Royals: His Hidden Secret: Revealed: A Prince and A Pregnancy / Date with a Surgeon Prince / The Secret King. Kelly Hunter
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‘Could you be a little more specific?’ She raked her nails lightly down his chest. Rafe’s breath left his body with a hiss.
‘Lose the clothes, Simone, forget the game, and stand naked before me.’
He asked a lot, this man, but she did it because he needed her to and because she would demand no less from him before this night was through. ‘What now?’ She shivered, just a little, in the cool night air. Her nipples tightened and she lifted her chin to show that she was not afraid, no matter what he asked of her.
He smiled at that, slow and wicked. ‘Cold?’
Not any more.
‘Come closer.’ Another order and one she obeyed. She was rewarded with a kiss, deep and drugging. ‘Tell me when to stop,’ he muttered. ‘The baby…’
‘The baby is fine,’ she whispered, and arched into his hands as he grazed the curve of her neck with his teeth. ‘And hell will freeze over before I ever tell you to stop.’
He needed this, thought Rafael. The protection Simone afforded him so effortlessly. The passion she offered so willingly. And the trust she placed in him. ‘It’s not a fair bargain,’ he murmured and he nipped at her shoulder blade and trailed his fingers down her spine. ‘This proposal of yours, I see nothing in it for you.’
‘That’s because you’re not looking through my eyes,’ she murmured, and slanted him a glance as she undid his belt and the button on his trousers. ‘I see plenty in this for me. Just…’ Simone found him and caressed him, a slow slide of her palm against straining hardness and heated skin. His heartbeat tripled. ‘Plenty.’
Rafael took her mouth again, an erotic tangle of lips and of tongues. The bed was here somewhere, he needed a bed, needed to be careful of this woman with his child in her womb. The need to protect warred with his need to possess. He could not predict which need would triumph.
He picked her up and carried her to the bed, laying her on her back before sinking down beside her. He ran his hand down her body, from shoulder to stomach and back to a tightly budded breast. Rafe bent his head and suckled hard. Simone gasped and bucked beneath his ministrations.
‘Sensitive?’ he whispered as her fingers came up to cradle his head.
‘You have no idea.’
‘More?’
‘Yes,’ she muttered and cried out her pleasure when he took to her other breast with a gentle scrape of teeth and tongue. Her hands were not gentle in his hair as she writhed beneath him. ‘God, yes.’
To protect or to possess? Which would it be? Simone parted her legs willingly, wantonly, as he trailed kisses down her ribcage and over her gently rounded stomach.
‘Would you like me to say your name?’ she offered raggedly.
Possession won.
ONE week slipped by and then another as Simone settled into the rhythms of Maracey, its politics and its people. During the day Rafael belonged to Maracey and to Etienne, or that was the way it seemed. He did what Etienne asked of him and attended all manner of meetings, emerging from them preoccupied and remote, with his defences so solidly in place there was no getting round them. Only at night when reckless, insatiable passion ruled them both did Rafael become truly hers, taking everything she offered, and giving everything a woman could ever want in return.
Tenderness.
And surrender.
Passion.
And possession.
Whether love grew in such conditions, Simone could not say. Rafael never spoke of love and he never spoke of their future. She didn’t know how long their stay in Maracey would last or whether Rafael intended to take on the role of Etienne’s heir apparent. He was being groomed for it, that much was certain.
So many questions in need of answers.
Such a fragile thing, Rafael’s trust in her.
Simone was three months pregnant now and her morning queasiness had become more pronounced. Rafe had taken to waking before her in the mornings and padding downstairs to the kitchen to collect whatever Rosa happened to be trialling that day that might, at a pinch, stay in her stomach for more than a minute. Fatty foods would not. Nor eggs, toast, fruit, yoghurt, cereal, croissants or baguettes. Day-old flatbread would. Salted crispbread would too, washed down with unsweetened tea. Once she’d lined her stomach with food the morning sickness would pass. Until she was up and about though, Rafael hovered.
It helped immensely that he chose to do so in a pair of long cotton pyjama bottoms and nothing else. She loved watching him pace around as he lingered over his own breakfast, with one eye on getting ready to go do business and one on her. She loved that she could admire the craftsmanship on his back now without wincing.
Admittedly, that didn’t stop her from suggesting a few minor improvements to the wording.
‘You know, I think,’ she said with a wave of her salted crispbread as he wandered past the bed for the umpteenth time, ‘that with a tiny bit of finessing, a master artist could make that tattoo read “Honey, I’m Back”.’
‘No.’ He continued on his way to wherever it was he was going. But his lips twitched and that was all the encouragement she needed.
‘“Wrong Way Go Back?”’ she suggested next. ‘Just in case you ever need to double as a roadside stop sign?’
He gave her a look that would have turned bacon crispy—had there actually been any bacon on her plate.
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘It’d never work for women drivers. They’d like as not drive off a cliff while looking at you. What about a nice solid square and no words at all. “Back in Black”. Get it?’
His lips twitched. Possibly in humour. Possibly in pain. ‘Eat your cracker,’ he said.
She nibbled the salty bits off it thoughtfully. ‘I’ve got it,’ she said. ‘“The Love Shack.”’
‘The wording stays as is,’ he said firmly. ‘Get used to it.’
She was used to it. It was the pain beneath the words that she objected to, and she still didn’t have the faintest idea how to make it go away. It was always there, in the emotional distance he demanded of others, in the way he kept his feelings to himself. ‘I bet you can’t wait for me to start suggesting names for this baby,’ she said sagely.
‘God help us,’ he muttered.
‘Well, she could. But you do realise she’s going to push for one of those archangel names. Not that it isn’t already a family theme. How about Michael?’
‘Michael is good.’
‘Uriel?’
The look he sent her indicated possibly not.
‘Metatron! Now there’s a goodie.’
‘No,’ he said sternly.
But he went to his meeting that day with a smile on his face.
Rafael lived to get through each day as best he could. He did what Etienne wanted and attended his meetings and sat through endless negotiations that had ramifications far beyond what he was used to thinking about. His respect for Etienne grew with each passing day. His feeling of entrapment grew with each passing day as well. Only the nights gave him solace. Only in Simone’s arms did Rafael find freedom of a sort, and even that was weighted against the guilt of having forced Simone to accompany him to Maracey and into a lifestyle she did not want and made no comment on although he could see for himself the unhappiness in her eyes at times.
She