The Prodigal Prince's Seduction (Castaldini Crown 2)

Unable to wait, he plunged after her, surfaced with her wrapped around him. He squeezed her, ravaged her with clinging, smiling kisses, which she reciprocated with ardor enough to make him steam the pool. He slid his lips up to her ear. “So you’re an Olympic diver and you never told me.”

She giggled. “Nothing so exalted. I used to be my school’s diving champion, got so far as the regional competitions. Won me some gold medals in those. But the last time I saw a springboard was seven years ago. I wanted to show you one of the few things that made me feel alive. I practiced while you took care of your business so I wouldn’t disgrace myself. And it’s true. It is like riding a bike. My body will curse me tomorrow, but it was worth it.” She yelped with the excess adrenaline still coursing in her blood. “It felt great! I thought I’d grown old and creaky.”

“You will never be that. And you will never again neglect your passions and your talents, Gabriella mia. Promise me.”

She nodded, her eyes blasting him with unadulterated appreciation, for his solicitude, for everything that he was. She made him feel treasured to his last cell. Just as he treasured her.

He swept her into his arms, swam on his back in leisurely strokes with her nestled at his side, the largest part of his soul. His gaze swept through the now-open plexi roof at another moonless, star-blazing night. Exotic plants teemed at the pool’s periphery forming an oasis in the middle of the ocean. Their oasis. He’d changed his mind about donating this boat. He was going to re-outfit it for them. He reveled in being with her in the freedom of such a setting, such a huge personal space.

He luxuriated in feeling her this way, through the silk medium of perfect-temperature water, her satin resilience and strength tapping into and feeding his own in a closed circuit of harmony. This had long surpassed any heaven he’d ever heard about.

What they shared was something he’d never imagined there was to be shared. He’d witnessed family and friends finding their soulmates, but he’d never believed he’d find his own. Now, he hadn’t just found his in her, he’d also been given a second chance when he’d wasted the first that fate had handed him. He still woke up in cold sweat thinking he’d forever alienated her only to subside, nerve-wracked and kissing-the-floor thankful at finding her curled up next to him.

Only one thing disturbed him. Every now and then he felt some reticence from her. He could think of only one reason for that unease. The speed with which everything had happened.

He didn’t feel that they’d gone too fast. He felt everything had unfolded in total leisure. Time stretched, widened, deepened when they were together. The month since they’d met felt like a year. More. He couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t know her. Didn’t want to remember. For what was there to remember before her?

But he forced himself to let her set the pace. It might look like he’d rushed her to move in with him in ten days. But in his view, he’d waited ten days. He’d wanted her to stay from that first night. He didn’t have the least doubt. He knew. She was the one he’d thought he’d never find. The one he’d been made for.

He kissed her again. “Thank you for sharing your dive with me, bellissima. Share everything with me, always.”

She enveloped him in the contentment, the serenity and certainty only her embrace had ever imbued him with. Then she suddenly wriggled, broke his hold, kicked away.

She giggled as he gave pursuit. She was such a strong swimmer he almost didn’t need to slow down for her to beat him to the other end of the pool. She pulled herself out in one agile move, stood there in her flame-colored, one-piece torture device of a swimsuit, grinning down at him, before she ran to the dinner table he’d had set for them before he’d sent everyone off the yacht. He never wanted anyone around when he was with her.

Tonight of all nights, it had to be just them.

He followed, taking his time to get his fill of watching her as she dried herself in brisk movements that grew languid, sensuous as he neared. He kept walking until he imprinted her from breast to calf, gathered her to him, cherished her with caresses and kisses as she stroked him dry.

“About sharing…” she purred against his neck, rubbing against him, stoking the fire perpetually raging for her. “I keep realizing I told you my life’s sob stories in embarrassing detail. Whereas you told me outlines. Very unbalanced, if you ask me. I feel fully naked, with you with only your tie undone.”

“But you love it that way.”

“That is a supreme truth only equaled by the fact that I am just as addicted to watching your mind-blowing stripteases.”

He raised an eyebrow, pseudo-suspicious. “You want to get everything out of me so you can help me sort through my issues, don’t you?”

Her eyes melted with tenderness. “Got me. Is it so bad to want to do for you a fraction of what you did for me?”

He stared at her. Would she ever cease to surprise him? To do and say exactly the right thing, at the right moment?

He sat down in one of the chaise longues where they sun-bathed in seclusion, brought her down straddling him, wrapped her in his arms, rested his forehead on her bosom.

Sì, it was the right moment to share all of him with her.

Durante nuzzled her like a lion would his mate before resting his ear on her heart. The poignancy of the revealing gesture swamped her, the so freely demonstrated admission that he needed the solace of her.

He stroked her back rhythmically, making her insides quiver with bliss. Then he started talking.

“Everything was perfect, or so I thought, until I was eleven. Looking back, things were never anywhere near perfect between my parents. Or with my mother. She had this…irrepressible energy. It was sometimes painful to watch her, like…looking at the sun. But she always dimmed around my father. I didn’t give it much thought until she dimmed all the time, during her pregnancy with my sister. After Clarissa was born it was like she forgot she had other children. I was hurt by her neglect, more on my brother Paolo’s behalf. She explained that I was a big boy, could take care of my brother, and I needed to be with my father more, while her baby girl needed her. I conceded that, thought it the natural order of things. And for years I got involved in my own life. But by age eighteen I could no longer overlook it. My mother had become unbalanced, one day manic, the next in a stupor. I thought my father was not doing enough—or anything—to stop her decline.

“Then I walked into her apartments unannounced one day and saw her…hitting Clarissa. Really hitting her. Clarissa had curled up in a ball on the ground as my mother beat her. But what really horrified me was that Clarissa’s cowering felt habitual. This wasn’t the first time. I charged in, overpowered my mother, and she kicked and writhed in my hold like a madwoman. I could no longer find my mother in her eyes. She spat in my face, told me I was so like my father she couldn’t bear to look at me. I was…devastated. I…hated her at that moment.”