Читать книгу His to Command: the Housekeeper - Sharon Kendrick - Страница 11

CATHY shrank back against the pillows, her heart sinking as she stared up at the darkened fury of the Prince’s features. ‘I’ve done something wrong?’ she questioned, her voice shaking with bewilderment.

‘Wrong? Oh, please don’t play the innocent with me!’ Xaviero snarled, until the irony of his words hit him. Because she was innocent, or, rather, she had been—until about five minutes ago. But now he realised that a woman could be innocent in the physical sense while having the most devious of motives. And there he had been—imagining that she was a sweet little thing who had desired him as a man more than she had desired him as a royal. As if!

How could he have been such a fool not to have seen through her? To have realised that he was being lured into the oldest trap of all. Because she had misled him, that was why. And so cleverly, too—those big aquamarine eyes clearly concealing a scheming brain, that voluptuous body luring him with its seductive promise. His fist clenched with impotent fury. ‘Did you lie about having a fiancé?’

‘No!’ she protested. ‘I did have one!’

‘Then how can you still be a virgin if you were engaged to be married?’ he flared. ‘I know that nobody waits until their wedding day any more—well, certainly not in the world which you inhabit!’

Cathy saw the contempt which had twisted his sensual lips, and flinched at how little he obviously thought of her. Oh, what a fool she had been. What a stupid little fool. Her greatest gift and she had given it to a man who had thrown it back in her face as if it had been a dirty rag. Her virginity treated with the contempt with which he might have viewed the bargain-basket at the supermarket. Except that she doubted this man had ever been near a supermarket in his life.

‘As a matter of fact, he said he thought we should wait until we were married!’ she objected heatedly.

‘And you—a woman who turns on as quickly as you do—you were happy to wait?’he demanded, in disbelief.

‘Well, yes! Actually, I was.’ With Peter waiting had never been a problem and in view of his job it had been more than appropriate. ‘He wasn’t like you,’ she finished miserably.

‘Nobody is like me,’ he qualified arrogantly, before his features darkened even more. ‘I have been duped,’ he grated.

Cathy stared at him. Wasn’t he forgetting something? ‘And what about me?’ she whispered. ‘You duped me, too, didn’t you? Pretending to be a painter and decorator! What was that all about?’

But he was not listening, his mind working overtime—until the realisation of what must have happened hit him like a dull blow in the solar plexus. He thought of the Englishman, Rupert. The way she had whirled away from him when he had entered the hotel that morning. Surely he was not the fiancé?

‘It is this…this…Rupert?’ he accused hotly.

For a moment Cathy stared at him in complete puzzlement. ‘What is?’

‘He was the man you were to have married?’

‘No!’ she protested, appalled. ‘My fiancé was a trainee clergyman,’ she added, though this added piece of information seemed to make him even angrier.

Xaviero’s eyes narrowed. Then what the hell was going on—were she and the hotel owner colluding? Had he convinced this little chambermaid to seduce him for his own nefarious purpose? But there was no way he could possibly interrogate her when she was lying there so bare and so beautiful. ‘Cover yourself up!’ he demanded hotly.

Cathy wondered if he meant for her to start dressing and she went to get off the bed when something in her movement made his face darken again and he bent and picked up the silky coverlet which must have slipped to the ground during their love-making. Love-making, she thought in revulsion as she hastily caught the coverlet he tossed towards her, and hauled it over her body. The last word you could ever apply to what had just happened was love.

Xaviero drew a deep breath as he looked at her, at the pale hair beginning to fall out of the pins which constrained it—thinking that he had been so eager to possess her that he hadn’t even got around to letting it spill over her magnificent breasts. A pulse flickered at his temple. ‘Okay,’ he said steadily. ‘Let’s just get it out of the way. Tell me what it is you want?’

‘What I w-want?’

‘You heard me!’

She stared at him. What she wanted was to be rid of this terrible feeling that she had just made the biggest mistake of her life. Or for the last ten minutes not to have happened and for him to come back and start kissing her again. But she suspected that neither of those options was going to happen. ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about.’

Xaviero looked at her disbelievingly. Had he believed those eyes to be so guileless, her passion to be so sweet, because he had wanted to believe it? But he came from a world where virginity was highly prized—an old-fashioned royal essential to ensure the pure continuation of his ancient bloodline. And he could not believe that any woman would have given it away so carelessly unless she had some kind of separate agenda.

‘You must want something to have behaved so impetuously,’ he snapped. ‘Did you collude with your boss? Provide the irresistible bait with your too-tight uniform and your over-made-up eyes? Knowing all the obvious ploys which will hook in a man. Yet I knew all that, and still I fell for it,’ he added bitterly. ‘Because sexual hunger has made fools of men since the beginning of time.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Cathy again, beginning to grow a little bit angry now. Yes, he was a prince and yes, he seemed genuinely shocked that she had been a virgin—but everything was about him, wasn’t it? Him, him, him! Didn’t he stop to think for a moment about how she was feeling right now? Foolish and empty and aware that she had been carried away by a hopeless fantasy that there was a spark of something real between her and the golden-eyed man. Something which had begun the very first time she’d seen him. Inexperience had made her attribute the passion of his kiss to something more than mere lust. So hadn’t she been the fool, not him?

Clutching onto the silken coverlet, she lifted her chin. ‘Why on earth should I want to collude with Rupert?’

‘To negotiate a better price?’ he returned, golden eyes lancing into her.

For a moment the room seemed to sway and Cathy felt sick. ‘To negotiate a better price?’ she echoed in disbelief. Surely—oh, please, no—surely he wasn’t implying that she was selling herself. She swallowed down the acrid taste in her throat. ‘A better price for what?’

‘For the hotel, of course,’ he snapped.

There was an odd, debilitating kind of silence. A moment when it seemed to her that everything which was dark in the world had formed itself into a horrible, tight little ball and been hurled, hard—at her stomach. ‘For the hotel?’ she whispered.

There was a pause. ‘He hasn’t told you?’

‘Told…told me what?’

‘That he’s selling?’ His eyes narrowed as he saw her face blanch. ‘No, clearly he hasn’t.’

‘To…you?’

Xaviero gave a grim kind of smile. ‘Of course to me.’

Through the series of befuddled impressions which began ricocheting through her mind, Cathy’s overriding thought was that she would have to leave now. She would have to. Prince Xaviero as her boss? How could she bear it? But then she met the cold, metallic gleam of his golden eyes and wondered who on earth she thought she was kidding. As if a man who had made his contempt for her so apparent would ever keep her on the payroll.

But something didn’t make sense to her. She knew that princes in modern times had ‘normal’ careers—but this? She tried to imagine him doing a stocktake of the cellar—or taking the chef to task when he had one of his periodical tantrums.

‘You mean…you’re going to be a hotelier?’ she questioned, mystified.

There was a moment of stunned silence before Xaviero gave an arrogant laugh, knowing that he should have been outraged at her suggestion and yet, in a way, didn’t it make walking away from her not just easy—but necessary? Because her ridiculous question had simply confirmed that he could not have picked a more unsuitable lover if he had searched to the ends of the earth to find one.

‘You can see me—running a hotel such as this?’ he mocked.

Now he came to mention it, no, she couldn’t—but something in his contemptuous attitude stabbed even harder 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.

There was a moment’s silence.

‘You liked that,’ he observed eventually, swallowing down the sudden lump in his throat.

Still dazed and confused by the intense experience, Cathy shook her head.

‘You didn’t?’ he murmured mockingly.

‘Oh, yes, I did—of course I did.’ She wanted to fling her arms around his neck. She wanted to cover him with a million little kisses of gratitude for making her feel that way, but she didn’t dare. ‘It was…oh, it was the most incredible experience of my entire life.’

He smiled. Her unqualified praise was rather touching, because all women thought it—even if few were gauche enough to express it so fulsomely. ‘That is what was making you so…argumentative,’he observed reflectively. ‘You should have an orgasm every time you have sex.’

Cathy cringed, the baldness of his statement shocking her—though not quite enough to pull away from his embrace—telling herself that at least nobody could accuse him of being a hypocrite. And then her attention was caught by the unmistakably hard outline which was apparent beneath the rich fabric of his satin robe and as their eyes met in silent acknowledgement she found herself blushing.

‘Yes,’ he agreed, as if responding to an unspoken question. ‘I want you very much indeed—but I have to be at a meeting in…’ he flicked an impatient glance up at the clock which hung over the beautiful marble fireplace ‘…just under an hour…’ his voice lowered ‘…which means there won’t be enough time.’

He thought that if she had been more experienced there would have been plenty of time. By now she would have taken the initiative and he would have loved nothing more than to see her on her knees in front of him. Pleasuring him with her lips while he tangled his fingers in the pale silk of her hair and fulfilled the very first fantasy he’d ever had about her.

And that was when a solution presented itself to him—a solution so perfectly simple he was amazed he had taken so long to getting around to it. One which would please and satisfy them both—but would also wipe the slate clean.

Because in a crazy way, he felt responsible for what had just happened. He would never have taken her so swiftly and perfunctorily if he had known she was an innocent. To be truthful, he would not have taken her at all. But he had and—while he had just shown her how pleasurable certain aspects of sex could be—she still had a lot to learn. And shouldn’t he be the one to teach her? Might that not more than compensate for the fact that he had unwittingly taken her virginity?

Abruptly, he turned his back on her—went to look out over the sweeping grounds. He noticed that the lawns which swept down to the lake were ragged at the edges, and that the lake itself looked clogged with debris. Encroaching weeds had made a mockery of the flowerbeds and some had even disappeared completely.

Had he been crazy to come up with this scheme—to uproot his New York life and establish himself in a brand-new part of the world? Yet his father’s death had unsettled him—made him aware of the impermanence of life and the need to chase your dreams.

Turning back to face her, he was aware that at least his arousal had subsided and was grateful for the fact that she had grabbed the coverlet and had slithered it over the enticement of her curves.

‘I need to get showered and dressed,’ he said shortly.

Hearing the abrupt note of dismissal in his voice, Cathy eyed her discarded uniform doubtfully, realising that she was going to have to leave here in a completely dishevelled state. What if she bumped into one of the other staff—how on earth would she be able to explain her appearance? ‘I’ll—’

‘You can use the bathroom after me,’ he said. With an effort, he flicked her a glance—barely able to look at her tousled golden beauty lest it make him break his resolve and go over there and ravish her. He smiled with predatory pleasure. ‘And I want you to be ready at eight tonight,’ he added softly.

Cathy’s heart missed a beat; she thought she must be imagining things. Was he asking her out on a date? ‘To-night?’

‘That’s right. There’s a party at the polo club—what they’re calling a low-key celebration of my successful takeover—and you’re coming with me.’

She stared at him incredulously. ‘B-but, why? I mean, why me?’

His eyes narrowed. Was she really as disingenuous as she seemed? Didn’t she realise that even a man of his calibre found her tight, lush body irresistible? Up until now those sinful curves had been woefully under-used—but not for much longer.

‘These occasions are always easier if you have someone beside you to deflect some of the inevitable attention—and also, I intend taking you to bed afterwards,’ he drawled, and his eyes glittered her a silent, sensual message. ‘But neither of us should forget that you are completely untutored—and royal princes expect their mistresses to be skilful.’

Cathy’s pulse rocketed as one word reverberated over and over again. ‘Mistress?’ she gasped.

‘I rather think what we’ve just been doing qualifies you for the role, don’t you, Cathy?’

‘I… I don’t know what to say,’ she breathed.

‘Then say nothing. Women usually say far too much when they would be better remaining silent and simply looking beautiful.’ He glittered her a look. ‘And beauty is marred by too much make-up—so please don’t wear quite so much in future because I can assure you that I don’t find it attractive.’

‘That was…that was Rupert’s idea,’ she blurted out.

‘Oh, was it?’ he questioned thoughtfully as he studied the too-sooty eyes and suddenly her tarty transformation began to make sense. What a creep the Englishman was! ‘Well, from now on—you will take instruction only from me in the best way to present yourself as my mistress. You show great potential for the position, cara mia. I should never have taken your virginity—indeed, you are the only virgin I have ever bedded—and that cannot now be undone. But perhaps I can in some way redress the balance.’

Cathy stared at him, her heart pounding wildly, her mouth drying. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Why, in return for having robbed you of your innocence, I intend teaching you everything I know about the art of love-making.’ He gave a slow and provocative smile. ‘And that way, we can call it quits.’