The Mills & Boon Stars Collection. Cathy Williams

to and I think it’s best you don’t share a room until after your marriage. Let tradition reign supreme. I think we should adopt a softly-softly approach.’

      Sophie glanced up at Rafe, expecting him to object to this as well. To a man with his healthy sexual appetite it would seem old-fashioned and hypocritical to be put in separate rooms. But to her astonishment, he simply nodded.

      ‘That sounds perfectly agreeable,’ he said.

      ‘Good. And I should be honoured if you would be my guest at the New Year’s Eve ball we hold here in the palace each year. It will be a good time to introduce you to the great and the good of Isolaverde. We can announce your engagement on New Year’s Day.’ Myron looked straight into Rafe’s eyes. ‘If that also meets with your approval?’

      ‘Absolutely,’ answered Rafe. ‘I should be honoured.’

      But as the King swept from the throne room Sophie couldn’t shake off a distinct feeling of disenchantment—remembering the way the two men had talked about her as if she were nothing but an object to barter. Suddenly, it felt as if she had been slotted straight back into her familiar restricted role of princess. As if the stiff mantle of being a royal had settled over her shoulders and was threatening to stifle her. The woman who had shovelled show and beaten eggs while wearing a silly little Santa outfit now seemed as if she belonged to another life.

      She accompanied Rafe and a small convoy of servants through the maze of palace corridors to the luxurious Ambassadorial suite and when they were alone at last, and the servants dismissed, he took her in his arms. It should have felt like heaven to be this close to him again, but Sophie couldn’t shake off the notion that it just didn’t feel right.

      ‘Now,’ he said, his thumb grazing over her breast and the warmth of his breath fanning her lips. ‘What shall we do next? Any ideas?’

      She swallowed. ‘We’ll have to get ready for dinner and my rooms are at the opposite end of the palace to yours, so I’d better... I’d better get going.’

      ‘Dinner can wait,’ he murmured as he ran his other hand down her spine to cup the curve of one buttock.

      This was the point when she normally began to dissolve, when her blood would grow heated and her skin sensitive as she anticipated his lovemaking. But all Sophie could feel was an acute self-consciousness, the easy familiarity all but gone. She felt as if people were watching. Listening. Wondered if the servants were hovering in the vicinity, eager to know if the Princess was being intimate with the commoner she had brought into their midst. She froze. Rafe’s fingers felt alien against her skin as he popped the buttons on her shirt and it flapped open. She felt as if this were all happening to someone else as he unclipped the front fastening of her bra and her breasts tumbled free.

      ‘Dinner can’t wait.’ She swallowed as she stared down at his fingers—olive-dark against her paler skin as he stroked her breast—but for once her knees weren’t growing weak and her nipples weren’t tingling. For once she could feel nothing. ‘That’s something you’d better get used to,’ she added. ‘It is always served on the stroke of eight and to be late will be seen as an insult to the King.’

      ‘So? That gives us a couple of hours.’ He nuzzled her neck with a lazy kiss. ‘Plenty of time for what I have in mind. I haven’t made love to you in hours, Sophie—and I’m beginning to get withdrawal symptoms. But if you’re telling me that we’re on a tight schedule, then maybe we won’t bother with bed. Maybe we’ll do it...right here.’

      She couldn’t stop him. She told herself she didn’t want to stop him and that much was true. Because she kept thinking that her familiar passion would return as his lovemaking progressed. So she let him push her up against the wall and slide her panties down over her thighs, and helped him as he carefully tugged the zip down over his straining erection. She even stroked on the condom just as he’d taught her to, but she didn’t get her usual thrill of pleasure as he made that first stifled groan when he entered her.

      She did everything she always did, wrapping her legs around his back, feeling the swing of her skirt against her naked thighs and burying her face in his neck as he thrust deep inside her. But today she couldn’t free herself of a slight sense of guilt. She’d always seen herself as others saw her, because that was the way she’d been brought up.

      Always be aware that someone could be watching you, Sophie, her mother used to say primly. Because someone usually is.

      So that now, part of her was observing a princess pressed up against the wall with her panties down by her ankles, as Rafe thrust in and out of her.

      She felt him begin to shudder and she whispered soft and muffled words in Greek to him. Words of excitement and encouragement and she kissed his lips hard and passionately when he came, hoping that would disguise her own lack of orgasm.

      Neither of them spoke for a moment and when the last of his spasms had died away, she pulled out of his embrace. Awkwardly, she stooped to pick up her panties, her hair falling over her flushed face as she stepped into them again. ‘I’d... I’d better go,’ she said. ‘And...settle in.’

      ‘Sure.’

      His face was curiously guarded as she put her bra and shirt back on and tidied up her hair, but he said nothing more as she left for her own section of the palace. And even the sight of her familiar rooms did little to soothe feelings which were ruffled by more than her scary lack of reaction to Rafe’s lovemaking. Was her prolonged taste of freedom responsible for the sense of alienation she now felt in the environment she’d grown up in?

      She looked at the canopied white bed, positioned beneath a soaring golden ceiling which had seemed so impossibly high when she was a little girl. She picked up a photo of her parents at a ball they’d attended before she was even born, her mother wearing the dazzling ruby and diamond necklace which Sophie had been destined to wear when she married Prince Luc. A necklace which now belonged to another woman...

      Putting the photo back down, she showered Rafe’s scent from her skin and then walked over to the wardrobe. The lavish clothes she found inside were worlds away from the cheap shorts and T-shirts she’d worn at Poonbarra, where she’d blended in and felt like everyone else. Running her fingertips over the soft fabrics, she put on a floaty dress of a blue so pale it was almost white, and went down to dinner.

      The meal was held in the State banqueting room—a setting designed to show the palace at its most splendid. Old gold and cream roses were massed into glittering crystal vases and tall gold candles flickered all the way along the centre of the table. It felt like a jolt to be back amid all this lavish and very obvious luxury again and Sophie tried to shake off the feeling of being on show. She was next to Myron, who she could tell was making a big effort to be nice to her. She kept expecting him to berate her for her impetuosity in running away, but instead he asked her about life at Poonbarra—and it was all she could do to keep the wistfulness from her voice. And she detected an undeniable sense of relief in his attitude towards her. Was the King glad that his troublesome little sister was soon to be off his hands at last—passed from the care of one powerful man to another?

      Rafe was seated next to Mary-Belle—with the Isolaverdian Prime Minister on the other side. Sophie watched as he charmed both her little sister and the high-ranking politician who had recently approved an extension to the country’s world-famous oceanographic museum. Who knew Rafe was such an expert on marine science, or that he’d once scuba-dived in the Galapagos? She sat and listened as he made her sister giggle. Over the top of her golden goblet she saw him smile at something the premier had said and Sophie’s heart began to pound beneath the delicate material of her silk-satin dress. He looked so gorgeous sitting there, but she thought he also seemed...distant. There were no meaningful looks slanted at her from across the wide expanse of the table. No suggestive smile. And whose fault was that? Had he noticed her lack of response earlier, or had he been so caught up in his own passion that he hadn’t noticed? She wondered if she should have faked an orgasm, yet something deep inside her baulked at the thought of doing that—because wasn’t this relationship of theirs supposed to be based on honesty?

      Except it didn’t