Melanie Milburne - Never Gamble with a Caffarelli

He gave a shrug of one broad shoulder. ‘The Crown Prince is a friend of mine. We went to university together. I like to visit him now and again.’

‘Do you come here often?’ Angelique gave herself a mental kick for not rephrasing that a little less suggestively.

He gave her a wicked look. ‘No single, unchaperoned women in my room, remember?’

She compressed her lips. ‘I’m being serious. How many times do you, er, visit?’

He put his plate down on a nearby table. ‘Not as often as I’d like. I only get out here once a year. Two, if I’m lucky, like this year when I came out for Talib and Abby’s wedding.’

Angelique’s eyes widened to the size of the plate he’d just put down. ‘But...but why? What’s so great about it? I don’t see anything that’s relaxing or beautiful about it. It’s just a bunch of boring old sand dunes.’

He put his hand on her elbow and led her away to a quieter area. ‘Will you please keep your opinions to yourself until we’re out of danger?’ he hissed out of the corner of his mouth.

Angelique wriggled out of his hold, not because she found it unpleasant, but because she found she rather liked it. A lot. She hadn’t realised until now how much she had come to rely on him protecting her. To come to her rescue. She had blundered into a minefield and yet he had remained calm and steady throughout. Even cracking jokes about it.

Was he scared?

If so, he had shown little sign of it until now.

‘I’m sorry, but I’m not used to this,’ she said. ‘You’ve been coming here for ages. This is my first time. I’m what you would call a desert virgin.’

‘What about that bikini shot of you I saw in New York a couple of years back? You were draped over a sand dune with a couple of camels in the background.’

Angelique mentally raised her brows. So he’d seen that, had he? And taken note of it. ‘It was staged. The sand dunes were in Mexico and the camels were cranky and smelly. One of them even tried to bite me. It was a horrible shoot. The designer was impossible to please and I ended up with a massive migraine from sunstroke.’

A frown appeared between his eyes. ‘Why do you do it?’

She felt her back come up. She’d heard this lecture before, too many times to count. The most memorable one had been from him. ‘Why do I do what?’

‘Model. Put yourself out there in nothing but a couple of scraps of fabric.’ His tone sounded starchy and disapproving. Old-fashioned. Conservative. ‘You’re capable of so much more than being some gorgeous too-perfect-to-believe image young guys jerk off to when they’re in the shower.’

Angelique gave him an arch look. ‘Is that what you do?’

His eyes hardened. His mouth flattened. A muscle ticked in his jaw. On-off. On-off. ‘No.’ His tone was clipped. Too clipped. ‘I don’t think of you like that.’

He was lying.

Just like she had been lying about her hunger.

How...interesting.

The thought of him being turned on by her, orgasming because of her, was deliciously shocking. It made her flesh tingle. It made her juices run. It made her need pulse and ache to feel him come to completion with her, the real her, not some airbrushed image that didn’t even come close.

Are you out of your mind? The sensible part of her brain kicked in again.

You are not going to sleep with Remy. Whether he wants to or you want to.

Angelique looked up at him, noting the dull flush that had flagged both of his aristocratic cheekbones. ‘So, when do we get to step out of this charade? We can leave for the airport once this is over, can’t we? I’ve got my bag packed all ready to go. All you have to do is say the word and I’m out of here with bells on. Not the wedding variety, of course.’

His dark-brown eyes seemed to go a shade darker as they held hers. ‘We’re not leaving tonight.’

Angelique felt that fist of panic come back, but now it was two fists.

Two very big, very strong fists.

‘But why not? You have a private jet, don’t you? You can leave whenever you want.’ She swallowed and looked up at him hopefully. Desperately. ‘C-can’t you?’

Remy turned his back so anyone nearby couldn’t see his expression, his voice sounding low and deep, like a rumble of an imminent earthquake under the ocean floor. ‘There is a tradition we have to uphold. We can’t leave until we officially consummate the marriage.’

Angelique jerked back from him. ‘You’re joking. You have to be joking! There’s no way we have to do that! How would anyone know if we, um, did it or not?’

He gave her a levelling look. ‘We’d have to prove it.’

Her brows went up. Her eyes went wide. Her heart started to gallop. Her inner core got hot. Very hot. ‘You mean like witnesses or something? Oh my God, I can’t believe this! I’m so not a threesome person. I’m not even a twosome person. I—’ She clamped her mouth shut. She had given away too much as it was.

‘We’ll need evidence that you’re a virgin.’

Angelique blinked. ‘Pardon?’

‘Blood.’ He had his poker face on. ‘On the sheets. We have to display them the next morning.’

She gave him a narrowed look. ‘Whose blood?’

His mouth cracked in a half-smile. ‘Yours.’

Angelique sent him a fulminating glare. ‘I just knew you were going to say that. The only blood I want to see spilled right now is yours.’

‘You’re really hating this, aren’t you?’ His expression was amused.

Her eyes went to slits again. ‘By “this” I suppose you mean this ridiculous subservience.’

He gave one of his loose, get-over-it shrugs. ‘It’s the way things are done here.’

She shook with outrage. ‘But it’s the wrong way!’

‘The women here are happy.’ His voice was calm, measured. ‘They don’t have to do anything but be who they are. They don’t have to primp and preen. They don’t have to have a spray tan every week or put on false nails or colour their hair. They don’t have to pretend they’re not hungry when they’re starving, because they’re not going to be judged solely on their appearance. It is who they are on the inside that matters.’

He was describing a paradise...or was he?

She set her mouth. ‘That’s only because they probably don’t know what they’re missing. If just one woman gets a glimpse of what she could have, you could have total anarchy out here.’

An amused quirk tilted his mouth. ‘And I suppose you’d be out front and leading the charge of that particular riot?’

She gave him a beady look. ‘You’d better believe it.’

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