Claiming His Princess: Duty at What Cost? / A Throne for the Taking / Princess in the Iron Mask. Kate Walker
with me and yet you won’t show it. So controlled. So cool under pressure. Maybe the rumours are true and you are made out of ice.’
She turned, flicking her hair back over one shoulder in a quintessentially feminine gesture that dared a man to follow through with his baser instincts. Wolfe was not in the mood to let such a direct challenge go uncontested.
Within seconds he was on her, the flat of his hand slamming loudly against the wardrobe door as she was about to open it. ‘You think I’m made out of ice, Princess? How quickly you forget.’
She spun around, her eyes wide, her breaths punching the air. Was that fear or anticipation he read in her dilated pupils?
He looked at her. At the silvery striations in her dark eyes and the tiny row of freckles that lined one side of her upper lip. Unable to help himself, he slid a hand into her hair and tilted her face up to his. Their eyes clashed in a battle of wills. He told himself to back off, settle down, but his gaze dropped to her soft mouth and he couldn’t think of anything else but kissing her. Taking her.
Her nostrils flared as if sensing his need, and instead of crushing her lips beneath his he lightly brushed against them.
Once.
Twice.
She moaned and tried to draw his tongue into her mouth, but he’d thought about kissing her like this for weeks and now he didn’t want to be rushed. He slipped his other arm around her waist and drew her against him, all the while teasing her lips with his. She twisted in his hold, her mouth moving beneath his as if she was as desperate for the contact as he was. As if she’d thought about this as often as he had. His hands swept over her back, cupping her firm butt and bringing her in closer against his pulsing hardness.
Her own hands were just as busy, roaming his chest, curving around his shoulders, burning him wherever she touched.
The sensation of her velvet tongue flicking against his threatened to drive him to his knees, and he pressed her against the wardrobe and wedged his leg between her thighs to keep them both upright. Her head thudded lightly against the wardrobe door and he cupped the nape of her neck and urged her mouth to open wider. She was like molten silk in his arms, sliding against him, urging him on with her husky whimpers for more.
Wolfe had felt his control slipping the moment he walked into the room. Now he had none. Even the thin barrier of their clothes was too much between them, and his hands stroked over her, shifting the slippery fabric aside as he sought the sweet perfection of her breasts.
For God only knew how long he was lost. A slave to sensation. A slave to her soft scent and even softer body. A slave to her heat, to the tug of her feminine fingers in his hair. If there was some reason he shouldn’t be doing this he couldn’t think of it.
Behind him he heard the snick of the latch as the door was quietly opened.
Thrusting Ava behind him he spun, his gun drawn, but even as he did so he knew he was at least two seconds too late.
The maid gasped softly and nearly fainted, but other than the sound of his own ragged breathing you could have heard a feather float to the floor.
So much for not making any more mistakes, Ice.
Hell.
If he needed a clearer example of just how poorly he was doing at the job of protecting her he didn’t want to know what it was.
Wolfe stood motionless at the back of yet another extravagant ballroom and knew that despite donning yet another squillion-dollar tux he was doing nothing to blend into the glitterati of Paris. He was too angry with himself to care.
He should never have kissed her.
Now it was not only uncomfortable to watch her in the arms of another man, it was downright impossible. How his father had taken his mother back time after time Wolfe didn’t know. He only knew he couldn’t do it. If Ava chose someone else—Lorenzo—then she could have him.
Hell.
Of course she was going to choose someone else. That was the whole point of these elaborate tea parties and gala events. She was husband hunting and he thanked God he wasn’t on her list.
Didn’t he?
Of course he did. Even posing that question was a sign that he needed to step back. A very long way back.
And he would. In fact he already had. In—he checked his watch—fifteen minutes everything would have changed for the better. He blew out a long breath and dragged in some perspective with his next inhalation.
He knew how it felt to feel that someone you loved didn’t love you, and…Oh, hell. He couldn’t keep thinking like this. It felt as if his precious rules were in tatters, and he’d already thought and spoken more about his past in the last week than he had in twenty years. Next he’d be imagining that lust was love, and then where would he be? Hung out to dry like his old man, that was where. Talk about perspective.
It was a cliché that the client often fell for the bodyguard. It was just a hot mess if the opposite occurred, and he fixed hot messes—he didn’t create them.
Telling himself she was just like any another woman wasn’t working either. He wanted her. Not just any woman. Her.
When he had taken this gig his arrogant fat head had led him to believe he could control himself around her. Yeah, right. He’d proved in her hotel room two hours ago that he showed about as much control around her as a shark in a blood bath.
As a special ops soldier he had been trained to dig deep when every bone, muscle and tendon in his body was screaming for rest. He was trained to hold his line under extreme forms of torture no man should ever have to face. Apparently they hadn’t thought to train him to resist desire of this magnitude. Of course in reality he could resist her—there was simply some part of him that didn’t want to. And that was the part that scared him the most.
Ten minutes.
He shifted his weight to the balls of his feet and searched the baroque-style ballroom for her. She wasn’t hard to find in that showstopper of swirling scarlet that hugged every inch of her lush curves—those it managed to contain anyway. If she’d wanted to make a statement of availability she’d succeeded. And Lorenzo was in the market and had the correct weight to buy.
But not Wolfe. his life was mapped out just as surely as hers. Work, women and play—in that order. It was a great life. A life any man with his head screwed on right would envy. A life he had never questioned before and, dammit, still didn’t. That soft, sexy sound she made every time he slipped his tongue into her mouth was nothing he wouldn’t forget with time.
Raucous laughter from somewhere behind him brought him out of his daze. Where the hell was she? The ever-moving crowd kept blocking his view, but even so his sixth sense told him she wasn’t there.
An icy chill slid down his spine.
Glancing to the left, he caught the eye of one of his team acting as a waiter. Jonesy subtly signalled towards the patio doors leading to the gardens. His mouth tightened. He’d told her not to leave the room. No doubt the perfect Prince of Triole had taken her outside, and that wasn’t going to happen on his watch.
Furious with himself for yet another lapse in concentration, Wolfe wove a determined line through the throng of guests until he was outside. Giving his eyes a moment to adjust to the dim light, he strained his hearing for the sound of her voice. Then he saw the flash of her strapless gown through the trees and the matching red stripe down the side of the Prince’s trousers. His and hers. Perfection in the making, he thought acidly.
Lorenzo had caught her hands in his, the expression on his face one of earnest concentration. Was he about to propose? Wolfe didn’t wait to find out.
‘Nice night for a stroll, ma’am.’
Ava stiffened at the sound of Wolfe’s voice behind her and tugged her hands out of Lorenzo’s. She knew Wolfe was reprimanding