The Prince's Love-Child. Sharon Kendrick

highly aroused state he carefully slid off his trousers and briefs, watching with a certain mocking triumph as her eyes widened, her lips forming a pouting and moist little circle when she saw just how turned on he was.

      ‘Oh, Guido,’ she whispered, on a thready note of wonder.

      Her fingertips moved from where they had been circling over her nipple to press between the juncture of her legs and her head fell back. She closed her eyes, and for a moment Guido wondered if she was just going to pleasure herself in front of him. And—in spite of his aching desire for her—wouldn’t that be unbearably erotic to watch?

      Driven on by an overwhelming need, he stroked his hand over himself as greedily as a schoolboy, and looked up to find her staring at him. Their eyes met in a moment of complete and silent understanding.

      ‘Okay, Lucy,’ he said unsteadily. ‘You’ve played your little stripper game. That’s enough. I want you here. Right now.’

      His command was raw enough to make her forget the harsh note in his voice as he had said stripper. Her hands were trembling as she pulled her panties down and tossed them aside, and half-ran across the room towards him. And then she straddled him, easing herself down onto his hardness, squealing with delight as he filled her.

      She thrust forward with her hips, as if she was riding bareback. But he rolled her straight over onto her back, assuming the position of mastery.

      ‘Now,’ he groaned, as he drove into her, over and over, each sweet, savage thrust sending her careering close to the edge. ‘Now!’

      He bent his head to kiss her. The touch of his lips seemed to set fire to the touch-paper embedded deep in her heart and unstoppable flames began to flicker through her veins. She gave a broken little cry, but she bit down on it. She wanted to tell him that only he could make her feel this way. But for Guido this was simply good sex, and everyone knew that men could get good sex from any number of women.

      And then the release washed over her—great powerful waves of it which rocked her to the very core, obliterating everything except the sheer wonder of the moment. Lucy clung to him, burying her face in his shoulder as he began to tense inside her, and to feel him beginning to orgasm only magnified her own pleasure.

      For Guido it went on and on, and even when it was over he lay back, gazing dazedly at the ceiling. He couldn’t remember sex as good as that. Never. He yawned, aware that his defences were down, irrevocably slipping into the dark, cushioned tunnel of sleep.

      Lucy lay quite still until she heard Guido’s breathing steady, then slow and deepen, and only when she was certain that he was asleep did she risk turning onto her side to look at him.

      In sleep he was beautiful and curiously accessible in a way he never was while awake—making it impossible not to weave hopeless fantasies about him. Only in sleep did his hard and handsome face relax. The cruel, sensual mouth softened and the piercing brilliance of the ebony eyes was shielded by the feathery arcs of his lashes, which curved with such childlike innocence against his cheek.

      His dark head was pillowed against a recumbent hand, and the long, lean limbs were sprawled over the giant-sized bed.

      Lucy wriggled up the bed a bit, resting against a bank of drift-soft pillows, and looked properly around the room for the first time.

      So this was the Prince’s bedroom!

      There was little to mark it out as a Royal residence—it just looked like home to a very wealthy man. The bed was bigger than any she had ever seen, and the view from the window was utterly spectacular. No cost had been spared in the restrained but elegant furnishings. It was minimalist and unashamedly masculine, without in any way being hard or cold.

      Only a silver-framed photo beside the bed gave any indication of his identity, and unless you knew it could have been any snapshot of any rich and privileged family.

      But it was not.

      It was a picture of Guido, taken with his mother, his elder brother Gianferro, and their father the King. Guido, with his black hair and black eyes, looked to be about four or five. Lucy bit her lip, moving her eyes over the figure of the beautiful young Queen. There was no outward sign of her pregnancy with Nicolo—the youngest—and certainly no sign that within a year of that photo being taken she would be dead. Thank God humans could not see into the future, she thought, with a sudden stab of pain.

      She stared at the young Guido. In the face of the child it was possible to see the man. His face was sweetly handsome, his expression almost grave, as if he was determined to be a grown-up boy for the mother whose hand he gripped so tightly.

      But Lucy had only learnt all this subsequently. It was easy to find out things about someone when you were interested—and when they were in the public eye. Not that she had known that he was a prince when she’d met him. At least, not at first.

      To Lucy, he had been just a heart-stoppingly gorgeous man who had struck up a conversation with her at a party.

       CHAPTER THREE

      IT HAD been one of those parties that Lucy hadn’t particularly wanted to go to—she had been on a stopover on her way back to London and desperate for some sleep—but the flight crew had overridden her objections. Apparently, parties didn’t get much better or more highly connected than this one. One of the other stewardesses had said that a prince was going to be there, but quite honestly Lucy hadn’t believed them.

      Well, who would have?

      When they had walked into the expensive Bohemian TriBeCa townhouse, Lucy had looked around her with interest. It had been like stepping into some lavishly appointed Bedouin tent—with embroidered cushions and rich brocade wall-hangings, and the heady scent of incense. The hypnotic drift of what had sounded like snake-charmer’s music had only added to the illusion of being on a film set.

      ‘When do the belly-dancers arrive?’ she asked drily.

      ‘Shh!’ someone hissed. ‘You know people tend to misunderstand your sense of humour!’

      So Lucy decided to observe, rather than to participate, and went to stand in a darkened corner which nonetheless gave her a great view. She took a glass of punch with her and sipped it, then shuddered, hastily putting the glass down on a small inlaid table.

      ‘Disgusting, isn’t it?’ came a rich, accented voice from a few feet away.

      Lucy was just about to protest that he had startled her when her words somehow died on her lips. ‘It’s…a little heavy on the spices,’ she agreed, blinking slightly, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing.

      ‘And the alcohol, of course.’

      ‘Well, there is that, of course,’ she echoed, and he smiled.

      They stood looking at one another in the way that two people did at parties when there was a strong sexual chemistry between them.

      Lucy was wearing a simple green velvet tunic dress—quite short, so that it came to mid-thigh and made her legs look endlessly long. But her baggy suede boots gave the outfit a quirky appearance. Her hair was loose, flooding down over her shoulders in a heavy Titian fall.

      Guido thought that she looked like a very sexy bandit. Her face was pale and freckled—he liked the freckles—and her wide honey-coloured eyes were slightly wary—he liked that, too.

      Lucy thought, quite honestly, that he was the most gorgeous man she had ever laid eyes on. But then, she had never seen a man who looked quite like this.

      He was tall, and his body was both lean and powerful. His hair was as black as the night, and his eyes only a shade lighter, and he had an almost aristocratic bearing. She wondered if he was Italian, or maybe Spanish. He was certainly European.

      And he almost certainly has a girlfriend, she told herself. If not one, then a legion of them.

      Guido waited, but she said nothing, and he