CHAPTER FIVE
LUCY looked up from the folder to the handsome prince in front of her. “What are you talking about?” she croaked. “Married? To you?”
“Correct.”
“I don’t even know you!”
His sensual lips curved. “An excellent start for marriage.”
“You said you’d never settle down with one woman—and you want to marry me?”
“Sì.”
“But why?”
“Let’s start with why you’d want to marry me,” he said smoothly. “My palatial homes all over the world. My vast fortune. You can buy whatever you want without question. You will never need to work again. You will travel in the most exclusive circles of society. Your daughter will go to the best schools.” He took a step toward her. “And then there’s the title.”
“The title?” she repeated faintly, aware of how close he was to her.
He stroked a dark tendril of her hair, still wet from when he’d crushed her into the snow. “Wherever you go, for the rest of your life, you will be accepted and admired. As my princess. My bride,” he said. “The Principessa Lucia d’Aquilla.”
Lucy—a princess?
Suddenly alcohol seemed like a terrific idea. Snatching up her champagne flute, she drank it all down in a gulp. The expensive bubbles might really have been soda for all she noticed. But when she was finished, her mouth was still dry. She licked her lips, then felt his searing blue gaze. She looked up.
His hot glance plundered her mouth. As if he’d seized her, kissed her, possessed her by force of his will. She was suddenly aware of her every breath—and his.
“But people don’t get married for money,” she whispered. “They do it because they care about each other…”
“Oh, do they?” He ran his hands on her shoulders, tracing upward with a finger along her neck to her jawline. He gently lifted her chin. He looked at her slowly, as if assessing the shape of her face beneath her glasses and messy hair, analyzing the shape of her body beneath her clothes. Finally he met her eyes.
“Perhaps you are right,” he said abruptly. “Perhaps this will be for more than money. Perhaps I will take you to my bed.”
“You what?”
He smiled, a cruelly sensual smile. “This will be even more enjoy
able than I thought. I will make you feel as you’ve never felt before. Make you moan and gasp with pleasure until you forget your own name.”
She closed her eyes. She knew he could do it. Just hearing him threaten to seduce her, feeling his touch against her skin, was nearly enough to make her forget her name already.
“Would you like that?” His lips brushed against the tender flesh of her ear. “Would you like, at last, to feel the sensations you’ve only read about in books?”
A quiet shiver rocked her from her toes.
Startled, she looked up at him. His expression was arrogant. Knowing. As if he could read into her very soul. As if he somehow knew that her only lover had left her deeply unsatisfied.
“But you said—you said you didn’t want me,” she stammered. “You said I’m not your type.”
“I see now that I was wrong.” He gently stroked down her neck with his forefinger and his thumb. “You have your own beauty, different from any I’ve seen before. There is no reason not to enjoy our short marriage. I can show you what love is truly like—show you how passionate love can be.”
Her heart turned over. “Love?”
“Marry me, and your feet will barely touch the ground.”
Oh. That kind of love. Of course, what else could he mean? A playboy like Prince Maximo d’Aquilla would not get emotionally entangled in relationships. He had too many of them.
“But you said you’d never settle down,” she whispered. “So why now, Maximo? Why me?”