Crowned for the Prince's Heir

was a man, wasn’t he? And no man could really be trusted. Did she need someone to carve it on a metal disc for her, so she could wear it around her neck? She needed to be strong enough to resist him and, for that, she needed him to go.

‘Lisa?’ Luc said again and his ragged sigh ruffled the curls at the back of her neck. ‘Look, I know I overreacted about the necklace and I’m sorry.’

She pulled away. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘It does matter.’

But she wasn’t in the mood to listen. She made herself yawn as she curled up into a ball—well, as much of a ball as her heavily pregnant state would allow. ‘I just want to go to sleep,’ she mumbled. ‘And I’d prefer to do it alone.’

CHAPTER TEN

‘LISA, WE HAVE to talk about this. We can’t keep pretending nothing has happened.’

Lisa closed her eyes as Luc’s voice washed over her skin, its rich tone setting her senses tingling the way it always did. It made her think of things she was trying to forget. Things she needed to forget. She swallowed. Like the night of the ball when she’d let her raging hormones get the better of her and had ended up on the bed with him. When passion and anger had fused in an explosive sexual cocktail and, for a short and surreal period, she had found herself yearning for the impossible.

And now?

She turned away from the window, where the palace gardens looked like a blurred kaleidoscope before her unseeing eyes.

Now she felt nothing but a deep sense of sadness as she met his piercing sapphire gaze.

‘What is there left to say?’ she questioned tiredly. ‘I thought we’d said it all on the night of the ball. Considering what happened, I thought we’d adapted to a bad situation rather well.’

‘You think so?’ His eyebrows arched. ‘With me occupying my former bachelor apartments while you sleep alone in the marital suite?’

‘What’s the matter, Luc? It can’t be the sex you’re missing. I mean, it isn’t as if we were at it like rabbits before all this blew up, is it?’

‘There’s no need to be crude,’ he snapped.

If they’d been a normal couple Lisa might have made a wry joke about that remark, but they weren’t. They were about as far from normal as you could get—two strangers living in a huge palace which somehow felt as claustrophobic as if they were stuck in some tenement apartment.

‘Are you worried what people are saying?’ she demanded. ‘Is that it? Afraid the servants will gossip about the Prince and Princess leading separate lives?’ She pushed a handful of curls away from her hot face and fixed him with a steady look. ‘Don’t you think that’s something they should get used to?’

Luc clenched the fists which were stuffed deep in the pockets of his trousers and tried very hard not to react to his wife’s angry taunts. If he’d been worried about gossip he would never have brought her back here. He would never have... He closed his eyes in a moment of frustration. How far back did he have to go to think about all the things he wouldn’t do with her—and why couldn’t he shake off the feeling that somehow all his good intentions were meaningless, because he felt powerless when it came to Lisa?

He shook his head. ‘No. I’m not worried about what people are saying.’

‘Maybe you’re still regretting the other night?’ she said softly. ‘Wishing you hadn’t had sex with me?’

Luc swallowed as her words conjured up a series of mental images he’d tried to keep off limits but now they hurtled into his mind in vivid and disturbing technicolour. Lisa pushing him back onto the bed. Lisa on top of him in the billowing crimson dress, her face flushed with passion as she rode him. His mouth dried. He wanted to regret what had happened, but how could he when it had been one of the most erotic encounters of his life? He had felt like her puppet. Her slave. And hadn’t that turned him on even more? Dazed and confused, he had left their suite afterwards and stumbled to the library to discover that what she’d said had been true—that pregnant women did have sex. It seemed his wife had been right and there were some things he didn’t know about women.

Especially about her.

‘No, I’m not regretting that.’

‘What, then?’

His gaze bored into her. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that Eleonora persuaded you to wear the necklace?’

‘Why bother shooting the messenger?’ she answered. ‘Eleonora might have had her own agenda but she wasn’t the one who made you react like that. You did that all by yourself.’ She glanced at him from between her lashes. ‘Did she tell you?’

‘No,’ he said grimly. ‘I overheard her saying something about it to one of the other aides and asked to see her.’

‘Gosh. That must have been a fun discussion,’ she said flippantly. ‘Did she persuade you that it had been a perfectly innocent gesture on her part? Flutter those big eyes at you and tell you that you’d be better off with her beloved Princess Sophie?’

‘I wasn’t in the mood for any kind of explanation,’ he bit out angrily. ‘And neither was I in the mood for her hysterical response when I sacked her.’

Lisa blinked. ‘You...sacked her?’