Читать книгу Royals: Wed To The Prince: By Royal Command / The Princess and the Outlaw / The Prince's Secret Bride - Leanne Banks, Robyn Donald - Страница 13

ONE hand holding back her heartbeats, Lauren swung around. A large dark silhouette against the violent crimson of the sky, Guy Bagaton stood a few feet away.

Relief and incandescent joy rioted through her, shocking her with their intensity.

Guy demanded, ‘Why aren’t you staying at the resort?’

‘I didn’t have enough money,’ she told him, fighting to keep her voice level. Although he stood about ten feet away, his awareness rested like a blade against her sensitised skin. ‘Your agent is in Singapore—he’s expected back tomorrow.’

Guy said something that made her brows shoot up. ‘So what have you been using for money? The amount I gave you wouldn’t have kept you for a week.’

‘It has,’ she said.

Then her eyes adjusted to the rapidly fading light, and she gasped and raced towards him. ‘What happened?’

He ignored the bandage around his upper arm. ‘It’s nothing—a crease from a bullet,’ he said curtly. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m fine.’ Brows drawn together, she examined him closely.

He was still villainously unshaven, his autocratic features were more deeply carved, and something in his eyes—a kind of bitter determination, as though he’d kept going through events that no one should ever see—had dimmed his tremendous vitality.

Empathy twisted her heart into a hard knot in her chest. No man should look like that. ‘How did you know I was here?’

He sent her a stabbing glance. ‘It took me a while. In the end I called in a favour from someone who works in the immigration service.’ He looked around. ‘This is no place for you.’

‘Has a doctor looked at that bullet crease?’

‘Yes. She jabbed me and provided me with antibiotics. It’s barely a scratch.’ He held out a plastic bag and, when Lauren automatically took it without stopping her anxious scrutiny of his face, commented drily, ‘You can open it. Your passport is in there.’

‘My passport!’ Hastily she pulled the bag open and saw the familiar cover. She looked up again sharply. ‘Did you go back to the resort?’

His lashes drooped. ‘Briefly. It had been looted, but they hadn’t been able to get into the safe.’

The hairs on the back of Lauren’s neck lifted. ‘How—was everybody all right?’

‘There was no one there, but as far as I know, the staff survived.’ He finished, ‘The passport’s intact and unblemished.’

Gratefully she said, ‘Thank you so much. It was terribly kind of you to take the trouble.’

Yet all she could think was that it meant she could now leave Valanu—when he had just arrived. A dangerously heady enchantment wrapped her with silken energy.

Lust, she thought, yet knew she was wrong. At the beginning, yes—it had been stark, undiluted animal attraction—but now she knew much more about Guy Bagaton, and that physical chemistry had transmuted into something she didn’t dare examine. He had saved her from what could have been her death; she wished she could help him with the cocktail of emotions simmering beneath his granite façade.

She put her passport on the table, its familiar formality incongruous amongst the scarlet taffeta of a cluster of hibiscus flowers. ‘Come in—no, let’s sit outside; it’s slightly cooler.’

True, but it was also less intimate. Babbling slightly, she continued, ‘You look as though you could do with a drink—a previous guest left behind a couple of cans of beer if you want some. They’re still in the fridge.’

He said on a harsh half-laugh, ‘You’re a woman out of every man’s fantasy.’

A rill of pleasure ran through her, hotly disturbing. Getting a can, she said lightly, ‘Because I offered you a beer? You’ve got remarkably low standards if that’s all a woman has to do.’

He took it from her, broke the seal, and drank half the contents in one swallow. Lauren busied herself pouring a long glass of tangy fruit juice before turning to find him watching her with a narrow-eyed intensity that almost sent her swaying into his arms.

‘Nothing like a can of beer after a few days’ fighting in the jungle,’ he said after a second so taut she could feel its impact twanging along her nerves.

Lauren let her breath go on a noiseless sigh. ‘Let’s sit on the terrace.’

He sank into one of the chairs with a sigh that hinted of bone-deep weariness. ‘Did you have any problems getting into Valanu?’

‘At first they didn’t want to let me off the plane.’ She drank the juice, taste buds purring at its acidic tang, every sense honed and on tiptoe. ‘The fake marriage papers—and the pilot—persuaded them to relent. He stayed long enough to convince them that I was truly married to you.’

‘Beachcombers are a damned nuisance in the Pacific. Without tough policies for keeping them out, the islands would have freeloaders from all over the world preying on the locals. Who have little enough for themselves, most of the time.’

‘Your name did the trick.’ She wanted very much to know what had happened on Sant’Rosa, but instinct warned her not to probe. ‘And you can’t believe how grateful I am to you for thinking of it. I walked past the prison the other day, and you were right, it didn’t look like a place I’d enjoy staying in.’ Remembering how he’d tried to put her off going up to the village in the mountains, she finished with a hint of humour, ‘I’ll bet the cockroaches there are truly outstanding specimens.’

‘No toenail is safe,’ he agreed gravely and swallowed another mouthful of beer. The warm light of the lamp emphasised the lines engraved down his cheeks and the dark fans of the lashes hiding his eyes.

Fighting a disturbing urge to cradle his head against her breasts, Lauren averted her gaze to a sky so deeply black it was like staring into the heart of darkness. Stars began to wink into life, huge, impersonal, the pure air cutting the familiar cheerful twinkle.

Pitching her words just above the soft murmur of the waves, she asked, ‘How long are you here for?’

The silence stretched so long she thought he’d gone to sleep.

Finally, in a voice completely without emotion, he said, ‘It’s over; there’s a bit of mopping up still to do, but the preacher’s followers have slunk back to their villages and the invaders have either been killed or fled back across the border. Sant’Rosan forces are in control.’

Not exactly an answer. ‘It must have been bad,’ she ventured.

He lifted the can and took another deep swallow of its contents. ‘Bad enough,’ he said flatly. ‘About eighty people died—mostly villagers who got in the way. Crops destroyed and villages burned down, the bodies of dead children—the usual aftermath of war.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said inadequately, her heart contracting.

‘Why? It wasn’t your fault.’

After a short silence she drawled, ‘Are you looking for someone to blame?’

His quiet, mirthless laugh chilled her. He drained the rest of his beer, then stood up. ‘Probably,’ he said roughly. ‘I’d better go; I’m in no fit state to discuss life and its unfairness with a gently brought-up Englishwoman.’

‘Have you a place to go to?’ She was teetering on the brink of something that would change her life, but she couldn’t let him take his memories back to an impersonal hotel room.

‘I’ll get a room at the resort,’ he said indifferently.

‘And face a pack of ravening journalists who haven’t been able to get anywhere near the fighting?’ she returned, keeping her tone light. ‘Although if the fighting’s over, I suppose they’ve all left for Sant’Rosa. When did you eat last?’

He didn’t answer straight away, and she suspected that her question had startled him. It had startled her too.

His broad shoulders lifted. ‘God knows.’

‘I’ll get you something.’ She got to her feet, strangely unsurprised to realise she’d made a decision—one, she thought with a flare of panic, that was totally unlike her. But her voice remained steady when she added, ‘And while I’m doing that, why don’t you have a shower?’

He didn’t move. Although her eyes were attuned to the night, she couldn’t see enough of his face to discern any expression, but his stance and his silence were intimidating.

Not so intimidating as his voice. Deep and raw, almost menacing, it sent a cold sliver of sensation down her spine. ‘Not a good idea, Lauren.’

The darkness wasn’t a barrier to him. When she flinched in humiliation, he cupped a lean hand around her chin. Applying the slightest pressure, he said without apology, ‘I’m not fit company. I probably need to get drunk.’

His hand was warm, the long fingers rough as though he’d been working hard, the strength of it palpable against her skin. She said crisply, ‘Then you’d regret it less tomorrow if you start out clean, and with some food in your stomach.’

‘Indeed, a woman out of every man’s fantasy,’ he said in a voice like rough velvet.

His thumb stroked across her lips in a caress that melted her bones so that when he dropped his hand she had to grab the back of her chair.

But there was nothing caressing in the gaze that held hers. It was hot and dark and devouring; it reached into the hidden depths of thoughts and emotions she’d never recognised, never experienced before, and made her face them. ‘But I’m not staying unless you’re sure.’

Sure that she wanted to be with him? Utterly. Sure that she was ready for what might happen? No, but certain that if she sent him to the resort she’d regret it. ‘I’m sure.’

He nodded and stepped back, letting her go first into the bungalow. Lauren switched on the light at the door, and opened the wardrobe door to hand him the shirt he’d lent her so many days ago. Tawny eyes quizzical, he took it.

But when she drew the ring from her finger, his gaze darkened. Her finger felt cold, abandoned, but her hand didn’t shake as she held out the gold trinket. ‘Thank you.’

‘Is that what your offer is? Gratitude for getting your passport? Or for getting you out of Sant’Rosa?’ His tone was softly aggressive, and he watched her so narrowly she felt that her every thought was being catalogued by that keen mind.

‘No,’ she said.

Guy slid the ring onto his little finger and went into the bathroom.

He stayed for so long that Lauren, preparing a meal of fish and salad in the kitchen, wondered whether he was indulging in a ritual of cleaning war’s filthy detritus from his body.

It wouldn’t be so easy or so quick to rid his mind of the horrendous images.

She listened to the soft swish of the tiny waves brushing the sand a few feet away and tried to sort out her emotions. Send him off to the resort, common sense urged. Now—before it’s too late.

But it was too late. He’d issued a challenge and she’d accepted it. Beneath Guy’s tight control she sensed a darkly primitive hunger; remember the traditional recreation of the warrior, she thought—banishing unbearable memories in the pleasure of a woman’s body.

But she didn’t fear him; instinct told her that he wouldn’t hurt her. And she wanted him with a heated desperation that fogged her mind, turning the unthinkable into the inevitable.

Oh, she could blame the heat and danger of the tropics—the perfume floating on the moist air, a sultry, sinful fragrance breathed out from the hearts of the crimson flowers on the vine wreathing the terrace. But the tropics hadn’t produced the smouldering intensity that sent the blood singing through her veins.

Her teeth gnawed her lip as she went on with the dinner preparations. She wanted Guy, but even more important than that, she suspected that tonight he needed her.

When he emerged, clad in the clean shirt and his trousers, she was sitting on the terrace with the second can of beer and a plate of sliced fruit. She didn’t hear him come up behind her, but some instinct switched her gaze from the geckos creeping ever closer to the lamp, intent on picking off the moths that danced in dazzled swirls around the dangerous, alluring light.

Her heart blocked her throat. He’d shaved, and in the soft light he was beautiful, the boldly carved framework of his face a miraculous, exotic blend of Mediterranean machismo and the northern-European angularity that nagged at her memory.

‘That food looks good.’ His voice was cool and noncommittal.

He didn’t fall on it like a starving man, but by the time he’d told her of the situation in Sant’Rosa he’d almost cleared the platter.

When he finished she observed, ‘So the Republic was behind it. Are they likely to try again?’

‘I don’t think so. They lost too many men.’

She said quietly, ‘And if they don’t know by now that they can’t ignore world opinion, they will once the Press gets there.’

‘I’m surprised that a local fracas, however bloody and determined, was interesting enough to attract the attention of foreign correspondents.’ His tone was satiric. ‘There can’t be much happening in the rest of the world.’

‘A meeting of heads of state has just finished in Australia.’ She looked up as a plane flew overhead.

‘Ah, so that’s it,’ Guy said sardonically. ‘And Sant’Rosa is an interesting detour on the way home. As for waking the world up to what’s happening here—it’ll be relegated to obscurity once the next flashpoint explodes.’

Unfortunately he was right. She said, ‘I’d like to be sure that the hotel staff on Sant’Rosa survived. And how did the village in the mountains fare? It was right in the thick of things, surely?’

‘No. As far as I know they didn’t come off any worse than any other village. You’re not going back,’ Guy responded in a flat, lethal tone.

A cold shiver scudded down her spine. ‘But—’

‘No buts,’ he said implacably. ‘You won’t be allowed anywhere near the South Coast. It’s still a sensitive area. Civilians and sightseers—even well-intentioned ones—are nothing but a damned nuisance in a post-war zone unless they’ve got skills to help the victims.’

‘Are you going back?’ She held her breath until he answered.

‘Yes.’

Something about his intonation and the formidable expression made her say, ‘Why? What skills do you have to help?’

His left brow rose, as mocking as the smile that curved his mouth. ‘I have contacts—I know who to apply to for the kind of aid that’s needed, and I can act as go-between.’

An odd, aching foreboding clutched her with a cold grip. Ignoring it, she got to her feet and said, ‘Dinner’s ready. I’ll go and get it.’

Over the meal Lauren set herself to switch Guy’s mind away from the horrors of the past few days. She filled him in on the latest headlines, culled from the newspaper stand outside the immigration office, then skimmed over a couple of juicy financial scandals and the spectacularly spicy meltdown of a singer’s marriage.

He knew what she was doing, but he went along with her and by the end of the meal he was laughing and the lines of tension scoring his lean face were slightly less deep.

Whereas she was now racked by taut expectancy.

‘Coffee?’ she asked, shielding herself with the banal little rituals of everyday life. ‘It’s only instant, I’m afraid.’

‘It’ll be fine.’ He yawned and rubbed the back of his neck, the easy flexion of his big body sending a shivering little ripple of anticipation through her. ‘But before you make it, I’ll go and collect the other parcel I have for you.’

‘What—’

‘You’ll see,’ he said coolly.

It took him about twenty minutes, the longest twenty minutes of Lauren’s life. When he came back she was sitting out on the terrace waiting for him, the friendly darkness pressing against her.

‘Here,’ he said, tossing a parcel onto the table.

‘Oh.’ Another plastic bag. ‘What is it?’

‘Clothes.’

Her clothes from Sant’Rosa. She said, ‘Thank you. I thought they’d have been looted.’

‘They’re new.’ He paused, then said, ‘I should go.’ He spoke abruptly, the words falling stark and curt in the heavy air.

Lauren got up and walked across to the tiny kitchen. With her back to him she filled the battered electric kettle and plugged it in, then set two cups on a tray with sugar and milk. Only when she’d made the coffee and picked up the tray did she ask coolly, ‘Why?’

Guy watched her carry the tray across to the table. She walked as he’d dreamed of her in the hot, foetid jungle nights—with the lithe, easy grace that set off her long, lovely legs and the sensuous little sway of her hips that had dragged him temporarily out of hell.

He waited until she’d sat down and picked up the milk jug before saying in a deliberately prosaic voice, ‘Because if I stay it will be in your bed, and I doubt if either of us will sleep much.’

Guy regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. Pragmatism was doing its best to convince him that making love to a woman he’d forced into a temporary marriage was a stupid thing to do.

For once, pragmatism could go bury itself.

Her hand shook so much she had to set the milk jug down. She kept her head down too so that all he could see was the lovely curve of her cheekbone. After a moment she poured the milk in, then got up and turned off the lights.

In the soft half-darkness, illuminated only by the stars, she said quietly, ‘I wouldn’t have asked you to stay if I hadn’t wanted that.’

Damn it, he could taste the need, hot as sin, dangerously heady as any drug; wanting Lauren was an ache in his guts, a reckless loss of control that both excited and infuriated him.

And for the first time in his life he was being propositioned by a woman who had no idea who he was. Here in Valanu they knew him only as Guy Bagaton. Combined with the heated sexual appetite raging through him, Lauren’s offer was damned near irresistible.

‘Neither reward nor gratitude,’ Lauren said.

Was there a hint of nervousness beneath the polished surface? When she stopped a step away, Guy refused to reach out, although the muscles in his shoulders and arms bunched with the effort to keep them still. Leaping on her with famished savagery was not the way to endear yourself to a woman, he thought derisively.

He asked, ‘So what is it?’

The taut seconds that followed his question didn’t give him enough time to impose control on his more primitive instincts. He could die wanting her, he thought, grimly fighting the physical longing that undermined his will-power, but he hadn’t come here for this.

Then she bent and fitted her mouth to his. Against his lips she said, ‘This.’

And kissed him.

She tasted of mystery and delight, of sex and truth, of daring and intensity and grace. An exultant, desperate need roared through him, and he said too harshly, ‘Good, because that’s what I want too.’

When Lauren began to straighten, he came up with her in a silent, purposeful movement that sent shudders through her.

‘Like this,’ he said.

He caught her against him, his mouth taking hers in a kiss that gave no quarter. Dimly, Lauren realised that it was a signal of dominant masculinity, and she gloried in it, demanding as much from him as he asked from her, her eager body thrumming with need.

He kissed her as though she was the only woman he’d ever wanted, as though they shared infinitely more than this transitory passion, this time out of time in the empty blue reaches of the Pacific.

Shuddering, she opened her mouth to his, and relished the wild kick of passion inside her—and the fierce hardness of his body against hers.

‘When I first saw you,’ he said, reluctantly giving her air, ‘I wanted you.’ That faint trace of accent flavoured each word, intriguing and different.

‘Mmm,’ she murmured. ‘You looked like a pirate. A very sexy pirate.’

His heavy eyelids almost covered his eyes, but she could see a gleam of laughter in their golden depths. ‘You have a thing for pirates?’

‘Stubble suits some people,’ she said demurely, nipping her way along his jawbone.

He laughed again, deep and low and triumphant, and kissed the spot where her neck joined her shoulders, and then the warm swell of her breasts above her sarong. Pleasure raced through her in a dizzying flood; as he deftly untied the knot she knew that nothing in her previous life had prepared her for the ardent, honeyed recklessness of making love with Guy.

When the sarong fell away, he froze. Lauren gazed into his stunned face, and her heart tumbled into free-fall. She hadn’t known a man could look like that—a mixture of conqueror and supplicant, eyes glittering in a darkly drawn face while he gazed at the slender white curves and lines of her body.

And then he lifted his head, and there was no supplication in his expression now—he was all conqueror. Her breath locked deliciously in her chest when he cupped a small, high breast, tanned fingers shaping the pale curves with erotic confidence as his thumb brushed the tight pink bud at the centre, slowly, back and forth, back and forth, until she moaned deep in her throat.

Needles of pure desire ran along her nerves; she couldn’t speak, couldn’t tell him that he was killing her with sensation. Even her breath died when he bent his head and kissed the nipple his thumb had tantalised. Carnal sensation sparked an inferno inside her when the tight little nub peaked in a silent, evocative plea for more.

He gave it to her, his dark head drawing close. Lauren swallowed, and when he drew the nipple into his mouth her knees buckled.

Guy caught her before she fell, lifting her into his arms and stepping over the fallen sarong to carry her across to the bed. As her feet touched the floor, his free hand jerked aside the bright quilted coverlet and he put her down gently on her back.

‘Are you sure?’ he asked deeply, his gaze caressing her body, exposed now for his delight with only a scrap of cotton hiding her most secret parts.

They had so little time, Lauren thought desperately. Soon she’d be leaving for New Zealand.

And Guy? He’d go back to Sant’Rosa, and she had no right to ask him to stay away.

A smile trembled along her lips. ‘Utterly sure,’ she said like a vow.

Guy stood very still, then said, ‘So am I,’ and without haste he shrugged out of his shirt.

Her pulses drummed faster as she feasted her eyes on the clean, perfect symmetry of his body. But when he stood naked before her, her breath locked in her throat. He was, she realised on a note of primitive panic, big all over, and it had been a long time since she’d done this…

‘Relax,’ he said softly, and ran a deliberate forefinger from the centre of her breast to the soft, warm nest between her thighs. ‘I won’t hurt you.’

The path of that finger burned like a streak of fire, and her confidence returned in a rush. Her first glance had told her that he was an experienced lover. ‘I know.’

Solemnly she watched the play of powerful muscles beneath his sleek bronze skin as he untied the mosquito netting so that it fell around the bed in a billow of white, shutting them off from the rest of the world.

Then he came down beside her, dark to her light, sun to her moon, strength to her grace.