“You see? My name is not so difficult to say after all.”
“Lucas.” God, her head was swimming. She’d been furious at him just a little while ago. Now, all she could think of was how dark his eyes were. How the brush of his thumb felt on the curve of her lip. “Lucas. On the plane…I was thinking—”
Slowly he drew her to him. “Si. So was I.”
“About—about our situation.”
“I, too, amada.” He smiled. “I was thinking how very glad I am that the contract stipulation did not involve a woman like the one my cousin Enrique found himself betrothed to.”
“We’re not betrothed,” Alyssa said, and wondered at how breathless she sounded.
“No. Certainly not. But Enrique was.” His smile became a grin. “His novia outweighed him.”
Alyssa laughed softly. “You’re making that up.”
“Cross my heart,” Lucas said, trying to look serious. “And she had only one eyebrow.” He put his finger to his temple and drew a line straight across his forehead. “One thick, black eyebrow. Can you imagine?” Slowly, inexorably, he drew her into his embrace. “Only a very fortunate man finds himself in a marriage contract with a woman as beautiful as you, chica.”
“It isn’t a real contract,” Alyssa said quickly.
“Of course not. But if it were—”
“It isn’t,” she said again and this time it was she who rose on her toes, who offered her mouth for Lucas’s kiss.
He kissed her gently at first. Tenderly. Gathered her in his arms as if she were fragile as glass…but it wasn’t enough.
Not for him.
Not for her.
“Lucas,” she whispered, and he groaned and enveloped her in his arms, his kiss deepening, heating, and she responded to it, pressed herself against him, touched the tip of her tongue to his.
His hands slid down her spine.
He cupped her bottom. Lifted her into him. Into his erection. And when she gasped, he said something against her mouth and suddenly he was holding her as if she were a woman, not a delicate bit of crystal.
His hands swept under her skirt, up her legs, and she moaned and thrust her hands into his hair, lifting herself to him, telling him with every beat of her heart, every whisper of her breath, that she wanted him.
“Amada,” he said thickly, and he slid a hand between her thighs, cupping her, feeling her heat, hearing her sharp little cry of pleasure, feeling her dampness against his palm. Then she was in his arms again and he was carrying her quickly through the gathering shadows of late afternoon, through another door, to a bed, a four-poster bed hung with ivory lace…
Someone pounded on the sitting room door.
Lucas lifted his head. Lyssa was still in his arms, her eyes blurred with desire, her lips rosy and swollen from his.
The fist hit the door again.
“Sir! Your Highness! The hospital called. Your grandfather…He’s conscious.”
It took a moment to register. He had forgotten everything but the woman in his arms. The sorceress who had the power to dazzle him even though he still didn’t know if she was a good witch or an evil one.
He lay her on the bed. Then he bent over her and kissed her again, hard enough to make her gasp, hard enough to nip her flesh…
Hard enough to leave his brand on her body as well as her soul.
Alyssa rolled onto her belly as he hurried from the room. She wrapped her arms around the pillow, her breathing quick, her pulse roaring in her ears. Her mouth still tasted of Lucas’s; his scent was on her skin.
Another minute and she’d have given herself to him.
She moaned softly, shut her eyes and buried her face in the pillow.