Robyn Donald - Royals - Wed To The Prince

And she was it, and she wanted it as much as he did. Lauren abandoned every last inhibition and surrendered to passion, rocking herself against him and tightening her inner muscles in an ancient, provocative rhythm every time he pushed into her.

She saw the moment his control cracked and shattered, registered the split-second of understanding in his aristocratic face, and then the torrent of ecstasy rolled over and through her in waves from the centre of her body.

Savage, merciless, exquisitely arousing, they hurled her into an alternate universe where all she saw was the golden gleam of Guy’s eyes and all she felt was an ineffable rapture that lasted too long and not long enough, where its slow fading was at once a tragedy and a glory.

And then Guy followed her into that secret, bewildering place, a low, hoarse sound torn from his throat as he fought for that peak, his beautiful body like steel against her and in her.

As the savage physical longing ebbed into sweet sorrow, Lauren linked her arms around his neck and pulled his head down to kiss him. Yielding to her conviction that he needed her had brought her wild ecstasy, but she’d chosen to break through an invisible barrier into another world where invisible chains linked her to him.

How would she ever forget him?

Mouth still holding hers captive, Guy rolled onto his back, scooping her with him so that she was lying on him.

When they could both breathe again, both speak, he asked, ‘When are you leaving Valanu?’

Her heart wept, but she answered steadily, ‘When funds come through for a plane ticket.’

‘I’m returning to Sant’Rosa three days from now,’ he said. ‘Would you like to spend those days with me?’

Lauren lifted her head to stare into his eyes; she saw the pupils dilate, and the fracture in her heart widened as she pulled back. Although the residual heat of passion still smouldered in the golden depths, she realised that once she left Valanu she’d never see Guy again. At least, she thought painfully, he made no promises, offered no inducements. ‘Here?’

‘A little further along the coast.’

‘On a desert island?’ she asked, putting off the moment of decision.

His smile was a sensual challenge. ‘Deserted,’ he said. ‘Not exactly an island.’

Although she hesitated, she knew what answer she’d give him. ‘Yes. But I’ll have to ring my parents and tell them what’s happening.’

He kissed her collar-bone. ‘Everything?’ he asked wickedly.

And although it hurt, she smiled. ‘Not everything,’ she admitted, and yawned.

‘You can tell them when we get there.’

‘You’ve got a telephone on your deserted not-island?’

He tucked her against his shoulder. ‘Yes. Now, go to sleep. We’ll leave at dawn tomorrow morning.’

But he woke her once more, and towards dawn she woke him, and both times they made love with slow, sweet passion that culminated in white-hot savagery, leaving them sensually replete.

Sputtering across the lagoon in a banana boat, Lauren turned to look at Guy. Something about his stance, his expression as he frowned into the sun and steered, sent a shiver across her nerve ends. Dismissing the momentary unease, she said lightly, ‘Where did you learn to run a departure like a military exercise?’

The canoe met the oncoming wave a little clumsily, splashing a sparkling cascade of water over the bow. ‘I did army training for a couple of years,’ he said. ‘It’s a tradition in my family. Look, can you see the frigate birds?’ He pointed to a pair of long-tailed birds that swooped above the lagoon.

In other words, she thought bleakly, do not go there, Lauren.

That morning she’d woken in his arms, and for a few seconds she’d allowed herself to feel at home there—until common sense took over, reminding her that Guy belonged in some way to Sant’Rosa, and she was a rising executive in her half-brother’s large organisation. Apart from the passion that blazed between them, they just didn’t connect—something Guy clearly understood, and something she had to accept.

Although the house he took her to sprawled alone beneath the coconut palms lining another white beach, there was nothing primitive about it. ‘Does this lovely place belong to you?’ she asked after she’d rung her parents using the latest in communications technology.

‘No. The resort,’ Guy told her. ‘The owner wanted to build a dozen or so along the lagoon, but his plans fell through. Do you like it?’

She gazed around the open, airy room, decorated in the blue of the lagoon, the soft green of the palm leaves and the white of the sand, and smiled a little ironically. Of course a buccaneer wouldn’t have a home.

‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, her voice dying as he kissed her.

During the next few days Lauren learned how lost in desire she could become; this new capacity for sensation both overwhelmed and scared her. But because these precious days were all that she’d have of Guy, she surrendered to erotic fantasy—and the arms and body of a man who set himself to satisfy appetites she hadn’t known existed.

Time enough to consider the implications when she returned to the workaday world.

He was the perfect lover—intelligent, intriguing, and he could cook. He made her laugh and he talked about anything she wanted to discuss, although by mutual consent neither spoke of their ordinary lives.

And he seemed to know by instinct when she wanted tenderness, when she wanted to walk on the wild side, and when she wanted to sleep. She soon lost any inhibitions about swimming naked in water as warm as her blood, walking back to the house over sand like powdered sugar to shower with him in the huge bathroom.

Sun-warmed, star-silvered, threaded with passion, the days and nights slid through her fingers like pearls on a silken cord, perfect, irretrievable, until at last it was the morning they were due back in Valanu. Just before they left Lauren spoke to her parents again.

Guy left her to check that everything was ready, coming back in the brightening light to hear her say, ‘I thought I might come straight back home instead of going on to New Zealand.’

He’d heard her voice in so many moods—sultry, playful, sophisticated, determined, and the way he liked best, shaken by craving—but never the warmly affectionate tone she used for her parents.

So? he thought restlessly.

She listened, then said, ‘Well—are you sure?’

A long silence followed, during which her soft mouth tilted at the corners in a smile she’d never bestowed on him. He watched a graceful hand trace a pattern on the table and responded to the familiar heaviness in his loins with tight anger. He didn’t want to feel like this. They had made love so many times he’d lost count; with Lauren he was insatiable and her response was equally reckless, but she had been careful to avoid any reference to the future.

Perhaps she was that rare thing, a woman who treated her lovers with affection, then let them go without any emotional strings.

Until that moment he’d deliberately pushed the shadow of Marc Corbett to the furthest reaches of his mind, but now a jagged pang of jealousy, barbaric in its intensity, thrust through his iron control. Guy had always considered himself a sophisticated man, one who didn’t expect anything more from his lovers than he was prepared to give them—affection, respect and good sex.

Yet the thought of Lauren going from his bed to another man’s summoned a primitive possessiveness that infuriated him.

‘Well, all right,’ she said cheerfully into the telephone. ‘I’m leaving today, but I have a few hours’ stopover in Fiji so I won’t get to New Zealand until late. I’ll spend the night at an airport hotel in Auckland and fly up to the Bay of Islands tomorrow morning.’