AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The rest of the drive across the city was filled with a brooding sort of silence that in many ways was worse than anything he might have said. Because the silence grew inside of her, and Natalie filled it with...images. Unhelpful images, one after the next. What might have happened if they hadn’t been interrupted on that terrace, for example. Or if they’d walked a little farther into the shadows, maybe even rounding the corner so no one could see them. Would Rodolfo’s hands have found their way beneath her dress again? Would they have traveled higher than her thigh—toward the place that burned the hottest for him even now?
“Thank you for the escort but I can see myself—” Natalie began when they arrived at her hotel, but Rodolfo only stared back at her in a sort of arrogant amazement that reminded her that he would one day rule an entire kingdom, no matter what the tabloids said about him now.
She restrained the little shiver that snaked down her spine, because it had nothing to do with apprehension, and let him usher her out of the car and into the hushed hotel lobby, done in sumptuous reds and deep golds and bursting with dramatic flowers arranged in stately vases. Well. It wasn’t so much that shelethim as that there was no way to stop him without causing a scene in front of all the guests in the lobby who were pretending not to gawk at them as they arrived—especially because really, yet again, Natalie didn’t muchwantto stop him. Until she’d met Rodolfo, she’d never known that she was weak straight through to her core. Now she couldn’t seem to remember that everywhere but here, she was known for being tough. Strong. Unflappable.
That Natalie seemed like a distant memory.
Rodolfo nodded at her security detail as he escorted her to the private, keyed elevator that led only to the penthouse suite, and then followed her into it. The door swished shut almost silently, and then it was only the two of them in a small and shiny enclosed space. Natalie braced herself, standing there just slightly behind him, with a view of his broad, high, solidly muscled back and beyond that, the gold-trimmed elevator car. She could feel the heat of him, and all that leashed danger, coming off him like flames. He surrounded her without even looking at her. He seemed to loop around her and pull tight, crushing her in his powerful grip, without so much as laying a finger upon her. She couldn’t hear herself think over the thunder of her heart, the clatter of her pulse—
But nothing happened. They were delivered directly into the grand living room of the hotel’s penthouse. Rodolfo stepped off and moved into the room, shrugging out of his jacket as he went. Natalie followed after him because she had no choice—or so she assured herself. It was that or go back downstairs to the hotel lobby, where she would have to explain herself to her security, the hotel staff, the other guests still sitting around with mobile phones at the ready to record her life at will.
The elevator doors slid shut behind her, and that was it. The choice was made. And it left her notably all alone in her suite’s living room with the Prince she very desperately wanted to find the antithesis of charming.
There was no Roman sunset to distract her now. There was only Rodolfo, far too beautiful and much too dangerous for anyone’s good. She watched the way he moved through the living room with a kind of liquid athleticism. The light from the soft lamps scattered here and there made the sprawling space feel close. Intimate.
And it made him look like some kind of god all over again. Not limned in red or gold, but draped in shadows and need.
Her throat was dry. Her lungs ached as if she’d been off running for untold miles. Her fingers trembled, and she realized she was as jittery as if she’d pulled one of her all-nighters before a big meeting and had rivers of coffee running through her veins in place of blood. It made her stomach clench tight to think that it wasn’t caffeine that was messing with her tonight. It was this man before her who she should never have touched, much less kissed.
What was she going to do now?
The sad truth was, Natalie couldn’t trust herself to make the right decision, or she wouldn’t still be standing where she was, would she? She would have gone straight on back to her bedchamber and locked the door. She would have summoned her staff, who she knew had to be nearby, just waiting for the opportunity to serve her and usher Rodolfo out. She would have donesomethingother than what she did.
Which was wait. Breathlessly. As if she really was a princess caught up in some or other enchantment. As if she could no more move a muscle than she could wave a magic wand and turn herself back into Natalie.
Rodolfo shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it over the back of one of the fussy chairs, and then he took his time turning to face her again. When he did, his dark eyes burned into her, the focused, searing hunger in them enough to send her back a step. In a wild panic or a kind of dizzy desire, she couldn’t have said.
Both,something whispered inside of her. And not with any trace of fear. Not with anything the least bit like fear.
“Rodolfo,” she managed to say then, in as measured a tone as she could manage, because she thought she should have been far more afraid of all those things she could feel in the air between them than she was. Either way, this was all too much. It was all temptation and need, and she could hardly think through the chaos inside of her. “This has all gotten much too fraught and strange. Why don’t I have some coffee made? We can sit and talk.”
“I am afraid,princesita, that it is much too late for talk.”
He moved then. His long stride ate up the floor and he was before her in an instant. Or perhaps it was that she didn’t want to move out of his reach. She couldn’t seem to make herself run. She couldn’t seem to do anything at all. All she did was stand right where she was and watch him come for her, that simmering light in his dark eyes and that stern set to his mouth that made everything inside her quiver.
Maybe there was no use pretending this wasn’t what she’d wanted all along. Since the very first moment she’d crossed the threshold of that reception room at the palace and discovered he was so much more than his pictures. She’d wanted to eviscerate him and instead she’d ended up on his lap with his tongue in her mouth. Had that really been by chance?
Something dark and guilty kicked inside of her at that, and she opened her mouth to protest—to dosomething,to sayanythingthat might stop this—but he was upon her. And he didn’t stop. Her breath left her in a rush, because he kept coming. She backed up when she thought he might collide into her, but there was nowhere to go. The doors to the elevator were at her back, closed up tight, and Rodolfo was there.Right there.He crowded into her. He laid a palm against the smooth metal on either side of her head and then he leaned in, trapping her between the doors of the elevator and his big, hard body.
And there was nothing but him, then. He was so much bigger than her that he became the whole world. She could see nothing past the wall of his chest. There was no sky but his sculpted, beautiful face. And if there was a sun in the heated little sliver of space that was all he’d left between their bodies, Natalie had no doubt it would be as hot as that look in his eyes.
“I think,” she began, because she had to try.
“That is the trouble. You think too much.”
And then he simply bent his head and took her mouth with his.
Just like that, Natalie was lost. The delirious taste of him exploded through her, chasing fire with more fire until all she did was burn. His kiss was masterful. Slick and hot and greedy. He left absolutely no doubt as to who was in control as he took her over and sampled her, again and again, as if he’d done it a thousand times before tonight alone. As if he planned to keep doing it forever, starting now. Here.
There was no rush. No desperation or hurry. Just that endless, erotic tasting as if he could go on and on and on.
And Natalie forgot, all over again, who she was and what she was meant to be doing here.
Because she could feel him everywhere. In her fingers, her toes. In the tips of her ears and like a breeze of sensation pouring down her spine. She pushed up on her feet, high on her toes, trying to get as close to him as she could. His arms stayed braced against the elevator doors like immovable barriers, leaving her to angle herself closer. She did it without thought, grabbing hold of his soft shirt in both fists and letting the fire that burned through her blaze out of control.
Sensation stormed through her, making and remaking her as it swept along. Telling her stark truths about herself she didn’t want to know. She felt flushed and wild from her lips to the tight, hard tips of her breasts, all the way to that ravenous heat between her legs.
She would have climbed him if she could. She couldn’t seem to get close enough.
