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

irrefutable horror that filled her gaze.

      Now she knew him.

      He was about to open his mouth, when her sudden, shocking departure slammed it shut. She had picked up her skirts and was racing away from the ballroom floor, disappearing into the crowd of people. But she would not get away that easily. He saw her at the wide French doors, open to the beckoning darkness of the gardens, and a smile curved the edges of his lips.

      Theo Tersi drew out his mobile phone, and as he followed her out into the night he fired off a text to the man he had waiting on standby. If she failed to offer him the apology he so very much deserved, Sofia de Loria would regret the day she had ever thought to play him.

      Plunged into the darkness of the Parisian night, he stalked amongst the manicured gardens, expecting to have to hunt much more than he did, and nearly crashed into her.

      ‘What are you doing here?’ Sofia demanded, apparently satisfied that there were no longer people to overhear them as her raised voice was carried away on the night air. Her outrage struck him low in the chest.

      ‘Why? Not used to discovering an ill-bred bastard amongst your high-society companions?’

      ‘What?’ He noticed her brow pucker in momentary confusion. ‘That has nothing to do with anything.’

      ‘No? I’d have thought your security teams would have vetted every single person here, check their DNA for their blue-blood credentials.’

      ‘Don’t be such a snob.’

      Now he was outraged. ‘How dare you accuse me of being a snob?’

      ‘Just because it’s reverse snobbery, it doesn’t make it any less prejudicial.’

      ‘You’re speaking nonsense.’

      ‘Because I disagree with you? You never did—’

      ‘Don’t. Do not talk to me of what I did or did not do in the past,’ he spat as he lifted his mask away from his face and cast it aside onto the thick emerald grass of the gardens.

      He watched her almost physically bite her tongue and he used the moment to take her in. The Sofia he knew had been breathtaking, but Sofia de Loria the Princess was obscenely beautiful. Her cheeks had lost some of the softness, striking cheekbones sculpting her face to perfection. The thick plaits of golden hair wrapped around her head glowed silver in the starlight of the night sky. A high brow made even more superior with the arch of a perfect, rich, honeyed eyebrow peeking out from the top of the mask, brilliant golden furls glinting in the moonlight.

      And, as always, crystal-blue eyes crackled and sparked as she tried to repress the anger she clearly felt. An anger he matched, if not exceeded. Oh, he’d had his share of beautiful women in the last two years, once he’d given himself permission to relish and enjoy the success that all his hard work had reaped. Once he’d lifted his self-imposed embargo on sensual pursuits. But no matter how many times he’d cursed her to hell and back, he’d never been able to deny Sofia’s beauty.

      But even in that he knew he lied to himself. It wasn’t just a simple fact of her beauty. It was as if a chemical reaction had ignited within him, fizzing in his veins, urging him to reach out and touch her. Draw her to him and seek her mouth, her kiss…to feed the burning arousal he had really only ever felt with this woman. He wanted her, needed her, with every ounce of his being. But he fought it. He would not give in to the temptation she unconsciously offered.

      Sofia felt her chest heave against the confines of the tight corset as her body struggled for an outlet for the anger and pure shock at Theo’s appearance. Masked, he was impressive. Unmasked he was undeniable. Age had only honed what were already incredible features. Even in his youth he had stood heads above even the older students, and now she had to crane her neck to look up at his scowling gaze, his deep brown irises swirling like the richest espresso. His clenched jaw was dusted with a fine dark stubble as if, even in that, Theo rejected the same propriety that saw every other man there either clean-shaven or fully bearded. His straight nose created a sense of balance between the downward slashes of his cheekbones, and the night cast his proud jaw in deep shadows.

      In obvious frustration he ran his hand through his thick hair and on any other man the result would have looked chaotic, but on Theo? It just made Sofia want to reach out and do the same. He was magnificent and for a second she imagined that she could reach for him, that she could draw him to her. Desire, thick and fast, rose up within her chest, even as she knew that she could not act upon it, should not feel it.

      She tried not to flinch at the sound of apparent disgust as he finally turned that lethal focus of his to her, casting the entire length of her body in a glance that was anything but lazy, or accidental. No. There was purpose to this…to make her uncomfortable, and she hated that it was working.

      ‘If you’ve had your fill and there’s nothing else?’ She refused to stand there before his assessment and be found wanting. She just couldn’t. Not tonight. She still had to meet with Joachim, the third possible suitor, her last hope. She could not stand here caught between the past and her future—it was threatening to tear her apart.

      Sofia turned to leave, but his hand snuck out and caught her at her wrist. His hold deceptively gentle. The delicate ring his fingers created around her skin thrummed with repressed tension. He tugged, and she almost fell against his chest and this time she just managed to stop her hand from leaning on his chest for…balance, she told herself. Balance.

      With her hand still hovering mid-air between them, she risked a glance at his face. It was so close, angled down at her, lips that once she would have delighted in now cruelly sensual and taunting her with a knowing smile. But the anger in his eyes was easier to read than her own reaction, and she welcomed it, embraced it, used it to fuel her now.

      ‘I’m here for an apology.’

      ‘An apology?’ Sofia didn’t know how he’d caused her to revert to the stammering seventeen-year-old she’d once been. More than a decade of training, diplomacy, education and learning trade negotiations and she seemed only capable of two words around this man.

      She knew she owed Theo an apology…more than that. An explanation at the very least, but before she could summon the words to her lips, he pressed on.

      ‘You doubt it?’

      ‘No, not at all, I—’

      ‘Do you know what I regret most? That even as I waited the first hour for you, the second, hidden amongst that ridiculous shrubbery, I didn’t even doubt you. It didn’t even cross my mind that you wouldn’t show. I waited, like a moon-eyed calf, half drunk on love for you. Even afterwards, when the headmaster came to find me, told me of the trick you pulled on his car, my first concern was for you, not for myself. My fear was that something had happened to you.’

      She felt shame slash across her cheeks in a dark crimson blush, painful and stinging, as if he had slapped her with his hands rather than his words. And all the wishes, wonderings and dreams of what happened to him that night were painted in stark reality by his words.

      ‘It didn’t take me long to realise, though. Realise what you had done that night and in the weeks, months leading up to it. To realise that everything you had told me was lies, Your Highness.’

      Secrets and lies had come back to haunt her and Sofia turned her head away, but his fingers, once again seemingly gentle, but determined, found her chin, and brought her back round to face him, to see the truth written in his eyes.

      ‘Can you imagine what it was like to realise that I had fallen in love with a fabrication? That everything I’d felt was simply the by-product of the ruse of a bored, pampered princess with nothing more to do with her time than to move people around a chessboard of her own imagination? That I was expelled because of