CHAPTER THREE

      CARS ROARED: a relentless mass of humming metal and fuel. Distracted, Antonio almost forgot to applaud when the first passed the chequered flag. He’d not been looking at the finish line because she was down with the winning team’s pit crew, and she was dressed not to be seen, but to stun.

      Photographers called and clicked constantly, like seagulls incessantly circling a kid with an ice-cream cone. Bella paused long enough to send them a glittering smile, then turned to snap a selfie with the winner of the race. Doubtless she’d upload it once she’d filtered it to her satisfaction.

      I don’t need any man.

      Her vehement denial replayed in his mind, but the vulnerability that the harsh-edged words revealed echoed loudest of all. Those tears after she’d come apart in his arms haunted him. He’d broken past that slick, sophisticated façade and found her to be tender and he’d been a jerk. Because he hadn’t reciprocated. He hadn’t been as honest with her as she’d been with him. And she’d been mortified.

      But now, only hours later, her façade was back—beautiful and bulletproof. Grimly he fought the urge to take her somewhere isolated and break her walls down to get to that genuine, emotional response again. As if she’d allow him to now.

      While he’d returned to the palace without detection that morning he was in no way pleased. He was a leader of not just an army, but a nation, and he never ran from a situation. Yet he’d run from the desire she’d aroused in him. Now regret and anger burned alongside it.

      For the best part of a decade he’d staved off sexual want, using extreme exercise to gain self-control; his honed physique was a by-product of that intense discipline. Because he refused to hurt anyone the way he had Alessia and he refused to use women to satisfy purely physical desires. Discipline had become habit. It had almost become easy.

      Until today.

      Maybe his apparently uncontrollable desire for Bella had been a reaction to tiredness and stress. Or maybe it was because it had been so long since lust had burned him, it had been able to slip his leash like quicksilver...

      He could come up with reasons, but they still didn’t excuse his actions. And they didn’t explain why he was unable to look away from her now.

      She was ravishing, putting on a performance for more than the thousands in this crowd and her online audience of millions. This fortnight on San Felipe was packed with festivities and events, ones he had to attend while sandwiching in the vital trade talks and tax-exemption debates with the foreign politicians who’d come to work during the day and party at night.

      Bella would use this fortnight to build her brand and define her club as the most ‘it’ venue on the island—if not the world. This was the reason for the glamour, the smiles and selfie-central behaviour. All those society events that he had to attend, she would be present at too. There would be no avoiding her. Not in the immediate future.

      His jaw ached with the effort of holding back his frustration.

      As soon as the race formalities had concluded, he returned to his large office in the palace. He listened to the requests of his aides, read through the official papers in the scarlet box on his desk and braced himself for the celebration reception that evening.

      As he’d figured, she was there, draped in an emerald-green silk dress that skimmed her curves before falling in a dramatic swathe to the floor. He was even less talkative than usual, preferring not to circulate at all. It would hammer home his icy reputation even more, but so be it. If only Eduardo weren’t away—his brother had more social patience. Antonio just wanted to get back to the paperwork and the important decisions.

      Except that wasn’t quite all he wanted.

      He endured her presence three more times over the next two days. At a charity brunch, at the unveiling of the plans to redevelop the marina, at the opening night of the new exhibition in the national art gallery...

      Every time he saw her, the craving bit harder.

      He avoided speaking directly to her, but more than once he met her gaze. Across the crowd in the gallery, during speeches, every glance seared, stopping that breach in his armour from sealing shut again.

      Three days since that morning in her office, he seethed at his inability to wrest back his self-control. His mind wandered every chance it got. When he should be focused, when he should be listening to someone else, when he should be thinking about things so much more important than himself, he thought about what he’d do to make her writhe in his arms until he heard her soft cry of release again.

      That cry had made him harder and more wanting, yet more satisfied than he’d ever been in his life. He’d revelled in it for one incredible moment. Then he’d remembered. He couldn’t have any kind of relationship.

      Then he’d run.

      But that cry had tormented his dreams day and night since. Now it was all he could think of.

      He glanced at the valet pointlessly polishing Antonio’s already buffed-to-brilliant shoes. He had a performance at the opera house to attend tonight and there was no way Bella Sanchez wouldn’t be there.

      ‘Leave me.’ Abruptly he dismissed the man.

      ‘Sir?’ The servant looked nonplussed at the sudden command.

      Varying from his schedule was impossible, given how crammed it was, but Antonio needed to pull himself together and cool this burn with a reality check. He needed to see through Bella Sanchez and remind himself she was merely a woman. And he’d refused hundreds, if not thousands of women. It was in their best interests that he had.

      ‘I need ten minutes alone,’ Antonio ordered.

      His valet swiftly bowed and left. Antonio picked up the tablet he used to scan newspaper headlines. With a couple of swipes he opened up a video channel. The simplest of searches retrieved an endless list of clips. He clicked on the first. Lifted from a performance at one of the US’s most prestigious ballet theatres, it had been viewed millions of times.

      Bella Sanchez dancing the title role of Carmen. In this scene she was seducing a soldier to get him to do her bidding. Antonio watched, his gut tightening, as Bella sent the man a smouldering look over her shoulder—alluring, enthralling, practised. It was a move she performed on stage night after night after night, yet she made it utterly convincing. At the end of her solo the audience exploded, chanting her name over and over, stomping their feet, delaying the rest of the performance for a full five minutes while they called for encores. He stared at the screen, as spellbound as everyone in the audience had been, watching as she didn’t break character for even a second. Haughtily she waited, accepting the adulation and keeping them in her sexual thrall as if it was only to be expected.

      But when she’d lain before him, warm and exposed, she’d not been at all practised or polished. She’d been unrehearsed and real and what had happened had taken her by surprise as much as it had him. And the raw emotion in her eyes when he’d pulled away from her?

      He’d hurt her. He regretted that. He regretted touching her.

      Yet all he wanted was to do it again.

      He tossed the tablet back onto the desk. Reduced to watching her like this, like some unbalanced stalker, was no way to find relief.

      Why couldn’t he end this aching awareness of her? The slow burn threatened to send him insane. He’d resisted already, hadn’t he? He’d stopped before taking