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His evasions hadn’t been quick enough. Both her scent and the image had burned into him. Dio, his heart was still thumping. His loins still throbbed.
She had been oblivious to the effect. If any other woman had paraded before him in a tiny towel he’d have assumed it was deliberate, but Clara had acted as if it were perfectly normal.
Couldn’t she have wrapped herself in one of the oversized towels? Did she have to select one that barely skimmed her buttocks?
He took some long breaths and reminded himself that in an hour or so he’d be able to send Clara to the embassy with his conscience clear. He’d make a call on her behalf, he decided. Smooth her path. He was a prince of the country, his word held sway. He’d put all his resources at Clara’s and the embassy’s disposal. Anything to get this dangerously sexy but untouchable woman off his island and allow his equilibrium to return to its normal state.
But then she joined him in the dining room and his heart thumped hard again.
‘I need your help,’ she said, and lifted the navy polo shirt he’d given her to her waist. The belt he’d provided her with to hold his jeans up was too big even fastened at the tightest notch. ‘These are going to fall down. Can you make another hole in the belt for me? I don’t mind if you’d rather not ruin it doing that as the polo shirt is long enough for me to wear as a dress, but I haven’t got any knickers on and if there’s a gust of wind when I leave the castle I might frighten your fellow countrymen.’
He gritted his teeth to fight off the imagery and beckoned the nearest servant to fetch him a sharp, pointed knife.
‘Take the belt off,’ he said in a curter tone than intended.
‘Okay.’ She pulled it off and, as she passed it to him, the jeans fell to her ankles. Stepping out of them, she picked them up and put them on the back of the chair next to hers and took her seat. ‘What’s for dinner?’
He filled his lungs with much needed air before answering. ‘Roast mushroom gnocchi.’
‘It smells wonderful.’
Their bowls were filled for them and a knife for Marcelo to make a notch in the belt placed beside him.
‘You’ve got that face again,’ Clara observed after barely a minute of silence while they ate.
‘What face?’
‘That face. All tense, like you’re sucking on a particularly sour lemon. Don’t you like gnocchi?’
She was observant. That supersonic brain didn’t miss anything.
How would she respond if he imitated her unfiltered bluntness and said, If I’m tense, it’s because you’re the sexiest creature I’ve ever met and you’ve candidly declared that you’re not wearing any knickers and I can clearly see you’re not wearing a bra either and right now I can’t stop my mind from imagining you naked and my taste buds are salivating to imagine the taste of your skin, and I feel as horny as the horniest of teenagers.
‘I have a headache,’ he answered, hoping she would take the hint and keep quiet for a little longer.
It wasn’t what she said that made him wish for her silence, he recognised. It was her voice. The more he listened to it, the more he wanted to listen. It had a musicality that was as alluring and entertaining as the rest of her.
Clara Sinclair aroused all his senses. And more.
‘Have you taken any painkillers?’ she asked.
‘Not yet.’
She managed another minute of silence before piping up with, ‘I put my dirty clothes in the laundry basket but if you get me a bag, I’ll bin them. Unless you have an incinerator?’
He shook his head and helped himself to more parmesan. He didn’t trust himself to look at her, not when his eyes itched to study her like a rare masterpiece. Many women stripped of their make-up looked washed out. Not Clara. Her natural luminosity shone through and elevated her beauty.
When Marcelo had been a child, his father would drag him around the castle trying to pique his interest in the thousands of pieces of art in the royal collection. Occasionally—very occasionally—a painting or sculpture would capture his interest and then he would be captivated enough to return to it time and time again. Those particular items were now housed here in his private quarters.
He wanted to stare at Clara as he still often gazed at those masterpieces.
As soon as he finished eating, Marcelo set to work on the belt. Once he’d stabbed the hole in it, he handed it back to her.
Smiling her thanks, she snatched her jeans off the chair beside her, threaded the belt through then stuck her legs in them and hopped onto her feet. Twisting around so her back was to him, she pulled them up her thighs. Unprepared for the glimpse of peachy buttock as the denim was pulled over her bottom, Marcelo was unable to stop himself from snapping, ‘Do you not have any modesty?’
She spun around. Startled brown eyes fixed on him. ‘What are you talking about?’
He gritted his teeth. He didn’t know whether to laugh or shout at her blitheness. ‘I just saw your bottom.’
