THE DAWN CHORUS was singing when he opened his eyes and Sabrina was still in his arms, her soft body warm, face pressed against his chest. Her hair, lying in a honeyed stream down her slender back, was tangled.
The corners of his mouth lifted in a smile as he experienced a swelling surge of possessiveness that was outside his experience and a million miles from his objectivity. His smile flattened and then reasserted itself as she gave a little sigh and burrowed deeper into his chest. He didn’t want to recognise the tenderness that tightened in his chest as he thought about last night; the sex had been mind-blowing. His eyes darkened as he remembered the moment she had taken the initiative, tentative at first as she’d begun to explore his body with her hands and mouth, and then with more confidence as she’d learned to drive him to the brink and bring him back. Her instincts were incredible, her lack of inhibitions a delight.
It was just sex. So why, asked the voice in his head, had it felt like no sex he had ever known? Did a marriage licence really make such a difference? He had never been a woman’s first before—maybe that was part of it. The fact that everything was new and fresh for her and her delight and wonder…her hunger made it new and fresh for him.
He lifted a strand of hair from her face and leaned in, breathing in the scent of her warm skin until the ringing phone in the other room reminded him that this respite had been temporary.
He eased his arm slowly from under her shoulders, and, pulling the sheet up over her naked body, he slipped from the bed. On his way to the door he grabbed one of the bathrobes that were hung up and closed the door quietly behind him. The phone had stopped ringing and it took him a couple of minutes to locate it to where it had slipped from his pocket. A glance at the screen revealed the identity of the person behind the five missed calls.
With a sigh he punched in the number. ‘Hello, Father.’
* * *
Sabrina fought her way through several layers of wispy sleep before she surfaced, not quite sure where she was or why she ached in muscles that she didn’t know she had.
She opened her eyes and encountered the cobalt-blue stare of the man who was standing at the foot of the bed sipping coffee.
Her husband!
Her lover!
She cut short her sinuous little stretch, sucked in a taut breath and sat up, dragging the sheet with her.
‘What time is it?’
‘Early.’
‘You’re…’ Not naked, she thought, taking in his suit and feeling a little stab of disappointment.
‘A meeting scheduled for tomorrow has been brought forward.’
‘What meeting?’
He looked surprised by the question. ‘The geological team who did the new survey are available to answer some questions. I have to fly back.’
She blinked, her brain still not working at full capacity. ‘How long do I have to get ready?’
‘No need for that. Take your time. I’m flying out.’
A cold, resentful feeling in the pit of her stomach expanded. She focused on that and not the hurt. ‘Without me.’
‘You are not missing much, I promise.’ He put down his coffee cup and got to his feet. ‘Depending on when the meeting ends, we will meet up tonight.’
Was that shorthand for to have sex? She didn’t know, but she was concerned by how much she wanted it to be. Hell, one night and she was already an addict! It was no longer a surprise to her that her husband had left a swathe of broken hearts across Europe.
‘Last night I…’ She paused, unable to find the words to tell him how right it had felt without sounding…besotted.
‘We are expected to make a baby or two. I think we might enjoy it.’
She brought her lashes down in a concealing sweep. It wasn’t what he’d said, it was the realisation that she had wanted him to say something more, to feel something more.
Because she felt more, Sabrina realised, she wanted more, she…oh, hell, she had fallen in love with her Playboy Prince, but he was so much more. Pain and shock seeped through her, because for him she would always be a duty, even if it was one he enjoyed. At least when the lights were out and no others duties demanded his attention.
She was his wife but not his love.
‘Are you all right?’
She dodged his eyes and pulled the sheet all the way up to her chin. Was this what being in love felt like? Nerve endings raw and exposed? The stomach churning? The need to cry until your eyes were red and puffy?
If so she was amazed it was so popular, that people actively looked for it. She’d had flu that felt better than being in love.
‘Fine.’
Sabrina was a very bad liar, but, rather than challenge the very obvious untruth, Sebastian accepted the statement at face value with a shrug of his muscled shoulders because—Because it’s easier and you’re a coward, Seb.
‘I’m not really human until I’ve had my first coffee.’
The brightness in her voice sent a knife surge of guilt through him as he lowered his lean frame onto the edge of the bed. ‘I know.’
Eyes dark, wide and wary lifted very slowly to his face as she began to shake her head. ‘No, it isn’t…’
‘You’re dreading moving into your golden cage… I do understand.’
Her dark lashes came down in a fluttering curtain across her eyes; she gave something that sounded like a laugh before raising them again.
‘Palace life is restricting, but…’ He took a deep breath. It didn’t matter how many times he told himself she knew what she was letting herself in for, that they were both victims of this situation, he still felt guilty as hell. ‘Our apartments will be separate from my father and you…we…must…’
‘Make the best of a bad job. Keep busy,’ she quipped with a brittle smile as he danced around the message he was delivering: that their lives might collide and sometimes in the bedroom, but essentially they were to live their own lives. It was nothing more than she had ever expected from marriage, but that had been before she had been stupid enough to fall in love with her husband.
That changed everything!
‘That wasn’t what I was going to say. The next twelve months…the workload will be… I won’t be there to—’
She lifted her chin, her pride coming to her rescue. ‘I am not a child, Sebastian, so relax. I do not need entertaining.’
I just need loving!
‘I do not need my hand held,’ she continued, ignoring the ache in her chest. ‘And I am not going to be a needy wife,’ she promised, managing to inject a note of amusement into her voice. ‘I’m not going to ask you for anything.’
She finished saying what he wanted to hear, getting a hard look for her efforts.
Sebastian knew he should be feeling relief; instead he felt an odd sense of dissatisfaction as he listened to her list the things she would not be asking of him. He knew that anger was an irrational response but struggled to put his finger on the exact cause.
‘What if I need my hand holding?’ From her expression the unplanned question appeared to surprise her almost as much as it had him. ‘Not literally, just a figure of speech,’ he said, responding to a need to clarify his comment. After all, he had never actually needed someone…anyone.
The addition made her wonder if she had imagined the hard-sounding question. Her eyes flickered from the brown hand he had moved across the counterpane until his splayed fingertips were a whisper away from her own, before shifting back to his face. A wave of sheer longing and lust pierced her like a knife blade, causing her chest to lift as she caught her breath.
‘Oh, for one moment there I thought the story that you don’t actually need more than one hour’s sleep a night was more than an urban myth.’
He responded with a half-smile to her comeback, not seeming to notice her heightened colour. ‘I have watched your parents. They work as a team.’
She nodded agreement. ‘Yes, but that’s different. They—’
‘Love one another.’
It wasn’t his assertion that sparked her angry response but the patronising little half-smile that accompanied it, though that faded as he continued. ‘But leaving the emotional stuff to one side…’
Suddenly the anger blocked out everything. It was simply too extreme for her to navigate around. ‘As far as I’m concerned marriage…a real marriage…is all about the emotional stuff! There,’ she charged, discovering that it was possible to love someone and want to throw something at them at one and the same time. ‘Is that emotional enough for you? Sorry if I lack your control!’
The mattress shifted, making her slide sideways as he got to his feet and turned, spreading his hands in a pacifying gesture as he looked down at her. ‘I’m sorry if I’m throwing the cold water of realism on your dreams, but we have to be realistic. Palace life…marriage, if I can say the word without you throwing something at me? It will take some adjusting to but things might work better if we don’t immediately form two opposing camps, if we are one…team.’
His logic was impeccable and deeply depressing, and the only thing, she reminded herself, on offer.
She lifted her brows before directing her retort at her pearly polished toenails. ‘Who knows? Your robot logic might cancel out my silly, girly emotionalism.’ As the last quivering resentful words left her lips her head lifted, but there was no answering anger in Sebastian’s face as their eyes clashed. He looked…hell, he looked incredibly sexy and exhausted. Her anger was lost in a wave of protective empathy.
‘For God’s sake, Sabrina, I want you in my bed, not in my head!’ he blasted, then saw her expression and stopped, a curse of frustration escaping his clenched teeth. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean—’
‘Yes, you did.’ She sat there looking frozen, offended and so incredibly sexy with her honey tumbled hair and pink mouth still partly swollen from their kisses from the previous night that he experienced the tsunami of all hormone surges. It struck with no warning and the results on his brain function was devastating—a white-hot, brain-melting blast.
Endurance was the only response. Waiting for it to pass, Sebastian closed his eyes, the muscles of his throat working as he fought for control—this should not be happening. Sex should have smoothed the path; the absence of love should have meant this was easier, not more complicated…yet another occasion when theory fell well short of reality!
He took a deep breath and tried again to breach the chasm he could feel forming between them. ‘Look…’ Their eyes connected and the silence stretched, only interrupted by the discordant sounds of their individual jagged breathing.
‘Marriage does not have to conform to any set pattern. We need to set out our own rules, not conform…and we must be flexible.’ She had been beautifully flexible last night.
‘What are you saying?’ she whispered, unable to tear her eyes away from his hot, scorching stare. Her insides were melting.
Good question, he thought. ‘I really don’t know…’ he said, because this was very much outside his experience. ‘I can’t promise anything, Sabrina. I know you have dreams and…’ He gave a short laugh, hating himself and the system for all that she had been robbed of. ‘Maybe you never had any, but anyway I’m sorry that this is your life, the politics, the scheming. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I don’t want us to be warring factions, sending notes to one another through a third party. You deserve more than that.’ And more than me, he thought.
His driven words penetrated the warm sexual whirlpool that was drawing her inside, a weird but oddly seductive experience. ‘That won’t happen,’ she managed faintly.
‘It could. I’ve seen it in action…my parents…no matter what, we will never be them.’ Kill me first, he thought. ‘I’d tell you about it but maybe in the long run it will just get easier when this chemistry wears off.’
Did the fact his deep voice was actually shaking with need make his prediction any the less painful? The rampant hunger glowing in his eyes made this a question for later; right now all she wanted to do was feel him inside her.
‘But in the meantime let’s enjoy it?’ he growled.
The hungry intent stamped on his lean face made her insides quiver with helpless desire.
Sebastian was fighting his way out of his jacket as he levered his long length onto the bed beside her.
Sabrina helped him.
* * *
It was the following day before he saw her next.
In that time, he had been able to gain some perspective, and a little sympathy he had previously lacked for people who actually convinced themselves that a hormonal response was something spiritual and everlasting. It was an easy mistake to make, he now appreciated.
Of course, there was more involved with his situation with Sabrina. They were two people in a unique arrangement that very few would ever experience; the affinity, the sense of understanding, when combined with a physical attraction had, when you viewed the situation logically, been almost predictable.
Then he saw her, and the smug, comforting conclusions slipped through his fingers like sand.
‘Hello, there.’
Sabrina started guiltily, looking from him to the heavy tome in her lap. She removed the rather sexy specs that had been balanced on the end of her nose.
‘Sorry!’ she said as she stood, clutching the heavy book to her chest. ‘We weren’t expecting you until later.’
‘Is that a royal we?’
She tried to slide her foot back into a sandal. ‘Hard to be royal when you’re barefoot.’ Hard to sound as if you had more than one brain cell when this man was standing so close. ‘How did it go?’
Well done, Brina, you sounded almost sane and not sadly deluded and desperately in love.
He dragged a hand through his hair ‘I have some sympathy with the idea of being a despot…’
‘That’s because you are incredibly impatient.’ Gifted with a quick mind and an exceptional intellect, Sebastian struggled, she suspected, with the intellectual pace of a normal human being.
‘So what are you reading?’
Heart beating fast, she hugged the book closer to her chest, knowing she looked guilty as she shrugged and took a step back. ‘Just a thing…nothing really.’
He bent down to her level and read the spine, running a finger along it as he read out the title. ‘“Dementia and the Socio-Economic Impact on Developing Nations…” Wow, racy stuff! Don’t look so worried—it can be our guilty secret.’
‘Someone I know wrote it. They asked me for a review.’
‘So they are getting paid to read it?’
She frowned, wondering if that was against the rules. ‘Not exactly. I keep the book.’
His teasing smile faded as the full impact of what she had left behind, the expertise that she was never likely to use, hit home. In contrast to the knot of anger in his belly, his voice was gentle. ‘This really is not your world, is it?’
‘It is now.’ She lifted her chin and along with it any wimpish impulses to throw herself at him and confess it had been awful: the arrival, tea with the Queen and being introduced to the women who she was expected to be friends with, suitable women.
She could deal with that, but she would be the wife he needed even if he didn’t know he needed her yet… Would he ever? ‘You never said—beyond discovering buried despotic tendencies you discovered, how was your day?’
Better since I saw you.
And the shocks just kept coming, he thought, pressing a hand to the region of his chest where the pleasurable warmth had ignited when he’d seen her sitting with her bare feet dangling in the historic fountain. He lowered his hand and focused instead on the lust that had come with it. There was something delightfully uncomplicated about lust. It was one of the basic needs in life, like hunger and sleep, and he was tired. It was a known fact that exhaustion could do weird things to a man’s brain.
His glance slid to the inches of smooth calf revealed as she lifted her skirt to grimace at the inches of damp silk that clung to those smooth calves. As it lifted he saw there was still a question in her eyes.
‘Long.’ And so were her legs.
The signs of tiredness in his face intensified the ache inside her.
‘And you?’
‘I had tea with your…the Queen.’
‘And you’re not lying down in a darkened room? I’m impressed.’
‘She was trying to be helpful.’
One dark brow elevated. ‘That bad.’
‘Apparently I am meeting a stylist tomorrow.’
‘No!’
Her eyes flew up to his face. ‘No what?’
‘Just no, you do not need a stylist, and the last thing you need is to be turned into some sort of “ladies who lunch” clone, and the idea that you need a makeover is an insult.’
His indignation on her behalf made her lips twitch but also filled her with a deep sense of relief. She didn’t want to emulate the women she had met today. ‘Is that an executive decision?’
He arched a haughty brow. ‘You have a problem with that?’
She gave a tiny smile. ‘I’ll let you know when I have a problem.’ She responded to the touch of his hand on her elbow, skipping a little to keep up with his long-legged pace. ‘Obviously I can’t offend the Queen.’
He gave a laugh. ‘She has the hide of a rhino.’
‘I will see the stylist.’
He stopped and swung her around to face him.
‘I’ll just ignore what he says.’
The annoyance slowly faded from his face and he laughed.
‘It’s called diplomacy, Seb. You should try it.’
He placed his hands on her shoulders and leaned in closer, his breath warm on the cool skin of her face. ‘You offering to give me lessons, cara?’
She shivered and raised herself onto her toes and his mouth brushed across her wavering lips. ‘Sometimes,’ she whispered, ‘the direct approach is better.’
She went limp as the hunger in his kiss drove the breath from her body.
He stroked her face and felt the tensions of the day slip away. ‘You really are a very beautiful woman, Sabrina.’ She sighed and turned her face into his hand. ‘I’ve never believed that it is possible to maintain any sort of friendship with a woman after an affair is over, but we just might.’
Her half-closed eyes snapped open and she stepped back abruptly, leaving him holding empty air. What the hell had just happened?
‘What’s wrong?’
She gave an inarticulate little growl of fury and stuck out her chin, glaring at him, dark eyes glowing with angry contempt as the words fell from her lips in an angry rush. His comment had pierced the protective shell of a core of pain she hadn’t known was there until now.
‘That you have to ask that says it all! I’m not a woman you’re having an affair with. I’m your wife.’ In the act of turning her back on him she swung back and shook her head. ‘Has it ever occurred to you that you were never friends with those women afterwards because you were never friends before?’
An expression of seething frustration on his face, he watched her stalk away, her head high, her narrow back eloquently rigid. Any inclination he had to follow her faded when she stopped twenty feet or so away and paused to fling over her shoulder, ‘And, for the record, neither are we!’