The Princess's Forbidden Lover

by Clare Connelly

  Her heart throbbed painfully in her chest.

  How often had she studied him like this while he slept? She knew every single line on his face. Every hair, every freckle, every detail. She swept quietly across the carpet, unconsciously holding her breath as she did. She lifted the notebook and went to put it more safely on the table beside him.

  Only her eyes caught the first sentence and she found herself spinning it around to read instead.

  Lilah and Kiral: prisoners of destiny.

  Kiral – Something wrong. Claims to accept his fate but doesn’t seem to want to own it.

  Melania – Does she really want to do this? Holding something back? Worried. Why? Investigate.

  Rocco – a real mystery. Why isn’t he coming to wedding? Go back to Italy. Double check the nanny.

  Lilah. He’d circled her name. Sheltered, out of touch with reality? Loves her brother. But doesn’t believe in love. A contradiction. Seeks suitable marriage for herself. Approves of brother’s marriage. Doesn’t like Melania? Investigate.

  Lilah’s heart was pounding faster now, but with a complex tangle of emotions at the root of it. He had said he loved her. But how could he, when he could make notes about her in such a clinical and detached way?

  His work involved writing an article – an expose? – on her family.

  With a feeling of absolute betrayal, she flipped forward several pages in the notebook until she got to:

  Jalilah Mazroui, NYC. Servant to her people. Believes in the absolute power of her position. Respects Kiral. Attractive, intelligent, though obviously hiding that behind niceties. Just a princess.

  Artifice and Grace. This point he had underlined three times.

  What makes her tick? Investigate. Then further down the page: Cold? Untouchable? Unfeeling?

  Lilah dropped the notebook from fingers that were trembling now and Will startled awake instantly. It took him two seconds to surmise the situation. Lilah’s paper white face, the hurt in her eyes, the way she was stepping backwards as though he were a ticking time bomb.

  He stood quickly but not quickly enough. Lilah turned and began to run. He caught her just as she pulled the door inwards. His palm slapped it shut and she spun to face him, her face shaking. “Let me go.”

  “Why are you so upset?” He demanded back, mentally trying to recall exactly what his notes had said. He could well believe she’d seen something he would have preferred her not to.

  “What makes her tick? Investigate. Artifice and Grace. Unfeeling? Cold?” She shook her head. “Was this some kind of sick ploy? Did you sleep with me because you wanted to see what was behind my so-called artifice and grace? Were you trying to see what makes me tick?”

  His laugh was a harsh sound. “I slept with you because I wanted to. I slept with you because you wanted to sleep with me and wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

  She sucked in a huge gasp and lifted her hand to slap his face. He saw it coming but didn’t dodge the assault. She was hurt. She wanted to hurt him back. He understood the instinct.

  She left a stinging red mark on his cheek and the sight of it burned sadness into her gut. “You slept with me out of pity?”

  “No.”

  “Curiosity then.”

  “No.” He pushed his body forward, wedging her against the door. His mouth was hard when it collided with hers. The kiss was as demanding as ever. His hands pushed at her blouse, lifting it from the waistband of her skirt.

  Lilah sobbed but she didn’t break the kiss. She couldn’t. For months she had craved this. She had dreamed of this. She had wondered if any man would ever touch her with such hot desire ever again.

  And now Will was ripping her clothes in a desperate bid to feel her soft skin in his hands. He cupped her breasts with possessiveness and still his tongue lashed against hers. He stroked his thumbs over her nipples, enjoying the sensation of her tautness – the physical sign of her desire that she couldn’t deny.

  Not that Lilah wanted to deny any of it.

  She lifted her arms and wrapped them around his neck, curling her fingers into the blonde hair at his nape.

  He raised the intensity of his kiss, plundering her mouth and making her wonder how she’d stayed away from him for so long. Months and months and they could have been doing this that whole time.

  It wasn’t possible, but in that moment she struggled to recall the reasons she’d left him behind when she’d left America.

  “Please,” she whispered into his mouth, her hands dropping lower to run against his sides and search for flesh.

  She didn’t need to ask twice.

  He pushed at the waistband of her skirt, making a sound of frustration when it wouldn’t give.

  “Buttons,” she explained almost incoherently.

  His hands pulled at the fabric, lifting it so that his fingers could finally connect with her bare legs. The anticipation was a slick inside her. She tilted her head back, hitting it abruptly against the door.

  He laughed softly. “Are you okay?”

  Lilah shook her head. “No.” And she wasn’t. She was terrified.

  He understood. He linked his fingers with hers and pulled her away from the door. “I slept with you because I wanted to.”

  “But that book … you are so … your notes are so …” Her breath was ragged and it was almost impossible to find the words she wanted to utter. “You are the one who is detached. How can you analyse me like that?”

  His lips twisted in a cynical smile. “I should have been detached. I should have kept you at arm’s length.”

  “I wouldn’t take no for an answer, remember?”

  “Thank God for that,” he said in an attempt at humour.

  Lilah shivered. “I don’t know why I came here.”

  He reached up and cupped her cheek. “You are so beautiful.”

  She pulled away from him and her body screamed in silent rejection to the distance. She tucked her shirt back in place with fingers that were trembling. “You said you wanted to talk. So talk. I will be missed soon.”

  A muscle jerked in his cheek. “Don’t you ever want to get away from all this?”

  “No,” she lied, staring out at the glistening night sky. The stars twinkled happily overhead and Lilah felt that their joy was a betrayal to the heaviness in her heart.

  “Come with me.” He held his hands out and though she knew it was stupid, she reluctantly placed hers in them. He led her through the room, through the sliding glass doors onto the private balcony. The fragrance from the orange blossoms below was heaven.

  He wrapped his arms around her waist and began to sing softly in her own language, whispering the words so that they wrapped around her heart. “Will,” she said softly but he shook his head.

  “Tell me you want to be anywhere else,” he challenged gently, stroking her back.

  “What I want isn’t relevant.”

  “Yes it is.” He kissed the top of her forehead. “You still love me.”

  She stiffened in his arms. “I never said I felt that about you.”

  He shook his head. “You didn’t need to. Love doesn’t need to be discussed. It’s either there or it isn’t. Can’t you feel it, honey?”

  Another sob threatened to erupt. She bit down on her lip. “What is expected of me is a chain around my soul. I cannot say what you want me to.”

  “You don’t need to say it. I told you. I can feel it. The same love is here with us now as was the first time we met. Remember how you felt when you leaped off that building? That was love. It was trust and it was unquestioning faith.”

  “It was stupidity,” she responded with soft scorn.

  “I came to Delani because Kiral invited me. I told myself that I was over you. That I didn’t care if I saw you or not. How foolish I was! I can’t leave Delani, Lilah. Not without you.”

  Her heart was accelerating wildly in her chest. He was saying everything she had ever hoped to hear. “None of this … what you’re suggesting … it’s not possib
le.”

  “You are a princess. Make it possible.”

  “It would never work.” She swallowed. “Kiral would never allow it.”

  “Who is he to stop it?” He demanded.

  “The King! I know you don’t respect our way of doing things, but in Delani, his power is absolute.”

  “It’s bullshit,” Will said angrily. “He adores you. We’ll go to him and tell him that we want to be together.”

  “No, Will,” she laughed shakily. “Don’t you understand? He’s marrying someone he doesn’t love simply because it is the right thing to do. He would never respect either of us.” She lifted her gaze to his face and tried to untangle the explanation she hadn’t been able to give him in the woods.

  “I want to tell you something,” she said slowly, carefully. “Something I ought to have told you much sooner.” She bit down on her lip. “Only with your job, and your article, I couldn’t be sure …”

  “Off the record,” he assured her. “Everything with us is off the record, Lilah.”

  “I know. Only it isn’t my secret to tell.” She sucked in a deep breath and fixed her gaze on one of the pomegranate trees that sat in a pot on the balcony. “There was a woman, several years ago. An American. I don’t know much more about her,” Lilah forestalled any questions Will might have. “In fact, Kiral never spoke to me of her. It was whispers and guess-work mainly, because he had just formalized his betrothal to Melania. But I do know she broke his heart. That leaving her changed him. He is still altered by that separation.” Lilah swallowed nervously.

  Will stared into her eyes, trying to forge a connection between the admission she was offering. “I don’t get it,” he said finally. “Because he once cared for an unknown American woman, or is rumoured to have done so, you are not allowed to love me?”

  “Yes.” She shook her head. “No. I don’t know. But he will expect me to do what he has done. I should never have let things go so far with you. I should never have been so foolish. This has all been a mistake.”

  He let out an angry sigh. He was far from done pleading his case but he sensed that the harder he pushed the more she’d shut down. “So what then, Lilah?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m here for the foreseeable future. Will you come to me here? Will you come to my bed, forgetting all the reasons you shouldn’t? Or will you push me away because you’re too scared to face the truth of what we share?”

  “Sometimes being scared is a good thing,” she said wearily. “You cannot possibly understand what it is like to be me.”

  He lifted a brow, his expression thunderous. “Then explain it.”

  She felt the impatience in his tone and made to push away from him, but he held her tight. “There are obligations and expectations.”

  “That you will marry someone suitable?” He prompted. “Like Kiral is doing?”

  “Don’t do that,” she said softly. “Don’t speak of him with such disrespect.”

  “I speak of his marriage with disrespect,” Will distinguished emphatically. “You are both royal. Fine. But these are your lives. The decisions are yours to make. If he loves this American woman, he should marry her instead.”

  “He made his decision, and it is to marry Melania. And I have made mine.”

  “And you’ve decided you don’t want this?” He tilted her chin so that her eyes clashed with his.

  “I want to do what is right by my people, my family and by you as well.”

  “Don’t make this about me. If you wanted to do what was right by me you would own up to the feelings you have.”

  “And what about me?” She said quietly. “Do you want to do right by me, as you say?”

  He swallowed. “Of course.”

  Her hands lifted to his chest of their own accord, her fingers splayed over the muscular wall. “Then let me go. As you did that day in New York, let me go. I have a life here, and you cannot be a part of it.”

  He ignored the pain in his gut. “I didn’t let you go, Lilah. I let you walk away from me but I have carried you here with me every day since then.” He pressed his fingers into his chest then captured one of her hands in his. “I have relived every moment of the time we shared in the cabin. I have dreamed of you and ached for you. I loved Maddie. After I lost her, I never thought I would feel that again. I didn’t want to feel this for you. I sure as hell wasn’t looking for it. But I have never once doubted that I love you, and that you love me.”

  “Please,” the word was shaky and her emotions were a throbbing, heaving force. Jealousy. Sorrow. Pity. And yes, love by the bucket-full. “This isn’t appropriate.”

  He made a noise. “Say you don’t love me, Lilah. That’s all you have to do. Look into my eyes and tell me that you don’t love me. Say those words to me knowing how much I love you. Tell me you don’t love me now, to my face. Say it.”

  Tears were sliding down her cheeks. A wind rose from the desert, brushing her hair over her face. She moved to pull it aside at the same time he did. Their fingers connected and she shook her head hopelessly. “Please don’t do this to me. Don’t offer me everything I want in life knowing it’s beyond my power to grab it.”

  “I’m right here. All you have to do is say yes. The details we can work out later.”

  “No,” she shook her head. “I know we can’t.” She fluttered her eyes shut. “I love you. I love you like you love me. But it is futile and pointless.”

  “You love me.” A huge smile creaked across his handsome face.

  “I have always loved you.”

  “Even that day at the cabin when you switched into some kind of Stepford Princess?”

  She laughed but her heart was breaking. “What do you think?”

  “And yet you left me.”

  “I had to.”

  “And did you miss me?”

  She blinked up at him, and nodded. “What do you think?”

  “I think that you need to face up to the fact that running away from me is only going to hurt us both.” He gripped her hands in his. “What’s the worst that can happen? We will speak to Kiral. Together.”

  “He won’t approve.”

  “Then we will make him!” Will couldn’t stop smiling now. “Don’t you see? This love makes us powerful.” He expelled a soft breath. “Lilah, I have known love, and God knows I have known loss. I am not going to lose you.” He kissed her on the tip of her nose. “Life is so short, sweetheart. It is precious and it is fleeting and no one and nothing should stand in the way of what makes you happiest of all. For me, that’s you.”

  “No.” She could feel the tide of his words pulling her away and it terrified her. Too far into the ocean of his promises and she knew she would drown. “No. This is not the way. It isn’t right. I cannot ever be what you want of me.”

  Will could have groaned in frustration. She was so close to letting go of all of the ridiculous notions that held her back, but still she held him at arms length. Even beneath his gaze he saw her transform herself into the untouchable princess he had first met.

  Artifice and Grace.

  He stepped away from her, anger coursing through his veins. “You either want me or you don’t.”

  “You know I do,” she implored, reaching out and hooking her fingers around his arm. He pulled away.

  “You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say ‘I do but I don’t’. Tell me now, Lilah, once and for all. Do you want me enough? Enough to find a way to make this work, knowing that I will stand by your side and protect you from whatever anger your brother feels? Do you love me enough to risk his disapproval?”

  If she were someone different, she might have allowed herself to cry in front of him. The impossible request he was making of her was turning her heart to stone.

  But having made her decision, Lilah stayed her course. She dropped her hands and shook her head. “I can only say that I love you more than I knew possible. That I want you to live your life knowing my feelings are true and that I will n
ever forget you. But that you can have no place in my life, apart from deep in my heart.”

  “This is absolutely absurd,” he responded with palpable frustration.

  She nodded and stepped backwards. “I can’t see you again, Will. It’s not safe, and it’s not wise.”

  Will groaned and moved to follow her, pulling her into his arms. He kissed her roughly and tasted the saltiness of a single tear that she hadn’t been able to control. “You’re actually trying to say goodbye?” He pushed the words into her mouth but she was powerless to respond.

  His kiss was stirring her soul. She surrendered to it, letting the power he wielded over her render every objection and sense mute. Her hands lifted to his chest, feeling his heart pound.

  It was all such a mess.

  She pulled away on a sob and spun from him. She was tormented. The chasm between what she wanted to do and what she knew she had to do was widening. “I have to go.”

  Will watched as she crossed the room, waiting for something to occur to him to say. An argument he hadn’t yet used. But in the end, he said nothing. He watched her leave, and he felt nausea rise in his gut.

  He had known love.

  He had known loss.

  And now he had known, loved and lost Lilah.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Only the deepest drama could have distracted her from the desolation that had literally torn her apart. Only an immediate and great need for her to shelve her own pain could have succeeded in setting aside the sadness that engulfed her nights.

  And drama did indeed come.

  It split the ordered nature of their lives almost completely in two.

  The wedding that had been planned for years, that had been sought and feted by people on both sides of the border, had been cancelled. In its place, a union was to take place that was both astounding and exciting. At least to Lilah.

  The American woman Kiral had, at one time, loved, had arrived. And with her so too came the news of the son they shared. Lilah’s heart raced as she thought of the boy. Michael. Their prince. A son for Kiral, an heir for the kingdom, and a nephew for Lilah.