The Royals Collection. Rebecca Winters

closed her mouth with a firm and audible snap. Clutching the dress in one hand and her anger in the other, she slung him a contemptuous look that would have frozen a normal man stone dead in his tracks. The man she had married gave a here-we-go-again look and dragged some of the excess moisture from his hair with one hand, sending a shower of silver water droplets over her heated skin.

      ‘I just bet there are, but I’m not too keen on wearing other women’s cast-offs—or, for that matter, sleeping with them!’

      He responded to her hostility with a long, slow, considering look. ‘Right.’

      He didn’t add I see because he didn’t. When she had left him a few minutes earlier the sexual promise in her blue eyes... Well, if she hadn’t left when she had, he had been within an undiplomatic hair’s breadth of doing the unthinkable—slamming the phone down on his uncle with the explanation, I need to make love to my wife.

      Acknowledging the strength of that need had been what had driven him to the pool. He hadn’t spared his body—the relentless pace through the water should have left him incapable of breath, let alone lust, but the ache was still there, and now she was looking at him as though he had just been found guilty of waging a hate campaign against kittens!

      He ground his teeth at the sheer, unremitting frustration of it all. He tilted his head, a dark scowl forming on his wide forehead as he fished for a word that summed up his life before Hannah had come into it. Centred.

      At another time he might have appreciated the black irony of the situation, but at that moment, with frustrated desire clenched like a knot, the humour passed him by. He had married her, resenting both the sense of duty that made him step up and the woman herself. And now, days later, he wanted her so badly he could barely string a coherent thought together. He was utterly consumed by it.

      Not his type...well, that self-delusion had lasted about five seconds! Hannah was every man’s type and once you saw the woman behind the cool mask... He shook his head, his fine-tuned steel trap of a mind finding it impossible to rationalise the fascination she exerted for him, the all-consuming need he felt to possess her and to lose himself in her.

      It was just sex, he told himself, recognising an uncharacteristic tendency to over-analyse in his train of thought. Why try and read anything else into it? He’d married a woman he couldn’t keep his hands off. But there was always a flip side, no heaven without hell. Not only did she have the ability to stretch the boundaries of sexual pleasure, she also had the ability to drive him crazy with her mood swings.

      He forced his eyes from her face to the garment in her hand. Her mood seemed out of proportion with a wardrobe malfunction. He struggled to school his features into something that conveyed an interest he did not feel—he was more interested in peeling off her clothes than discussing fashion.

      ‘You want to show me a new dress?’

      Her brows hit her hairline. He actually thought she wanted to parade around and ask his approval!

      ‘I suppose you’ve never seen this before?’ Her voice shook almost as much as her hand did as she held out the backless, frontless, totally tasteless garment.

      Recognition clicked in his brain. ‘I have.’ He had little interest in women’s clothes but this one had been hard to forget—as was the evening that had gone with it.

      He hadn’t been the intended victim or beneficiary of the provocative number. Neither, it turned out, had Charlotte begged him to escort her to the glittering premiere for the pleasure of his company. He and the dress had been part of her revenge on her ex-husband. Bizarrely, although Charlotte had been glad to be out of her marriage, she had resented the fact her ex had moved on too—especially as the woman he had moved on to was a younger version of herself.

      ‘You’re angry.’ His eyes slid down her body, over the slim curves and long, long legs. She was, he decided, totally magnificent. ‘I know because your eyes turn from summer sky to stormy sea when you’re mad.’

      ‘It can work once, even twice, but I have to tell you, Kamel, that the staring-deep-into-my-eyes thing has a shelf life,’ she lied. ‘So don’t try and change the subject.’

      ‘What was the subject?’ he asked, continuing to stare deep into her eyes, causing major and probably permanent damage to her frazzled nervous system.

      ‘Your girlfriend’s choice of clothes. Oh, incidentally, I’m totally fine with sharing my wardrobe space with your harem, though I have to tell you that they are not my size!’

      ‘I know,’ he said, his fingertips twitching as he transferred his stare to Hannah’s heaving breasts. They fitted almost perfectly into his palms, soft, firm and... He took a deep swallow and lifted his gaze. ‘Charlotte has had help in that area. They were, I believe, an engagement present from her ex.’

      Her chin went up as she enquired in a deceptively soft voice, ‘Are you suggesting I need help in that area?’

      The icy question drew a low smoky laugh from him. ‘You are perfect in that area.’ The humour faded from his face, leaving a restless hunger. She was perfect. His perfect lover.

      The hunger in his stare as much as his flattering words brought hot colour flying to her cheeks. But this heat was mild compared to the surge of sexual warmth that settled deep in her pelvis and spread. Her mask of disdain was rice-paper thin as she gave a sniff and tossed her head.

      ‘I have no interest,’ she informed him icily. ‘Not in what your idea of perfect is, or the surgical procedures your girlfriend has had, or who paid for them.’ Her haughty delivery vanished as the strength of her feelings became impossible to disguise. ‘I just have an interest in being treated with a modicum, a bare modicum of respect while we are sharing a—’ on the brink of saying bed, she stopped herself; the chain of thought already set in motion was less easy to stall ‘—roof!’ she improvised, seeing his muscled body sleek with sweat, his face taut in a mask of need.

      ‘I’m sorry you were upset. I gave instructions for the room to be cleared.’

      ‘Cleared!’ she parroted, her face twisted in an ironic grimace of disgust. ‘I would have thought fumigated would have been more appropriate when we’re talking about the sort of woman who would wear this!’ She directed a look of lip-curling distaste at the garment, which was a perfect example of the adage money couldn’t buy class.

      ‘Don’t you think you’re overreacting to what is, after all, a simple housekeeping error? I’ll speak to someone and it won’t happen again.’

      ‘You mean the next time your girlfriend leaves her clothes you’ll have them tidied away before I arrive? My God,’ she flung with sarcastic appreciation. ‘I’m one hell of a lucky woman to have married such a considerate man.’

      ‘I will not be seeing Charlotte again.’ Though the lady had made it quite clear that she did not see marriage as an obstacle to continuing their relationship.

      ‘I do not want to know her name.’ Or hear how good she is in bed, Hannah thought, experiencing a wave of jealousy that felt like a knife between her ribs. She paled and lifted her hands to her ears, squeezing her eyes shut.

      Unfortunately neither action blotted out the knowledge that there would be women in slutty outfits sharing his bed in the future. They just wouldn’t be called Charlotte.

      She drew in a deep shuddering breath, her temper reaching boiling point in the time it took her to drag air into her lungs. ‘So you think I’m overreacting?’ she quivered incredulously. ‘I’m curious—are you trying to be an insensitive, hateful slob?’

      I’m curious—are you trying to look like a tart?

      Kamel laughed as he recalled his response to Charlotte in the dress his bride held in a death grip. But then he saw Hannah’s face. ‘I’m not laughing at you.’

      ‘Oh, you’re laughing with me. I feel so much better.’

      His jaw clenched as he fought to contain his increasing