impossibly, seemed to want her.
‘Yes,’ she said, flinging the word out the way a knight would fling down a gauntlet. It felt like a challenge, a dare, completely reckless but also brave. ‘Yes, I will.’
‘Excellent.’ His fingers tightened on hers, causing a fizz of fireworks to go off in her belly. She was already feeling light-headed from two glasses of hastily drunk champagne, imbibed to steel her nerves. Now she felt utterly overwhelmed by the sheer, lunatic magic of the situation—she, the innocent Princess in her ivory tower being lured upstairs by the most magnetically sexual man in the world, never mind this room. And he wanted her.
Taking a deep breath, Halina followed Rico down the hall, away from the party, determined not to panic or even doubt herself. A little bit of flirting, another glass of champagne, maybe a kiss...and then she’d leave. Of course she would. And she wouldn’t think about her mother, or Abdul, the sleepy bodyguard, and certainly not her father the Sultan who would be both furious and heartbroken to know she’d dared to go this far, never mind what she might get up to once they were in Rico’s suite.
One night. One adventure. That was all she wanted, all she was asking for. Surely it wasn’t too much?
Rico stabbed the button for the lifts and the doors whooshed open. Still holding her by the hand, he drew her inside, then the doors closed and they were alone, soaring upwards.
‘So what made you decide to crash the party tonight?’ he asked in a lazy voice. Halina tried not to blush. So it had been obvious that she hadn’t had an invitation.
‘An impulse decision.’
‘Some of the best decisions are borne from impulse.’
‘Are yours?’ she asked. She was so nervous and hyper-aware of him that she wondered if he could see the hectic, urgent thud of her heart from beneath her dress. She resisted the urge to wipe her damp palms down its sides.
‘My impulses are borne of instinct,’ Rico answered. ‘So they’re always right.’
She laughed, incredulous and a little bit amused by his arrogance, despite her nerves. ‘Is there anything you’re insecure about?’
Something dark flashed across his face, so quickly that Halina almost missed it. She couldn’t decipher what it was. Then his expression evened out and he smiled, his lips curving, showing a flash of very white, very straight teeth. ‘No,’ he answered. ‘There isn’t.’
The doors opened straight into the penthouse suite of the hotel, the one her mother had demanded but which the concierge had regretfully informed her was already booked. What kind of man was Rico Falcone, that the hotel had turned away even a queen?
‘So, where’s this wonderful champagne?’ Halina asked as she stepped into the suite, her heels clicking the black marble floor. The space stretched on into the darkness, the only light coming from the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city.
Rico threw her a darkly amused glance. ‘Are you quite certain you want another glass?’
Surely he wasn’t going to treat her like a child? Halina lifted her chin. ‘Why wouldn’t I?’
‘I don’t want you drunk when I make love to you.’
Everything inside her trembled, her internal organs reduced to a plateful of jelly. ‘Who says you’re going to—to make love to me?’ Halina demanded with far more bravado than actual courage. An image slid through her mind like a sensuous snake—body entwined with body, candlelight gleaming off satin sheets—and a current of desire zinged through her, twanging all her senses, every nerve.
‘I do,’ Rico replied baldly as he retrieved a bottle of champagne chilling in a silver ice-bucket by a pair of white leather sofas. ‘Why else would you have come up here with me?’
Nerves clamoured in her belly. Was she in over her head? The answer was obvious—of course she was. Yet she didn’t want to leave. Not so soon, not yet. ‘For the champagne, of course,’ Halina quipped as she strolled through the sweeping living area of the suite towards the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the Eternal City, its ancient, crumbling buildings now awash with moonlight.
‘At least on that I can oblige.’ With a satisfying pop he pulled the cork from the bottle and then filled two glasses right to the brim before handing one to Halina. She took a sip, relishing the crisp taste of bubbles on her tongue, and definitely needing the Dutch courage. What now?
‘You really shouldn’t be quite so arrogant,’ she said as she lowered the glass. Her palms were slick and her heart thudded but she managed to hold his sardonic gaze. Just.
‘Oh? Why shouldn’t I?’
His utter, unapologetic confidence stunned her. She admired it too, because although she knew she could seem confident to her school friends or sisters, playing to familiar crowds with her trademark drama and humour, when it came to the real world she had nothing on this man. Nothing at all.
‘It’s not a particularly appealing trait,’ she said at last.
‘I disagree.’
His self-assurance was like a brick wall, high and wide, impossible to cross or find a chink in. Still, for some perverse reason, she tried. ‘So you think it’s an asset? Being so ridiculously self-assured?’
He shrugged, as if the answer was so apparent the question should not have even been asked. ‘Of course.’
‘Why? How?’
‘Because there is a basis for it. I am the way I am because I know what I’m doing and, more importantly, I know what I want and I go after it.’ His eyes flashed, a glint of silver like moonlight flashing off the blade of a knife. ‘And do you know what I want right now, Lina?’
She swallowed. Hard. Excitement licked along her veins like the most dangerous fire. ‘What?’
‘You.’
Before she could form the words for a semi-coherent reply he’d crossed the room, swallowing up the space in a couple of strides, and plucked the champagne flute from her nerveless fingers. She opened her mouth to protest—she hadn’t finished her drink—but then his hands were on his shoulders, warm and so very sure, and he was kissing her.
Her very first kiss, and it felt like diving head-first into ice-cold water, a shock to her entire system. She stiffened underneath the onslaught of his persuasive mouth, the sudden intimacy of it, even as heat exploded in her centre and stars shot from behind her eyes. Her knees buckled and she felt Rico smile against her mouth as he gauged her obvious and overwhelming response to him.
She clutched at the slippery, satiny lapels of his tuxedo jacket, lost in the sensation of his mouth on hers. Were all kisses like this? Did you always feel as if you were drowning, caught up in a whirlpool of pleasure, every sense singing? She’d never experienced anything like it, and all she knew was that she wanted more. Much more.
Her mouth opened under his and she stood on her tiptoes, straining to reach more of him. Feel more of him. Her breasts pressed against his chest and created even more arrows of sensations sizzling through her, making her whole being burn.
Rico slid his hands from her shoulders to her waist, anchoring
