Royals: Claimed By The Prince: The Heartbreaker Prince / Passion and the Prince / Prince of Secrets. PENNY JORDANЧитать онлайн книгу.
her! Like an angry curtain, the protective veil of her lashes lifted, but her militant response was delayed as their glances connected and the subsequent sensual jolt caused her brain to stall.
‘I if...I...?’
The nerve endings in her brain might have stopped sending messages, but during that long, nerve-shredding pause those elsewhere had stepped up to fill the vacuum. She could almost feel the blood racing through her veins—it felt dark and hot like the ache low in her pelvis. She snatched a breath, let it out in a quivering sigh, and lifted her chin.
‘Yes, it is, and,’ she added, wagging her finger as she took a squelchy step towards him, ‘if you want to know about the damned guest list why ask me? Ask Dad. I probably know half a dozen people here by first name. You’re the one in the loop. I’m here to smile and take one for the team.’
‘Take one for the team?’
‘What else would you call it?’ His outrage struck her as the height of hypocrisy. ‘Apologies to your ego, but don’t expect me to pretend I like the situation when we’re alone!’
‘No. You’ll just pretend you haven’t thought about what it will be like.’
‘What what would be like?’
His slow predatory smile sent a pulse of sexual heat through her body.
‘Oh, that.’ She faked amusement to cover her embarrassment. ‘Now? Here?’ She laughed a high-pitched laugh. ‘Has anyone ever mentioned your awful timing?’
‘Actually, no.’
She swallowed hard, thinking, That I can believe. ‘Silly me! Of course, even if you were lousy in bed they’d still tell you how marvellous you were because you’re—’ She broke off and finished lamely, ‘You’re...a prince.’
‘You’re a princess.’
‘What?’
‘You’re a princess.’
As in dignified, serene, gracious, aloof...qualities that when she’d been plain old Hannah Latimer she’d had in abundance. Now she was the real deal—a real princess—she’d turned into some sort of fishwife!
It isn’t me, it’s him, she thought, levelling a look of breathless resentment up at his impossibly handsome face. He was the one who was making her act this way, the one who was making her feel...out of control. Because of him she was saying the first thing that popped into her head. She’d lost every vestige of mental censorship; she was saying things she didn’t know she felt...
‘Oh, God!’ Without warning, the adrenalin wave that she’d been riding suddenly broke and she started shaking.
Watching her wrap her arms around herself, an action that didn’t disguise the fact she was shaking like a leaf, Kamel felt a sharp stab of guilt. ‘You’ve had a bad experience.’ A fact he was a little late acknowledging.
She slung him a look. Anybody hearing him would think he gave a damn. ‘I’m fine. Look, it was handy you turned up when you did.’ He was the last person in the world she would have wanted to see her in that position, but that didn’t alter the fact she had needed saving. ‘And if the opportunity ever arises and some ex-girlfriend of yours comes to scratch your eyes out I’ll return the favour.’ By the time the last syllable had left her lips Hannah was utterly drained; her ironic smile was not weak, it was non-existent.
‘So you will rescue me?’ He was torn between amusement, astonishment and an uncharacteristic impulse that he firmly quashed. Comforting embraces were so not his style.
She felt the colour rush to her cheeks. ‘You think that’s funny because I’m a woman.’ Hopping on one foot while she bent to try and retrieve the shoe that had been sucked into a patch of mud, she turned her head and threw him a look of frowning dislike. ‘You going to stand there and watch?’
He held up his phone, his eyes trained on her bottom, the firm, curvy outline very clear against the silk of her gown. ‘That really is a good look for you!’
‘You dare!’ she growled.
Still grinning—the grin made him look normal and nice and far too good-looking—he shrugged and slid the phone back into his pocket before he bent and grabbed the protruded strap of her shoe. It came free with a massive slurping sound.
‘Well, Cinderella, you can go to the ball but I don’t think that you’re going to be doing much dancing in this,’ he said, shaking free the larger dollops of mud that clung to the heel. His brows suddenly lifted.
‘What?’
‘I never realised,’ he said, his glance transferring from the wrecked shoe to her foot and back again, ‘that you actually have really big feet.’
Hannah’s jaw dropped.
‘As for women being weaker...Have you ever seen a tigress protecting her young?’ It was not the image of a tigress that formed in his mind, though. It was Hannah with a baby in her arms at her breast.
‘I suppose you have.’ There was an air of resignation in her response. He’d done all the things she hadn’t... An image that she had seen in a magazine during her last hairdresser’s appointment superimposed itself over his face: the gorgeous scantily clad model strutting her stuff at a red-carpet event while her escort looked on indulgently.
‘I have no doubt that a woman can be fierce in defence of what she considers hers.’
‘You’re not mine,’ she blurted, embarrassed by the suggestion and slightly queasy. In her head the damned supermodel was now doing things to the man she had married that Hannah knew she never could...which was a good thing, she reminded herself.
‘And I’m not fierce. I’m...I just like to pay my debts.’
‘And you shall.’
Promise, threat...Hannah was beyond differentiating between the two even in her own head. ‘By having sex with you?’
Anger drew the skin tight across his hard-boned features. ‘I have no intention of negotiating sex with my own wife,’ he asserted proudly.
‘You think I’m going to have sex with a man I don’t like or respect?’ She barely spoke above a whisper but her low voice sounded loud in the charged silence.
‘You don’t have to respect or like someone to want to rip off their clothes.’
‘My God, you do love yourself.’
‘This isn’t love, but it is a strong mutual attraction.’
Heart thudding, she dodged his stare and snatched the shoe from him, grimacing as she slid her foot back in. ‘Thank you.’ She managed two steps before the heel snapped and threw her off balance. The jolt as she struggled to stay upright caused her chignon to come free, effectively blinding her. She took several more lopsided strides forward before she stopped and swore.
Throwing him a look that dared him to comment, she took off both shoes and threw them in a bush. Hitching her skirt a little higher, she continued barefoot, feeling his eyes in her back.
‘Go on, say it!’ she challenged him.
‘Say what?’
‘Say whatever sarcastic little gem you’re just aching to say. Go ahead,’ she said, opening her arms wide in invitation. ‘I can take it.’
Their eyes connected and her challenging smile vanished. She dropped her arms so fast she almost lost her balance. She would have lowered her gaze had his dark, glittered stare not held her captive. The silence settled like a heavy velvet blanket around them. She had to fight for breath and fight the weird compulsion that made her want to...
‘You want to take me, ma belle?’ His eyes cancelled out the joke in his voice.
She could feel the heat inside her swell and she thought, Yes, I do. ‘You can’t say things like that