brushed her lips with his.

  Her whole body responded. His lips were so warm and firm, and he was so sure, so confident. She didn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe – she couldn’t think straight. Lucaj kissing her was stunning, riveting, addictive; she never wanted it to end.

  ‘You can open your eyes now,’ he suggested with a smile in his voice.

  She blushed furiously.

  ‘Blame the shoes,’ he advised.

  ‘Bad shoes,’ she murmured, but she blamed herself for the weakness of wanting Lucaj to kiss her, and Lucaj for making her feel naked when she was still fully clothed.

  ‘Maybe this is the real you,’ he suggested as he brushed Libby’s tempting lips again.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think so.’ Coming to her senses, she stepped back. ‘I was planning to have a quiet night in London. Maybe some room service –’

  ‘Shall I ring down for coffee? Or would you prefer something stronger? There seems to be a bar over there…’

  She looked at him in surprise. ‘You’re not going.’

  ‘Unless you want me to.’

  ‘No, I’m just… surprised.’

  He wanted to say to her, have some confidence, Libby. She was like a green shoot that had been shielded from the sun by a tree, but she’d stepped out of the shadows tonight, and he wanted her to stay out of those shadows. He’d spent his life surrounded by courtiers, braggarts and hangers on, so he had some idea of how good freedom felt, and the urge to take Libby to bed, to prove that she was the most beautiful woman in his world, was overwhelming him now.

  So much for his good intentions where Libby Lancaster was concerned!

  Chapter Five

  ‘What I don’t understand is – ’

  ‘Too much talking,’ he insisted softly. Caging her with his arms either side of her face and his fists planted against the wall, he brushed her lips again for the sheer pleasure of hearing her sigh.

  ‘I was going to say –’

  ‘What were you going to say?’ He repeated the action.

  It took her a moment before her eyes cleared and then she frowned. ‘I don’t understand why you’re staying at the Chatsfield, when it mentions your Thames-side penthouse in that article?’

  ‘Ah, suspicions,’ he murmured, pulling back. ‘I wondered when they’d raise their ugly head.’

  Angling his chin, he stared deep into her eyes and told her the truth. ‘The Chatsfield is my favourite hotel in the world. And as for why I stay here when I have a place in town?’ His mouth slanted with amusement. ‘I get to meet people like you?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Too smooth. ’ Libby shook her head. ‘I’m afraid I don’t believe you – especially where getting the chance to meet people is concerned. I’m sure you meet plenty of people in the course of your life.’

  ‘But not many I want to spend time with,’ he said honestly.

  Libby didn’t disagree with this, and as her face was still upturned to his, he yielded to temptation again, and this time she softened against him as he teased his way into her mouth with his tongue.

  ‘Tell me the truth,’ she said softly a long while later, pulling back.

  ‘All right, I will. Redecoration…’

  Deepening the kiss, he pressed her back against the wall. She was the perfect fit. She felt amazing.

  ‘Sorry?’ she murmured distractedly when he briefly raised his head. It took her a lot longer this time to recover after they’d kissed. Her eyes were closed as she spoke the single word and she seemed in no hurry to open them again.

  ‘My penthouse is being decorated,’ he explained. ‘I’d like you to see it when it’s finished –’

  Libby’s eyes flashed open.

  He’d spoiled the mood. No problem. He’d just have to start over. Great. That suited him.

  Smiling against her mouth, he teased her lips with his tongue and with his teeth, just lightly until she moaned approval. Moving to cup her head, he loosed her hair and let it fall in gleaming waves of heavy silk around her shoulders. ‘You should always wear your hair down.’

  ‘Really?’

  She searched his eyes in a way that touched him somewhere deep. It told him that Libby wasn’t used to compliments. She didn’t see herself as he saw her. She might be a girl he’d only known a short time, but he felt as if he’d known her forever, if only from a distance, and now he had the chance to get really close. Libby was a revelation to him. Most girls of his acquaintance were overly self-aware, but Libby was completely oblivious to her allure, which made her infinitely more attractive in his eyes. It also made him all the more determined to make her feel appreciated.

  ‘Why are you looking at me like that?” she murmured.

  ‘I was just thinking that ‘appreciated’ is far too tame a word to describe the way I want you to feel.’

  ‘I’m beginning to think you must be a little crazy.’

  ‘Not even a little bit.’ Sharing Libby’s rueful smile, he drew her into his arms.

  She quivered beneath his hands as he teased her lips apart with
his tongue, and when he deepened the kiss, she melted against him. He pressed her against the wall, discovering the contours of her body fit his perfectly. She was driving him crazy.

  ‘I think you’re enjoying this chance to be the real you, Libby Lancaster,’ he remarked when she reached up to push the jacket from his shoulders.

  ‘And I think you’re enjoying the chance to lose that royal straightjacket.’

  He wasn’t going to deny it.

  Helping her, he shrugged out of the casual jacket and let it fall to the floor, then taking hold of her shoulders, he held Libby away from him so he could take a long, appreciative look at the only woman he could remember in a long time for whom he didn’t want to use the royal straightjacket as an excuse to ward her off.

  ‘Why the scowl, Lucaj?’ she demanded softly. ‘Do I look such a mess?’

  ‘You look beautiful.’ He frowned. ‘I just wish you were wearing more clothes.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Yeah.’ His mouth tugged up in a grin. ‘I could have more fun taking them off, then.’

  ‘How do you know I don’t have a bustle and pantaloons, whale-bone corset, and a chastity belt beneath this dress?’

  He grinned as he admitted. ‘I can see that Lucinda’s underwear didn’t fit you, and that those luscious curves are all your own.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be looking, Lucaj.’

  ‘Am I wearing a blindfold? Do you expect me to ignore the outline of your body beneath a dress as clinging as this?’

  ‘Are you trying to tell me the dress is too tight?’

  ‘The dress is perfect. It moulds every soft, firm, contour –’

  ‘Soft and firm?’ Libby hummed as she arched a mocking brow.

  ‘And perfect,’ he insisted, ‘though I need a closer examination to confirm my thoughts.’

  She gasped as his big hand cupped her breast. She had the most amazing breasts. They were big, beautiful breasts, and just as he’d suspected, she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her breasts were pert and full. Her breasts were perfect. He couldn’t wait to sink his face into them, and more besides, and all the time he was thinking this, Libby was sighing beneath his touch in a way that made him mad with desire for her.

  ‘Did I give you permission for that, Lucaj?’

  ‘No,’ he admitted. Libby hadn’t given the packet in his jeans permission to strain to the extent that it was threatening to burst his zip, either. ‘You have great breasts.’

  ‘And they’re real,’ she teased him.

  ‘I don’t doubt it, but I’d better check again, just to be sure.’

  She huffed a soft, sexy laugh against his mouth as he put his plan into action. Libby’s sexual heat, coming from a girl who thought she was unattractive, lassoed him, and enclosed him, and kept him exactly where he wanted to be.

  She gasped and moaned, before finally exclaiming, ‘Please stop teasing me, Lucaj. You’re driving me crazy –’

  ‘Good crazy or bad crazy?’ he whispered against her lips.

  ‘Good, of course!’ she exclaimed, her voice strangled with frustration.

  Libby was right. He’d had it with holding back too. They both needed more than teasing now.

  Chapter Six

  Hot sex with a bad man was the last thing she had planned for tonight. Not so long ago she’d been tired and jaded. She had soon discovered it wasn’t possible to be tired or jaded with Lucaj around. Having located the zip at the back of her dress, he’d slid it down like a hot knife through butter, and once he pushed the dress off her shoulders and it floated to the ground to pool on the floor at her feet, the time to pretend this wasn’t going anywhere, was over.

  ‘What?’ she murmured when he went very still.

  Lucaj’s eyes were black and slumberous as he studied her naked form. ‘You are so beautiful.’

  She put her fingers to his lips. ‘You don’t need to say that. I don’t need to hear it.’

  ‘I disagree. I think you do. Who hurt you, Libby?’

  ‘That’s a bit blunt, isn’t it?’ She frowned. ‘No-one.’

  ‘Liar.’

  She tensed and firmed her jaw, stubbornly refusing to argue with him, and so they stared at each other, neither prepared to back down, while heat sizzled and snapped between them. She was composed entirely of nerve-tingling energy, and was in no mood to fight Lucaj – at least, not with words.

  ‘Just because you’re not used to hearing something, doesn’t mean it isn’t true,’ he insisted. ‘And I won’t stop telling you that you’re beautiful, when it’s true.’

  She laughed as he swept her into his arms. ‘Am I arguing?’

  Lucaj carried her across the room and through the door leading into the bedroom. This was life-changing. She hadn’t so much as dipped her toe into the turbulent waters of romance since a bad experience with a man who found it impossible to decide if he wanted a girlfriend or a mother/PA to organise his life had decided Libby that romance wasn’t for her.

  ‘Why are you laughing?’ Lucaj demanded as he lowered her down on the bed.

  ‘You haven’t asked me to organise your sock drawer once.’

  ‘Not yet,’ he teased.

  ‘Not ever,’ she warned, catching hold of him.

  ‘Now, what?’ Lucaj demanded.

  ‘I was just thinking, you’re seriously overdressed. And remembering those photographs in the magazine…’

  Shaking his head, Lucaj’s mouth tugged up in a grin. ‘If you insist.’

  ‘I do insist.’ She sighed with appreciation when Lucaj, who had no inhibitions, tugged his shirt out of the waistband of his jeans, opened a couple of buttons at the neck, and then reached back to tug it over his head, to reveal that torso in all its tanned and hard-muscled glory.

  ‘Why, Libby Lancaster, if I didn’t know you better –’

  ‘Which you don’t.’

  ‘I’d say you were aroused by the sight of my naked body.’

  ‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ she lied as Lucaj tossed his jeans aside.

  No. She’d go further. The power in Lucaj’s chest and arms was irresistible. ‘As I haven’t seen all of your body yet, I couldn’t possibly comment,’ she said coolly. ‘But I suppose what I have seen isn’t bad.’

  She couldn’t wait to feel that hard, tanned chest pressed up against her breasts – rubbing against them until she begged for mercy. ‘What makes you think I’m aroused?’

  ‘Your voice is husky. Your eyes are black. Your lips are swollen, and –’

  ‘Stop,’ she begged, trying her hardest not to smile. ‘There’s a very good reason for my lips being swollen.’

  ‘Oh?’ Stretching out his length against her, Lucaj began to toy with her hair. ‘Would you care to explain?’

  ‘I’ve just been kissed by a very bad man.’

  ‘Anyone I know?’

  ‘Someone very close to me…’ She glanced at him and smiled. ‘Very close to me indeed –’ She exclaimed with excitement as Lucaj tumbled her beneath him. ‘So much muscle… So much time in the sun,’ she murmured, tracing the map of muscle along Lucaj’s impossibly powerful forearms to his shoulders, and then onto his chest.

  Dipping his head to kiss her, Lucaj tormented her by withholding the heat of his naked skin and the pressure of his weight against her aching body.

  ‘The longer you wait, the better it will be for you,’ Lucaj explained frowning down at her.

  ‘Don’t give me all that delay is the servant of pleasure jibber jabber,’ she warned, ‘Because I’m not sure I can wait.’ Running her hands very lightly down the sides of his body, she had the satisfaction of seeing a shudder of anticipation wrack him. ‘How much longer did you say I have to wait?’

  ‘You’re a witch, Ms Lancaster.’

  ‘There’s no need to look quite so pleased about it.’

  ‘Why act coy when we could be enjoying each other?’

  ‘My point exactly,’ she complained.

  It felt like the most natural thing on earth when Luca
j drove his tongue into her mouth and his thigh between her legs; natural, as well as the most necessary thing on earth. She’d never experienced this level of arousal before, but though her body was screaming for release, a little voice inside her was still insisting, ‘hang on’.

  No. She refused to listen. Her heart and head were as one tonight. This chance to make love with an unrepentantly, brutally masculine man might never happen again – not unless all the stars in the heavens were aligned, and every bit of good fortune she was due in her lifetime came along in one day.

  And was she prepared to take the chance that that was ever going to happen again?

  Chapter Seven

  Fortunately, Lucaj had a stronger grip on control than Libby, and he paused to protect them both, and then her hips rose instinctively to meet his. Foreplay wasn’t necessary. They’d been indulging in foreplay since the moment they met, and she was more than ready for Lucaj now.

  But not prepared for him, it turned out.

  ‘Oh…’

  ‘Oh, good? Or, oh, bad?’ Lucaj whispered as he teased her mercilessly with the tip of his heavy erection.

  ‘It’s a size issue – but that’s good – and don’t you dare stop,’ she warned him. If Lucaj pulled away now, she wouldn’t be responsible for her actions. ‘I thought we agreed, no more teasing?’

  ‘But it’s such fun teasing you.’

  ‘Really?’ Reaching down, she took matters into her own hands.

  ‘Witch.’

  She couldn’t reply. First, it took both her hands to encompass him, which was a pleasant, if gulp-inducing shock – though admittedly, she had small hands, but still…And second, she was composed entirely of sensation, so she couldn’t have second thoughts now unless she planned to expire with frustration. In his defence, Lucaj, who had his head thrown back and his eyes closed with an expression of supreme pleasure on his face, didn’t look as if he would be entering into any arguments with her just now.

  Biting her lip, she slipped him just a little way in.