His expression was grimmer still. Stella quelled another shiver. She’d spent years working alongside fearsomely powerful men and she recognised that edge in his eyes. It denoted more than determination. It spelled ruthlessness—said that he had the mental strength to make the harshest, most irrevocable of decisions. This was not the teasing man she’d met that searingly sunny day.
‘You have been dismissed from the army,’ he said abruptly.
‘Yes.’
‘Because you are pregnant.’
His tone jarred, damning her with his certainty. And disapproval. Her throat thickened and clogged so she couldn’t answer. She didn’t know for sure, but in her bones she feared it. She feared his response. His retaliation. Most of all she feared her own future.
She’d been in some seriously dangerous situations in her time, but she’d never felt as afraid as she did right now. Nor had she ever felt so alone. She had no one to help her.
As a result, she was more than disarmed—she was emotionally disabled.
Her heart resumed that too hard, too loud thudding again. She took quickened breaths, trying to control her intense physical reaction to this horror situation. Trying to deny that her extreme internal reaction really was to him.
He lifted himself away from the door and walked towards her with long, easy strides that belied the speed and strength she knew he had. And his expression was too leashed to be anything like reassuring.
This wasn’t the suave, gleaming-eyed Prince Charming whom the public adored. This was a coldly angry stranger, carved from granite. This was a side of him she’d never seen.
Because when she’d left him that afternoon she’d not looked back.
Yet now, despite his iciness, that sensual intensity still emanated from every inch of him. And in seconds she was close to succumbing to it again.
That scared her too.
But she couldn’t peel her gaze off him. Never had she met such a wildly attractive man. Never had she wanted a man in the way she’d wanted him. The memories she’d tried to bury for so long now burst into her shock-weakened mind. For a split-second she saw him as he’d been that afternoon, naked and slick and braced above her, his gaze brilliant and fierce, his body both punishing and protective, while she—
‘Stella.’
Heat surged into her cheeks and she banished the scorching image—mortified that she could lose control so quickly. She lifted her chin, bracing herself—because that was a warning tone if ever she’d heard one.
He walked closer, his gaze never leaving her face, restraint evident in his too-measured movements and the compression of his mouth. But for a second he’d looked furious.
It was only with supreme self-discipline that she suppressed the instinct to step back. Her stupid body turned schizophrenic. Instead of freezing, she was burning. Just beneath her skin her blood simmered, almost humming in delight from his nearness. It was insane, and she hated her foolishness. How could she be so weak when the result of this want had just ruined her world? Yet that wilful, wicked, reckless part of her only wanted him to touch her again. Touch her and make her forget the world, as he’d done so easily once before.
Mercifully, he didn’t. He stopped a single pace away, his muscles taut, his stance wide and predatory—as if he suspected she might try to escape any second.
‘Stella Zambrano,’ he said softly, but through gritted teeth. His intense lapis lazuli eyes sharpened, hardened, chilled. And his words stabbed. ‘Welcome to Secreto Real. We will be married here tomorrow.’
MARRIED? STELLA LAUGHED. As if.
She was a disgraced soldier. He was a partying pirate prince. The idea of him marrying her was preposterous.
‘Did you hear what I said, Stella?’ Shadows darkened his blue eyes. ‘Do you understand?’
Why was he talking to her as if she was a two-year-old?
‘You’re not getting married,’ she said. He was a playboy. And when he finally settled down—at least five years from now—it would be with one of the stunning minor European royals with an aristocratic seal of approval.
‘I am. To you. Tomorrow.’
She shook her head. ‘There’s no need. I’m not pregnant.’
He caught her wrist. ‘Do not lie to me. Ever.’
She flinched, squeezing to stop her cells sizzling at his touch. ‘I’m not.’
She couldn’t be pregnant—surely she’d know if she was? Wouldn’t she have symptoms? She struggled to remember her last cycle, but other memories—whispered mentions of her mother—crowded her mind. Confused her. Scared the hell out of her.
Her skin burned. The edge of her vision wobbled and blurred.
‘You’re saying the report is wrong?’ he prompted.
‘I’m saying I don’t know.’ She frowned, trying to focus.
‘Well, I am saying that if you are pregnant we marry immediately. I am not having my child born illegitimately and left to live on the fringes of society, with none of the benefits he or she should rightly have.’
Royal benefits.
Stella refused to believe this was happening. She refused to allow control to be taken over every aspect of her life. She’d find an escape. Immediately.
‘Even if I am pregnant...who’s to say it’s yours?’ she challenged, breathing hard to fill her constricted lungs.
Deadly silence followed.
His grip on her wrist tightened painfully, then he grasped her chin with hard fingers and tilted it. Defiantly she held his gaze.
‘Try saying that again,’ he muttered, through lips that barely moved.
She couldn’t answer. She couldn’t breathe. Her heart hammered loud and hard, as if trying to smash free from its cage.
‘I remember,’ he said, low and harsh and so very angry. ‘I remember everything.’
They both knew the truth.
They’d both been aware of her feverish fumbling. Of her physical reaction—the resulting stain of surrendered innocence that couldn’t be feigned. She’d been with no other man before and no man since.
If she was pregnant, Prince Eduardo De Santis was the only possible father.
‘We used protection...’ she whispered unhappily.
‘It
