Читать книгу A Queen for the Taking? - Кейт Хьюит - Страница 9

CHAPTER THREE

LIANA STUDIED SANDRO’S face and wondered what he was thinking. Her husband-to-be was, so far, an unsettling enigma. She didn’t understand why everything she did, from being polite to trying to eat mussels without splattering herself with butter, seemed to irritate him, but she knew it did. She saw the way his silvery eyes darkened to storm-grey, his mobile mouth tightening into a firm line.

So he didn’t want to marry her. That undeniable truth lodged inside her like a cold, hard stone. She hadn’t expected that, but could she really be surprised? He’d spent fifteen years escaping his royal duty. Just because he’d decided finally to honour his commitments didn’t mean, as he’d admitted himself, that he relished the prospect.

And yet it was hard not to take his annoyance personally. Not to let it hurt—which was foolish, because this marriage wasn’t personal. She didn’t want his love or even his affection, but she had, she realised, hoped for agreement. Understanding.

A footman came in and cleared their plates, and Liana was glad to see the last of the mussels. She felt resentment stir inside her at the memory of Sandro’s mocking smile. He’d enjoyed seeing her discomfited, would have probably laughed aloud if she’d dropped a mussel in her lap or sent it spinning across the table.

Perhaps she should have dived in and smeared her face and fingers with butter; perhaps he would have liked her better then. But a lifetime of careful, quiet choices had kept her from making a mess of anything, even a plate of mussels. She couldn’t change now, not even over something so trivial.

The footman laid their plates down, a main course of lamb garnished with fresh mint.

‘At least this shouldn’t present you with too much trouble,’ Sandro said softly as the door clicked shut. Liana glanced up at him.

She felt irritation flare once more, surprising her, because she usually didn’t let herself feel irritated or angry...or anything. Yet this man called feelings up from deep within her, and she didn’t even know why or how. She definitely didn’t like it. ‘You seem to enjoy amusing yourself at my expense.’

‘I meant only to tease,’ he said quietly. ‘I apologise if I’ve offended you. But you are so very perfect, Lady Liana—and I’d like to see you a little less so.’

Perfect? If only he knew the truth. ‘No one is perfect.’

‘You come close.’

‘That is not, I believe, a compliment.’

His lips twitched, drawing her attention to them. He had such sculpted lips, almost as if they belonged on a statue. She yanked her gaze upwards, but his eyes were no better. Silvery grey and glinting with amusement.

She felt as if a fist had taken hold of her heart, plunged into her belly. Everything quivered, and the sensation was not particularly pleasant. Or perhaps it was too pleasant; she felt that same thrill of fascination that had taken hold of her when she’d first met him.

‘I would like to see you,’ Sandro said, his voice lowering to a husky murmur, ‘with your hair cascading over your shoulders. Your lips rosy and parted, your face flushed.’

And as if he could command it by royal decree, she felt herself begin to blush. The image he painted was so suggestive. And it made that fist inside her squeeze her heart once more, made awareness tauten muscles she’d never even known she had.

‘Why do you wish to see me like that?’ she asked, relieved her voice sounded as calm as always. Almost.

‘Because I think you would look even more beautiful then than you already are. You’d look warm and real and alive.’

She drew back, strangely hurt by his words. ‘I am quite real already. And alive, thank you very much.’

Sandro’s gaze swept over her, assessing, knowing. ‘You remind me of a statue.’

A statue? A statue was cold and lifeless, without blood or bone, thought or feeling. And he thought that was what she was?

Wasn’t it what she’d been for the past twenty years? The thought was like a hammer blow to the heart. She blinked, tried to keep her face expressionless. Blank, just like the statue he accused her of being. ‘Are you trying to be offensive?’ she answered, striving to keep her voice mild and not quite managing it.

His honesty shouldn’t hurt her, she knew. There was certainly truth in it, and yet... She didn’t want to be a statue. Not to this man.

A thought that alarmed her more than anything else.

‘Not trying, no,’ Sandro answered. ‘I suppose it comes naturally.’

‘I suppose it does.’

He shook his head slowly. ‘Do you ever lose your temper? Shout? Curse?’

‘Would you prefer to be marrying a shrew?’ she answered evenly and his mouth quirked in a small smile.

‘Does anything make you angry?’ he asked, and before she could think better of it, she snapped, ‘Right now, you do.’

He laughed, a rich chuckle of amusement, the sound spreading over her like chocolate, warming her in a way she didn’t even understand. This man was frustrating and even hurting her and yet...

She liked his laugh.

‘I am glad for it,’ he told her. ‘Anger is better than indifference.’

‘I have never said I was indifferent.’

‘You have shown it in everything you’ve said or done,’ Sandro replied. ‘Almost.’

‘Almost?’

‘You are not quite,’ he told her in that murmur of a voice, ‘as indifferent as you’d like me to believe—or even to believe yourself.’

She felt her breath bottle in her lungs, catch in her throat. ‘I don’t know what you mean, Your Highness.’

‘Don’t you?’ He leaned forward, his eyes glinting silver in the candlelight. ‘And must I remind you yet again that you are to call me Sandro?’

She felt her blush deepen, every nerve and sinew and sense so agonisingly aware. Feeling this much hurt. She was angry and scared and, most of all, she wanted him...just as he knew she did. ‘I am not inclined,’ she told him, her voice shaking, ‘to call you by your first name just now, Your Highness.’

‘I wonder, under what circumstances would you call me Sandro?’

Her nails dug into her palms. ‘I cannot think of any at the moment.’

Sandro’s silvery gaze swept over her in lingering assessment. ‘I can think of one or two,’ he answered lazily, and everything in her lurched at the sudden predatory intentness in his gaze. She felt her heart beat hard in response, her palms go cold and her mouth dry. ‘Yes, definitely, one or two,’ he murmured, and, throwing his napkin on the table, he rose from the chair.

* * *

She looked, Sandro thought, like a trapped rabbit, although perhaps not quite so frightened a creature. Even in her obvious and wary surprise she clung to her control, to her coldness. He had a fierce urge to strip it away from her and see what lay beneath it. An urge he intended to act on now.

Her eyes had widened and she gazed at him unblinkingly, her hands frozen over her plate, the knife and fork clenched between her slender, white-knuckled fingers.

Sandro moved towards her chair with a loose-limbed, predatory intent; he was acting on instinct now, wanting—needing—to strip away her cold haughtiness, chip away at that damned ice until it shattered all around them. She would call him Sandro. She would melt in his arms.

Gently, yet with firm purpose, he uncurled her clenched fingers from around her cutlery, and the knife and fork clattered onto her plate. She didn’t resist. Her violet gaze was still fastened on him, her lips slightly parted. Her pulse thundered under his thumb as he took her by the wrist and drew her from the chair to stand before him.

Still she didn’t resist, not even as he moved closer to her, nudging his thigh in between her own legs as he lifted his hands to frame her face.

Her skin was cool and unbearably soft, and he brushed his thumb over the fullness of her parted lips, heard her tiny, indrawn grasp, and smiled. He rested his thumb on the soft pad of her lower lip before he slid his hands down to her bare shoulders, her skin like silk under his palms.

He gazed into her eyes, the colour of a bruise, framed by moon-coloured lashes, wide and waiting. Then he bent his head and brushed his mouth across hers, a first kiss that was soft and questioning, and yet she gave no answer.

She remained utterly still, her lips unmoving under his, her hands clenched by her sides. The only movement was the hard beating of her heart that he could feel from where he stood, and Sandro’s determination to make her respond crystallised inside him, diamond hard. He deepened the kiss, sliding his tongue into her luscious mouth, the question turning into a demand.

For a woman who was so coldly determined, her mouth tasted incredibly warm and sweet. He wanted more, any sense of purpose be damned, and as he explored the contours of her mouth with his tongue he moved his hands from her shoulders down the silk of her dress to cup the surprising fullness of her breasts. They fitted his hands perfectly, and he brushed his thumbs lightly over the taut peaks. Still she didn’t move.

She was like the statue he’d accused her of being, frozen into place, rigid and unyielding. A shaft of both sexual and emotional frustration blazed through him. He wanted—needed—her to respond. Physically. Emotionally. He needed something from her, something real and alive, and he would do whatever it took to get it.

Sandro tore his mouth from hers and kissed his way along her jawline, revelling in the silkiness of her skin even as a furious determination took hold of him once more.

Yet as his mouth hovered over the sweet hollow where her jaw met her throat he hesitated, unwilling to continue when she was so unresponsive despite the insistence pulsing through him. He had never forced a woman, not for so much as a kiss, and he wasn’t about to start now. Not with his bride. Submission, he thought grimly, was not the same as acceptance. As want.

Then she let out a little gasping shudder and her hand, as if of its own accord, clasped his arm, her nails digging into his skin as she pulled him infinitesimally closer. She tilted her head back just a little to allow him greater access to her throat, her breasts, and triumph surged through him. She wanted this. Him.

He moved lower, kissing his way to the V between her breasts where the diamond-and-pearl pendant nestled. He lifted the jewel and licked the warm skin underneath, tasted salt on his tongue and heard her gasp again, her knees buckling as she sat down hard on the table amidst the detritus of their dinner.

Triumph mixed with pure lust and he fastened his hands on her hips, sliding them down to her thighs so he could spread her legs wider. He stood between them, the silken folds of her dress whispering around him as he kissed her like a starving man feasting at a banquet.

He felt her shy response, her tongue touching his before darting away again, and he was utterly enflamed. He slid the straps of her dress from her shoulders, freeing her breasts from their silken prison.

She wore no bra, and desire ripped through him at the sight of her, her head thrown back, her breath coming in gasps as she surrendered herself to his touch, her face flushed and rosy, her lips parted, her body so wonderfully open to him. This was how he’d wanted to see her. He bent his head, kissing his way down her throat, his hand cupping her bared breast—

And then the door opened and a waitress gasped an apology before closing it again quickly, but the moment, Sandro knew, had broken. Shattered into shock and awkwardness and regret.

Liana wrenched herself from his grasp, holding her dress up to her bare front, her lips swollen, her eyes huge and dazed as she stared at him.

He stared back in both challenge and desire, because as much as she might want to deny what had just happened between them, her response had said otherwise. Her response had told him she really was alive and warm and real beneath all that ice, and he was glad.

‘Don’t—’ she finally managed, the single word choked, and Sandro arched an eyebrow.

‘It’s a little late for that. But obviously, I’ve stopped.’

‘You shouldn’t have—’

‘Stopped?’

‘Started—’

‘And why not? We are to be married, aren’t we?’

She just shook her head, fumbling as she attempted to slide her arms back into the dress, but she couldn’t manage it without ripping the fragile fabric. Sandro came to stand behind her, unzipping the back with one quick tug.