She gasped into his mouth.
His blood thundered.
Now, it said, take her now…
Beep. “Sir? Will you be deplaning, or shall I tell the pilot to leave the electrical system on?”
That was all it took to destroy the fragile moment. Ivy tore her mouth from Damian’s. Her face was flushed, her lips full and heated from his kisses. He wanted to cup her face, kiss her into submission…
Instead he rolled away and rose from the bed. She did, too, but as she got to her feet, he scooped her into his arms.
“I can walk.”
“It’s dark outside.”
“I can see.”
“I know the terrain. You don’t.”
A Jeep and driver waited on the side of the runway. His driver was well-trained. Either that, or the arrival of his employer with a woman in his arms was not an unusual event.
Ivy was not as casual. She saw the driver and buried her face in Damian’s throat.
The feel of her mouth on his skin, the warmth of her breath…He loved it almost as much as the feel of her in his arms during the short drive to his palace, perched on the ancient, long-dormant volcanic summit of Minos.
The palace was lit softly in anticipation of his arrival. He wondered what Ivy would think of his home when she saw it tomorrow by daylight. He’d learned that most people envisioned a palace as an imposing edifice of stone.
His home, if you could call a palace a home, was built of marble. The oldest part of it dated to the fourth century, another wing to the sixth, and the balance to the early 1600s. It was an enormous, sprawling, overblown place…
But he loved it.
Would Ivy? Not that it mattered, of course, but if she lived here with him, if, after his son’s birth, she became his—she became his—
The huge bronze doors swung open, revealing his houseman, Esias. Despite the hour, Esias was formally dressed.
Damian had given up trying to break him of the habit. Esias had served his grandfather, his father and now him. How could you argue with an icon—an icon who was as determined as the Jeep’s driver not to show surprise at seeing his master with a woman in his arms.
“Welcome home, Your Highness.”
“Esias.”
“May I, ah, may I help you with—”
r /> “I am fine, thank you.”
“Damian,” Ivy snapped. “My God, put me—”
“Soon.”
Trailed by Esias, he carried her up a wide, curving marble staircase to the second floor, then down the corridor that led to his rooms.
Esias stepped forward and opened the door.
“Efharisto,” Damian said. “That is all, Esias. I’ll see you in the morning.”
The houseman inclined his head and moved back. Damian carried Ivy through the door and shouldered it shut, and the silence of the room closed around them.
“Who was that?”