The Mediterranean Prince's Passion (The Royal House of Cacciatore 1)

She couldn’t let this one pass. ‘You mean the man who rescued us?’

‘Yeah, whatever. Well, you’ll never guess what his name is?’

She didn’t need to guess. She knew his name, just as she knew that his kiss had taken her to heaven and his tongue had guaranteed her a permanent place there. Ella shivered, pleasure mingling with the nagging feeling that she might never hear from him again. ‘Nico,’ she said. ‘His name is Nico.’

‘That’s not his real name!’

The first feelings of foreboding began to prickle at her skin. ‘What are you talking about?’

/> ‘His real name is Nicolo!’

‘So he abbreviates it,’ said Ella coldly. ‘Lots of people do. I do. So what?’

‘Nicolo of Mardivino,’ he emphasised carefully.

She still didn’t get it. ‘Yes, that’s where he lives.’

‘Prince Nicolo!’ he declared triumphantly.

‘Mark, have you been drinking again?’ But even as she asked the question the import of his words finally struck home, and Ella very nearly dropped the phone. ‘What did you say?’ she hissed.

‘He’s a prince!’

‘Of course he isn’t! He’s… He’s…’ But her words tailed off, instinct telling her she had to believe the unbelievable. But sometimes you fought instinct when it told you something you didn’t want to hear. ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘Check it up, then! He’s the youngest Prince—there’s three of them! Bit of a playboy, as you’d expect.’ He gave a crude laugh. ‘A daredevil and a ladies’ man!’

Ella’s fingers bit into the receiver. ‘Was there anything else, Mark?’

A sly note was injected into his voice. ‘So just what happened after we’d gone? Did you sleep with him?’

Ella slammed the phone down with a shaking hand.

Of course he wasn’t a prince! Princes didn’t rescue you and nurse you and then turn up at your front door and…

And make love to you.

Scarcely aware of what she was doing, she went straight back to her computer and tapped the words ‘Mardivino + Prince Nicolo’ into a search engine, licking her dry lips in horror as she saw that there were 36,700 entries. She clicked onto the first one and waited for what seemed like an eternity, until suddenly there it was—a picture of Nico who, it seemed, was not just Nico at all, but His Serene Highness Prince Nicolo Louis Fantone Cacciatore.

There were details about his schooling, in Mardivino and France and Italy, and pictures of him with his family—except that this particular family happened to be sitting in a throne room decked with ornate gold and precious jewels.

Ella honestly thought she was going to be sick.

The powerful car nosed its way like a silver predator along the narrow lanes and once again Nico glanced into his driving mirror, but the road behind him was still empty.

Should he have rung her?

No, better this way. Face to face and person to person.

He was clever with words and good with women. He would explain why he hadn’t told her and make her understand. And then he would kiss her again, in a way guaranteed to have her forgive him anything.

He felt the deep ache of desire, tempered only marginally by his awareness that their lovemaking had been too…

The dark brows knitted. Too what? Too intimate? Intimacy was dangerous and misleading and to be avoided. It weakened you and it gave women expectations. Expectations that could never be met—particularly for someone like Ella.

But she had been everything. Tender. Passionate. Warm. Provocative. And maybe the most potent of all those had been the tenderness, because for Nico it was an unknown quantity. He never allowed people close enough for tenderness, and he hadn’t been expecting it. It had crept up on him unawares—like the feeling of gentle torpor after just a mouthful of especially good wine.

Maybe it was because he hadn’t felt the need—or had the need—to put up the usual barriers to protect himself. For once he had been able to pretend that he was just anyone, and she had responded to him with a passion that had taken him unawares.