Scandals Of The Famous: The Scandalous Princess. Кейт Хьюит

And that kiss—and all it might mean—had drained her too.

      ‘I would have thought it would revitalise you,’ Ben said, a slight edge to his voice. ‘Don’t extroverts get their energy from socialising?’ He spoke with a trace of mockery that was all too familiar. So it was going to be like that. Fine. That was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Light. Safe. Not real. Not like that kiss had been.

      ‘Perhaps I’m not an extrovert,’ she said, her head still resting against the seat, her eyes closed. Ben let out a short little laugh.

      ‘Not an extrovert, Princess? I find that hard to believe.’

      She opened her eyes, turning her head so she could look at him. His shoulders were tense, a muscle bunched in his jaw. ‘You don’t know me,’ she said quietly. ‘Even if you think you do.’ Even if she wanted him to. Even if she was afraid for him to.

      Ben was silent as he gazed back out at the night, his hands flexing on the plane’s controls. ‘What are you saying?’ he finally asked. ‘That you don’t enjoy all those parties? All those affairs and scandals? Everything you get up to—it’s just an act?’

      That’s exactly what I’m saying. The words were in her heart, on her lips, yet she could not speak them. She’d tried telling him earlier, tried to explain she did it as a way to feel in control. Strong. But she knew now she could not risk making herself so vulnerable, not when it was so obviously not what Ben wanted to hear. He wanted her to be exactly what he thought she was. The shallow, spoilt princess. That was easier for both of them, wasn’t it? Anything else was scary. And this was a man who hated fear, who was scared of being scared. He might not know her, but she understood him all too well.

      She turned her head away from him and closed her eyes. ‘An act?’ she repeated with a little laugh. ‘How exhausting it sounds.’ Ben didn’t reply, and neither of them spoke again.

      By the time the plane landed on the airfield with a bump Natalia felt more depressed than tense. The hour of silence had left her with far too much time to think. To remember. She could quite distinctly and deliciously remember the feel of Ben’s lips on hers, his hands sliding under her dress, those strong arms pulling her closer. It had all felt so amazing, and not just physically. Emotionally she’d felt something too. She’d felt something stir to life and awaken inside her that was more than just desire or need. Natalia was afraid to think of what it was.

      She could not fall in love with this man.

      She’d slid him a couple of sideways glances during the course of the journey, but his rather grim gaze remained on the stretch of night sky in front of them. She had no idea what he was thinking. Was he regretting the kiss? Wishing it had never happened? Why had he kissed her? Was it just simple lust or something more?

      And was she willing to ask herself the same question? What was this potent mix of excitement and fear, hope and need, that she was feeling? If she ignored it, would it go away? Would life be safe again? Did she want it to be?

      Too many questions, and no answers. She felt as if she were teetering on the edge of a precipice. She had no idea what lay waiting for her far below, or on the other side. She had no idea just how far she’d have to jump to land safely. Maybe she didn’t even want to be safe any more.

      ‘We’re here,’ Ben said, startling Natalia out of the endless looping reel of her thoughts. She straightened, smoothed her skirt.

      ‘Brilliant,’ she said, and cleared her throat, the sound loud and awkward in the confined space of the cockpit. Ben turned to look at her, and Natalia’s breath froze in her chest.

      ‘About that kiss …’ he began.

      Here it comes, she thought. The apologies or accusations, it didn’t matter which. It was a mistake. Let’s forget it ever happened. Maybe that would be for the best. Safer. She lifted her chin a notch. ‘What about it?’

      Ben stared at her for a long, endless moment. It was too dark for Natalia to make out his expression. ‘I can’t stop thinking about it,’ he finally confessed in a ragged whisper, and then he was pulling her towards him, and she was on his lap and his mouth was on hers and that was all they needed to say about that kiss.

      This one was even better.

      Ben’s hands slid along her body, his thumbs grazing the sides of her breasts before coming to rest on her hips, guiding her even closer so her legs splayed on either side of him, her body pressed intimately to his. It felt so good, Natalia thought hazily, but not good enough. She wanted more. She needed more. She shifted, pressing against him, her fingers fisted in his hair, raked his back in an agony of sensation, anything to get closer.

      His hands were hard on her hips as he pressed back, and desperately Natalia thought how they were wearing too many clothes. Too much between them. Ben must have thought so too for impatiently his hands pulled at her dress, her underwear, his fingers finding her, and Natalia lost all train of thought, the sensation was too great, too much.

      Until the cockpit was suddenly awash with light and someone tapped on the hatch of the plane. Ben jerked his mouth from hers and in one quick movement pushed her from his lap so she was sprawled most inelegantly, her dress up around her waist, half on her seat, half on the floor.

      Natalia blinked, too shocked to even push her dress back down. One of the airport’s security guards was shining a torch into the plane, but he’d immediately grasped what was going on for he backed quickly away.

       ‘Scusi … scusi …’

      Reality returned in a sickening rush. Humiliation too. Carefully Natalia pulled her dress back down.

      ‘Sorry,’ Ben muttered, and reached for her hand. Natalia ignored it. It wasn’t easy to act sophisticated when she’d just been dumped on the floor, but she tried.

      ‘That’s not quite how I envisioned this ending,’ she murmured, giving him a tart look even though inside she felt sick with humiliation and hurt.

      ‘I thought it was the press.’

      Ah. Well, that explained it. The last thing Ben wanted was to be caught in flagrante with Princess Natalia. ‘The press, camping out at the airport after midnight?’ she remarked drily. ‘I know you don’t like the paparazzi, Ben, but I think that’s verging on paranoid.’

      ‘Sorry,’ he said again. He didn’t look at her as he said it. Natalia felt her heart start to splinter.

      ‘Sorry you thought it was the press, or sorry for dumping me on the floor like so much rubbish? Or,’ Natalia continued, making sure to keep her voice dry, as if this were all so amusing, ‘sorry for kissing me in the first place?’

      Ben didn’t answer. His expression had become so irritatingly unreadable. ‘Perhaps you’re sorry for all three?’ she suggested. ‘That would be a nice hat trick.’ Ben remained silent and she finished adjusting her dress, her chin held high, her hands trembling.

      ‘I’ll drive you home,’ he said after another interminable moment, and Natalia didn’t bother to reply. She didn’t think she could.

      Nothing had gone the way he’d expected. Fury and regret pulsed through him as Ben drove Natalia home. She sat next to him, her posture ramrod straight, her chin tilted at an impossibly proud angle. Had he hurt her?

      Of course you did, you bastard.

      He’d dumped her on the floor. He’d pushed her away from him as if she disgusted him. It had been an instinctive response, one borne of self-protection and even fear. He’d had his moments of weakness exploited all too often. A tear-streaked face at four years old. Sullen and alone at twelve. The agony of his knee injury at sixteen. The paparazzi had captured every moment of emotional vulnerability and anguish he’d ever experienced and plastered them across their papers so the whole world had seen. So his mother had seen, and been heartbroken. Oldest Jackson misses his Daddy. Another Jackson Disappoints. Ben Jackson’s Dreams Shattered.