by Olivia Gates
A hush reigned after his last vibrato had died away.
Then a storm of applause and questions exploded.
“Did you write this song?”
“Will you be recording this song?”
“Will you release it as a single? Part of an album?”
He shrugged. “It’s Gabrielle’s song. She decides what I do with it.” He turned his eyes down to her, his all-out surrender stoking the inferno raging inside her. “Just say the word and I’ll turn it into a rock number and perform it in a jumpsuit—”
She surged up, sealed his lips with hers, shutting him up.
He sagged in her arms, groaned his relief long and shuddering into her mouth, shaking the foundations of her soul. Then he suddenly dropped down. She panicked. For a millisecond.
He wasn’t fainting. He was bending for leverage. Then she was in his arms, feeling weightless, his gaze, the emanations of his whole being making her feel priceless.
The sea of bystanders parted, raged with hoots and applause. She vaguely thought New Yorkers must be reveling in the unfolding of yet another chapter in the fairy tale of their resident Castaldinian prince and his commoner American princess.
She missed the journey back up to her apartment. She only knew she was on her bed, her world once again anchored by Durante’s beloved weight, the heat and hardness of his steel-fleshed body driving security and equilibrium back into hers.
A long time after the frenzy unleashed in the wake of the barely escaped catastrophe abated, she lay boneless and throbbing with satiation, cleaved into him, sighing her bliss. “That was quite a stunt you pulled down there.”
Durante pressed into her, almost entering her again “down there,” purred, “Glad you approve.”
She wanted nothing more than to have him inside her again. But this couldn’t be put off. She dug her nails in his buttocks, stopping his movement.
He groaned in disappointment, rose over her, his eyes growing serious. “It wasn’t a stunt. I was showing you everything I held dear, my privacy, my pride, my status, my achievements, are a negligible price for regaining your trust. None of them mean a thing without you.”
Her heart swelled until it seemed to fill her down to her toes. Seemed it squeezed against her now ever-filled tear glands. “I won’t let you do any of the things you said you’d do.”
“I already did them.
“You’re undoing them, right this second.”
“I can’t. It’s all yours now.”
“Okay, Durante, this long ceased to be thrilling and is getting pretty scary. Stop. Now! Before this crazy stunt backlashes, you crazy, insane man.”
“I was insane to hurt you. I’ve never been saner or clearer about what matters. You, the restoration of your pride, your trust in me and my love. All I need is for you to let me be yours…yes, until the end of my days.” His lips crooked. “I just hope you’ll let me give you advice on what to do with your newly acquired wealth, so your stockholders don’t suffer a cent’s devaluation in the transfer. That’s the only catch, really, that you can’t give it all away to your favorite charities and causes.”
“But I can give it to anyone I want, right? So I’m giving it to you. End of conversation.” Something enormous mushroomed in his eyes, until she almost wailed. “What now?”
“I was just wondering. Who else would toss back something of that magnitude, without even pausing to make me sweat it first? Not that I am sweating it. I don’t care about it at all. I made my billions, and I’ll just make more. In fact, on the way here, I made a transaction that resulted in half a billion in my newly emptied account. I’m not destitute, if that what you’re worried about.”
“I’m not worried. I’m disintegrating.”
“While I’m rejoicing. If I managed to prove the extent of my trust. Even though you’re making it so hard to prove anything by tossing everything back to me like that, I hope you know I wouldn’t have risked anything with such catastrophic potential to so many if I didn’t trust you more than I trust myself.”
“Everything has to be larger-than-Jupiter with you, doesn’t it? I toss around a few stupid words when I’m upset, and instead of giving me those couple of days—of hours you once suggested—to get my act together, you fling a whole financial empire at me.”
“And my kingdom, for good measure.” He sighed in contentment.
Suspicion sank its ice into her bones. She exploded out of his arms, sprung standing on the bed. “God, what did you do?”
He spread his magnificence like a replete lion, hooked his hands behind his head. “I told my father to go for his third candidate for the crown.”
Her heart almost fired out of her ribs. “What do you think I am? An insane goddess appeased only with atrocious sacrifices?”
“You are my goddess, but you’re regretfully too benevolent. You tried to stop my sacrifices, are trying to reverse them now.”
He stirred, prowled on all fours to her, bent to kiss her feet. She cried out the surplus of emotion. He crooned worship, worked his way up her legs, her calves, the back of her knees, burning one fuse after another, congealing the valves of her heart. She collapsed at the first touch of his tongue inside the thighs that trembled again with the need to wrap around him.
He received her nerveless mass in his cherishing arms, cosseted all of her quivering flesh. “This has nothing to do with what happened between us. But it is the best course of action for us. We’re both too much citizens of the world, too invested in our careers. As much as I love Castaldini and know you can come to love it, too, I don’t see our life bound to it.”
She squirmed. “God, no, don’t even consider my career in this decision. I’ll find a dozen ways to maintain it. I’m sure you can work out as many ways to run your empire by remote control. Take this back, please.”
“I won’t, because it’s the right thing to do. If I’m crowned, it will pulverize the law that made Castaldini such a unique and prosperous kingdom until my father’s personal life interfered with his being the formidable king he was. My reign would be the end of the crown for merit. And I truly think King Antonio had a great idea in making the king work for his crown, not be born to it.”
“But the law is too absolute and unfair,” she protested. “Many sons won’t live up to their fathers’ level, but you’ve surpassed yours. It would be glaringly obvious you were made king on total merit, that after you the law would be enforced again, until another king’s son proves himself as worthy of the crown.”
“Even if I’m worthy of it, I didn’t grow up dreaming of it, wasn’t fighting for it when I built my success and fortune.”
“But that should only make you even more worthy of it!”
“It doesn’t work that way in Castaldini. And then, I truly don’t want the power and the responsibility, and that’s a huge strike against me. All I want is to be yours.”
There were no limits to the heights he’d make her scale.
She pitched herself from those heights into the depths of arms she knew would always be there to catch her. “It’s too much!” He rumbled. She swallowed his protest, sobbed. “Don’t contradict me. I’m stating facts here.”
He chuckled. “Here’s one more fact, bellissima. My father, too, believes the long-term repercussions of the precedent of my crowning would change the face of Castaldini, something we should all fight against. He was desperate for me to take the crown, not because I was Castaldini’s last hope, but because he feared the Council’s rigidity. They proved it by choosing me over the third candidate because he’s an illegitimate D’Agostino, a factor that in this day and age shouldn’t be a consideration. He still fears they’ll let him, the one they know would probably make the best king go because of this stupid prejudice.”
She raised an eyebrow, suspicion and hackles rising. “Going overboard alert. Losing all credibility here. Way to go to de- convince me. There can be no better king-material than you.”
Delight crackled from his depths, rich
and infectious and unbearably arousing. “Never stop saying things like that to me.”
“No danger of that whatsoever. Just hope you can stomach all the nonstop adulation. So what’s this exaggeration about this third candidate making the best king?”
“It’s what I believe. We—my father’s candidates—are on par as far as power and success go. But I believe Ferruccio is the one among us who has that most drive to lead. He’s also the most…old-fashioned, if you will. And he might never admit it, but he craves setting down roots, which he’s never had. That combination makes him the best choice for Castaldini’s king. I pray they make him the offer and fast, and that he agrees to take up the mantle when they do. I’m not sure he will. If I were him, I’d probably courier the D’Agostino family and Castaldini to hell.”
“What if he does refuse? Will you then take the crown?”
“I won’t think of that unless I’m the last candidate left standing. But I agreed to be Leandro’s co-regent. Once Ferruccio is crown prince, we’ll be his main men on his new Council, continuing to do our utmost in Castaldini’s service. That means many, many visits there. Would you like that?”
She plunged into his embrace, kissing him all over. “I would love that! And I love you, most of the time beyond endurance…”
She cursed herself for the tremor in her voice when he heaved up, his eyes alert, alarmed. “What is it? Surrender all your worries, anima mia, let me erase them.”
“I-I’m just so afraid…and that was the reason I…”
“The reason you said what you did yesterday.”
“I always forget that you can read my mind.”
“Just partially now. I can’t tell what still pains you so.”
“I-I…oh, hell…tell me the truth, okay? I’ll know if you don’t and it will prey on my mind. You really don’t care who I am?”
“I couldn’t care more.” She jerked, and he gentled her, leaned her against his propped up thighs, stroked and kneaded her, at once mind-blowingly sexual and heart-meltingly emotional. “You are the one who has awakened my heart, reawakened my ability to care, to enjoy, introduced me to the full potential of life. You have nothing to do with our parents’ choices. I was insane to suspect you of knowing of their affair, to doubt your motives toward me. But at the core of my madness was my fear that I didn’t deserve you and all the happiness you bring me, that something would happen to prove it was all too incredible to be true.”
“And even though you deserve to be punished, slowly, agonizingly…” She lunged at him, kissed her way down his body until he growled, thrust at her, drove convulsing fingers in her hair to stop her, to urge her on. “…you also deserve far more than I can possibly be or give…hush, don’t contradict me again.” She raised her eyes, found that his were rivaling Castaldini’s shores in vividness and translucency, radiating pure azure adoration. “And that’s the same fear that paralyzed me into keeping silent. I couldn’t believe this could be happening to me. I was living in dread of ending the perfection.”
His lips quirked. “So you don’t think it was fool’s gold?”
She fluttered her lashes. “So you don’t think I seduced you?”
“You did seduce me. To the point that my mind unravels at the merest thought of losing you.” Distress gurgled in her throat. A slash of bedeviling white lit up his dark gold face as he hauled her to him. “And Grazie a Dio that you did. You seduced me just by being yourself, with no motive other than being unable to have enough of me. But ragazzaccia mia, you stopped my amends too soon. Not that I’ll stop. I’ll just keep on making them, keep showing you, proving to you what you are to me, my everything.”
“Them’s fightin’ words, Your Highness. Prepare to witness that you are this and more to me. For starters, I’ll never withhold anything from you again, not facts, not the last shred of thought or emotion.” She bit her tongue. “Uh…that sounded as if I’ll be a blabbering, overemotional pain in the rear.”
“This kind of pain?” He squeezed her buttocks, pressed her into his aroused flesh, groaned as if in suffering. Her insides clenched, needing, gnawing. She knew how he felt. “Or the other kind, where you agonize me by reassuring me I’m in your heart and thoughts, that I’m pleasing and pleasuring you? If that’s the kind of torment you have in store for me, I beg you to never stop.”
She opened herself to him, pledged with body and soul, to never, ever stop.
Much, much later, she was draped over her man, her lover, the most incredible gift in this plane of existence, feeling savagely pleasured and overcharged with satiation.
It was why the thought, when it came, ripped through her like a hot knife through butter.
He felt it at once, gathered her more securely. “Tell me.”
She didn’t hesitate this time. “You still don’t know what really went on with your mother, what her diary meant.”
“I know she was disturbed. From the thankfully little I saw of my grandfather, I can see why, now that I’ve opened my mind to other possibilities rather than the obvious ones pointing to my father.”
“So you don’t believe your father drove her to suicide?”
He shook his head. “Or your mother. It was a tragedy, but I believe my father now, that there was no villain.”
“Do you really believe that, or are you just—”
“Manipulating history to get closure in a way that would exonerate both our parents for obvious self-serving purposes?”
“Will you quit finishing my thoughts and questions?” She scraped her teeth against the abrasion of his stubble.
He groaned his pleasure before he pulled back, his eyes solemn. “And no, I’m not deluding myself here. I punished myself and my father long enough for the failures I believed we were both guilty of. But finding you gave me the clarity to see that neither of us could have done anything to help her, just like neither you nor your mother could help your father. I also faced it that neither of us could have suspected Clarissa’s ordeal, that we did intervene immediately when we found out. I was never able to forgive either of us for this. But loving you opened up my ability to forgive, to let only positive emotions thrive.”
The serenity he exuded enveloped her, the freedom from darkness that blazed in his eyes lighting up the universe. Searing joy spilled from her eyes, as for the first time she knew the real meaning of security, of stability. This was unshakable.
He suddenly frowned. “Dio mio, what a fool I am!”
She jerked up. “What?”
“I dared presume you’ll walk down the aisle on the strength of a proposal I effectively rescinded.”
“It’s okay. It’s reusable. Like a ‘get out of jail free’ card.”
He guffawed as he jumped up, scooped her up in his arms. “If you ran a jail, I’d never want to get out. Now, will you lend me your yacht? I want to reenact a certain proposal scene.”
“Oh, God! You still haven’t taken all your stuff back.”
“You make it sound like some old clothes and a guitar.”
“Just tell me how to get everything back in your name or I’ll hold my breath until I pass out!”
He sighed, let her down on her feet. “I trust this won’t be the way you operate with me from now on?”
She gulped a breath and he shook his head, grudgingly walked away, reached down to his strewn clothes for his cell phone.
He’d hit two numbers when she cried out. “Wait!” He cocked a daunting eyebrow at her. “You’re penniless right now, right? Comparatively speaking?”
“Sì.” His eyes flared and subsided like blue pulsars as he prowled back to her, running his hands suggestively down his chiseled body. “Why? Do you have a…position for me?”
She glowed up at him. “Many, permanent ones. In my bed. And everywhere else.”
“Hmm. Do I get to be…on top sometimes still?”
“On top, under, behind, around. All positions are…wide open.”
“I can say I’m interested.” He licked his lips
. “Rabidly so.”
She hauled him to her in a ribs-cracking hug. “You just want me for my money.” She giggled and sobbed and deluged him with kisses. “So, Your Scrumptiousness—now that I’ve proven, from my exalted upper-hand position, that I want you for you, will want only you, will love, cherish and defend you, be there for you with all that I am, for the rest of my days, sposami, Durante. Marry me, amore mio. Make me complete.”
He hugged her off the ground, the elation and adoration radiating from him enough to power the whole city with years of love and wonder. “On one condition. If I say yes now, I still get to do my reenactment.”
“Say yes now and you can do whatever you like, always. In fact, you’d better.”
“You’ll let me give you all that I am?”
“Oh, yes, please.”
He let her down, kneeled, still hugging her, his eyes pledging more than his all. “Then, yes, amore mio. Love me and let me love you…forever.”
She hugged him into her, body and being, bliss shaking her, gushing from her eyes. And she knew.
There’d never be doubt again.
This was unshakable. This was forever.
*Throne of Judar
*Throne of Judar
*Throne of Judar
†The Castaldini Crown
†The Castaldini Crown
IMPRINT: Bestseller Collection eBooks
ISBN: 9781460887295
TITLE: OLIVIA GATES BESTSELLER COLLECTION 201211 - THE ONCE AND FUTURE PRINCE/THE PRODIGAL PRINCE'S SEDUCTION
First Australian Publication 2012
Copyright © 2012 Olivia Gates
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilisation of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the permission of the publisher, Harlequin Mills & Boon®, Locked Bag 7002, Chatswood D.C. N.S.W., Australia 2067.
