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His fingers skimmed over her face as delicately as the whisper of butterfly wings.
How arrogant her prince was.
How wonderful.
She had thought him ruled by ego but she was wrong. In a world of “me-firsters,” Lucas believed in putting the needs of others before his own. His grandfather’s, now hers.
Her prince was an amazing man. Complex. Generous. Exciting. If only they’d met some other way. If she could go back, undo the damned contract and meet her prince as a woman, not an obligation…
Alyssa caught her breath. Lucas’s hand stilled.
“Am I hurting you, amada?”
She shook her head to tell him he wasn’t. She didn’t trust herself to speak.
When had he become her prince? Because that was who he was, in her heart, and wasn’t that a joke? They’d met because his grandfather and her father had come up with an arrangement that would have made the devil laugh; he’d brought her here because he was as desperate to find a way out of it as she was…
Except, she wasn’t. Not anymore.
Lucas’s dark head was bent over her a scrape on her hand, baring his nape. Was it only last night she’d buried her fingers in the silky hair that grew there? Kissed his throat? Sighed his name and, God, welcomed him deep, deep inside her…
“Lucas.”
His name whispered from her lips. He looked up, his eyes going dark.
“Lyssa,” he said softly, wrapping a hand around the back of her head, bringing her mouth to his, her breath to his…
“Your Highness? The doctor is here.”
Lucas brushed his lips over Alyssa’s. Then he rose to his feet, introduced her to the doctor, frowned when the doctor suggested he leave the room…and left only after Alyssa touched his hand and said she’d be fine.
The doctor poked, delicately prodded, heard the entire story—well, not the entire story but enough of it to tell her she was a very fortunate young woman. Then he prescribed a salve for her cuts and tablets to take should the rapidly-rising lump on her forehead or the cut on her knee cause undue discomfort.
“Other than that, Your Highness,” he said, when Lucas rejoined them, “the señorita needs only a relaxing bath and a long siesta.”
Once he was gone, Lucas shut the door, then sat down on the bed next to her.
“Does your knee hurt, amada?”
“It’s only a little cut.”
“Your head?”
“Honestly, Lucas—”
“Honestly, amada,” he said gruffly, “you could have been killed! Is that only a little thing, too? Were you so desperate to get away from me that you would risk your life to do it?”
“No! I wasn’t—” She took a long breath. “It wasn’t you. It was everything. So much has happened and—and I didn’t want to think about any of it anymore.”
Lucas took her face in his hands. “And what happened last night?” he said softly. “Did you want to stop thinking about that, too?”
How simple it would be to say yes. To tell him last night had been a terrible mistake. She’d as much as said that this morning. All she had to do now was look into his eyes and say—and say—
“No!” The word burst from her throat on a shaky breath. “I’ll always think about last night, Lucas. All of it. Your kisses. Your caresses. Your—”
He stopped her words with a kiss. “Last night was wonderful, amada. And then I ruined it.”
“Not you. Me. I said things—”
