at Cathy’s heart. It might not have been the most fashionable hotel in the country, but it was the only real job she’d ever had—and she felt a certain kind of loyalty towards it.
‘Not really, no,’ she said. Because some modicum of politeness and charm were necessary if you wanted to make a place a real success—and, unless he was actually trying to get a woman to kiss him, the arrogant Prince Xaviero seemed badly lacking in both. ‘So why are you buying it, then?’
‘Because I want a retreat—a beautiful, English country home, which this has the potential to be. Something with history which can be brought up to date with a little care and money injected into it. Somewhere that’s close enough to London and the international airports—near enough to my polo club but far away enough to escape from it. Somewhere big enough to site a helicopter pad—and which will satisfy my security people. This place seems to fulfil most of the criteria—though obviously it needs extensive work before it can be made habitable.’ He began to laugh softly. ‘Me? A hotelier? Can you imagine?’
Cathy stared at him. In a way, she had thought the worst thing that could happen was the Prince taking over the hotel—but now she saw that there was a far worse scenario. That soon there would be no hotel at all—it would revert to being a private home and not just she but all the other people who worked there would be out of a job. Dismissed as if they were of no consequence by a spoilt and selfish prince who thought of nobody but himself!
‘No, now I come to think of it, I can’t—it was a riridiculous thing to say,’ she agreed, her voice shaking with rage and hurt. ‘I don’t think you’ve got the people skills to run a hotel.’
There was a stunned silence, while he stared at her in a slow-burning disbelief. ‘What did you just say?’
Don’t let him intimidate you, thought Cathy fiercely—because now indignation was taking over from the terrible hurt which seemed to have turned her body into a block of ice. Had she done something awful in a past life which meant that men felt they had a right to trample over her feelings like a herd of cows in a meadow? He had just taken her virginity and then turned on her as if she were nothing more than a cheap con-artist.
‘I think you heard me.’
‘How dare you?’ he bit out dangerously.
‘Why?’ She didn’t flinch under his accusing stare. ‘Does the truth make you angry, Your Highness?’
Xaviero’s eyes narrowed as her impudence almost took his breath away. ‘This is completely unacceptable!’ he hissed.
Didn’t what they had just been doing give her at least some rights? Clearly not. Clutching the silken coverlet even tighter, Cathy thought that if someone had spoken to him like that more often in the past, then he might not be so overbearingly arrogant. ‘Well, if you’ll let me leave—then I won’t need to bother you any more, will I?’
Still reeling from her insubordination, he paused to study her flushed face and the aquamarine eyes which were unexpectedly sparking blue fire at him. And even while her sudden defiance began to turn him on he remembered something else, too. Something which might account for her spiky rebelliousness.
‘I’m not stopping you from leaving,’ he said softly.
She stared at him—as a hungry mouse might stare at a piece of cheese while wondering what the glint of metal behind it could possibly be. ‘You…you aren’t?’
‘Of course not.’ He smiled, feeling himself grow exquisitely hard beneath his robe. ‘Go. Go on, if that’s what you want.’
Cathy swallowed, knowing that she could not move an inch while those eyes were melting into her like molten gold. ‘Then…then would you mind turning your back?’
His lips curved into a mocking smile. ‘Yes, I would, actually.’ He reached out and hooked his finger inside the silk-satin rim of the coverlet which concealed the trembling rise and fall of her breasts. ‘Isn’t it a little late in the day for modesty?’
Her breathing was coming in short little bursts. ‘N-no. I don’t th-think it is.’
The finger slipped a little further down and sank into the cushioned flesh. ‘Sure?’
‘Q-quite sure,’ she breathed, wanting—no, praying that he wouldn’t stop touching her even while part of her despised herself for letting him. Push him away, she told herself. Push him away and he will let you go. Because despite the dark look of predatory intent which had made his features grow tense, some deep-rooted instinct told her that he would stop immediately if she wanted him to.
‘You see, what just happened was not the best initiation into sex you could have had, mia cara,’ he murmured as his finger dipped down and began to tease at one tightly aroused nipple.
Cathy’s grip on the coverlet loosened. ‘It…wasn’t?’
‘No.’ His palm now captured the entire heavy mound of her breast and he felt the coverlet slither down uselessly to her waist. Leaning over, he bent his lips to one rosy tip, feeling a convulsive shudder rack her tiny frame as he flicked his tongue against it. ‘If I had known…’ If he had known, he would have run a million miles away from her blue-eyed enchantment. But perhaps this wasn’t the best time in the world to say so. ‘Then I should have taken things more…slowly.’
Cathy’s eyes fluttered to a close as she felt his tongue now slide its way down towards her belly, and an unbearable flame of desire shot through her. ‘Oh,’ she breathed as he slid a slow, moist trail over her skin and her fingers drifted automatically to tangle themselves in the dark silk of his hair. Sweet sensation sucked her towards an unknown vortex as she struggled to hold onto reality. She wanted to ask him what he thought he was doing—but it felt so good that she didn’t want to risk him stopping by answering.
‘Is that good?’ he murmured as his mouth lingered against her navel—his tongue circling the neat little hollow.
Good? ‘Yes,’ she breathed.
Parting her legs with gentle fingers, he put his face between her thighs, his first slow lick producing a squirm of pleasure and a disbelieving intake of breath.
‘Oh!’ she gasped as his tongue began to move against her heated flesh. Cathy was on fire—as the growing hunger of her body demanded to be fed. And in a way, this felt even more intimate than what had happened before. The Prince kissing her there…there…how was that possible? But then she forgot that he was a prince, forgot the angry words and the accusations which had preceded this, forgot everything except the sensations which began to build and build, promising her some tantalising conclusion so perfect that she didn’t dare dream that it might really exist.
But it did. It really did. She choked back a cry of disbelief, her back arched like a bow as it began to happen and she was hurtled, unprepared—into an entirely new stratosphere. It was like slowly falling off a cliff and into a warm and soaring sea—as waves and waves of warm pleasure began to wash over her.
Moving away from her, Xaviero watched her climax, unbearably turned on himself as he watched one hand stray to her neck, as if heating itself on the rose-bloom flush which had begun to flower there. For a moment he saw her naked body shift in lazy and uninhibited contentment, but when eventually her eyes fluttered open they fixed on him, suddenly becoming veiled, as if she was remembering exactly where she was, and with whom—and uncertain of what to do next.
