make it up to you tonight.”
“How?” she stammered.
He stepped back, his gaze still intensely upon her. She felt butterflies in her stomach and nervously drank the rest of the delicious raspberry-infused champagne. But the butterflies only increased. Xerxes silently refilled her champagne with a sensual promise in his dark gaze.
Then he left her, going into the adjacent white marble bathroom, with its bathtub built for two that overlooked the moonlit sea. He turned on the faucet, starting a hot, steamy bath, filling it with fragrant bubble bath.
“It’s ready,” he whispered, pulling her to her feet. She gripped his hand, feeling a little unsteady.
He pulled her into the elegant bathroom. Still holding her champagne flute, which had somehow been refilled again, she looked down at the enormous bathtub full of bubbles. Beyond it, an enormous open window overlooked the moonlit Indian Ocean. She felt the warm breeze off the lanai. Warm steam and the scent of exotic, spiced flowers filled the room.
She felt his touch move like silk against her waist as he opened the belts that held the two gauzy robes to her body. He dropped first one robe, then the other, to the marble floor.
Xerxes towered over Rose as he looked down at her, his eyes slowly tracing her body as she stood nearly naked in her pale pink bikini. He gave her a dark, sensual smile and a flash of heat raced over her body, causing a bead of sweat to break out between her breasts. What was his electricity that made her so weak, that left her shaking from the inside out?
The smile dropped from his sensual mouth.
“Take off your bikini,” he whispered.
Without thinking, she reached up for the tie behind her neck. Then she realized what she was doing. She dropped her hand.
“I can’t,” she stammered. “Not with you right here.”
“I’ll turn around.”
She had a sudden view of his broad-shouldered back in the form-fitting T-shirt as he turned around. She stared at his form, his slim hips in his jeans, the hard-muscled curve of his backside.
“Done?” he said without turning around.
With a jolt, she put her hands unsteadily to her head. Had she been ogling him? The bubbles of the champagne made her feel so strangely unlike herself.
But it wasn’t just the champagne. She looked back at the fragrant, steaming bubble bath. She knew she should leave this room at once. She should tell Xerxes she had no interest in champagne or warmth or bubbles. She should go back into the bedroom alone and close the door. That was the sensible thing to do.
But she suddenly didn’t want to be sensible.
She’d spent twenty-nine years waiting for her prince to come, saving herself for a man she could love forever. But what if he wasn’t coming? What if, as Xerxes had said, her knight in shining armor did not even exist? What if she’d wasted all her youth yearning for a romantic dream that would never happen?
She was tired of being the girl who was always alone. Always waiting, as locked away from pleasure as any sleeping princess in a glass coffin.
Rose took a haggard breath. If she could not have the romantic dream everyone else in her family had, she would take what joy she could in the life that was left to her. She would take risks. She would be bold.
Slowly, Rose untied her bikini top and dropped it to the floor. She untied the bottom and kicked it away. Climbing naked into the bathtub, she sank beneath the fragrant white bubbles. Closing her eyes, holding her breath, she slid all the way down beneath the water.
When she rose up from the bath a moment later, her hair soaking wet, she felt reborn.
She heard a choked gasp behind her.
Xerxes was now standing by the bathtub, staring down at her. Following his eyes, she saw rivulets of water running between her breasts, saw her nipples flushed deep pink. They pebbled beneath his gaze.
With a gasp, she sank into the water, covering her body with thick white bubbles.
“You said you would turn around!” she said.
He gave a low laugh. “I never said I wouldn’t turn back.” He sat on the edge of the large tub and looked down at her. “You are so beautiful,” he whispered, running his hand along her naked shoulder, visible above the bubbles. “The most magnificent woman I’ve ever seen.”
She blushed. “You’re just tipsy on champagne.”
“I haven’t had any champagne.”
She blinked, glancing at the nearly empty bottle next to the bathtub. Who’d drunk all that, then? By the way her body felt pleasantly separated from her brain, the answer was appallingly clear. She shook her head. “You…are you trying to…”
“To what?”
“Get me drunk?” she blurted out.
His sensual mouth curved. “Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “You tell me.”
He stroked her water-slicked blond hair curling over her collarbone. She looked up at him breathlessly, her neck tilting back. He leaned over her, his lips inches from hers. Her mouth inched toward his, wanting him to kiss her. Willing him to kiss her.
“Turn around,” he ordered, and without thought she obeyed, turning her face toward the window.
She felt his hands fall heavily on her naked shoulders. He began to slowly rub circles into the overwrought muscles of her neck and shoulders. She closed her eyes. It was bliss. It was heaven. It was…
Dangerous.
“So you think I am going to all this effort to seduce you,” he said quietly.
Hearing him actually speak the words made her fears seem ludicrous. He was a powerful, ruthless millionaire with the world at his fingertips. And he’d told her he loved another woman—someone he intended to trade for Rose. She was just his captive, his pawn. Why would he go to such effort to seduce Rose, the ex-girlfriend of his enemy, a waitress and twenty-nine-year-old nobody? Her cheeks became hot. “I know that sounds ridiculous.”
“You’re right,” he said quietly. “I am going to seduce you.”
Her eyes flew open. As he continued to sensually rub her neck and shoulders, she stared wide-eyed out the window. In the silence, she saw the slender black silhouettes of palm trees swaying in front of the brilliant white clouds lit up by the moon, saw the stars twinkling in the night.
She felt the intense pleasure of his touch. Felt his strength. Felt his power.
When he leaned over her, she felt his breath against the crook of her neck, then his lips brushed the tender flesh of her earlobe.
“I want you.” The whisper of his lips against her skin caused a sizzle of fire down her body. “And I intend to do everything I can to win you.”
She
