The Mediterranean Prince's Passion (The Royal House 0f Cacciatore Book 1) Read online

  The words were flirty, and almost imperceptibly something in the atmosphere changed and then intensified. A blurry sexual awareness that had been there all the time was now brought into sharp focus. Ella felt the warm tongue of desire licking its way over her skin and the heated clamour of her response. She found that she didn’t dare look at him—and yet where else was there to look? The room was so small, and he was so…so…

  She swallowed, her mouth as dry as the sun-baked sand outside. ‘Maybe I should think about getting home,’ she said quietly.

  Nico had watched her body tense, and then seen the wary look that crept into her eyes. He forced himself to steel against the demands of his hungry body, aware that he could frighten her away. Because sex was easy. He could get sex any time he wanted. But not a unique situation like this. And what would sex be like with a woman who didn’t know?

  ‘Not yet.’ His dark eyes on her face, he took a mouthful of wine. ‘You still haven’t told me anything about you.’

  ‘Well, you know my name. And I’m twenty-six and I was born in Somerset.’ Her eyes mocked him. ‘So now you know everything about me, too.’

  ‘Everything and nothing.’ He echoed her sardonic words. ‘And what of the men on board—one of them is your lover, perhaps?’

  Ella found her cheeks colouring. ‘You can’t just come out and ask me something like that!’ she protested.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I thought we were sitting here having a polite conversation, and that sort of question breaks all the rules!’

  ‘A polite conversation?’ he murmured. ‘Oh, I think not, cara mia. When a man and a woman talk together there is always an internal dialogue taking place. What you say is never what you’re really thinking, deep down.’ Or else I would be telling you that I want to feel your naked body against me, to taste your tongue as it licks against my lips and hear your cry of startled pleasure as I thrust into you that sweet first time.

  His murmured words increased her wariness, but heightened the sensation of tense expectation, too. Surely by now she should be itching to get away? Not finding her eyes drawn to the luscious curve of his lips, to the hard, clean lines of his body, and thinking how magnificent he must look when he was naked.

  His voice interrupted her thoughts. ‘So?’ he persisted silkily. ‘You wish to rush away to the jail-house to greet one of them?’

  ‘Ugh—no, thanks!’ Ella shuddered. ‘None of them is my lover, nor ever would be. Mark is just someone I met through work.’ She bit her lip, remembering how trusting she had been. ‘He invited me along to join some friends of his for the weekend, only I arrived to discover that his idea about how we were going to spend our time together differed somewhat from mine.’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘I made it clear I wasn’t interested in him, and that’s when he decided to make love to a bottle of whisky instead.’ She pulled a face. ‘They all did.’

  ‘And did he hurt you?’ he demanded, his expression darkening.

  Ella shook her head, taken aback by the sudden hardening of his voice. ‘No. I stayed as far away from them as possible. Then they started to drink more and more, and no one seemed capable of taking charge of the boat.’ Her voice trembled a little. ‘That’s when I started to get frightened.’

  He remembered the way she had clung to him on deck, and the gut-wrenching effect of the little whimper of protest she had made when he had left her. The way she had weakly gripped onto his hand as if he were her lifeline. Playing rescuer to a woman could evoke some very powerful and primitive feelings, he recognised—feelings he was unfamiliar with, which were given extra potency by her ignorance of who he really was. And that, too, was a rare sensation.

  He knew he wanted to make love to her, but he couldn’t do it now. Not here. Making love to a woman on his own territory was always fraught with difficulty. And he had no wish to shatter her trust in him, nor to abuse his position. When he took her to bed it must be on equal terms. And in order for that to happen he must get her back to England with as little fuss as possible.

  ‘You want to go home?’ he asked suddenly.

  His question took Ella off-guard, and she hoped her expression managed to mask her disappointment. What had she been expecting? To stay here indefinitely, in this beautiful place, with this strong, handsome man who had saved her? Alone like Adam and Eve—with the inevitable outcome of sexual discovery?

  She fixed her mouth into a wobbly kind of smile. ‘Well, I suppose I’d better.’

  He heard her reluctance, and that only heightened his appetite. But, as he had already told her, hunger made the best sauce…

  He slid a high tech-looking mobile phone from the back pocket of his jeans. ‘I’ll arrange it.’

  He went outside to get a signal and she could hear him talking in a low, rapid voice in Spanish. Then he came back inside.

  ‘We can be airborne within the hour.’

  She was unable to hide her bewilderment. ‘That soon? But my ticket is from Nice, and that’s miles away.’

  ‘We’ll be travelling by private jet.’

  Her frown deepened. ‘How come?’

  Again, his eyes pierced her with their brilliant light, but he was enjoying this sensation of anonymity far too much to break it. And besides, he wasn’t telling a lie. He was merely presenting the truth in a slightly different form.

  ‘My…employer,’ he elaborated casually, ‘is an exceedingly rich and generous man. And I’m a qualified pilot,’ he added. ‘So I can fly you home.’ There was a pause and his dark eyes captured hers in their ebony crossfire. ‘That is, of course, if you trust me to fly you home safely, cara?’

  He had rescued her from the boat and ensured that she did not spend a night in the cells. He had cared for her while she thrashed around with fever—what was there not to trust?

  And when he called her cara like that…

  ‘But can you just get up and go like that? Won’t your employer mind?’

  ‘Not at all. I have to do some business myself in England, and I can do it this week just as easily as next.’

  She saw the gleam of anticipation that had lightened the night-dark eyes, the slow smile that had irresistibly curved his lips, and she could feel the erratic beat of her heart.

  ‘It’s very…sweet of you,’ she said.

  The question why hung unspoken on the air.

  He shook his head very slightly. It was a very English description, and one that had never been applied to him in his life. ‘Sweet? No, cara—it is something much more fundamental than that.’ He suddenly became aware of the irony of his words. ‘You see, I find that I’m just as susceptible to the lure of a pair of dazzling green eyes and a pair of petal-soft lips as the next man.’

  Ella felt the heat rise in her cheeks. It was most definitely an overture. And what was she going to do about it? After all, what did she have in common with this all-action foreigner—with his jet-ski and his pilot’s licence and his ability to rustle up a delicious one-pot meal in the most basic surroundings? Who lived on a remote island far away from her world…

  A shadow of a smile had flitted across the hard contours of his face. ‘Maybe you’d like to have dinner with me back in England?’ Breakfast would have been his meal of choice, but that would inevitably follow.

  From the crashing of her heart against her ribcage someone might think that she’d never been asked out for dinner before—but quite honestly that was the way it felt. As though every invitation up until that moment had been a rehearsal for the real thing. And Ella found herself smiling at him with lips that she had never considered to be petal-soft before, but that now parted like a flower.

  ‘Why, thank you,’ she murmured. ‘I’d like that.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IT’S ONLY a dinner date, Ella told herself.

  So why did she feel so jumpy? Why were the hands that smoothed the dress down over her hips so clammy and her lips so cool and pale? She rubbed a slick of lipgloss on
them and stared at herself critically in the mirror.

  The silky black dress gleamed against the curve of bottom and breast, contrasting provocatively with the tiny covered buttons that ran in a demure line from neck to knee.

  The spiky black sandals made the best of her legs, and her only adornment was a matching velvet choker at her neck, inlaid with jet as dark and glittering as Nico’s eyes.

  For the umpteenth time she glanced at the clock, nervously tugging at the hem of her dress, her mind skipping back over the extraordinary events of the last couple of days, which had culminated in Nico flying her home on a private jet.

  Ella had spent the flight sipping on a fruit cocktail and looking around her with a sense of disbelief. Whatever Nico’s boss did for a living, he must be enormously successful at it to own a plane like that.

  She had glanced yet again to the cockpit, to see Nico sitting in front of a radar screen lit up like a Christmas tree, his fingers caressing the joy stick as if it was a woman’s body, and she had shivered, unable to prevent herself. There was something decidedly sexy about a man who could fly a plane—but there again, she’d never met one before!

  ‘Here you are. Home,’ Nico murmured as he came through into the cabin after a successful touch-down, his eyes shining.

  When he flew a plane he always felt filled with a wild kind of exhilaration—it was the same when he sailed, or climbed, or dived deep to explore the beautiful coral reefs off Mardivino. Some people called it living dangerously—he just called it living.

  ‘Thanks,’ Ella said steadily, praying that he’d meant his offer of dinner. ‘It was a brilliant flight.’

  ‘So when am I going to see you?’ he drawled. ‘Tonight?’

  It nearly killed her, but Ella shook her head. A woman should never be too available—everyone in the world knew that! ‘No, not tonight, I’m afraid. I have masses to catch up on.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Cancel it,’ he said arrogantly.

  Their eyes clashed. That was what he was used to, she recognised. Easy come, easy go. Well, if he wasn’t prepared to wait even a day, then he was wasting his time.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said coolly. ‘I can’t. I’ve been away and I need to catch up on work. See what’s been happening in my absence. You know.’

  With an effort he hid the little flicker of irritation and shrugged. ‘Sure. So…when? Tomorrow night—or will you be busy then, too?’

  She heard the sarcasm in his voice. ‘Tomorrow will be fine,’ she said steadily, but the small victory of holding out only increased her sense of apprehension.

  She wasn’t dealing with the kind of man she normally came into contact with—Nico was different, and not just because he was foreign and heartstoppingly gorgeous. He flew planes and plucked women to safety from lost boats. He was, she recognised, a true alpha male, with the corresponding appetites, and she hadn’t run into enough of them to be quite sure of how to deal with him…

  ‘Give me your address,’ he said. ‘I’ll come and pick you up around eight. We’ll go somewhere local—unless you’d rather meet up in London?’

  Ella’s mind raced. London would throw up its own problems—like getting back late after dinner and him suggesting a hotel. And she had never been the kind of woman to fall into bed with a man on a first date. Slightly appalled at the progression of her thoughts, Ella shook her head. ‘We have a lovely restaurant, close to where I live. I’ll take you there.’

  At just after eight Nico jammed his finger on the doorbell, the scent of flowers drifting in the warm, heavy air towards him. Summer roses flowered in profusion around the door of her cottage—which looked as pretty as a picture you might see on an old-fashioned box of chocolates.

  He felt a sense of vague detachment, as if he couldn’t quite believe where he was or what he was doing—a million miles away from his usual world and all its restraints and rules.

  The door opened and suddenly he could barely think straight, for she looked utterly sensational, wearing a clinging black dress that made her body look as if it was coated in liquorice. And he could lick it all off…

  A slow smile curved his mouth. ‘Ciao, Ella,’ he said softly.

  Ella stared at him and words just refused to come—because… Oh, he really was gorgeous.

  On Mardivino she had been captivated by his powerful strength and his spell-bindingly good looks, but now those qualities were somehow increased a thousandfold. Maybe it was seeing him away from his natural habitat—like plucking an exotic flower and placing it in a suburban garden.

  His height made the proportions of her rose-covered porch resemble a doll’s house, and next to him even the softly brilliant colours of the garden flowers faded into insignificance. His skin gleamed faintly olive, and he was wearing soft, cool linen through which the hard, muscular power of his body was startlingly evident. His dark eyes gleamed with brilliance, and here, under a gentler English sun, he looked almost indecently alive—as though any other man in the world would look like only half a man next to him.

  Her heart began to thunder erratically and her mouth dried to sawdust. ‘Hello, Nico.’

  It occurred to him that she might have been doing her homework on Mardivino and that things might already have irrevocably changed. Did she know? He stared at her closely but her eyes showed no indication that she found out. He raised his eyebrows in lazy question. ‘Hungry?’

  She felt as if food would choke her—but that was hardly the most diplomatic thing to say before a dinner date. ‘I…I hope you like the restaurant,’ she said breathlessly, for his warm, virile scent seemed to be running heated fingertips over her skin.

  He smiled with satisfaction, enjoying her response. The unspoken question was already answered in his mind—for the wide-eyed look of pleasure that made her green eyes sparkle like emeralds convinced him that to her he was still just ‘Nico’.

  ‘You look very beautiful,’ he said softly.

  Oddly enough, his flattery had the reverse effect to the one she suspected he wanted. It brought her to her senses. Made her see things for what they really were, and not how she would like them to be. She was not beautiful—she was reasonably attractive on a good day.

  ‘Mediterranean men are always better at giving compliments than their English counterparts,’ she observed coolly.

  ‘Which might explain why Mediterranean women are more gracious at accepting them,’ he countered wryly.

  Oh, if only she could rewind the clock and play that scene again! Was she going to ruin the evening before it had even started? She gave him an apologetic smile. ‘You’re right.’

  ‘Shall we try again?’ he mocked, curving his lips into a smile. ‘You look very beautiful.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  Her heart pounded. When he looked at her like that she wished… She wished he would pull her into his arms and kiss her. She wanted to touch her fingertips to his cheek, as if to assure herself that he was flesh and blood and not some figment of her imagination. But she stopped herself.

  ‘Would you…um, would you like a drink first?’ she asked. ‘Or shall we just get going?’

  She was like a lioness protecting her den, thought Nico, and clearly nervous about letting him set foot over the threshold! He had never had to play by the rules of other men before, and now he was beginning to see the disadvantages.

  He shook his dark head, recognising the need to get her on neutral territory. ‘No. Let’s go and eat,’ he said.

  It was too warm for her to need a coat or wrap, and they walked side by side down the village street, which was washed amber with the light of the sun. An old man was in his front garden, dead-heading his roses, and he smiled at them as they passed.

  ‘Beautiful evening, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s gorgeous,’ said Ella, stealing a look at Nico’s hard, dark profile.

  The restaurant was nestled into a crook of the high street, right next to the church. It was small, and run by an e
nthusiastic amateur, but word had spread about its fresh, seasonal food, and in high season it was nearly always full and notoriously hard to get a booking. But on fine nights they put more tables out on the terrace and down onto the lawn beyond, and tonight was one of them.

  Ella saw a couple of women turn their heads and stare hard at them as they wended their way to a table beneath a chestnut tree. Maybe she shouldn’t be surprised—Nico was exceptionally good-looking, and he really did stand out in a crowd. And there weren’t exactly many Latin hunks strolling round the streets of Greenhampton!

  ‘You must order for me, cara,’ he said firmly once they had sat down, handing his menu straight back to the waitress.

  ‘What do you like?’

  ‘Everything. I like everything.’ His eyes were steady as they rested on her face. ‘I have very catholic tastes.’

  Oh, heavens… Ella was aware of a sudden wave of helpless longing as she was caught in the soft ebony light from his eyes. It was as if a man had never looked at her before—though when she stopped to think about it no man had—not with such an undeniable message of sensuality. Yet his silent flirting did nothing to detract from his cool air of self-possession, which seemed so at odds with his warmly Latin exterior.

  She ordered asparagus and prawns and chilled Montrachet, unable to miss the unmistakably flirtatious glance the waitress slanted at him—though to his credit he didn’t react in any way.

  The sky was a pale Wedgwood blue, softened with apricot edges from the sun. In the distance could be heard the sporadic sound of birdsong and the occasional rattling brush of crickets. Nico had deliberately sat with his back to the other diners, and now he drank a glass of wine and expelled a long, low sigh as he felt all the tension leave his body.

  ‘That’s good wine,’ he murmured.

  She looked up. ‘I know it is.’

  He laughed, and captured her eyes. ‘So, have you lived here a long time?’

  ‘About three years. I went to university nearby and liked it a lot—but it wasn’t until I knew what I wanted to do that I put down roots.’