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She climbed off the hammock and padded barefoot to him. As she drew closer and out of the shadows, he barely had time to register that she was wearing pretty, short pyjamas before she put her hands on the balustrade—she was so short her shoulders barely reached the top of it—and, with an effortless grace, swung herself over. In seconds she stood before him, the moonlight pouring on her casting her in an ethereal light that highlighted her delicate beauty and gave the illusion of her dark velvet eyes being limitless pools.
Spellbound, for perhaps the first time in his life, Gabriel found himself at a loss for words.
CHAPTER TWO
THEREWASANintensity in the princess’s stare before her chest rose and she indicated the bottle engulfed in Gabriel’s hand. ‘May I?’
A cloud of soft, fruity scent seeped into his airwaves and darted through his senses.
Dragging himself back to the here and now, he forced a tight smile and passed it to her.
‘Thanks.’ She unscrewed the cap and placed it to her lips. Her small but perfectly formed mouth was one of the first things he’d noticed about her. It was like a rosebud on the cusp of blooming. She took a long drink and swallowed without so much as a flinch then delicately brushed the residue with a sweep of an elegant finger. Everything about her was elegant. Graceful.
She bestowed him with a small, sad smile that did something funny to his chest. ‘May I sit?’
His next forced smile almost made his face crack. ‘Of course.’
Carrying the bottle to the balcony’s deep L-shaped sofa, the princess sank elegantly onto the L part and stretched her legs out, hooking her ankles together. The shorts of her pale blue pyjamas had risen to the tops of her thighs and he hastily cast his gaze down. The toes at the end of feet that were the smallest he’d ever seen on a grown woman were painted deep blue. It was a colour that complemented her golden skin and set off the delicate shapeliness of legs that appeared almost impossibly smooth.
His veins heating with dangerous awareness, Gabriel dragged his gaze from the princess’s feet and looked back in her eyes...only to find himself trapped again in those beguiling orbs.
Her stare fixed on him, she took another drink of bourbon. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t stay long,’ she said softly in that husky voice. She pulled another sad smile and shrugged. ‘Looks like it’s true that misery loves company.’
‘You are unhappy?’ he asked before he could stop himself.
He shouldn’t encourage conversation. The moonlight, the all-pervading silence in the air around them...it lent an intimacy to the balcony setting that made his skin tingle and heightened his senses.
‘I...’ She cut herself off and closed her eyes. After a mediative breath, she looked back at him, her features showing she’d composed herself. She indicated the space next to her. ‘Don’t stand on ceremony on my account.’
He inclined his head, thinking hard as to how to extract himself from this situation but coming up with nothing. ‘You’re a princess. As a commoner, I thought it was my duty to stand on ceremony.’
Her cheeks pulled into a smile fractionally wider than he’d seen from her before, and in a faintly teasing voice, she said, ‘Then as a princess of this castle, I invite you to sit on the sofa of your own balcony in your own quarters.’
Alessia looked into the eyes of the man standing so rigidly he could have a pole for a spine. When he finally sat, placing himself far at the other end of the sofa, it was with the same rigidity that he’d stood.
It was nothing but a mad impulse that had made her call out to him. Nothing but a second mad impulse that had made her swing over the balustrade to his balcony. And now she was sat on his balcony sofa. Sat alone with a bare-chested man in the middle of the night where the only living beings observing them were crickets and frogs and the other nocturnal creatures who played and sang and mated when the sun went down.
‘I didn’t realise you’d stayed,’ she said when he made no effort at conversation.
‘There is a problem with my plane’s engine. It should be fixed by the morning. Your parents kindly invited me to stay the night.’
‘That’s my parents,’ she said with a muted laugh, and drank some more bourbon. ‘Kindness personified.’
She saw the raising of a thick, black brow at this but his firm lips stayed closed.
Feeling a stab of disloyalty for her slight on her parents, she changed the subject. Not that he’d allowed himself to be drawn into it. Was that discretion on his part or a lack of interest? She’d seen the way he looked at her, sensed he was attracted to her, but that didn’t mean he liked her. After all, he had spent the last three days clearing up the mess she’d made. He probably thought her a vacuous troublemaker who’d brought shame on her family. The latter part was true but the former...? No. Alessia had put duty first her entire life. Maybe that’s where the guilt at her disloyalty had come from—the Berrutis did not bad-mouth each other to outsiders. Their loyalty was to the monarchy as an institution first, and then to their people, and then to each other as family. ‘Where are you from? I can’t place your accent.’
Gabriel breathed in deeply. He wanted to ask her to return to her own quarters but was conscious that this magnificent castle was the princess’s home. And conscious that she was a princess used to being deferred to. She would not take kindly to being ordered about by a commoner, and his brain ticked quickly as he tried to work out how he could extract himself from this situation without offending her. A man did not reach the heights Gabriel had in the diplomatic world by offending clients or members of their families.
Those were the reasons he tried to convince himself as to why he’d not already asked her to leave. The pulses throbbing throughout his body proved the lie. Those pulses had been throbbing since the moonlight had bathed her in its silver glow, a shimmering mirage made of flesh and blood.
Alessia Berruti was a princess, yes, but she was also a woman. A highly desirable woman.
He fisted his hands and clenched his jaw.
Alessia Berruti was a highly desirable woman he couldn’t touch. Shouldn’t touch. Mustn’t touch.
‘My mother is French, my father is Spanish,’ he said in his practised even tone. ‘I spent my formative years in Paris but I was raised to be bilingual.’
