LENGTHENING HIS STRIDE, Andreas ducked into the nearby Blue Room, his blood on fire. From the minute he’d spied Clara from across the ballroom, the sophisticated black lace gown he’d chosen hugging the curves of her sensational body like a glove, he’d been deafened by a roar of desire. As he’d crossed the endless-seeming distance between them, urgency had pounded through his head. He’d wanted to blindfold every other man present. Better still, he should have called off the banquet, sent everyone home and selfishly had her to himself.
Except she didn’t want him...
The door closed behind them—no doubt Nils’s doing, so he could stand sentry.
Clara tugged her hand from his. Reeling from the loss of her touch and the tightness gripping his insides like a fist, he scrubbed a hand through his hair.
‘What are you trying to do to me?’ His breathing turned harsh as he fought for the control that had seemed second nature to him until he’d met this woman. ‘Threatening to take off that dress?’
As if of its own accord, his frantic stare traced her lush curves, the cascading lace no barrier to his vivid and debauched imagination about what delights lay underneath.
‘You should have asked someone else to dance,’ she snapped, ignoring the reference to their chemistry. ‘I told you I couldn’t do it.’
‘You did it just fine, until you stopped trusting me. And I wanted to dance with you, sötnos.’
He paced closer, catching the sparks of hurt in her eyes. ‘This isn’t about dancing or dresses,’ he said, shame thickening his voice. ‘I hurt you.’
She pressed her lovely lips together and hid her eyes from him by looking down.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I hate that I let you down over something that looks so beautiful. If I’d known how...insulting you would find the gesture, I never would have done it.’
Guilt punched him in the gut, its force no match for the arousal coiled in his belly because she was close, so close, her scent bewitching.
‘All I seem to do is apologise.’ He scrubbed a hand down his face. He’d crossed the line and been selfish and entitled. He should never have asked her to dance, because the minute he’d taken her in his arms he’d no longer been able to pretend that he had their chemistry under control. When she’d talked about removing the dress, vulnerable but defiant before him, he’d almost fallen to his knees.
But he needed to grapple back control. He didn’t want to hurt her more than he had already. He didn’t want to let her down the way she’d obviously been let down before by her father.
‘It doesn’t matter.’ She looked down and Andreas wanted to punch something—preferably himself.
‘It matters to me.’ He paced away in frustration, spinning to face her once more. ‘I got carried away. I thought we made a connection. But then you seemed disgusted by my title. I told myself I would leave you alone, but then I learned you’d been invited tonight. I saw that dress and imagined you in it and then you came, wearing it, looking stunning, the only person in the room I genuinely wanted to see.’
She frowned, confused.
‘Why me?’ she asked, as fearless as ever. ‘When you had that entire room to choose from, every other woman more on your level than I will ever be, no matter how fancy you dress me up?’
She was right: they were from different backgrounds. She had her own demons—financial strains and trust issues he knew nothing about. By asking her to dance, by dragging her into the goldfish bowl of his life, he’d surely exposed her to the rife speculation that would follow—the last thing she deserved. He’d have to spend the remainder of the evening running damage limitation—playing the playboy prince of old, dancing with every single woman in the room in order to head off the gossips and society bloodhounds who always seemed to bay for his blood. Andreas the stand-in—never more so than tonight, when his father, the man they’d all assembled to celebrate, was indisposed with a bad headache.
His first public appearance for his father and he’d messed up. But, as long as he lived, he would never regret it fully. For a brief time, when she’d trusted him on the dance floor, he’d felt invincible with her in his arms.
‘Because I’m selfish, okay?’ Andreas winced, hating that he’d made her feel so small. ‘The fact that you’re different, that you don’t seem to care about all of this—’ he waved his arm to encompass the ornate room in which they stood, the vast banquet hall beyond, the very palace itself ‘—is what I like about you. I wanted you, grounding me the way you did that first night when you reminded me that—away from perceptions and duty to my family, away from the shoes of my dead brother that I must one day fill—sometimes I can just be myself: the real Andreas.’
Clara hesitated, her stare softening. ‘And who is the real Andreas? The compassionate doctor taking the frail hand of an elderly patient? Or is he the party prince in those pictures on the Internet, invited to all the best gatherings, usually with some glamorous woman on his arm?’
‘I admit, I’ve been both in my time.’ Fascinated by her thrilling jealousy, he stepped closer and watched her breathing speed up, caught the enticing waft of her perfume that almost made his eyes roll closed in ecstasy. ‘Are you jealous, sötnos?’
His blood surged at her sense of possession. She might feel that they came from different worlds, but she couldn’t conceal how she felt physically. She wanted him in return—man, doctor and prince.
‘Not at all,’ she bluffed, clearing her throat in a nervous gesture. ‘I’m just disorientated, wondering what I’m doing here, how I should address you—or if I should even acknowledge you at all, given that we’re from such starkly different worlds and clearly have nothing in common.’
‘You can call me Andreas,’ he said, ignoring the parts of her argument he deemed irrelevant as he focussed on her parted lips, slicked by some berry-coloured gloss he wanted more than anything to taste.
Oh, how he wanted to hear his name on her lips—preferably cried out in passion. But, now that she knew his true identity, would she give him her honest desire, as she had that first night? Or would she demure like a timid mouse simply because he’d been born into an historic family, something over which he’d had no control?
Clara licked her lips, as if aware of his observation and the direction of his thoughts. ‘That hardly seems reverential enough, given the circumstances.’
Stepping closer, he drew her stare back to his, finding it full of her signature defiance. Triumph electrified his nerve endings at the resolute tilt of her chin. Clara was no mouse.
‘That is exactly why I insist on it. When I’m with you, I’m just me. You are the one person I can rely on to treat me with brutal honesty. Don’t turn on me now, sötnos, when I need an ally within these walls more than ever.’
He caught her soft gasp of astonishment and watched as her pupils dilated and compassion replaced all that fire in her eyes.
‘Why do you need an ally in your family home?’ she asked in a confused whisper, voicing the one question designed to strip him bare of his layers of armour. ‘You belong here.’
Andreas swallowed and tugged at the hem of his waistcoat, a reminder that he at least looked the part he’d been born to play. Except he’d spent most of his adult life free to live another role, to forge his own path, to just be a man who belonged in Clara’s world.
‘I do,’ he agreed, desperate to talk about anything other than his royal life with this woman he wanted so badly, he could taste it. ‘But I wasn’t born the heir, wasn’t raised for the position. So you see there are many out there, perhaps my father included, who believe I’m not fit to follow him to the throne. That it should have been my elder brother Oscar standing here today, charming the crowds and dancing with the most beautiful woman in the room.’
As the ugly truth spilled free, he glanced away from her frowning face, jealousy a hot slash through his chest at the idea of Clara dancing with the brother he’d loved. Should he also spill at her feet his guilt and regrets over Oscar’s death? His secret fear that those with no confidence in him were right because, as a doctor and brother, he’d failed Oscar so completely?
No; he wanted her too much to risk it.
‘That’s not true,’ she whispered, horrified.
‘Isn’t it?’ he asked. ‘I’m the spare, don’t forget. My father certainly made that clear while I was growing up.’
‘Is that why you refused your brother’s rooms—why you’re still in the guest wing? Perhaps you should talk to your father about this. Perhaps you’re wrong about his reasons and how he feels.’
She reached for his arm, bringing him back from a dark place with her touch. But it was too much; it caught him off-guard, the desire that was never far away since that first night a roar in his head.
‘While I appreciate your directness, sötnos, and your suggestions, do we know each other well enough for such advice? Because I might be prompted to ask why you work two jobs when one is all anyone could expect, or why you insist on paying your father’s debts.’
She flushed but held her ground. ‘Helping out my family financially is my choice.’
‘As is choosing to forge my own path rather than stepping into my dead brother’s shoes. But we don’t always get what we want, do we? Sometimes, we must be something others need us to be.’
Clara’s eyes widened, as if his words resonated deeply.
‘Still think we have little in common?’ he asked while they faced each other at an impasse, equals with, he suspected, more similarities than they had differences. Except, unlike him, she was free to choose how to live her life. He’d long ago come to terms with his...mostly.
Sighing with defeat, Andreas again rubbed a hand down his face.
‘I asked you to dance so I could clear the air,’ he said, his hands itching to touch her once more. ‘Except, yet again, I underestimated the impact of our chemistry.’
Her jaw dropped, the arousal shining in her eyes urging him to lay his cards on the table.
‘Even here when I must be on show, play this role that feels...borrowed, it’s inescapable.’ That simmer of heat in his blood he felt around her boiled over. ‘That day at Nordic Care, you said we should forget our attraction. Do you still feel the same?’
‘I’m certainly trying to forget it.’ Colour flushed her chest and neck. ‘But... I... I don’t know.’
‘Whereas I feel the opposite,’ he admitted, a sting of disappointment in his throat. ‘You are all I can think about, even when my priority should be temporarily standing in for my father.’
Her eyes shot to his.
‘I’ve shocked you with my own directness,’ he continued, determined now to lay his feelings out. ‘Would you prefer that I lie to you? That I conceal how much I want you? Deceive and manipulate you into my bed instead, as you once accused me?’
She shook her head with conviction, her stare bold on his. ‘No. But—’
‘Be honest with me, sötnos,’ he urged. ‘The way you’ve always been. Because, whatever our other differences, our bodies don’t seem to care. In this—’ he pointed between them, illustrating the sexual tension coiling between them like smoke ‘—we are absolute equals.’
She dragged in a ragged breath, as if resolved. ‘I want you too.’
The sweet-sounding words left her in a rush.
‘But I can’t lose my job and it feels...dangerous.’ Her breath came faster, her breasts rising and falling.
‘I guarantee your job will be safe.’ He stepped closer, taking her hand and placing it over the medals she’d admired on his chest to show his sincerity. ‘You have my word—as a prince, as a Knight of Varborg and a string of other titles.’
She regarded him silently and thoughtfully for long seconds, her lip snagged under teeth. Then she rolled back her shoulders. ‘No one can know.’
Andreas nodded solemnly, his pulse pounding with excitement at this negotiation of terms. ‘I never again want to hurt you as I did tonight—I hate letting people down. So, tell me what you need for this to work.’
She tilted her face up so her breath brushed his lips. ‘I’m not interested in relationships, so it can only be a physical thing,’ she said, adding another condition of her own.
‘Agreed.’ Curiosity shoved a list of questions to the forefront of his mind as he inched closer, his body restless with desire. ‘At present, I have more than enough to consider without...romantic complications.’
At some point in the future, he would need to address his marital state, settle down, find a wife, produce an heir and put the needs of the principality first. But for now he could focus on pleasure and freedom—focus on Clara.
‘A fling, then,’ he said. Satisfaction bloomed in his chest.
‘A brief fling,’ she countered, her eyes swimming with need as she stared up at him.
He nodded, already forming a plan to safeguard her privacy. He didn’t want his public prominence to scare her off before they’d even begun.
‘I have one final condition,’ he said, tugging her hand so their bodies were almost touching. ‘And this one is non-negotiable, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh?’ A playful glint shone in her eyes. ‘How very bossy of you.’
Andreas smiled. As he had that first night, he reached for a strand of her hair and eased it behind her ear, allowing his fingertips slowly to trace the curve of her cheek and down to the tip of her earlobe, where a tiny pearl earring dangled.
She shuddered and need rumbled in his chest on a stifled groan.
He stared into her eyes and rested his hand on her waist, the very air in the room seeming to crackle and hiss with electricity.
‘No more curtseys. No more “Your Royal Highness”,’ he stated, his gaze falling to the soft excited pant of her breath over those gloss-slicked lips he wanted so badly to taste.
‘It’s only proper,’ she said, one corner of her mouth tugged in a knowing and defiant smile. ‘After all, I am one of your subjects.’
His fingers curled into the fabric of her dress, an animalistic growl sounding in his head. ‘Not when I’m inside you, making you come.’
Galvanised by her low moan, he hauled her close, crushing her to his chest. Their lips found the others in a rush of desperation and mutual, almost palpable, relief as they kissed. Her curves moulded to his chest and hips in all the right places, the heat of her fanning the inferno in his veins, the scent of her a dizzying cloud that made time recede. Andreas cupped the back of her head, directing her mouth, their tongues meeting and surging wildly, so nothing else seemed to matter. There was just this moment: just a man and woman; just passion and need.
Her fingers twisted in his hair, tugging, greedy to have him where she wanted him. Andreas paced forward, pressing her against the back of a sofa, his mind and body consumed by her, as he’d been since that first meeting in the guest suite when she’d effortlessly blown him away. He fisted the fabric of her dress over her hip, hoisting the dress up high enough to slide his hand around one silky bare thigh.
‘Andreas,’ she moaned, just as he’d hoped, dropping her head back to expose her neck to his ravaging mouth.
The sound of his name on her lips was more rewarding than anything he’d imagined. Cupping one cheek of her backside, he lifted her, depositing her bottom on the edge of the furniture so he could slot himself between her parted thighs.
He grew hard between her legs as he ran his lips over her jaw, up to her earlobe and down the silky column of her neck, sucking in her scent, filling his senses with her taste, licking and nibbling her satin-like skin. He couldn’t get enough. It was as if her skin was laced with some sort of potent aphrodisiac. He’d walk away smelling of her, the scent of her torturing him for the rest of the night.
Her hands were inside his waistcoat, her touch through his shirt hot like a brand. He kissed her again, his tongue in her mouth as she dipped her hands lower to cup his buttocks, drawing his hips to hers, massaging his arousal between their bodies so Andreas almost lost his mind. This was insane. He needed to stop. But his fingers swiped the lacy edge of her underwear over her backside and sanity fled.
‘Andreas...please...’ she whispered, her eyes closed and her head back so her throat was exposed to him, already pink from the scrape of his facial hair and ferocity of his desire.
Her beauty was a painful throb beneath his ribs. The marks he’d left on her skin called to the primitive part of his brain, the part acting on instinct alone. If she kept calling his name in that breathy voice, he feared what he’d do next. Indulging in one last kiss, he ripped his mouth from hers, his breathing wild and painful.
‘Look at me, sötnos,’ he demanded, sliding his fingers under the lace of her underwear to stroke the molten heat between her legs. ‘Open your eyes.’
She obeyed, blinking up at him, her lips parted on a series of soft gasps as he stroked her over and over.
With his other hand, he reached for her wrist and pressed her palm over his erection, steely hard behind his fly.
‘Tell me we’re equals now, when I’m so hard for you it hurts and you’re wet for me. Tell me. I need to hear you say it. I need to know you believe it. I don’t want a puppet in my bed. I want you.’
She gripped his arm, her stare slumberous with arousal but alive with the sparks of fire that were pure Clara.
‘We’re equals,’ she said on a ragged breath, dragging his mouth back to hers as her hips bucked against his hand.
‘That’s right, we are,’ he murmured against her lips, against the wild kisses she snatched from him in between moans. Andreas kissed her back, the taste of triumph sweet and satisfying as he stroked her faster, sliding a finger inside her core.
‘Except,’ he said, rearing back to gaze into her eyes, ‘I’ve never wanted anyone as much as I want you.’
His words seemed to tip her over the edge into bliss. She climaxed, shuddering in his arms as he kissed her through the spasms with slow thrusts of his tongue. When she was spent, she leaned her weight against him, her face buried against his neck while she caught her breath.
Andreas’s heart thundered in his chest, his arm holding her tight. He slid his hand from between her legs and brushed down the hem of her dress, literally blocking out the sight of temptation. One glimpse of her naked thigh, a flash of black lace, and he might not make it back to the banquet where he was to give an after-dinner tribute to his father.
Just then, there was an insistent rap of knuckles on the door. Nils had been instructed to give him as much time as possible.
‘Just a moment,’ Andreas called, frustration a tight knot under his ribs.
Clara deserved more than a quick clandestine fumble. She deserved seduction and satin sheets, romance and adoration. Especially after the way he’d inadvertently hurt her over the dress. But his time with her was up. His absence at the banquet must have been noticed, and his official duties called.
‘I have to get back,’ he said, his hands reluctant to leave Clara’s waist. He tilted up her chin and pressed a soft kiss to her lovely lips. ‘I have people to schmooze, an after-dinner speech to give. Hopefully my father will be recovered from his headache and join us for the rest of the night.’
How had he completely blanked out the visiting dignitaries awaiting an audience with him as a stand-in for his father? With Clara in his arms, he’d forget his own name...
She nodded, stood and looked up at him. ‘Of course. You should go.’
She was flushed from her orgasm, more beautiful than ever. She cast her eyes over him and then straightened the row of medals on his lapel, which had gone awry during their passionate tryst. ‘There—perfect.’
He reached for her hand, raised it to his lips and pressed a lingering kiss over her knuckles. ‘It was a pleasure negotiating with you, Ms Lund. I look forward to our next meeting, more than you could ever imagine.’
She smiled, her eyelids heavy, and his breath caught. How he wished he could whisk her away somewhere private, just the two of them.
But Clara’s cold, hard reality was calling to them both. Taking once last glance at her breath-taking image, committing how she looked to memory, he tugged his jacket into place, ran a hand through his hair and left the room, pulling on his persona as he re-joined the evening’s festivities.
She was right: they were from different worlds. Hers was less privileged, but she had greater freedom. But as long as he was careful with her feelings—as long as he never again let her down, as long as he protected her from speculation, from the royal-watchers and press critics who judged his every move—they could meet on common ground as equals.