The Prodigal Prince's Seduction / The Heir's Scandalous Affair: The Prodigal Prince's Seduction. Jennifer Lewis
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and taking days off.”
“To put your mind to rest on the sacrifice of my taking a day off, I can afford to in this instance, because before we met I put in thirty-six hours of work, more than covering for it in advance.”
“Oh, God…that means you’ve been awake for forty-eight hours now. And I kept you up all night yakking and singing and…and…”
“And being tormented within an inch of my sanity? Laughing my head off? Confessing my darkest secrets? Being fully alive?”
“Yeah…uh…all that,” she croaked. “But I bet you were longing to hit the sheets.”
“The only sheets I want to hit are those with you spread out on them. Being with you has been the most worthwhile reason to forgo sleep that I’ve ever had. I never realized there was anything to want as fiercely as I want a steady supply of sleepless nights with you.”
She stared up at him, motionless, breathless. Then the first tremor broke through the stillness. The second merged into a stream that shook her. Gratification swelled, that he affected her to that extent. He might not be exhibiting the same outward manifestation, but she shook him, too, to the core.
He embraced her again, absorbed her tremors. They were her response to him made tangible. They belonged to him. He wanted them, along with everything that made her herself.
He’d given Giancarlo orders to keep sailing until he told him otherwise. He wanted to keep on sailing, never to return her to her life, never to return to his.
He was thinking she’d say yes if he proposed that radical plan when she raised an agitated face, whispered, “Take me home, please, Durante.”
Five
Durante raised an eyebrow at Gabrielle’s TriBeCa apartment building’s concierge in response to his open surprise and curiosity. Very strange reaction coming from someone whose job description was headed by discretion and diplomacy.
Did the man recognize him? Or was it his tenant’s return dressed in an evening gown in broad daylight, escorted by a strange man?
He did see recognition in the man’s eyes. Which wasn’t strange. Royalty was an endless source of public fascination and romanticizing anywhere in the world. But it was far more so in the States, especially in New York, his adopted home for the last five years. It seemed New Yorkers clamored for anything that would transport them from their hectic lives. Being a prince of an exotic kingdom, combined with his vast wealth, was the stuff of fairy tales to them. That this view did not match the reality of his life had nothing to do with their perception of it. The perception was there to stay.
So the man recognized him. But Durante was still convinced his second interpretation of his reaction was the correct one. Which led to another conviction. The incident had so surprised the man because he hadn’t seen her coming home with a man before. She’d told the truth about first times. As he knew she had.
Not that he was “coming home” with her. He was taking her to her door, had no idea if she’d invite him in.
She’d asked him to take her home after he’d again stressed his open-ended desire, had barely spoken during the ride there. Considering how fluent she’d been up until then, her fraught silence had disturbed him more by the minute. He’d tried to tell himself she was exhausted, that not everyone was an insomniac able to function on sporadic half hours of sleep. But what if this night hadn’t meant as much to her as it had to him? What if she’d decided that it wasn’t prudent to let things develop further?
The sharp ping of the elevator as they reached her tenth-floor apartment cut through his oppressive thoughts. He let her precede him, fell into step with her through the dimly lit corridor leading to her corner apartment, his hand gripping hers as if he were afraid she’d dematerialize. Then they reached her door.
It was the same as all the others. It was also the gateway to the one place on earth he wanted to be.
Behind this door lay the stage of her unseen existence. Where she walked barefoot, dressed and undressed, reflected, shed tears. Where she sang in out-of-tune abandon as she cooked her meals, danced in front of mirrors to snippets of music that blipped inside her head, washed away exhausting days under the spray of hot water, drowned her angers and anxieties in steaming baths and surrendered to oblivion after a book dropped from her hand at the strike of 1 a.m… or after she’d pleasured herself.
Crossing this door into that microcosm became his highest goal. To be allowed into her sanctuary, to be given the privilege to witness her secrets, see to her safety, cater to her needs.
She turned, her eyes overflowing with so much emotion that his mind seized. Then her whisper floated in the silence, impeded, unsteady.
“I wanted to be on my turf when I said this. I-I…”
She was going to say goodbye. No. He couldn’t let her. “Don’t say anything now, bellissima. Just get some sleep. When you’ve taken it all in, let me see you again. We’ll take it from there.”
Her gaze wavered, then she groaned. “God, I’m so stupid. You must be exhausted. Oh, just go please…”
He caught her arm, stopped her babbling. “The last thing I need now is sleep. What did you want to say? If it’s anything other than ‘I don’t think this should go any farther,’ please say it.”
Her flush rose. His whole body bunched as her lips parted on a hectic inhalation and she burst out, “I want this night, Durante. Or this day. Or whenever we are. And I want as many nights and days as I can ha—”
Durante couldn’t wait for her confession to finish exiting her lips before he devoured it along with them. The way she met his ardor halfway with as much ferocity told him everything he needed to know. This time there was no hesitation on her part, as there was no intention of holding back on his.
He stilled the tremors invading the fullness of her lower lip in a bite that made her cry out, arch into him, all lushness and surrender. The taste and feel and scent of her eddied in his arteries, pounded through his system. Her urgency spilled into his mouth in moans and gasps that blanked his mind. He gathered her thighs through the layers of cloth, raised her, opened her for his bulk, pinned her to her door with the force of his hunger. His tongue drove inside her as his erection thrust against her heat through layers of barriers, losing rhythm in the wildness.
Her tongue slid against his, rubbed, tangled, her lips suckled at his, her teeth matching him nip for nip until he slammed against her, rattling the door, the wall that housed it.
This—as she called it—was everything. It couldn’t be spoiled, could only deepen and widen and intensify. This wasn’t rushing things, wasn’t too soon. This was how it should be. They didn’t need time to know this was right. It was. Time would only provide the leisure to explore and savor all the ways of how right it was.
But this totality of response was also frightening. His grip on control was softening, the need to ram inside her, here, now, ride her until she convulsed around him, drenched his flesh with her pleasure and he pumped her full of his, was replacing his mental faculties. And that was after just a kiss.
But it wasn’t a kiss. It was a rehearsal for their mating, enough to portray what that would be like. Something so outside the realm of his experience he couldn’t even begin to imagine it.
He knew that on a fundamental level. He had to know the rest.
He tore his lips from the lock of her passion, shuddered with her cry, her lurch, her demand that he resume their fusion.
He molded her features with his mouth as if mapping them into tactile memory. “Tell me your name, bellissima. I need to know it now, to whisper it into your lips and against your every pleasure point. I need to think it, have it fill my mind as I look on your beauty. I want to roar it as I fill you.”
“Gabrielle…” Her moan penetrated his brain, lodged in his erection. Gabrielle.