WHO WAS HE?
For the first time Antonietta truly wanted to know more about a guest—or rather, she corrected herself, about a man.
Her no-gossip rule wasn’t serving her well now.
But the Internet service in her tiny cottage really was terrible.
To her own slight bemusement, an hour after her shift had ended Antonietta found herself heading out of her cottage and standing on a cliff, typing Rafe and Tulano into her laptop.
No service.
Agh!
She stomped back to her cottage and told herself she was being ridiculous. Whoever Rafe really was, it was irrelevant, given he’d be gone in a matter of days.
Yet, she wanted to know.
She was too embarrassed to ask Pino, who would generally be her main source of information, having shut down his conversation that first morning. And Chi-Chi, who usually daydreamed aloud about any male she saw as a potential suitor, was unusually quiet. Vincenzo was too discreet.
Oh, how she regretted refusing to let Francesca reveal his identify to her. She could hardly ask her for more information now—it would only raise suspicion. Nico, and in turn Francesca, were very strict about staff keeping a professional distance from their guests.
It was why she was doing so well.
A knock at the door startled her. No one ever came and visited her at the cottage. Well, except for Aurora, but usually she would text to say that she was on her way. Could it be her parents, feeling guilty about avoiding her earlier in the village? Was she finally going to get the Christmas she had craved?
There was a spark of hope as she pulled open the door. But that tiny ray of hope dimmed when she saw who it was.
Rafe!
Actually, it didn’t dim. That little spark shrank and regrouped and then reignited, hot, white and blue, as if the collar of a Bunsen burner had been altered.
‘Rafe!’
And it was a Rafe she had never seen before. He looked more like the man in the photo attached to his profile except in that he was scowling. In fact, he was smiling, making no attempt to hide his pleasure at her shock.
He wore a dinner suit, and he wore it so very well.
The first time she had seen him he had been rumpled and his hair matted with blood. Now it was black and glossy and brushed back from his elegant face.
There was still a deep bruise on his eyelid, but the swelling had gone, and he was so elegant and commanding, so unexpected and exquisite, that he was simply too much.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ Antonietta said immediately.
‘I didn’t see any signs warning me not to trespass.’
‘How did you know where I live?’
‘Thankfully there is only one cottage near the helipad.’ Rafe shrugged. ‘Or I might have ended up at Chi-Chi’s—I’d never have got out alive...’
Despite herself, Antonietta found that she was laughing at the vision his words created. The most stunning man stood at her door, and instead of being nervous she was laughing!
But she stopped herself. ‘I can’t invite you in.’
‘I’m not asking to be let in,’ Rafe responded smoothly. ‘I’m inviting you to come out.’
‘Out?’
‘After the day you’ve had, I thought you might like a night of being spoiled.’
‘I can’t be seen in the restaurant with a guest.’ Antonietta shook her head, but as one hand went to close the door her other hand resisted and held it part-way open—a kind of push-pull within her as she offered more reasons to say no. ‘And I don’t want to be seen in the village...’
‘So we go further afield,’ he said easily. ‘My driver is waiting, if a night out appeals...?’
If a night out appeals?
Her mouth gaped at his choice of words. It more than appealed; pure temptation had come knocking at her door in the delectable shape of Rafe. And yet, as irresistible as his offer was, here came the voice of reason.
He’s bored, the voice told her. You are a mere diversion.
And the voice became more insistent, rather unkindly pointing out that she was way too inexperienced to handle such prowess and likely it was not just her company he sought.
‘I’m not allowed to date guests.’
‘Who said anything about a date?’
Those eyes did, Antonietta wanted to respond. They made her feel warm, and important, and deliciously sought after.
He played it down. ‘It is dinner at a restaurant. I could use some company, that is all.’ He looked at her. ‘And so could you. It is my last night in Sicily. It seems a shame to leave without seeing some of it.’
Her heart sank at the news.
She had been told from the very start, even before they had met, when he had been simply Signor Dupont to her, that he undoubtedly would not last until Christmas Eve and would soon leave. Yet he was Rafe now, the man who brightened her day, and soon he would be gone.
Was that why she was considering his offer?
‘Where?’
‘I shall leave that to my driver. We have to try not to be seen, but it shouldn’t be a problem...’
Antonietta frowned. Why would he worry about being seen out? She could think of only one thing.
‘You don’t have a wife?’ she hurriedly checked. ‘I know it’s not a date, but...’ Her voice trailed off.
‘Antonietta, I don’t have a wife, or a girlfriend. It’s my parents who want me to lie low.’
His response gave her some relief, but also confused her. Rafe certainly didn’t look like a man who worried about what his parents thought.
‘Will you join me?’ he asked.
A night of reheated pizza, ruminating over her parents’ actions that morning and regretting her decision not to join this beautifully dizzying man for dinner? Such a night would be spent loathing her decision and her absolute inability to throw caution to the wind.
In fact, it might even become a lifetime of regret.
‘Yes,’ Antonietta said. ‘I would love to join you.’
* * *
What were you supposed to wear when the sexiest man alive had arrived on your doorstep with a driver, and was waiting to whisk you to dinner?
Antonietta had but one possibility.
And, just as she had reluctantly handed the fabric over to Aurora, she now almost reluctantly slid the dress on.
Because it changed her.
Aurora was a brilliant seamstress. The silk had been cut on the bias, so the dress was as fluid as water and skimmed her body, enhancing the subtle curves The only issue she had was that it was so strappy it showed her bra, and Antonietta did not possess a strapless one.
Thankfully she was small-breasted, and Aurora had lined the top of the dress, but it still felt a little sinful to head out without one.
There was no time to fuss with her hair, so she simply brushed it and settled for wearing it down.
The dress needed no heels, but it certainly required lipstick.
Antonietta had no make-up of her own, and so, promising herself she would replenish it, she opened Aurora’s Christmas present and painted her mouth crimson.
No, she would not save the dress for her coffin—and yet she felt like a liar as she stared in the mirror, for truly she was not the woman her reflection portrayed. She was not sexy, nor beautiful, Antonietta told herself, even if the dress said that she was.
Oh, but to Rafe she was.
Antonietta could not know the breath of fresh air that she was to him.
‘I lied to you,’ Rafe said as she approached.
‘You are married...’
She knew it! He was simply too good to be true.
‘No,’ Rafe said, ‘but this is a date, Antonietta.’
Her breath hitched and that flame spread warmth in her chest and down to her stomach.
‘This can go nowhere...’ he was very direct in telling her there could be no future for them ‘...but that doesn’t change the fact that tonight I would love to get to know you some more.’
Before she responded, Antonietta knew she had to make something very clear. She did not know his motives, and she would not spend the whole night worrying about them, and so she would be upfront.
‘I won’t sleep with you, Rafe.’
‘You would be a very boring dinner companion if you did.’
‘I meant—’
‘I know what you meant.’ He smiled. ‘Don’t worry. I wouldn’t sleep with me either—there’s far too much paperwork involved.’
‘Paperwork?’
‘Come on,’ he said, without clarifying what he meant, but she was glad she had told him the night would not end in bed, all the same.
He took her hand and led her to the waiting car, and it made her just a little dizzy that part of her didn’t want to know that tomorrow she might wake up and think this had all been just a dream. Perhaps it was.
His driver took them through the village, and Antonietta was grateful for the blacked-out windows because of the number of people who turned and looked at the luxurious vehicle. But as they passed the tiny church—the one she failed to turn up to on her wedding day—Rafe must have felt her ripple of tension.
He turned and looked at her. ‘Are you okay?’ he checked.
‘Of course.’
Except she wasn’t. Because a short while later they passed her parents’ property and she wondered what they would make of her going out on a date with a guest.
‘Don’t worry about your parents now.’
‘How did you know I was thinking of them?’
‘You pointed out where they live,’ he reminded her. ‘Forget about everything,’ he told her. ‘Tonight we escape.’
Only not quite.
They drove up the winding hillside and then down into the valley, and there was a certain exhilaration that swept through her at leaving the village she knew so well. But when she glanced behind them, the same car that had followed them out of the Old Monastery was still there.
‘Are they following us?’ Antonietta asked.
‘It’s just my security.’ Rafe shrugged. ‘Don’t worry about them.’
But she did.
Not just because Rafe came with a full security detail, but because there was clearly more power to him than she could properly define. She felt as if she had run into the night with a giant—and not just in stature. There was an authoritative air to him that she had never encountered before, even in the most esteemed guests, a commanding edge that both enthralled and unnerved her.
Who was he?
Less than an hour ago she had been desperate to find out, but now she was scared to know.
‘Do you like to dance?’ Rafe asked.
‘I don’t dance,’ Antonietta said. ‘Well, I can’t dance,’ she admitted, and then frowned as he pressed the intercom and spoke with his driver.
‘The lady likes to dance.’
The restaurant he took her to was stunning. His security team went into the trattoria before them, and she felt a little awkward when they were seated and she saw that the guards had stayed close.
‘Do they have to be here?’ Antonietta checked.
Rafe was so used to them that for a second he was about to ask to whom she referred, but then Antonietta spoke on.
‘We’re in the middle of nowhere.’
Only it wasn’t just for his protection that they were close. It was to stop diners taking photos if he was recognised and also, Rafe knew bitterly, to report back to the King.
Rafe lived his life in the presence of staff—maids and aides, advisors and security—and barely noticed them. Yet he could see her discomfort.
‘I’ll have a word,’ Rafe said.
He had several words, and none of them went down very well, for the Crown Prince’s behaviour tonight was most irregular.
Still, soon enough they were dining alone.
Wine was poured and Antonietta realised just how hard it was to be in the village day after day after day. Being away from it, she could actually feel the tension leaving, and she let out a sigh as she put down her wine.
‘That’s better,’ Rafe said. ‘It’s nice to see you looking...’
He didn’t really know how to say it—it seemed there was a lightness to her that hadn’t been there before. And he felt better being away from the hotel too. It was a relief from the constant weight of planning his next move forward.
‘I don’t know what to have,’ Antonietta admitted, but then her eyes fell on the words ‘pistachio pesto’ and her mind was made up.
‘I’ve never tried it,’ Rafe said.
‘Then you don’t know what you’re missing.’ Antonietta smiled.
They ordered their main courses and then, finally alone, they clinked glasses.
‘Saluti,’ the French-speaking Rafe said.
‘Santé!’ Antonietta said, and looked him in the eye as they clinked glasses.
He was still looking at her as she took a sip of her drink and then rested back into her seat.
‘It is good to be away,’ Antonietta admitted. ‘It’s nice not to be stared at.’
‘People were staring when we walked in,’ Rafe said. ‘Because you look beautiful.’
‘Thank you,’ Antonietta said. ‘It’s the dress.’
‘Believe me, it’s not just the dress,’ Rafe said, and he realised he was more relaxed than he had been in a very long while.
It was a gorgeous restaurant, but the atmosphere was peaceful. And Antonietta was right: it was nice not to have his minders so close. Nice to tear bread and dip it in oil and to just...be.
Here, she was no longer his chambermaid. Which meant he could ask, ‘What happened with your parents?’ And she could choose whether or not she answered.
Antonietta looked at this delectable man and, though she would love his take on things, she did not want to bring the mood down. ‘I don’t want to bore you with it, Rafe.’
‘So, give me the short version, then.’
He made her laugh. Oh, there was no ha-ha-ha, but his brusque humour teased a single note from her closed throat and stretched her lips to a smile.
He relaxed her. Even while she was nervous and out of her depth, still Rafe’s presence somehow eased her soul.
‘I was to be married,’ Antonietta said. ‘I have a very big family, across all the villages, and my father is very well connected...’ She stopped herself. ‘Sorry, you want the short version.’
‘Take as long as you like.’
Her eyes widened, for he sounded as if he meant it. ‘I’ve never really told anyone the whole thing. Then again, I’ve never had to—everyone already knows...’
‘Ah, but do they know your version of events?’
‘No.’ She shook her head and thought for a moment. ‘No,’ she said again, for even Aurora had not heard the news from her first-hand.
‘It will go no further,’ he assured her, ‘and I would love to hear it.’
‘The day I turned twenty-one I was told that I was to marry my second cousin, Sylvester.’
Antonietta had found that there were generally two reactions to this revelation—a slight grimace of discomfort or a nod of acceptance that said of course she should marry into the family, because that was where the money had to stay.
She looked at Rafe to gauge his reaction. There was no grimace and there was no nod. There was just patience.
She looked down. ‘At the last minute I decided I couldn’t go through with it. I jilted him.’
She dared not look up, but then his hand came across the table and closed around hers.
‘Antonietta, can I have the slightly longer version, please?’
She gave a soft laugh, but it was laced with unshed tears—not just because of the subject matter, it was more the bliss of contact, the touch of his skin on hers that somehow cooled her endless scalding shame.
‘I should have told him. I know that. Instead I left him standing at the altar. I ran away.’
‘In your wedding dress?’
Still he held her hand.
‘No. I pulled on some jeans and climbed out of the bedroom window. My father was waiting to take me to the church. By the time he worked out what I had done I was already on the train.’
To Rafe, the waiter coming over with their meals felt like an intrusion, and he wanted to wave him away.
For Antonietta, though, it felt like a reprieve, and her only reluctance at this break in conversation was that their hands had to part.
Then there were flurries of pepper and cheese, and their glasses were topped up, and Rafe could sense her relief not to be talking about herself any more.
He was not used to reticence.
The women he dated—for want of a better word—were only too happy to spend hours talking about themselves. Their upcoming photoshoot, their latest role, their clean and green diet, their blah-blah-blah.
And then they would casually ask if he knew so-and-so, which meant could he possibly have a word with them? Not that they wanted favours or anything, they would hastily add.
And then they would sip their thimble of champagne and pretend it had gone to their head, even as they kept all their wits about them, for this was their chance to get ahead, get seen, get a step up on the A-list ladder.
Oh, yes, Rafe knew their game well, because over and over he had allowed them to play it. And even as he told them that this could go nowhere, they countered with how much they liked him. No, no, they insisted, they really liked him. For himself. It had nothing to do with him being royal—they just liked him incredibly much...
He was bored with their fawning, and he knew that he was arrogant and not that nice—he knew there was nothing in him to like aside from his title.
He looked over to Antonietta, who gave an appreciative eye-roll that said her pasta was truly divine.
It was refreshing to sit in silence. To want to know more about someone else. And so it was Rafe who spoke. ‘What made you change your mind?’
‘I never got to make up my mind,’ Antonietta said. ‘He was the golden boy of the village.’
‘Was?’
‘He has married and moved away now, but at the time he was the star of Silibri—funny, charming, a hard worker. Everybody loves Sylvester. My father thought he was choosing well...’
‘But?’
Antonietta did not know how to answer that. She did not know how to tell Rafe that Sylvester’s kisses had left her cold, and that his hands had felt too rough. And that she’d had a sense of fear that had pitched in her stomach whenever she was alone with the man who had been chosen for her.
It wasn’t loyalty to Sylvester that halted her, and nor was it Antonietta’s propensity never to gossip. Instead it was a new layer of confusion that Rafe had inadvertently added to the mix—for she wanted his hand to close again around hers.
They were mid-meal, of course, but his earlier touch had bemused Antonietta, for not only had she liked it, it had felt like the most natural thing in the world. And touch had never come naturally to her.
‘Have you seen him since?’ Rafe asked when she refused to elaborate on what it was about Sylvester that had caused her to change her mind.
‘No. When I got to Paris I wrote and apologised. He never responded and I don’t blame him for that.’
‘What about your parents?’
‘They have had nothing to do with me since. I understand, though. I didn’t just shame them. I embarrassed the whole family on both sides...’
‘That’s surely to be expected when the bride and groom are related?’
‘Don’t!’ She gave a shocked laugh, but then it faded. ‘I’m coming to realise that they’re never going to forgive me.’
‘The question is, can you forgive them?’
‘Forgive them?’
‘Antonietta, I’m sure you had your reasons for running away.’
She didn’t answer with words. Instead it was Antonietta’s skin that spoke, as a blush spread across her chest and cheeks.
‘Quite sure,’ Rafe said.
‘They weren’t to know,’ she responded, in hot defence of her parents, but Rafe remained unmoved.
‘I have known you for only a few days,’ he said. ‘And I know that you had your reasons. I don’t know what they were, but I am certain they exist.’
Antonietta swallowed and then reached for her wine, took a gulp and swallowed again.
‘You can tell me,’ he offered.
‘Why would I?’ Antonietta retorted. ‘You leave tomorrow.’
‘That makes me the perfect sounding board,’ said Rafe, refusing to match her sudden anger. ‘You never have to see me again.’
It was, she silently conceded, oddly appealing.
‘However, if you don’t want to speak about yourself any more you can ask about me,’ he invited. ‘Or perhaps you already know?’
‘I don’t know anything about you,’ Antonietta admitted. ‘Some of the staff have tried to tell me, but I close my ears to gossip and I never pry.’
‘Pry away,’ Rafe said, for although he had done his best to maintain their privacy, there was a chance she would wake up to the tabloids telling her she had dined with a playboy prince.
‘You’ll answer anything?’ Antonietta checked.
‘Not necessarily.’ He would tell her his title, Rafe had decided. Generally, that more than sufficed.
Yet the question she had for Rafe was not about that. ‘Where did you get those bruises?’
His eyebrows rose in surprise at her question. ‘Skiing,’ he said.
‘An accident?’
‘Not really. It was more recklessness on my part.’
‘Oh. So you’re here in Silibri to recover?’
‘I’m here to lie low for a while,’ Rafe said.
‘And you’re not married?’
‘I’ve already told you, no.’
‘Or involved with anyone?’
Rafe’s jaw gritted a fraction. Couldn’t she just ask the simple question and be done? Once she knew he was the Crown Prince of Tulano this attempt at a get-to-know-you would end.
For no one really knew the Crown Prince.
‘I’m not serious about anyone.’
‘Have you ever been?’
‘Why all these questions?’
‘You told me I was free to pry!’
So he had. ‘No,’ Rafe said. ‘I have never been serious about anyone.’ He thought back. ‘I tried to be once,’ he said. He glanced up and saw that she sat still and silent. Patiently waiting. ‘Or rather, I tried to make things work. But I was barely in my twenties.’ He looked into her sad treacle-black eyes and appreciated her lack of comment. ‘I disappointed a lot of people when we broke up. Though I guess you would know all about that?’
‘Were you engaged?’
‘God, no!’ Rafe said. ‘If that had been the case there would have been no going back.’
The way he said it made her shiver. That dark note to his tone struck a warning that she had no idea of the power she was dealing with.
As delectable as her pasta was, Antonietta put her silverware down, and as the waiter removed her plate she braced herself to ask the final question.
But when push came to shove she found that she dared not. ‘Rafe, on a couple of occasions I have tried to find out who you are. But the truth is I am a little nervous to know.’
‘Why?’
‘Because...’ She flailed around for an explanation. ‘Because I don’t want to feel any more daunted than I already do.’
‘You feel daunted?’
‘A bit,’ she admitted. ‘A lot.’
‘I don’t want you to feel daunted,’ Rafe said, and again he took her hand.
‘Which is why I don’t want to find out that you’re a film star, or a world champion skier...’
She floundered in her poor attempts to label him, for she was certain he was rather more than that. She knew it from the way he held himself, and the silent command of his presence. She knew that heads had turned as they entered the restaurant, and they had not, despite his kind words, turned for her.
She looked down at their entwined fingers. Oh, it was not just his hands that gave him away, but they had hinted at the truth from the start. Yes, there really were only two reasons that men had manicures: they chose to or they were born to.
She did not want to know.
‘So you think I could be a film star or a world champion skier?’ Rafe teased. ‘Absolutely not, to the former, and I wish, to the latter.’
And then it was Rafe who had a question, and he both frowned and smiled when he asked it.
‘Why wouldn’t you want me to be a champion skier?’
She blushed instead of answering.
‘Why?’ Rafe asked again.
‘I would like to see the dessert menu,’ Antonietta said, and sidestepped the question.
Rafe left it.
For now.
‘I can’t decide!’ Antonietta groaned as she read through the menu, because everything sounded sublime.
‘When there is Modica chocolate mousse on the menu,’ Rafe said, with barely a glance at the other offerings, ‘the choice is already made.’
He gave her a quizzical look as she started.
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ Antonietta said, thinking of the purchase she had made that morning with Rafe in mind. It would be foolish to tell him, surely? But then she looked into the eyes of the man who had been so very kind to her today and it made it a little easier to reveal. ‘I bought some for you.’
‘For me?’
Antonietta nodded. ‘For Christmas. Well, that was when I thought you were staying until Christmas Eve.’
In Silibri, gifts were often exchanged then. Though it wasn’t often that a chambermaid bought a gift for a guest, and they both knew it.
She opened her mouth to say that she had bought it because he had been kind when she cried. But of course that would be a lie, for she had bought it before that had happened.
‘It’s just a small thing,’ she settled for instead. ‘A tiny little thing.’
Yet it touched Rafe.
‘Coffee-flavoured,’ Antonietta said.
‘With a breakfast banquet at the side?’ he checked, taking them both back to the morning they had met.
‘No!’ Antonietta smiled.
‘You were the only good thing that happened that day.’
‘I didn’t do anything,’ she pointed out.
‘Antonietta, I find your silence golden.’
Their desserts arrived, and with them a silver platter which, the waiter told them, held real snow from the Nebrodi range. Nestled in it were two tiny glasses of icy Limoncello.
‘Is this really snow?’ Antonietta asked, pressing into it with her fingers.
‘Apparently so,’ Rafe said, pushing his own fingers in and finding hers. ‘Not what I need after a skiing accident. It’s lucky it’s not triggering a flashback.’
He made her laugh.
And to see her laugh felt like a reward.
The mousse was perfect and the Limoncello, though icy, was warming and a delectable end to their meal. Though the night did not have to end, suggested Rafe. Because they could dance.
‘I told you, I don’t dance,’ she attempted to say. But when he ignored her and stood up, held out his hand, she decided that Aurora was right and this dress did deserve at least one dance.
Or two. For how could he be so tall and so broad and yet so graceful? Antonietta wondered as she melted in his arms.
He carried her through it—not physically, but through her missteps and clumsy efforts. And he only winced once.
‘Did I step on your feet?’ She gave a worried frown.
‘No,’ Rafe told her, and he said no more—just held her until she knew how to dance...but only with him.
He felt the tension slide out of her during the second dance, and he knew certain triumph as she relaxed in his arms. Somehow he knew this was rare for her. And he could not remember enjoying a night so much.
A night that could be considered tame by his usual standards, but by royal standards was both reckless and wild. Because she hadn’t been palace-approved, as a true date would be, and neither had she signed disclaimers, as his usual companions would.
It was uncharted waters for both of them.
The music slowed further, as if the band had heard his silent request, and now he moved her closer.
Antonietta made no protest, for she wanted more contact and she liked the shield of his arms. The heat from his palm was in the middle of her back and his other hand was on her bare arm. He did not put a finger wrong.
Not one.
Yet her bare arm wished that he would.
She could feel the slight pressure of his fingers and she ached to know their caress. She wished the hand on her back would go lower, so much so that she suddenly found she was holding her breath.
‘Antonietta?’
His head had lowered and his mouth was near her ear. His voice, so close, made her shiver.
‘Yes?’ she said, though she did not lift her face to him. Instead she opened her eyes to the fabric of his suit.
‘Why don’t you want me to be a world champion skier?’
She didn’t answer straight away, and instead swayed to the beat as every exposed piece of flesh—and those hidden away beneath the red silk—burned in his arms.
‘Because...’ she started.
‘I can’t hear you.’
Now she lifted her head, and she had to stretch her neck so that her red-painted lips were close to his ear.
‘Aren’t sportsmen supposed to be insatiable?’
‘I don’t know,’ Rafe said. ‘I have never been with one.’
She laughed, but then she was serious. ‘I won’t sleep with you,’ she said again.
It was stated as fact, yet she knew it was a lie, because she was on fire in his arms and she was weak with want.
‘Can I ask why?’ Rafe said, for he could feel her desire.
She could have told him that she was scared to, or that she did not know how, and both of those answers would have been true, but there was another reason that was holding her back, and Antonietta voiced it now.
‘Because I have a feeling that you would pay me.’
‘I would pay for your discretion,’ Rafe responded calmly. ‘Not for the act.’
She pulled back and looked up into his eyes. ‘I don’t understand...’
‘You would have to sign an NDA.’ He registered her frown. ‘A non-disclosure agreement.’
‘That’s the most unromantic thing I have ever heard.’ She actually laughed.
‘Tell me about it,’ Rafe said. ‘It is very inconvenient at times.’
How was she laughing at such a subject?
Why was she imagining them tumbling into bed and Rafe whipping out a contract for her to sign?
‘It is just as well,’ Rafe continued, ‘that I am the least romantic man.’
Except he didn’t seem unromantic to her. She had never felt more looked after, or been held with such care and skill, and she had never looked so deeply into a man’s eyes while sharing a smile.
‘But you can carry on dancing with me,’ Rafe said, ‘without signing a thing.’
He pulled her in so close that she could feel all she would be missing pressing into the softness of her stomach. His other hand was on her shoulder, toying with the spaghetti strap of her dress and making her breasts ache and crave for the same attention.
‘Can you kiss me?’ Antonietta asked, and her voice was husky and unfamiliar. ‘Without me having to sign a thing?’
‘Of course,’ he said, in a voice that was completely steady. ‘But later.’
Kiss me now, she wanted to plead as his hand moved down to the small of her back and pressed her in a little more.
He smoothed the hair from her hot face and then slid his hand under the dark curtain and stroked her neck and the top of her spine. They hadn’t even kissed, yet she was weak and breathless in his arms, and just when she thought she might die from wanting him he released her a touch.
‘Why don’t I take you home?’ Rafe suggested.
He made her wait for her kiss.
Through handshakes with the owner and then out to the delicately lit street.
Now, she kept thinking. Let it be now.
But, no.
He took her hand and held it tightly as they walked to the car.
Now, please now, she thought, with the moon high in the sky as they drove through the hillsides.
But of course it would not be now, for she did not want the audience of his driver for their first kiss, even if there was a partition.
Rafe sensed that. He had done far more than kiss in the back of a luxury car, but he wanted this to be right.
He still held her hand, carefully moving it to his thigh, but that was all. And then he loosened his grip and left it there.
She felt the solid muscle beneath her hand and of course she was too shy to move her hand higher. But there was actually no need, for to rest her hand on his thigh was bliss enough.
And then the girl with the saddest eyes spoke and made her first joke to him. ‘Champion skiers have very powerful thighs.’
He smiled. ‘Perhaps I missed my vocation.’
He made her wait even longer as they arrived at her little stone cottage at the end of a perfect date, and he made one thing very clear.
‘Don’t ask me to come in, for I might find it impossible to leave.’
‘I won’t.’ Antonietta nodded. She would not lower herself to deal with ‘paperwork’, but she did have one request. ‘Can you ask your minders to leave, though?’
She was not just quiet, Rafe realised, she was shy, for the cars were all parked well away. He was about to point that out, and even possibly to add that they could not be less interested in a mere kiss, for they had seen far more. In truth, should he be asked in, they were the men who would speak with her first and get her signature on a page.
Except it was not a mere kiss.
And he would not be asked in.
‘One moment.’
Dismissing Royal Protection Officers was not that easy, for though they were minding him, they answered to the King. And this was irregular indeed.
But in the end Rafe was Crown Prince, and when the Crown Prince told you, in no uncertain terms, to back the hell off because you were dismissed for the night, then—albeit reluctantly—you left.
She heard the crunch of gravel as the cars drove away and watched as Rafe walked back towards her—alone. She was nervous, but no longer daunted. He took her little purse from her hands and he took off her shawl. But it wasn’t the night air that made her shiver as he placed them on the stone wall, it was the thought of the kiss to come.
He looked right at her as his fingers went to the spaghetti strap of her dress. They made a new language, one without words, for as his fingers toyed with the strap his eyes told her that he had wanted to do this on the dance floor. She swallowed as he pulled the strap down her arm, and she was shaking like a trapped bird as he lowered his head and kissed the bare skin.
Oh, his mouth was warm and soft, and then not so soft, more thorough and deep, and her lips parted, and her knees did not know how to keep her standing up.
No matter, for his hand slid around her waist and his mouth worked up her neck and then came to her mouth.
‘All night,’ Rafe said, ‘I have wanted to kiss you.’
Antonietta had dreaded Sylvester’s kiss, let alone the thought of anything more. She had never envisaged that she might ache for a man’s kiss. But now, with her neck damp from his mouth and his hands on her cheeks, she was wound tight with anticipation, and desperate to know the weight of his lips on hers.
It was a soft weight, and at first it satisfied. The graze of his lips had her own mouth pouting to reciprocate and her eyes simultaneously closing. He kissed her slowly until she returned it, and when her lips parted she shivered at her first taste of his tongue.
She had never imagined that a mouth could be so sublime, that his tongue could dance her to pleasure. His hands slipped from her face and moved down her bare arms, and Antonietta remained in his kiss, felt the pleasure building. He kissed her harder, and she felt as if she were nailed to the wooden door by his mouth, by the hands that were on her ribcage and the stroke of his thumb on her breast.
It had her weak and yet faintly desperate. Yes, desperate. For his kiss no longer satisfied. Instead it shot need into her veins. And the way his hand cupped her breast and lightly stroked her felt as if he was stroking her on the inside.
Rafe wanted her.
Badly.
But she had stated her case. So he removed his mouth and looked down at her, flushed and wanting and desirous.
‘Go inside,’ he told her.
Yet she remained.
For it felt as if the sky had parted and she had glimpsed behind it—as if everything she had been told and all that she had assumed was wrong.
Her body worked.
She wanted Rafe’s kisses.
She craved Rafe’s touch.
Sylvester’s taunts had pierced her, embedded themselves so deeply, and yet she felt them lifting now.
Rafe did not daunt her.
If anything, she felt as if he had freed her.
This elusive man, who housed so many secrets, had set her body on fire.
Antonietta glimpsed all that she had avoided and all she had never truly known she was missing.
But would that change if he knew about her lack of experience?
Rafe was used to sophisticated women—something she doubted she could be. Would her innocence douse his desire? For he had made it clear he wanted no strings. And in that moment neither did she.
For the first time in her life Antonietta wanted to be intimate with a man. To taste his kiss again and to know the bliss denied to her until now.
This was so different—so new and so transforming.
And her choice entirely.
Her usual caution lay somewhere between the furthest star and the moon. She knew now how good a kiss should be, and only wanted more of the same.
And so she said what was in her heart.
‘Take me to bed.’