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Where was her sanity when she needed it? ‘I don’t think...’That this is a good idea.But she did not finish her sentence for the good reason that he claimed her mouth in another breath-stealing kiss.
‘Much better not to think. Instead, feel what you are doing to me.’ He moved his hand down to her bottom and pulled her against his hard thighs. His groan of raw sexual need evoked a quiver of longing inside her. ‘Why don’t we continue this upstairs in your bedroom?’ he asked thickly. ‘I want to make love to you, and you want that too, don’t you, my little mermaid?’
She did, heaven help her! Desire swept hot and urgent through her veins as Eirik’s mouth sought hers once more. He kissed her with mounting hunger, and she responded with a wild abandon she’d never experienced before, a need that made her desperate to lead him upstairs to her bed.
Reality intruded as Arielle pictured her tiny bedroom with the narrow bed that she’d slept on since she was a little girl. There was still the mural on the wall of a princess in a castle that her mother had painted. The other bedroom along the landing was bigger than her room, but it was where her father had slept, and she never, ever went into that room.
She crashed back down to earth and stiffened in Eirik’s arms. He lifted his mouth from hers and gave her a quizzical look.
‘I think we should slow things down,’ she said unsteadily. ‘It’s a big leap from dinner to bed.’
He released his breath slowly and dropped his hands down to his sides. ‘Forgive my impatience, but I want you very badly and we only have tonight.’
Something cold and heavy replaced the fire he’d aroused in her. ‘What happens after tonight?’
‘I will return to Fjernland to accept the formal title of Hereditary Prince. The health of my father, the Sovereign Prince, is not good and, with the loss of my brother, it is my duty to prepare for the day when I will become monarch.’ His gaze narrowed on her frozen expression. ‘You and I can only ever be two shooting stars who briefly collide before continuing on our different trajectories.’
‘In England we call it a one-night stand,’ she said curtly. What a fool she was for thinking that Eirik was actually interested in her as a person when clearly all he wanted was sex.
He might not be so keen if she admitted that her sexual experience was limited to one disastrous relationship. Arielle remembered how Jack had fallen asleep immediately after sex, leaving her feeling unfulfilled. She’d assumed it was her fault their lovemaking had been disappointing. Often when she had visited Jack at his flat, he’d left a mountain of washing up and dirty laundry for her to do. He had treated her more like a servant than a girlfriend, but he had been her first and only proper relationship and she’d had low expectations as a result of growing up with her surly father, who had demanded that she kept the cottage clean and cooked his meals after her mother died when Arielle was a child.
One reason why she had been attracted to Jack was because she’d believed he did not know about her father. But he had admitted that he’d only been interested in her after he’d discovered that she was Gerran Rowse’s daughter. Jack had been convinced that Arielle knew where her father had hidden money from his drug-dealing operation. Finding out that Jack had pretended to be in love with her had been another blow to her shaky self-confidence. Would she ever meet a man who genuinely wanted to be with her?
‘I think you should leave,’ she told Eirik stiffly.
His eyes were no longer the warm blue of summer skies. He gave her a haughty look that served as a reminder, if she had needed it, that they were not only from different countries, but they were worlds apart.
‘We both got carried away,’ he growled. ‘There is nothing wrong with two consenting adults spending a pleasurable night together.’ His jaw hardened. ‘What did you expect?’
‘That’s my problem. I never expect anything, but maybe it’s time I did.’ Arielle bit down on her lower lip that felt slightly puffy from where he had kissed her with masterful passion. ‘I really want you to go.’ Before she made even more of an idiot of herself and burst into tears or, worse, asked him to stay.
He stared at her as if he couldn’t believe she was turfing him out. It had probably never happened to him before. But she felt no sense of triumph in the thought, just a heaviness in her heart when without another word he strode across the room and opened the front door.
The breeze had picked up and above the rattle of a loose roof tile and the creaking branches of the hawthorn tree that was bowed by years of the punishing wind Arielle heard the barn door slam. Eirik stepped into the porch and his feet crunched on something on the floor. He bent down and picked up a shard of glass.
‘I hadn’t noticed when we arrived at the cottage, but it looks as if the light bulb was deliberately smashed.’ He stooped again and, when he straightened up, Arielle saw he was holding a pebble that he’d found on the doormat.
The barn door clattered. ‘I know I locked my studio,’ she muttered. She grabbed a torch from the dresser, kicked off her high heels and slipped her feet into her wellington boots that were standing next to the front door.
‘Wait here, and I’ll go and check it out.’ Eirik held out his hand for the torch. His expression told her she would be wasting her breath if she argued. She gave him the torch but followed him across the courtyard to the barn. Arielle sucked in a breath when she saw in the torch’s gleam that the padlock on the door had been broken.
‘Someone has been busy,’ Eirik said grimly as he picked up an iron bar from the ground. ‘This must have been used to break the lock.’
He pushed open the door and Arielle quickly found the light switch on the wall. The overhead strip light flickered and then became brighter.
‘Oh, no.’ Her brain took a few seconds to compute the carnage in front of her. The first things she saw were the ripped-open boxes that she’d packed, ready to be sent to the London department store. The numerous pieces of eco-friendly jewellery that she’d painstakingly created had been destroyed.
Tears filled her eyes as she looked around at the devastation in her studio. Her worktable had been upended and her collection of sea glass had been smashed and was scattered over the floor. She bent down and picked up two halves of a piece of pink glass that had obviously been hit with a hammer lying on the floor nearby. ‘This was the first piece of sea glass in my collection. I found it when I was swimming in the sea with my mother,’ she told Eirik. ‘Pink sea glass is rare, and after Mum died I kept it because it reminded me of her.’
It was idiotic to cry over bits of broken glass, she told herself. Even worse was how much her silly treasures that she’d collected from the sea had meant to her. She had been hiding from real life in her studio, haunted by her past and afraid to face the future. ‘Everything is ruined,’ she choked out.
‘Arielle...’ The sympathy in Eirik’s voice was too much to bear.
‘Just...leave me alone.’
He took out his phone. ‘I’ll call the police.’
‘No.’She hurried over to him, praying he hadn’t noticed the graffiti that had been sprayed in red paint on the wall.Blood on your hands.It wasn’t true, but some of the villagers believed that she had lied to protect her father when he had been charged with the murder of the young police constable, Josh Bray.
