by Kali Anthony
‘Hannah... I’m going to... Hannah...’
He tugged at her hair in warning, but she didn’t let up on the relentless rhythm. For once in his life he allowed the scorching fire of his orgasm tear through his body with no thought or care for the consequences.
Letting the burn set him free.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ALESSIO SAT BEHIND his desk, trying and failing to make sense of some financial reports. The numbers on the page swirled and blurred into one another. Yesterday had been an exercise in hedonism. Something he’d never indulged in. He and Hannah in his city office. Cancelling his appointments. Spending the afternoon in bed, repaying her a thousand-fold, making her scream. That filled his thoughts. Not these dry figures and graphs about tourism which should be holding his interest.
Yet he couldn’t see what he and Hannah were doing as a mistake. Not now. It might be a glorious folly, like the pavilion on the palace grounds. Built to a love that was all an illusion. But they had set an end: the date Hannah left Lasserno. Then he could choose his princess, establish his throne. Renew the glory of his country.
Still, what had once driven him now held no excitement. He rubbed his hands over his face. Took another long draught of his coffee. Today it was as if his bones were made of lead. Strange that around Hannah he seemed...lighter. More energised, invigorated, as if plugged straight into a power source. Not bowed by this weight, as if the expectations of the world sat on his shoulders.
He checked the time, then his diary. More meetings. Soon Stefano would walk in and they’d go. Instead of preparing, all he could think about was another evening in bed with Hannah. Driving away his worries for Lasserno in the warmth of her body. The way her hands stroked tenderly over his skin. A shred of softness at the end of a hard day...
‘Sir, His Highness is busy... Sir! You can’t go—’
‘My abdication does not mean this has ceased to be my palace. I go where I choose. I choose to see my son.’
Alessio’s blood froze, then his repressed rage heated it till it was near boiling. That voice sent a jagged spear through the heart of him. His father. Since his abdication he’d barely been near the palace, holed up in his personal villa on the outskirts of the capital, where few people paid any attention to his exploits and greater excesses. The double doors of his office were flung open and the former Prince himself strode in as if he still owned the room. To some people in this country he still did, but that was a problem for another day. Stefano followed, fists clenched.
‘I’m sorry—’
Alessio held up his hand. If he’d not been able to curb his father, then his best friend had no chance. ‘It’s okay. I’m sure he’ll leave soon.’
The man in question looked around the room as Stefano backed out and closed the doors behind him. The corner of his father’s top lip curled in a sneer. ‘I don’t favour what you’ve done with the place.’
‘I don’t care. Your taste isn’t mine.’ In anything. He’d happily rid the space of the more garish furniture and installed less frivolous antique pieces, more solid and befitting the future ruler of Lasserno.
Alessio gritted his teeth so hard he could almost taste blood. This was the man who’d left his wife and Lasserno’s beloved Princess to die alone. The man who’d plundered the crown jewels as he’d seen fit, as if it wasn’t bad enough in days long past that the royal family had lost the coronation ring present in so many portraits here, never to be recovered. A reminder to Alessio of responsibility and all he was tasked to protect.
‘All your talk of austerity and yet you decide to redecorate. I wonder, is this what hypocrisy looks like?’
‘This furniture was already in the palace. None of it’s new. At least I didn’t raid the crown jewels, the country’s treasures, to fund my lifestyle or provide baubles to sycophants.’
His father threw back his head and laughed. Dressed in a favoured Savile Row suit, he remained a handsome man, although his hair was greying, and he carried a little thickness around the middle. To Alessio’s disgust, he looked more like this man than he did his beautiful mother, with her pale hair and eyes. His father’s genes had erased everything of his mother from him...almost. Not her inherent goodness, he hoped. Alessio strove to carry that always.
‘The country’s? No. We’re an absolute monarchy. Everything in Lasserno is ours, to take as we see fit. Or have you forgotten? Next, you’ll be talking constitutions and presidents. Save me from a straw crown. I want none of it.’
Alessio sat still in his seat, the lessons of his childhood coming to the fore, when all he wanted was to stand and rage. But he refused to give this man the satisfaction of showing any emotion. Anyhow, toddler tantrums were his father’s specialty. He had more control. Alessio gripped the arms of his chair a little tighter, to prevent himself from leaping from it.
‘A ruler can be absolute, and still do the right thing by the country and its people.’
‘Doing what’s right for oneself is much more entertaining. Yet, despite your efforts, the people don’t seem to think you’re doing a good job. What are the press saying again?’
That he was cold. Autocratic. Opaque. Those words might have stung if his path weren’t clear. The people would see, once Lasserno took its rightful place on the world stage rather than being a forgotten backwater.
‘I don’t care, and that’s where our core difference lies. Since I’m a busy man fixing the messes you left, get to the point. Why did you come here? I suspect it wasn’t to criticise my decorating style.’
His father took a seat in the chair opposite Alessio’s desk, lounging in an indolent kind of way that was the man’s specialty.
‘I’ve come to congratulate you.’ His father’s gloating tone sounded a warning. ‘You’re not a lost cause yet, when for some time I thought you were all work and no play. She really is a masterstroke.’
Alessio froze. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t know about Hannah. Everyone in the palace was faithful to him. No one would say a thing. He’d learned a hard lesson about misplaced trust and had rid himself of his father’s cronies and hangers-on the minute the man had walked away from the throne. Any whispers could only be rumour because he’d been seen with a woman, whose presence had been well reported before she’d even arrived in Lasserno. It was one of the few things he’d allowed Stefano to tell the press, the coup of his coronation portrait being painted by the world’s finest young artist, something to be celebrated rather than hidden.
‘Who are you talking about?’
His father waved his hand theatrically, twisting that spear even harder. His disdain for his son and only child had seemed to increase over the years. Alessio had long ceased trying to impress the man. He’d given up around the time he’d been called home from England, leaving behind his dreams of riding for his country any more. Arriving home to find Lasserno in disarray.
‘The artist. I should have done the same.’
Alessio’s veins turned to ice. ‘Stop talking in riddles.’
Yet even as he said the words his voice was like dust in his mouth, dry and lacking conviction. His father was a master of playing vicious, wicked games. He enjoyed them, and Alessio wondered whether the ʻmistake’ in Hannah’s placement at his table for dinner hadn’t been a mistake at all but a move designed to create gossip.
‘Installed my mistress before marriage. What did that prim little English nanny of yours always say? Something about beginning as you mean to end things.’
Start as you mean to finish.
‘I have no mistress.’ That was not what was happening here. Hannah would be leaving soon. But the denial caught in his throat, threatening to throttle him.
His father was only guessing, assuming his son would debauch any beautiful young woman the same as he would. The bile rose in Alessio’s throat. He tried not to think that was exactly what he was doing. This was different. He didn’t hav
e a wife; he didn’t have a child. There was nothing currently tying him to any person. He was as free as he could be.
‘You can keep telling that to your conscience. Marry the perfect ice-cold princess and have your passionate piece already installed. You’re setting the expectations of your wife early. Perfect.’
‘I have nothing to trouble my conscience. Unlike you, I’ll be a faithful husband and I would never leave my wife to die alone.’
‘Your mother wanted me nowhere near her, especially not at the end. If she had I might have spent more time with her. Let’s say she was satisfied with having an heir. She was never going to give me a spare. Trust me when I say a lack of passion makes for a very cold bed to lie in for eternity.’
Alessio stood then, began pacing the carpet.
‘Perhaps if you’d been faithful, she might have been inclined to like you rather than despise you. Take care. This is my mother whose memory you’re disparaging.’
‘Whose necklace you allowed your little artist to wear. Which was sensible. They form no part of the crown jewels. Sets the girl’s expectations, wearing secondary gems. She’ll always know her place.’
‘She is not my anything.’
‘Lie to yourself all you want but say it with more conviction next time. Or better, admit to your failings. You have me as a father after all. One day you’ll awaken a lonely old man and only then, when it’s too late, you’ll see I was right.’
‘Is that all you have to say?’ Alessio gritted his teeth, tried to maintain his temper. Swept his hands over the paperwork sitting on the desk. ‘Because I have work, and no time for your ravings. You chose to abdicate this responsibility. Now leave me be.’
‘Of course, Your Highness.’ His father’s voice was a cold sneer. ‘Just remember, the work is always there. As the English like to say, All work and no play makes Alessio a dull boy. My suggestion? Keep your artist and find your royal wife. What use is being a prince if you can’t have what you want?’
His father rose with the presence of a ruler, stalked to the study doors and flung them back. They smacked into the walls on either side with unnecessary force as he left the room. Alessio couldn’t stop moving, the anger burning in his gut as he paced. His father didn’t really know what was going on—he was fishing for information. But this, the palace, all the intrigue...it would sully what he had with Hannah, their last precious days spent together. He wanted perfect memories for them both. Had to get her away from here, but everywhere was fraught. Any of the other royal homes, the royal yacht, had bigger problems. Whilst he’d rid the palace in the capital of his father’s sycophants, he couldn’t be sure of elsewhere.
Where to go? Somewhere close enough to the capital to be able to return easily, but far enough away to avoid prying eyes.
Stefano entered the room, brow furrowed in concern. ‘All okay?’
In those days after his father’s abdication, only his best friend knew the true extent of the trouble his father had caused. Alessio stilled. The solution stood in front of him. One he’d used a few times before when riding his horses had ceased to be enough. ‘I need to escape for a few days. The usual way.’
Stefano nodded, yet his eyebrows rose again. ‘Will Hannah be joining you?’
‘Yes.’ Alessio clenched his jaw. He would have no judgement on this, not from his friend. ‘Are you going to ask whether I know what I’m doing?’
Stefano gave him a wry smile. This man was one of his closest supporters. Like a brother. He placed a hand on Alessio’s shoulder and gave a brief squeeze of solidarity.
‘I don’t have to, my friend. I think you know exactly what you’re doing. And for once it’s what you want to do, rather than what you believe you should. That’s a good thing.’
Stefano released him and left the room, phone to his ear. In his office, all alone with the weight of his ancestors’ portraits around him, Alessio wasn’t sure he could take any comfort from his friend’s parting words.
CHAPTER NINE
HANNAH WALKED DOWN a gangplank to the harbour at dawn. The whole journey had been cloaked in secrecy. She had been told to pack for the beach for two days, and that was it. Not that she’d come to Lasserno prepared for needing beachwear. When she’d told Alessio, a host of bags had arrived in her room. Clothes with tags from designers who left her breathless, so she simply stuffed it all into a duffel bag she’d brought with her. In the pale morning light Alessio looked nothing like his usual self, unrecognisable in shorts showing off his strong calves, a T-shirt, cap jammed on his head, like a disguise. The whole episode was all subterfuge. He’d even driven them here through a back exit of the palace, with no entourage. Something cloak and dagger about it thrilled her.
They arrived at a magnificent yacht that looked as if it had come straight out of a classic movie, with three soaring masts and gleaming, honeyed wood. Alessio helped her aboard, where they were met by the crew. He shook their hands. Introduced her.
‘Remember, the same rules as last time,’ Alessio said.
The captain nodded. ‘Of course, sir. We’ll be underway immediately.’
‘Thank you.’
No Your Highness...no bowing. Little ceremony at all, as someone spirited away their bags. Alessio slid a hand to the small of her back and they traversed the expansive deck to the bow. As they reached the rail, Alessio checked his watch. She placed her hand over his wrist.
‘You do that constantly.’
‘I want to see if we’re leaving in good time.’
He’d told her this weekend was for them, to get away. It seemed as if he never could, always managing his day to the last second. She turned his wrist over, unclipped the burnished gold band and slid the timepiece from his wrist. Rubbed a thumb over his pulse-point. Over the mark the clasp had left. Relishing the feel of his smooth, golden skin under her fingers.
‘You need to stop sometimes.’ She clasped the watch in her fist as Alessio let out a slow breath, his shoulders relaxing as if some weight had been removed. ‘I’d like to pitch it into the sea to make sure you do, but it’s probably valuable.’
‘My maternal grandfather gave it to me.’
‘Did you like him?’
The corner of Alessio’s mouth kicked up into a smile. ‘I did.’
‘Then I’ll keep it safe.’ She slipped it into the pocket of her skirt, its weight against her thigh. A reminder of how little time they had, which was something she shouldn’t even be thinking about. She should be living in the now, because her time here had always had an end date. Hannah tipped her head back to look up into the complicated rigging.
‘This is an amazing boat.’
‘Il Delfino. A schooner built in 1910. One hundred and seventy feet long, if you’re interested.’
‘It’s beautiful.’
‘So are you.’
She smiled, breath catching in her throat. ‘Thank you.’
Since her parents had died, there’d been no one to tell her she was beautiful. Her dad had said those words to her, to her mother, all the time. Back then her parents had made sure she felt as attractive as an awkward teen could, with pimples and hormones causing trouble. On the other hand, her aunt and uncle hadn’t realised what she’d needed. Or hadn’t cared. Maybe the only thing they’d ever been interested in was the money her parents had left.
Tears burned at her eyes. There was no time for them here. Instead she stared out over the horizon. Ribbons of pink and gold threaded through the sky. The cool breeze brushed her face.
Alessio moved behind her, wrapping strong arms round her body. She leaned into him, tried to relax. To make the most of every second here.
‘This feels like another movie moment,’ she said.
‘Is that a bad thing this time?’
‘Only if the boat sinks.’
‘She’s had a complete refit, if you’re worried.’
&
nbsp; Hannah wasn’t. Around Alessio she almost felt more secure than with anyone else, apart from the way she had as a child with her mother and father. ‘I’m sure you’ll keep me safe.’
His arms tightened a fraction. She closed her eyes to savour the moment. He’d keep her safe physically. Emotionally though...it was as if she stood in a crowded room, naked. But this, between them, was all physical. An attraction. Nothing more.
‘You mentioned something to the crew about rules,’ she said. ‘What are they?’
‘This is Stefano’s yacht. Here, I’m not the Prince of Lasserno, I’m him.’
He played Stefano, so he could hide her. Part of that made sense. He was protecting them both from the press. Another part of it stung like a bee ruining a barefoot walk in the grass.
‘Stefano? This isn’t just any old boat. Where did he get it?’
‘Family. Stefano’s the Conte di Varno. The Moretti family and mine have a long history. Each count has served the royal family in their own way. Stefano’s way is as my private secretary, since I trust him implicitly.’
‘It’s nice that you have so much trust in someone.’
Alessio loosened his arms and turned her, a slight frown forming on his brow, the look concerned and earnest. ‘And you don’t?’
It was as if she were standing on a precipice. This between them was supposed to be casual. That meant light banter and fun. But she was driven to unburden herself, as if telling Alessio might set herself free.
‘My uncle was a financial advisor. He looked after my inheritance. Six months ago, he ignored my wishes. Invested in something I didn’t want. That investment failed. My parents didn’t have much, but my dad had an insurance policy. It’s all gone now. I’m hanging on to the cottage.’
