Chapter 4
“I never liked him anyway.”
“What?” Stazzi stared bleary-eyed at Lissa as the two of them sat opposite each other at the breakfast bar in their apartment the following morning.
Lissa was eating her toast with obvious enjoyment, while Stazzi nursed a cup of black coffee. The thought of eating anything made her feel nauseated.
“Will,” Lissa dismissed airily. “I never liked him, or the way he sometimes looked at the two of us as if we’re from another planet, just because we share the same sense of humor and laugh at ridiculous things. Judgmental prick,” she added with feeling.
Stazzi slowly put down her coffee mug. “I never noticed that…”
Her friend grimaced. “Well, you wouldn’t, because you were too busy hoping that he was ‘the one.’ Oh, I’ll grant you that on the surface, Will had it all. Handsome. Charming. A lawyer. Owns his own house. Understated but expensive car. No scary mother-in-law to cope with, only an elderly father.”
“I like his father.”
Lissa snorted. “I’m sure he liked your father too.”
Stazzi frowned. “Are you saying Daddy, who he is, was the reason Will went out with me?”
“Not the only reason, no.” Lissa smiled ruefully. “You’re gorgeous, let’s face it.”
“Thanks…I think.”
“Your parents don’t like him, you know.”
Stazzi’s eyes widened. “Did they tell you that?”
“Maybe,” Lissa admitted with reluctance.
“Why didn’t they tell me?”
“Because you’re their only child, and they would never deliberately hurt you.” Lissa shook her head. “But the fact your father is an impoverished duke rather than a rich one, and that even the title will eventually go to some obscure male relative, will have been deciding factors for someone like Will. He wants money to go with the prestige.”
“I can’t believe I missed all this about him.”
Lissa sighed. “Believe me, Stazzi, you may not think so now, but you’re better off without him. He has such an inflated opinion of himself. You would have had to take a subservient role all the time if you’d married him. In Will Granger’s opinion, only Will Granger matters.”
“Why have you never said any of this before?” She felt slightly punch-drunk, completely dazed by Lissa’s blunt insights into the man Stazzi had thought she was going to marry.
Had thought.
Because that was no longer going to happen.
She’d called Will as soon as she left the hotel the night before, needing to be with him after that encounter with Prince Alexandre. Will had suggested the two of them meet for a late-night coffee.
Turned out that the conversation Will wanted to have with her wasn’t a marriage proposal at all, but the ending of their six-month relationship.
His reasons?
Because she was, to quote Will “too caught up in your job to give me and our relationship the time it deserves.” And “after careful consideration, you aren’t a suitable wife for a man who is being made junior partner of the firm.” Last, but certainly not least, he had told her there was someone else. When Stazzi asked who, Will had admitted he had been dating the daughter of the senior partner for several weeks now. The daughter of the very wealthy senior partner. Which would seem to confirm Lissa’s opinion of Will requiring a wealthy father-in-law and not just a titled one.
It had been that last admission, the knowing that Will had been seeing someone else while still stringing her along, that had been the blow that killed every last vestige of feeling Stazzi had ever believed she felt for him.
As well as making me regret turning down Prince Alexandre.
“You seemed so set on him.” Lissa reached across the table and squeezed Stazzi’s hand. “I didn’t want to burst your bubble with my niggling doubts.” She straightened. “Besides, I could have been wrong about him. With my record for choosing the wrong man, I’m not the best person in the world to give an opinion on any of them.” She always wore her heart on her sleeve, and inevitably had it broken. “The fact we now know the bastard was deceiving you with the daughter of the senior partner of Barrett, Barrett, and Palmer just confirms every bad thing I ever thought about him.”
Lissa had already been in bed and asleep in her room when Stazzi came home the night before, still in shock from that conversation with Will. But Stazzi hadn’t cried when he told her those things. She had more pride than that. The tears had come later, once she was alone in her bedroom.
Which was the reason she felt heavy eyed and lethargic this morning.
“I’m so sorry I was actually right this time. Will isn’t worth another minute of your time, love.” Lissa smiled at her sympathetically.
No. No, he really wasn’t.
It was her dreams for the future she mourned the most, Stazzi realized sadly. The husband, house in the suburbs, children playing on the swing set in the neatly trimmed and pruned garden. All things she had imagined with Will. All gone now.
“Now tell me what happened last night with your gorgeous Mediterranean prince?” Lissa sat forward in anticipation.
Stazzi felt the blush warm her cheeks from merely thinking about Alexandre St Sebastien, and the way he had kissed her the night before. And her response to those kisses.
Realizing if it had happened just one day later, and feeling as empty and uncertain as she did now, she might not have said no to him…
“How are you today, Anastazia?”
Stazzi almost knocked over the vase of fresh flowers she was arranging in the sitting room of the penthouse suite—as per Gerard St Sebastien’s instruction—at hearing the sound of Alexandre’s voice just behind her.
She turned, eyes accusing. “I really wish you wouldn’t creep up on me like that.”
He raised one dark eyebrow. “I wasn’t aware of doing so.”
She was overreacting, Stazzi acknowledged. Being rude again to one of the hotel’s VIP guests. The VIP guest. And it wasn’t Alexandre’s fault she was so tired and jumpy this morning.
She gave a heavy sigh. “I apologize. I was concentrating on what I was doing and didn’t hear you.”
She had been thinking about Will and trying to stop the tears from falling. But she knew Lissa was right and Will simply wasn’t worth the tears she had shed. He was ruthless and calculating, was dating the daughter of the senior partner at the firm where he worked, Stazzi now believed, in order to advance his career as much as anything else. None of which prevented Stazzi’s feelings of humiliation.
She winced as she recalled shopping for a new dress for her special date, her excitement yesterday, and her expectations. All dashed to hell by a man she now realized was a calculating and pompous prick, who had used her and then dropped her when a better prospect came along. The rich and prestigious Stephen Barrett would make a much better father-in-law than her own father, an impoverished duke whose estate was falling down about his ears.
“We seem to feel the need to apologize to each other quite often,” Alexandre observed.
She grimaced. “I know. But please believe my own apology just now was sincere. It’s no excuse that I was distracted and didn’t hear you come in.”
Alexandre studied the pallor of Anastazia’s cheeks. The dark shadows under those beautiful blue eyes that remained fixed on his clean-shaven chin, rather than met his searching gaze. He glanced down at her left hand. Still no ring.
Dare he hope…?
Hope what? That Anastazia wasn’t engaged to another man after all? What difference would it make if that were true?
Alexandre had taken a long hard look at himself and his life after she left him the previous night. He was a ruling prince, and the expectation politically was that he would take an equally royal wife and produce doubly royal children. Desire, even love, were not luxuries a ruling prince could afford.
No, much as Alexandre desired Anastazia, his circumstances said he would never be able to offer her any more than an affair. Short- or long-term.
Much as he desired her…
And he did still desire her. More than ever. Had spent the rest of the previous evening thinking about her. How she smelled of lemons and flowers, how soft her skin was to the touch, how delicious her lips and mouth tasted beneath his. He had dreamt about her too, once he was in bed and finally fell asleep. Those dreams, sensual and unchecked, had taken him much further than just those explorations of the sweet temptation of her mouth.
His hands had roamed freely over each curve of her body, cupping her breasts, lifting them each in turn so that her nipples could receive the rasping attentions of his tongue before his mouth closed over one and suckled hard, while his other hand stroked and pulled on its twin. Before that hand moved lower, to the undulations of her hips, her whimpering sighs becoming a plea.
His fingers had stroked along the dampness of her curls before moving lower, and then deeper, two of his fingers entering her as she parted her legs wider for him, her sighs becoming groans of ecstasy as the soft pad of his thumb found and pleasured her clit and she climaxed, coming apart beneath him as she rode that climax, and then another, until her breath was no more than gasping sobs.
Alexandre closed his eyes now as he remembered the pleasure as he slowly pushed his cock inside her slick, tight, hot pussy, inch by inch, until he was seated firmly inside her. Her legs—those gloriously long legs—curved about his back as she lifted up and into each thrust, until Alexandre couldn’t hold back any longer and he thrust into her wildly, deeper, harder, before his seed erupted inside her.
He opened his eyes again as he remembered the ignominy of waking alone in his darkened hotel bedroom, the evidence of his spent seed all over him. Something that hadn’t happened to him since he was a teenager.
“Where’s your entourage today?”
“Entourage…?” Alexandre’s heart was beating so fast, his cock throbbing at the memory of his dreams, he had briefly forgotten where he was. What he and Anastazia had been talking about.
This woman who had been the sole focus of the dream, just those images in his head having caused his body to harden once again.
“Your cousin.” She nodded. “The scary bodyguards.”
“They went to their own rooms upon our return from a business meeting.” Alexandre had dismissed them all as soon as they entered the safety of the penthouse suite. His business meeting had been long and grueling and he’d had enough company for one day. Unless, he recognized, that company happened to be Anastazia… “And bodyguards are meant to be scary.”
“Yes, but yours are really scary.” Stazzi had been taken by surprise when she entered to check on the suite earlier—once she was sure Prince Alexandre had left for his business appointment—to find that one of his bodyguards remained on duty just outside the private lift.
It made sense, of course. The hotel prided itself on its privacy and security for all its guests, but a prince really couldn’t just leave his temporary living quarters unguarded.
“Especially the guy that came from Knight Security to check the suite yesterday before your arrival.” She gave a shake of her head as she once again thought of the man, over six feet tall, with long shaggy dark hair and piercing dark eyes that looked at everything, including her, with suspicion.
Alexandre laughed softly. “Caleb, Ethan, Asher, or perhaps it was Gabriel himself?”
“He didn’t offer his name once Daniel had delivered him up here.” She frowned. “You know all Knight Security employees by name?”
“The Knight brothers? Yes.” He nodded. “I went to school and university in England with Ash.”
Stazzi had already guessed at a possibly British education; Alexandre spoke the language with absolutely no foreign accent. He also seemed to get her English idioms. “Well, this brother was tall, dark, and yes, definitely scary.”
“All the Knight brothers are tall, dark, and scary. It’s the reason I always employ them as extra security whenever I come to England.” Alexandre chuckled. “It was probably Asher,” he decided. “We’re having dinner together this evening.”
Was that disappointment Stazzi was feeling? Because Alexandre’s dinner engagement meant he wouldn’t be renewing his invitation to her?
Perhaps it was as well; a rebound love affair with a sexy prince was a terrible idea.
Lissa didn’t agree. Her comment after Stazzi had told her about Alexandre’s kiss and the dinner invitation, had been “Whoo-hoo, go for it.” Lissa was sure that a few days and nights of raunchy sex with a hot prince were just what Stazzi needed to forget all about the two-timing bastard Will.
Stazzi felt so raw, so hurt by Will’s behavior, she was half-inclined to agree with Lissa. So it was probably as well that Alexandre was otherwise engaged this evening.
“Unless, of course,” he said softly, “you are available for dinner tonight?”
Stazzi gave him a startled glance. Were her thoughts and emotions so obvious to him? And her disappointment when he revealed he was meeting one of the Knight brothers for dinner?
Wouldn’t that be just wonderful?
It was bad enough Will had dumped her in the way he had; she didn’t need to have Alexandre guess any of that and feel sorry for her. She felt sorry enough for herself, mainly for being a stupid idiot who hadn’t seen what was right in front of her nose.
She gave Alexandre a bright, meaningless smile. “Some friend you are, thinking of blowing off dinner with your childhood friend in order to take a woman out instead.”
“Ash wouldn’t mind,” he assured her with certainty. “Or you could always join the two of us?”
Stazzi’s cheeks warmed as she thought of what Lissa would think of that idea. Ménage à trois. Stazzi, completely at the mercy of two gorgeous and virile men who were only interested in her pleasure.
Stazzi trembled as a delicious thrill of anticipation traveled the length of her spine.
What the hell was that?
She’d just told Alexandre how scary Asher Knight was, and now her imagination had taken her into thinking of having him and Alexandre both pleasuring her until she screamed for them to stop?
Well…yes.
Alexandre was so suave and seductive, and—yes, she could admit it now, she was no longer in another relationship—his kisses were to die for. And just because Asher Knight was scary didn’t mean he wasn’t also handsome as sin, or that edge of danger surrounding him wasn’t a direct challenge to any red-blooded woman. Being in bed with those two men would be heaven and hell—
She must be going out of her mind even to allow her thoughts to go there!
A ménage à trois, for God’s sake.
What was she thinking?
I’m not thinking, I’m feeling. And those thoughts alone, of being in bed with Alexandre and Asher at the same time, have made me wet and aching.