The Queen's Nine-Month Scandal (3 page)

Heat prickled over her exposed skin and wet heat moistened her, just where his mouth and tongue held her in a state of high tension. His fingers pulled aside the thin barrier of lace, baring her skin to his touch and she arched off the bed when she felt him touch her, tongue to skin.

He licked her, tasted her, his tongue finding the secret, sacred opening of her body and stabbing deep. Analia was aware of moaning coming from somewhere. Her hand was in his hair, gripping him. And then she felt his tongue move up, circling her clitoris as two fingers thrust inside her. Analia lost any sense of reason, pre-orgasmic tremors racked her body in reaction, as small waves of pleasure pulsed through her, gathering force.

It was too much. She couldn’t cope. Blindly, Analia tugged on Sasha’s hair until he lifted his head. She gasped, ‘I can’t...take it.’

He surged up over her body and pressed a kiss to her mouth. She tasted herself on his tongue and it was the most erotic sensation. He drew back. ‘You can,’ he said roughly with assertation.

Analia was quivering, as taut as a bowstring. Her whole body sensitized to the point of pain. She vaguely heard foil ripping and instinctively reached a hand down to encircle Sasha’s impressive erection, moving her hand experimentally up and down, squeezing gently, fascinated by the silken steely strength.

‘Witch...you’re a beautiful witch,’ he muttered, before taking her hand away gently and sheathing himself. Analia lay back, unable to do much more, breathing raggedly. Her inner thighs tingled from where his beard had scratched.

She was laid bare to this man’s gaze. This man whose name she didn’t even know. The knowledge was heady and yet a part of her felt incredibly poignant for a moment.

He came down alongside her again and said gruffly, as he brought his hand up to cup her breast possessively, ‘You’re more...than anything I’ve ever experienced.’

Analia felt a wave of tenderness wash through her and it unsettled her. Tender emotions weren’t something she was used to, having had to maintain a distance from others all the time. She reached up to touch his jaw. “So are you...”

Spreading his hand across her breasts, trapping a nipple between his fingers, Sasha moved his body over hers, mouth to mouth, tongues tangling furiously. Heat was rising. Their hearts seemed to be beating as one. In an innately feminine move as old as time, Analia moved so that he slipped into the cradle of her thighs. Her legs spread around him as if they’d lain together before.

He lifted himself off her slightly and then she felt him at her core. Without words, she put her hands on his arms, and arched up slightly. He emitted another word in a language that sounded like Russian and then he was pushing inside her, stretching her impossibly, filling her so that she gasped out loud at the exquisite pleasure bordering on pain.

‘You’re so tight,’ he growled.

When he thrust again it became proper pain and Analia instinctively tensed. Immediately Sasha stopped. The only sound in the room was their ragged breathing. ‘You can’t be...’ he said.

Analia felt as if she were between heaven and hell. But she knew it would be infinitely worse if he stopped now. So she gritted her teeth against the stinging pain and wrapped her legs around his waist, binding him to her fiercely.

‘Don’t you dare stop now.’ she commanded.

The words were ripped from his throat, raw. ‘As if I could...’

He put his hand between them and his clever fingers found where he’d brought her close before. Immediately Analia spasmed in reaction, the pain eclipsed for a moment. ‘That’s right sweetheart, relax your muscles, let me in.’

As if she could deny him. Analia felt him slide further in and felt a ripple of sensation deep inside her, unlike anything she’d ever known. Moving her hips experimentally it came again. Sasha drove in and out, his fingers moving against her, between them, heightening her pleasure.

She almost sobbed a plea for him to stop but just then the tension broke and wave upon wave of indescribable pleasure washed through her, obliterating everything in their wake. The pleasure was so viscerally physical that Analia forgot to breathe for a long moment, before finally reacting and sucking in great lungfuls of air.

For a long suspended minute they seemed to hang in the brilliance of the moment and then it crashed slowly around them. She felt a rush of warmth inside her. Daniel’s body was thick and heavy in hers but she couldn’t unwrap her legs from around him. Chuckling softly, darkly, he moved so that his weight was off her and then pulled her close into his chest, their legs entwined, still intimately joined.

CHAPTER THREE

D
ANIEL
WOKE
SOME
time
later to find himself with Alexandra still wrapped in his arms. He recalled going
to sleep, still inside her. He moved a fraction but she made a soft sexy sound
and snuggled close to his chest. One long, lissome leg curled around his,
trapping him. The sense of unease he’d felt earlier returned. When he slept with
a woman, he usually couldn’t wait to extricate himself, wanting to shower
straight away. Right now, he felt as if he’d kill anyone who tried to part
them.

She’d been a virgin
. The knowledge
crashed through Daniel’s head as if he’d been holding it at bay. Since when did
virgins go out with seduction in mind?He moved slightly so that he could look at
her face. That sinful mouth was plump from his kisses. Making him want to kiss
it again. The mask had moved slightly, exposing more of her face, a small
straight nose.

His fingers itched to pull it off now that he could. But he
remembered the almost panicked way she’d said no earlier and cursed. Giving up
any chance of escape and not really wanting to, Daniel lay back down.

It was only after a few seconds, when sleep was reclaiming him
that Daniel’s eyes snapped open. Peace. For the first time in his life...he felt
at peace.

* * *

Analia woke slowly, blinking to adjust to the weak dawn
light filtering in through gently billowing curtains. She was completely
disorientated. Everything was different; her surroundings,
her
. Her body felt deliciously lethargic and sated, yet humming with
a restlessness she’d never known before.
Before
. She
looked to her side and stifled a shocked gasp when she saw the naked body of the
man in the bed beside her and her sluggish brain finally caught up with her.

She had a humiliating memory of not releasing him last night
after...afte. Analia closed her eyes now and gulped. After he’d wrung every
ounce of pleasure out of her. More than she’d known she was capable of.

Urgency gripped her. If she didn’t return to her hotel by
daybreak proper and she was discovered missing, it would cause a national
incident. She was also terrified that he might wake and she would have to face
the undoubtedly mocking look in his eyes. She’d been so easy. She’d never done
anything so knowingly dangerous or morally reprehensible in her life.
But it hadn’t felt morally reprehensible
, a small
wicked voice crowed and Analia’s skin went hot to recall how it had felt.

Stealthily she got out of the bed without disturbing him.
Tiptoeing around she picked up the detritus of her clothes and put them on as
best she could, struggling with the zip on her dress.

It was only as she was about to leave the room, her heart
feeling heavy in her chest, that she noticed her lace mask had fallen off and
lay on the bed. She went back to get it and spotted something out of the corner
of her eye. His passport. Her heart thumping, she stopped in her tracks. It sat
enticingly on the gleaming walnut chest of drawers. She looked from it to the
sleeping man on the bed.

She had an overwhelming urge to see who he really was. Silently
she moved and picked it up. Flipping it to the page of identification she almost
dropped it when she saw a very recognizable, clean-shaven face staring back at
her with implacable arrogance. She read his name with growing dread: Daniel
Sasha Petrovsky. No wonder he’d looked faintly familiar, he was one of the most
photographed men in the world.

Cold fingers touched her spine when she realized the
ramifications of being found with such a man. He might be one of the world’s
most dashing and generous philanthropists but he’d never quite shed his playboy
persona. Myths surrounded him about his Irish-Russian lineage; his youth spent
in an orphanage. How his life had been transformed when he’d received one of the
largest inheritances in years at the age of twenty-three from an estranged
Russian relative. By then he’d already become famous as a prodigious, fearless
photojournalist covering the worst war zones in the world. It was only now that
Analia recalled feeling the raised skin of a scar on his back last night and she
shivered to think of what might have caused it.

The passport dropped to the floor from her suddenly nerveless
fingers and Analia looked to the bed where Sasha—
Daniel
—moved slightly. Panic filled her. She fled before he could
wake and find her, leaving the mask behind.

As she made her way back to her hotel through the narrow and
atmospheric streets, she told herself that he would probably wake and hardly
notice her absence. Her heart clenched so hard that she had to stop for a
moment.

The thought of last night meaning nothing to him hurt more than
she could fathom. The fact that it had affected her so deeply scared her to
death. How on earth was she going to be able to relegate him to a secret part of
her heart and head and get on with her life while knowing he was somewhere in
the world?

Analia’s mouth firmed. She had no choice. She would just have
to. She had a life most people would never understand. She served her country,
not herself. Last night had been her one chance to taste that delicious freedom
and she would have to leave it behind. She was no longer the Virgin Queen of
Azoria and that would be her secret...forever.

* * *

‘Daniel, you’re going to have to decide where to base
the Petrovsky Philanthropic Foundation sooner or later. I can’t field the calls
forever.’

‘I know, Philip,’ Daniel absently answered his chief advisor in
London absently. His hand closed around something and he looked down to see the
familiar—and by now very crumpled—piece of black lace. He curtly ended the phone
conversation and stuffed the material back into his pocket.

He looked out the window of the plane and saw nothing but
clouds. He sighed deeply. Eight weeks had passed since that night in Venice.
Each day was etched like a brand onto his brain since he’d woken up to find the
bed empty with not a trace of her left behind except the mask which had hidden
her from him.
Alexandra
. A made-up name. A beautiful
ghost.

He’d called his friend the next day to quiz him about his guest
list but Andreas had been uncustomarily unhelpful.

‘Look, I’d like to help you track down your latest conquest
Daniel but I have no recollection of any guest by that name...’

More irritated than he’d like to admit he’d asked tersely,
‘Maybe you’re caught up with a conquest of your own?’

To his surprise his Greek friend had taken a deep breath and
admitted heavily, ‘Something like that. Siena DePiero has turned up in
London...’

Daniel had whistled softly, ‘You’re going to go after her
then?’

Andreas’s voice had been tight. ‘We have unfinished
business.’

Daniel had felt some sympathy for his friend’s single-minded
intent to find the woman he couldn’t forgive, even after five years. He could
empathize with that single—mindedness now.

The knowledge burned in his gut though—she’d looked at his
passport before she’d left because he’d found it on the floor. So she knew who
he was. And yet she hadn’t been in touch. Maybe it was karma for a man like him
who had loved and left women in his wake all his life.

A cynical smile touched his mouth. What had he expected? That
she’d have declared undying love just because she’d been innocent? His mouth
tightened. And since when had he ever had such notions?

The feeling of peace he’d experienced that night with her in
his arms mocked him now. It had shattered the moment he’d woken and found her
gone. And truth be told, as much as he wanted to find her again, a part of him
was also wary. She’d touched something deep inside him that had been locked away
ever since he was a tiny boy.

For the first time in his adult life, he felt exposed. The last
time that had happened had been when he was five, at the orphanage, when a
couple had chosen another child over him. After that day, he’d greeted
prospective parents with an angry, gray-eyed glare. Of course they hadn’t chosen
the wild-looking child, and Daniel had never had to deal with the excoriating
sense of rejection again.

But right now, his well-ingrained self-protection was fast
coming second to finding his mystery lover. He told himself again that he had a
valid reason: the protection had failed so she could even be pregnant. He told
himself this was why he wanted to find her so badly. But he knew himself well
enough by now to know it for such a falsehood. He wanted to find her because he
wanted her. He could still taste her on his tongue. His heart beat fast just
thinking about her.

‘Mr Petrovsky? You wanted the papers?’

Daniel looked at the steward stupidly for a moment, his head
full of soft skin and a lush mouth. His body was reacting and this lack of
control made him curt as he accepted the pile of papers. ‘See to it I’m not
disturbed again.’

Daniel hated this evidence that a memory controlled him. He
gritted his jaw as he flicked open the top paper, one of Europe’s main
broadsheets. For a second he could only blink at the screaming headline and the
huge colour picture underneath, even as he felt the shock register in his
body.

Virgin Queen Analia of Azoria pregnant by
a mystery lover!

Daniel looked at the picture. Half of her face was obscured by
huge black glasses. Below was another picture and he saw the eyes that had been
hidden from him under black lace. They were the deepest sapphire blue, with long
dark lashes, exotically tilted at the corners. Stunning.

Recognition fell like a cold hard stone into his gut. He took
in the delicate jaw, small straight nose, lush mouth, glossy dark hair. The
shape of her cheek.
The way her breast had felt in his
palm
.
The way she’d splintered around
him
. Daniel’s hands curled to fists around the paper, crushing it. Rage
engulfed him, eclipsing the feeling of exposure. To finally
know
who she was...to finally be able to confront her and know why
she’d run.

With a calm belying his inner tumult, Daniel picked up his
intercom to the pilot and instructed him to change the flight plan.

* * *

The City of Azoria’s palatial grand palace was a
glorious mix of its heritage; Moorish, Greek, Italian and French. But Analia was
oblivious to it. She’d just emerged from a meeting with Pierre and her chief
advisors.

One had stood up and declared censoriously, ‘The engagement
with Prince Wilhelm is off. Unless you can marry the father of your child then
you will leave us no choice but to force you to abdicate.’

Pierre, her stalwart supporter had stood up angrily and said,
‘The people will decide what they want and they will want Queen Analia, as she
is.’

The meeting descended into shouts and anger until Analia stood
up and slammed her fist on the table, shocking them as much as herself. In a
quiet authoritative voice she said, ‘I’m still Queen and this meeting is
adjourned for now. I am well aware that we face a crisis and I will do
everything in my power to avert it.’

Now she was wrung out and needed some space so she escaped to
her office. Just then she heard her office door open and close behind her. She
closed her eyes and said wearily, ‘Please Pierre, not now.’

A deep, infinitely memorable voice from behind her said, ‘It’s
not Pierre.’

Analia’s eyes snapped open and a rush of adrenaline washed away
any weariness. She wondered if she might be having an aural hallucination but
then the voice came again. Harder.

‘Aren’t you going to say hello to the father of your
child?’