Читать книгу The Royal House of Niroli Collection - Кейт Хьюит, Пенни Джордан - Страница 38

H‘OW about we have a quick dinner at my place before I visit your father?’ Alex suggested a short time later.

‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble…’

‘I’m not quite a celebrity chef or anything, but I can whip up a mean omelette and salad. My mother always told me women are super impressed by a man who can cook.’

‘I’m super impressed by a man who can clean up after he cooks,’ Amelia said with a wry smile. ‘My father and brothers are absolutely hopeless.’

‘You have it tough up there, don’t you?’ he asked as he led her into the cottage. ‘But you have no need to be ashamed. Home is home, Amelia.’

She lowered her eyes. ‘I’m sorry I was so rude to you last night. I’m just not used to people seeing where I live.’

‘I’ve seen some wonderful mansions in my time, and, let me tell you, some miserable souls living in them,’ he said. ‘Some of the happiest and most well-adjusted people I’ve met have lived in virtual squalor. Where you live is not important, it’s who you are as a person.’

She smiled up at him. ‘So while you were up at the palace did you think about how it would be to live like a prince?’

‘Yeah, I did a bit, but do you know something? I think it would get on my nerves after a while. All those eyes watching your every move and obsequious staff rushing to pull out your chair for you, or wipe a crumb off your lap. Sheesh! I bet you couldn’t even go the bathroom without someone peering through the keyhole to see if you really are human after all.’

Amelia laughed. ‘I’m sure it’s not that bad!’

He grinned as he pulled her towards him. ‘What do you say, little elf? Shall we have our main course now or go straight to dessert?’

She gazed up at him with shining eyes. ‘What did you have in mind for dessert?’

His mouth came down towards hers, his warm breath caressing the surface of her lips. ‘How about strawberry kisses?’

‘Is there such a dessert?’ she asked breathlessly.

He pressed his mouth against hers for a moment before running his tongue over his lips as if to taste her. ‘Yep, there definitely is,’ he said, ‘and I can’t get enough of it.’

Amelia totally melted as his mouth moved over hers, his sensual tongue pushing between her lips to find her own. Each sweeping, sexy movement set her on fire; her skin tingled and shivered with the warm glide of his hands as they moved to shape her form. She felt his hands cup the light weight of her breasts and her stomach hollowed as he began to undo the top buttons of her uniform, one by one, leaving a trail of scorching kisses as he went. Her bra slipped to the floor along with her uniform, leaving her at the mercy of his hungry dark gaze.

‘You’re so beautiful.’ He almost growled the words, so deep and low was his voice as he pulled the tie from his throat and tossed it to the floor.

Her hands helped him with his shirt, her fingers skating over the buttons until it too was at their feet along with her uniform. He stepped out of his trousers and she felt the full thrust of his body against her, the heat of his arousal burning into the soft skin of her stomach.

‘Am I going too fast for you?’ he said next to her ear where he was nibbling her until her skin started to lift all over.

‘Not fast enough,’ she breathed and, kicking off her shoes, pushed herself closer.

‘It’s been a long time for both of us,’ he said as he kissed the upper side of one breast. ‘I want to pace myself but you’re making it hard for me.’

‘I can’t help it,’ she said, and started kissing his throat, hot, sucking little kisses that made him groan with need. ‘I want you.’

He picked her up and carried her to his bedroom, his weight coming down on top of her as he joined her, his long legs anchoring her to the bed. He kissed his way down her stomach but she wouldn’t let him go below her belly button. She brought his head back up and wriggled until he was pushing against her soft folds.

He wrenched his mouth off hers long enough to gasp something about a condom and she waited impatiently as he reached across her to find one. She heard him rummaging about in the drawer with little success.

‘Damn!’

‘Here.’ She pushed him aside. ‘Let me have a girl look.’

‘A girl look?’

She smiled coyly as she found a little foil packet and held it up. ‘See?’

‘I swear you must have planted that in there.’

‘I did not! You just weren’t looking.’

He ripped the packet open with his teeth and handed her the condom. ‘Why don’t you put it on in case I can’t find what I’m looking for?’

She bit her lip in sudden shyness. ‘No…you do it… I might not do it properly.’

He lifted her chin so she met his eyes. ‘That’s what I like about you, little elf. You’re so adorably shy.’

A small frown wrinkled her brow. ‘I can’t help it.’

He kissed the little crease on her forehead. ‘I’ve never made love to a woman like you before.’

Her brow wrinkled even more. ‘Like me?’

He smiled and, taking her hand, placed it on the rigidity of his erection. ‘Amelia, do you see what you are doing to me?’

‘Oh…’

‘You’re not disappointed?’

‘Why would I be disappointed?’ she asked.

‘If the rumours were true about me, you could be seconds away from sleeping with a prince. Isn’t that every girl’s dream?’

Amelia looked at his mouth, the sexy curve of his smile sending sparks of sensation right to the core of her being. ‘Just how many seconds are we talking about here?’ she asked.

He smiled and pushed her back down, taking her breath away with his first deep thrust, and covered her mouth with his.

The silky slide of his thick body in hers was almost too much for her sensation-starved body to cope with. She felt every nerve jump to attention, every single cell and pore screaming for more and more of his touch. He drove deeper and deeper, obviously trying to pace himself, but she was too greedy for more and lifted her hips to bring him closer. She felt him brush against the pearl of her desire but the tingling sensation didn’t last long enough to bring her the release she craved. He shifted position, driving forward with increasing urgency until she was almost screaming with the intimate slippery abrasion of his body rubbing so closely against hers. She arched her back and suddenly everything fell into place. He was where she most wanted him, the deeper, longer strokes of his aroused length taking her to lift-off so that her senses finally soared into oblivion.

She was vaguely aware of his own release, the deep throb of his heart against her naked breasts as he pumped himself into her, his body collapsing like a wind-depleted sail as soon as it was over.

Amelia gently stroked the length of his back, amazed at how she had responded to him but even more amazed at how he had responded to her.

Alex lifted himself up on one elbow to look at her. ‘I hope this doesn’t sound like a line from that playboy manual you referred to the other night, but that was the most amazing experience I’ve had in years.’

Amelia ran her hand up and down his forearm in a tickling caress. ‘It does sound a bit like something on about page twenty-three, but I agree, it was amazing. Certainly nothing like I’ve ever experienced before.’

He let out a deep, contented sigh as she moved her fingers farther along his arm. ‘That feels nice. You have such soft hands.’

Amelia watched the pathway of her fingers as they went towards his elbow, her brow furrowing when she came to some tiny white, almost undetectable scars on the underside of his arm. ‘What did you do to yourself here?’ she asked.

He looked down at where she was pointing. ‘Oh, that. That was years ago. I had some laser work done.’

‘Laser work?’ She sat up and stared at him. ‘Laser work for what?’

‘I had a birthmark.’

She stared at him in shock. ‘A birthmark?’ she gasped.

He gave her a world-weary look. ‘And here I was thinking you were going to be different. That’s why I had it removed in the first place.’

‘Y-you had it removed?’ she croaked.

‘My ex-girlfriend Sarah hated it,’ he said with a curl of his lip. ‘So did a couple of other girlfriends in the past. Quite frankly I couldn’t see what the fuss was all about. It was only small and no one could see it unless I had my arm in a certain position.’

‘You had a birthmark?’ Amelia was aware she was still gaping at him but there was nothing she could do to stop it. ‘A strawberry birthmark?’

‘Don’t worry, Amelia, it’s not catching.’

‘But…but you don’t understand.’

He got off the bed and roughly disposed of the condom. ‘Oh, I understand all right. I’ve been dealing with this for years. What is it with women these days? A birthmark isn’t contagious. It’s not as if any children I sire will inherit it or anything.’

‘Alex—’

‘Don’t start, Amelia.’ He rounded on her. ‘I had enough of this from Sarah.’

Amelia knew she was still staring at him but she couldn’t seem to get her voice to work.

‘Ever heard of a copper bromide machine?’ he asked. ‘Or perhaps the newer V-beam machine used in laser and sclerotherapy clinics?’

Her eyes widened, her heart starting to hammer in her chest. ‘You mean for the…the removal of lesions?’

‘Lesions, pigmentation, spider veins, sun damage, broken capillaries and birthmarks can all be removed, without trace in some instances, with laser-beam therapy.’ He sounded as if he were reading it from a brochure.

The silence that fell was so heavy she felt it like a crushing weight against her chest. She could hardly breathe for the pressure, her lungs feeling as if they were full of lead instead of oxygen.

‘S-so…’ she moistened her parched lips ‘…so what you’re saying is you…you had a birthmark and…and h-had it removed?’

He nodded again. ‘I wouldn’t have bothered except a mate of mine set up a cosmetic surgery practice with a sclerotherapy clinic attached. Strawberry birthmarks are harder to remove if they’re not attended to while the person is young. The birthmark develops nodules over time which have to be surgically removed, hence the tiny scars.’

The silence was thrumming in Amelia’s ears. Her head seemed to be full of it, making it difficult for her to think, let alone speak.

‘Alex…I don’t know how to tell you this but the prince who was kidnapped thirty-four years ago had a birthmark. A very distinctive birthmark.’

He looked at her without speaking, but she could see the way his throat tightened, the muscles contracting as if he were trying to swallow something too big to go down.

‘Y-you know what this means…don’t you?’ she finally managed to ask as a sinking feeling settled in the middle of her stomach.

‘I’m not sure it means anything,’ he said in an offhand manner. ‘Lots of people have birthmarks.’

‘But don’t you see how it all makes sense?’ she asked. ‘You were adopted—a late adoption at two years of age, the exact age of the prince when he was supposedly murdered. You even had the same Christian name. People have remarked on your resemblance to Antonio and Marco Fierezza from the moment you stepped on the island. Don’t you see it all adds up?’

‘My birth certificate documents—’

‘Birth certificates can be forged!’ she interrupted him, her eyes wide with anguish. ‘Especially when lots of money changes hands.’

‘You seem to know an awful lot about all this,’ he observed with a slight narrowing of his eyes. ‘You said someone told you the prince wasn’t murdered. Was that person by any chance your father?’

Amelia felt the trickle of ice-cold dread make its way down her spine. She had desperately wanted to protect her family from the fallout from all of this, but how could she now? Alex had a right to know the truth. He had been denied all of his other rights since the age of two when he had been snatched from his parents. How could she stand by now and not tell him everything she knew?

‘Yes,’ she said on the back end of a wobbly sigh. ‘He knows he’s dying. My brother told him of the rumours down at the port. My father wants to see you.’

Alex blew out a breath and ran a hand through his hair as he began to pace the room. ‘This is totally surreal. I can’t believe any of this.’

‘I know it must be hard for you to grasp…but it’s real, Alex. It has to be. It all adds up.’ Tears burned in her eyes as she realised that what she was about to say would permanently sever any chance of a relationship between them. Their two worlds were now even farther apart and could never be bridged.

‘You aren’t simply Dr Alex Hunter, the visiting surgeon from Australia.’ She took a scalding breath and continued, ‘You are His Royal Highness Prince Alessandro Fierezza of Niroli, the next in line to the throne.’