frightened her so much she couldn’t even talk to or look at him. “I know I was out of control.” His arms tightened about her. “But I never want to hurt you, Anastazia. Please, stop crying.”
“I’m not crying because you hurt me, Alexandre.” She raised her head to gaze at him through tear-wet lashes. “I’m crying because that was amazing. Totally crazy too,” she conceded wryly. “Sensual overload.” One of her hands moved up to his clenched jaw, fingers a light caress to ease his tension. “But now I need for you to take me home.”
Alexandre’s gut clenched at the thought of not being with her tonight. All night. “I know you’re worried about Lissa, but I seriously doubt she’ll be back to your apartment until the morning, and we would be more comfortable together at the hotel.” He glanced pointedly at the bodyguard in the front of the car. “Where I go, they go,” he reminded her.
“I realize that.” Stazzi sighed, her cheeks burning at the memory of her screams. Screams those men couldn’t have helped but overhear. “But the same doesn’t apply to me. And I do really need to go home. Alone. This is all… It’s too much too fast, Alexandre,” she added as his expression darkened.
“I’m only in London for a week,” he groaned as she moved out of his arms.
Stazzi knew that. As she knew also at the end of that week, this ruling prince would return to his island, and she would never see him again. She needed time, away from Alexandre, to gather together her fractured thoughts and emotions—and her shattered and satiated body—because when she was with him, she couldn’t think beyond the moment, let alone what the consequences might be of falling for this man.
It was only twenty-four hours since she had believed she would be agreeing to marry another man. This attraction to Alexandre could merely be a reaction to that, on the rebound, because she felt so hurt and humiliated—
I was attracted to him before I knew what a bastard Will is.
Well, yes, she had been, but it was an attraction she had denied, out of misplaced loyalty to Will. And despite now knowing of Will’s betrayal, she simply wasn’t the type to jump into bed with a man after knowing him for only one day.
I don’t seem to have any problem with that in the back of his limousine.
Because Alexandre was like no other man she had ever met. On the surface so suave and charming, controlled, but underneath that was the dark and intense savage who had made love to her while telling her he was going to “fucking own her.”
She gave a shiver, unsure whether it was one of apprehension or anticipation. And if it was the latter, what did that make her? What would it do to her to be owned by this man, body and soul, and then discarded, forgotten, when he returned to his Mediterranean island?
Alexandre was a prince, unmarried or even engaged, but she had no doubts that he would be, and not too far in the future. He was aged in his midthirties, a ruling prince, and one day very soon, he would need an heir. If she hadn’t been good enough for Will, she certainly wasn’t good enough for this rich-as-Croesus prince.
Nor, once Alexandre married, was she mistress material. It simply wasn’t in her to hurt another woman by sneaking around behind her back by having an affair with her husband. Her parents had brought her up never to do anything to another person she wouldn’t want done to her. Which meant she could never be any man’s mistress. Even more so when she could still feel the humiliation of knowing Will had cheated on her in that very same way.
And she was jumping way ahead of herself. Yes, there was no doubt that Alexandre wanted her now, tonight, maybe even for the rest of the week he was in London, but nothing he had said or done indicated he would be interested in continuing any sort of relationship with her once he returned to Androcco and his life there.
Better not to become involved in the first
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