Reunited By The Royal Baby. Maisey Yates

to grow as Ben had grown. She’d remembered his kindness to her. His tenderness when he’d held her in his arms. In her head, she had built on those memories, brick by brick. She had nurtured a fantasy man in her imagination, she realised—because the real man was nothing but an arrogant and hurtful bastard.

      ‘So my hair’s the wrong colour, my body’s the wrong shape and I dress like a tramp.’ Melissa paused and then looked at him boldly. ‘Anything else you’ve missed?’

      Casimiro frowned, because her persistence was surprising. By now she should have caved in. Started blubbing and giving him some hard-luck story about how she really needed money. She wanted financial aid for an ailing donkey sanctuary. She was battling to preserve a rare butterfly threatened by the proposed new road which would raze through its natural habitat. She was sorry to have invented such a far-fetched story but she was desperate…

      ‘Actually, yes.’ His voice was stealthy now. ‘I always use protection when I make love to a woman.’ He saw her cheeks grow pink. Would this graphic truth be enough to get her to back down? he wondered. ‘There’s a general consensus, you see—which deems that my seed is precious stuff. More precious than most.’ His mouth twisted into a knowingly sarcastic smile. ‘It’s a King thing.’

      She paused for a moment to let this outrageous comment die away. ‘So why are you here?’ she questioned quietly.

      Again, her general unflappability when faced with his unmistakable anger slightly wrong-footed him. Why was he here? If he had really believed that she was some cheap con-artist then she wouldn’t have got within a million miles of him. So why? Why was it that when he looked at her, he felt the faint tug of something he couldn’t quite put his finger on? Something which felt unfamiliar and uncomfortable.

      Since his accident—when his life had hung in the balance for days—so many of his usual pastimes had been curtailed that it felt an age since he had tasted danger. But he could taste it now. It seemed to linger in the air about him—tantalising him—just as the highest jump on one of his beloved horses had always tantalised him.

      He hadn’t ridden since the accident—but now came enticement in a different and unexpected form. Not blonde. Not petite, nor curvy—but bold and brunette with long, long legs and eyes which were the greenest he had ever seen. Almost emerald…Once again he felt the distant tug of something nebulous—some tantalising memory which hovered just out of reach.

      He touched the tip of his tongue to his upper lip, slid it slowly over the surface. ‘Maybe I came looking for something to nudge my memory,’ he said softly.

      She hadn’t realised what he was about to do—because in Melissa’s book, you didn’t come onto a woman if you had just spent the last ten minutes insulting her and looking at her as if she’d crawled out from underneath a stone.

      But to her shock he was pulling her into his arms with a proprietary and arrogant air. Pulling her really close—so that all that lay between her and his hard, lean torso were just two thin layers of their respective T-shirts. Suddenly, she could feel the sheer pleasure of being touched by him again and—despite the circumstances—it felt just as amazing as it had ever done. Her skin began to sing and her heart to pound, but this wasn’t right. Deep down, she knew it wasn’t right…

      ‘What…what the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she breathed.

      Her stumbled little protest both angered and inflamed him, so that another hot urgent jerk of desire pressed hard against the denim of his jeans. Pushing a strand of dark hair away from her pale face, he stared down into the pure green colour of her darkening eyes.

      ‘Make your mind up, cara mia,’ he bit out throatily. ‘You say that I’ve been your lover—’

      ‘I say it because it’s true!’

      ‘Then maybe the taste of your lips and the feel of your body will jog my memory. Capisca?’

      He lowered his mouth onto hers, capturing her lips in a kiss so hard that it made her shudder for all kinds of reasons. She shuddered because, as a kiss, it felt almost contemptuous and a million miles away from any real tenderness or regard. And she shuddered because he kissed with a masterly skill which took her breath away. And, of course, because it had been so long. Much, much too long.

      ‘Casimiro,’ she breathed—the word itself a luxury, because surely you were permitted to call a king by name when he was kissing you?

      ‘Dio—’ He felt her lips open beneath his—and her instantaneous response cut through his defences—as if he had been unprepared for such immediate passion. Had he expected more of a fight? Even wanted more of a fight—so that he would have had to kiss her into some sort of submission and force her to retract her ridiculous claim?

      But there was no fight as her rangy body melted against his—the small but perfect breasts flowering into life, her sighing delight made irresistible by the accompanying soft swivel of her hips. Casimiro felt his jutting erection positioned in perfect alignment to her and he uttered a small curse beneath his breath.

      He had meant to give her a swift demonstration of his sexual power. To have her weak and wanting him—her body soft with yearning—and in this he had succeeded. But by now he should have terminated the kiss. To have thrust her away with a contemptuous remark about how any man could surely be the father of her child if she was so free and easy with her favours.

      So why were his lips plundering hers with a hunger which had never felt so keen? And why were his fingers clasping one of her breasts—feeling the iron-hard little peak puckering through her T-shirt?

      ‘Oh!’ she gasped, knowing that she should stop him—but how the hell could her love-starved body stop him from doing something which was so incredible? Running her fingers distractedly through the thick tumble of his ebony hair, she felt a faint little raised line which zigzagged from behind his ear to just beside his temple, and for a brief second she frowned. But only for a second—because the way he was touching her drove all sane thoughts from her mind. ‘Casimiro,’ she breathed again, the word sounding like a prayer and an incitement.

      Her easy acquiescence both thrilled and angered him—her breathless little moans spurring him until he was rucking up the baggy T-shirt like a schoolboy eager for his first intimate touch of a woman. And she was letting him.

      He gave a groan of delight as his hand skated up and over her inner thighs and for one tantalising moment he paused, heard her hold her breath.

      ‘You are good,’ he ground out, tearing his lips away from hers in an attempt to suck in a ragged supply of oxygen to his lungs. Too good, he thought—as the desire to unzip himself and impale her heated his blood with a terrible kind of primitive yearning.

      ‘So are you,’ she whispered, wanting him to kiss her again. And more. Much more. Was he remembering the feel of her body and the fact that they were so good together—as she was? Would it be such a terrible thing to carry on with what they’d been doing—to show Casimiro that their son had been given life as a result of an act as amazing as this?

      ‘I want you,’ he ground out.

      ‘And I want…I want you,’ came her shuddered response.

      Yet even as he felt the restlessness in her body which matched his own, Casimiro knew that this was crazy. Still his hand lingered on the cool thigh and the temptation to trail it towards its sweet destination almost overwhelmed him. He could have her in an instant. Here. Now. On the floor. In her bed—and then what?

      ‘No. This is not going to happen.’ Abruptly, he let his hand fall and stepped away from her—observing the disbelief and disappointment which had darkened her green eyes, the rapid rising and falling of her perfect little breasts as her fingers flew to her lips. And Casimiro could do nothing to stop the tide of relief which flooded over him—eclipsing even the aching frustration in his aroused body. For he had demonstrated to them both the power of his steely will! Of his iron-hard resolve. Let her know the kind of person she was dealing