To Claim His Heir by Christmas. Victoria Parker

was what he was. Bewitching her with that breathtaking aura of danger. Those high, wide slashing cheekbones and obsidian eyes framed with thick decadent inky lashes. That chiselled jaw that was smothered in a seriously sexy short beard. On anyone else it would be labelled designer stubble. But this was Thane and he wasn’t vain in the least. Or he hadn’t been. In truth, she’d been amazed at just how clueless to his gorgeous looks he was.

      His hair was longer, she noticed. Dishevelled was a ridiculously romantic word for the mussed-up glossy black hair that fell in a tumble to flick his shoulders, one side swept back and tucked behind his ear. Unkempt, maybe. Hideously long… But she kind of liked it. Craved to run her fingers through it. Had to fist her hands to stop herself from doing just that.

      The dim interior lighting camouflaged his facial scars but she remembered every one. The slash in his top lip, just shy of the full cupid’s bow. The second, enhancing the sensuous, kissable divot in his chin. Another slicing into the outer corner of his left eyebrow.

      Her throat grew tight, swelling in sadness and hurt for him. Just as it had five years ago. Not that he’d ever talked to her about them. The one time she’d asked he’d shut down so hard it had taken her sitting astride his lap wearing nothing but lace panties to tease him out of it.

       Ah, Luce, don’t remember. Don’t.

      His tongue sneaked out and he briefly licked his lips, but otherwise he remained still, watching…waiting…his sensationally dynamic body vibrating with dark power. And she clutched her handbag tighter still, fingers burying into the leather—

      Whether it was the feel of her phone poking through the side of her bag or the sudden realisation that the car was at a standstill she wasn’t sure, but she crashed back to earth with a thud.

      The car had actually stopped!

      Luciana shuffled on her bottom to peek out of the window and saw the huge security gates of the lodge swing open in front of the car. Electronic operation. Unmanned. Drat.

      Twisting the other way, she grasped the cushioned leather and peeked out of the back window, her eyes widening as she spied her bellboy, still at the top of the drive, waving for her attention, with her case in his hand.

       Oh, my life!

      Her speech faculties finally deigned to kick in. ‘You have to turn around,’ she said, with her best do-it-or-else regal intonation. ‘You’ve left my case back there.’

      And as soon as they pulled up back at the lodge she was making a run for it.

      ‘Really?’ he drawled, mock astonishment lifting his brows high above his vivid eyes. ‘How unfortunate.’

      Luciana narrowed her gaze on him. That was it? Unfortunate?

      ‘Well? Aren’t you going to go back for it?’ she asked, her tone pitched to an ear-splitting squeak.

      ‘And give you the opportunity to run again? I think not, princesa. Consider yourself under lock and key.’

      The limo turned right onto the main road and picked up speed. But not nearly as fast as her temper.

      Anger sparked. Revving up to be free of its leash. And she let it take hold. Uncoil deep inside her. Unravel at a breakneck pace. It was wonderful. Glorious. Just what she’d hankered for all day. All day? No. Since she’d stepped off the plane from Hong Kong, thoroughly powerless, with her façade firmly in place.

      ‘Just who do you think you are? You can’t just take me like this.’

      Cool as you like, he simply said, ‘Watch me.’

      She sucked in air through her nose. ‘Are you playing with me? You’re taking me to the Altiport, right? I have a plane to catch.’

      ‘We are going to the Altiport, si.’

      ‘Good. That’s good.’

      Though he hadn’t really said what was happening when they got there, had he?

      Warily, she ventured, ‘And you’ll let me get on my own plane to Arunthia, yes?’

      ‘No.’

      Mouth falling agape, she coughed out an incredulous laugh. ‘Are you serious?’

      ‘Deadly,’ he said, as sharp as a blade.

      His eyes were as cold and hard as steel. Where once they’d been tender and warm. Had she known him at all? she wondered, fighting a miserable flare of anguish. Even a little bit? Or had the last few years killed any ounce of decency and compassion he’d possessed?

      Icy fingers of dread curled around her throat. ‘So where are you taking me?’

      ‘Galancia.’

      The world tilted as if the car had skidded down an embankment with a five-score gradient and she went woozy. Galancia? No, no, no!

      Luciana scoured his expression, desperate to find even a flicker of his dry humour, and came up blank. Galancia… She shuddered in her own skin.

      ‘No way. You haven’t got a hope in hell of getting me to that place. I have to go home.’

      He pursed his lips and cocked his head in faux contemplation. ‘Not today. Today you will go where I ordain.’

      ‘But…but that’s tantamount to abduction!’

      ‘I suppose technically it is. Yet during the several minutes we’ve been in this car I haven’t heard you call for assistance once.’

      It didn’t bode well that he was right. But, honest to God, the man was so distracting. Still, why wasn’t she petrified out of her mind, screeching her head off?

      ‘Give me a second and I’ll scream blue murder. Though let’s face it,’ she said, gesturing to the luxurious car. ‘There’s no one to hear me, is there?’

      ‘Not now, no. You are seven minutes too late, princesa. Though Seve may help you.’

      ‘Who on earth is Seve?’

      ‘The driver.’

      She almost shuffled to the edge of the bench seat and raised her fist to knock on the glass partition. Almost. Frankly, she knew better.

      ‘Friend?’

      ‘Cousin,’ he drawled, a flicker of a devilish smile playing about his mouth.

      It was obscene how relieved she was to see that tiny flirtation with humour—that hint of the man she’d fallen for on a raucous, cluttered muddy field in Zurich. Particularly since it suggested he was enjoying her discomfort. What was all this? Payback for her walking away? Some kind of twisted revenge?

      ‘You can’t go about kidnapping people. It isn’t civilised behaviour.’

      Lord, she sounded like her mother. And, honestly, only a dimwit would put ‘civilised’ and ‘Thane’ in the same sentence. It had been his untamed earthy savagery that had attracted her in the first place. Obviously she had a screw loose.

      Blasé, he gave her an insouciant shrug that said, try and stop me, and it made her anger boil into lava-hot fury until she felt like a mini-volcano on the verge of eruption. What was it about men trying to govern her life? She’d just escaped one control freak and run headlong into another.

      Smouldering with resentment, she decided she wanted him to erupt too. It was as if he’d switched off his emotions. He was far too cool and collected over there. While she was sitting here losing it!

      Look at him, she thought. Sitting at an angle, one leg bent and resting on the bench seat, he sprawled like a debauched lion, taking over half the enormous car—and all of the oxygen—in that outrageously expensive Italian suit. It should have oozed elegance and debonair refinement, but it made him look like pure wickedness and carnal sin.

      And