Virgin Princess's Marriage Debt / Demanding His Desert Queen. Annie West

the way she had made him feel. Surely it could never have been that incredible.

      He watched her closely, the way her eyes had widened as he’d moved closer, the way she too struggled with the thick, heavy want wrapping around them both. And he saw the moment she gave in to it. Gave in to the silent demand he hated his body for making.

      He gave her the space of one breath, to turn, to flee, to refuse him. He gave himself that time, to turn back, to walk away. But when her pupils widened, that breath she took a sharp inhale, all but begging him to press the advantage, to make good on his unspoken promise, he was lost to the need pulsing in his chest. Lost to the insanity of what had been, what now was, between them.

      ‘Tell me you don’t want me, don’t want my kiss. Tell me, Sofia, and I’ll walk away. Lie to me again, Sofia,’ he challenged.

      ‘I can’t,’ she whispered, as if hating herself for the confession.

      His arm swept around her small frame, drawing her to him and him into madness as his lips descended on hers with ten years of pent-up frustration, anger and a raging need that even the sweep of her tongue against his could not appease.

      Passion and desire crackled in the air as they came together, her touch as bruising as his, the almost painful clash of lips, tongues, the merciful bite of teeth that brought clarity as much as it brought confusion.

      He had thought himself lost, but a small part of him whispered instead that he’d been found. Found within her, the scent of her winding around him, pulling him even deeper into the kiss. It was everything he remembered and more. His pulse beat erratically in his ears, as if in warning, but it was drowned out by the gentle, almost pleading moans she made into his mouth. But whether Sofia was begging for more or less, he couldn’t tell. And that was what made him pull away.

      He wrenched himself back, shocked by the intensity of what they had shared, Sofia, looking equally stunned, her mouth quickly covered by the back of her wrist, pressing their kiss to her lips or swiping it away, he couldn’t tell. He needed to sever whatever hold this madness had on him and quickly.

      ‘Now, there’s the Sofia I remember.’

      ‘You bastard,’ she cried and ran from the gardens towards the safety of the ballroom.

      And he knew that, for possibly the first time in any of her exchanges, she had spoken the truth. He was a bastard. Because even as he had lost himself to the kiss, lost himself to the chaotic emotions storming within his chest, his mind was moving at the speed of light.

      Because now, it was too late for her. The moment Sofia had issued that half-mustered apology had sealed her fate as surely as the shutter on the camera of the paparazzo Theo had hired to capture the moment of her compromise.

      He let loose a bitter laugh. He had hoped that an image of them in a heated argument would do damage enough, but a kiss? So much better for his plan of revenge.

      Yes. Sofia de Loria would very much regret the day she had ever thought to play him the fool.

       CHAPTER THREE

       Widow Princess Caught in Clinch with Wine Playboy!

       From Widow Princess to Scandalous Princess in One Kiss!

       Widow Princess Tames Bad Boy of the Wine Industry!

      THE HEADLINES SCREAMED in Sofia’s mind, punctuated by exclamation marks that struck almost physical blows as she threw down the collection of newspapers unceremoniously handed to her by the royal council earlier that day. She peered through the window of the car and cast a glance up and down one of Monaco’s most famous streets. The light illuminating the Plaza del Casino de Mónaco caused the water feature in the centre to sparkle in the night like a thousand diamonds.

      And each and every glint scratched against her already frayed nerves and temper.

      It wasn’t the fact that she had been captured in a kiss with one of Europe’s most notorious playboys, and splashed across the front pages for the world to see. It wasn’t even the fact that the morning after the party, Joachim—her third and last hope for a fiancé—had regrettably informed Angelique that he could no longer consider matrimony with Sofia.

      It was the fact that Theo Tersi—notorious womaniser—had refused to comment. And he always commented. By neither confirming nor denying their speculative questions, he had served only to inflame the rabid press. The Iondorran privy council had further tied her hands and refused to allow a statement to be issued by the royal communications office in a desperate act of blind ignorance, wilfully hoping that it would all ‘blow over’.

      But she knew better. Because the sneaking suspicion that had begun the first moment she’d seen the awful photographs had grown into a living, breathing belief that Theo Tersi had somehow managed to orchestrate this whole disaster. The birthday party in Paris had been under a strict press embargo, the girl’s family having sold the rights for images to Paris Match. Furthermore, the only photos surfacing from that night were of them—no other guests—despite the fact that Sofia was aware of at least three front-page headline-worthy incidents. In the last three weeks she had stopped wondering how and instead focused on the why.

      She bit back a distinctly unladylike growl as she exited the dark diplomatic-plated sedan, remembering how she had held herself that night as her body trembled after their conversation, after their kiss, as it shook at how he had weakened her. For the hours following, her body left overly sensitised, she had found herself pressing her fingers to her mouth as if in denial or longing, she couldn’t tell, and no matter how much she wished it the low, aching throb between her legs and in her chest had both shocked and terrified her. She had allowed herself that night to feel, to ache, to want. But in the morning when she had seen the headlines, something within her had turned to steel. Sofia dismissed the guards she usually travelled with. She did not want an audience for what was about to happen.

      She cast a glance up and down the stunning architecture of the buildings gathered around Monaco’s famous gambling district. She had never been anywhere like it. People filled the streets, couples holding hands, groups of men stalking the bars and cafes brimming with tourists and celebrities. Their excitement was infectious, but she resisted the instinct to relish in their levity, instead clinging to her incredulity that Theo would do something so…so…

      Theo had resisted every single attempt she had made to contact him. Email, telephone, text message… she had dismissed the idea of carrier pigeon as ridiculous. In the last two days he had repeatedly posted images of himself on Twitter at some of the many casinos in Monaco, and finally, just an hour ago, she had located this club as his current place of residence, if the latest Victoria’s Secret model to hit the headlines was to be believed.

       Two blondes, two Doms and two Ts. Lol.

      Lol. Honestly. Sofia had barely repressed the acidic taste of bile at the back of her throat the moment she saw the accompanying obligatory selfie of two beautiful blondes, two bottles of Dom Perignon and ‘TT’, aka Theo Tersi, grinning in the background as if he was purposefully taunting Sofia. Which he was.

      Clearly less than two hundred and eighty characters were needed to explain the models’ ecstasy, and the fact they had snared Theo’s legendarily short attention span.

      She knew that Theo wasn’t naïve or stupid. He must have known that every single indecent headline following the publication of their kiss nearly three weeks ago now would take her down with him. She knew that this was an act of revenge, knew that in his mind she most definitely deserved it. And in a very small, very quiet part of her own mind, she feared that he might be right. But right or wrong had no place here. She needed to get him to issue a denial so that she could do whatever damage limitation was required and press forward with her hopes to find a forgiving fiancé.

      Her heartbeat thrummed beneath the thin silk top and jeans she had chosen with the express purpose