Princess in the Iron Mask (16 page)

‘Lucas?’ she said, lifting her head and resting her chin on the back of her hand as she looked up at him. Her eyes were fired with enough anxiety to make his guts clench. ‘Was I...okay?’

He let go of the air locked in his chest and raked damp hair back from his brow. Never had he been asked that. But she was looking up at him, so damn trusting, her heart etched on her face, needing to know she’d been worth it. His stomach ached.

‘Listen to me,
querida,
’ he said, trailing the back of his finger over her temple, down her nose. ‘When you are stripped bare and no longer able to hide you are breathtaking.’

As her bruised lips parted he traced them, following the sexy dip of her top lip. Her pink tongue snaked out and flicked the tip and a fresh spurt of heat shot down his spine, thick as lava, as he remembered the way she’d tasted him. Such a ferocious mind. Always learning, always desirous to be the best.

‘You’re the most passionate woman I have ever met.’

She blinked. Smiled the sexiest of satisfied smiles and dropped a lush, moist kiss on his chest.

‘That’s good,’ she said, as she tiptoed her fingers down his abdomen, cruising over the ridges and down, down to where he was hard and ready for her touch.

Bolder now, she wrapped her fingers around his length and explored every inch of him, first with her hand and then with her eyes. Until the heat was a fiery ball and he was plunging past the point of no return. He grasped her wrist, flipped her over and pinned her to the bed, his hands holding hers above her head.

Her eyes blazed, glittering with shards of exquisite excitement.

‘Ah... You like that?’

What she liked, he realised, was to be wanted. She loved his weight on top of her. His strength turned her on, heated her blood. She felt protected.
He
made her feel safe.
Dios.
His heart turned over again. He should not revel in that—he really shouldn’t.

Licking her lips, she nodded, her breath quickening, her hips writhing in their own little way to drive him crazy with the need to be inside her.

Keeping her hands above her head with one hand, he trailed the other down the slope of her full lush breast. ‘
Dios
. You have the body of a goddess. Heavenly to look at. Sinful to touch. Makes me feel damn weak.’

He kissed the soft underside while his fingers trailed down her soft stomach, wanting to see if she was ready. ‘You are not sore?’

‘No,’ she breathed. ‘Need you.’

Her head tossed back and forth. Her dark curls fanned over his white pillow. His pillow. His bed.
His.

Skating over the damp curls at the apex of her thighs, he dipped into her heat, felt warm moisture coat his fingers. A moan—his, hers, entwined—filled the air.

His heart struck up a ferocious beat. Blood roared through his head. Lucas knew he was flirting with disaster, stumbling across unknown territory, yet nothing could stop him. She would be gone soon enough.

‘So wet,
cariña.
You want me inside you?’

‘Yes, yes...’

Sweat beaded his brow as he settled between her legs, hard and achingly heavy. And when she moved against him for a frantic beat he wondered if he would last.

He grasped her hair, cupped her head in one hand and brought her mouth to his so he could plunder, drink in her cries when she came for him. With his free hand he caught her nipple with his thumb and forefinger, rolling the tight tip until she undulated against him, working up to a frenzy. Then he stroked down her toned thigh and sank into her with one deep thrust.

A hoarse cry broke from his very soul and poured into her mouth. Tight, hot, she gripped him in her slick heat, drawing him deeper under her spell until he didn’t know where he ended and she began.

The need to watch her orgasm for him, so he could remember, became an almighty obsession. So he stroked down her waist, over her hip, round to the soft curve of her luscious rear and lifted her thigh-high over his waist to deepen his thrust and grind against her.

‘Oh, Lucas...’

Her fingernails bit into the skin on his shoulders and a fever unlike any other took hold of his blood as a torrent of fire built inside him, far stronger than the first time, and Lucas knew—just knew—he would never recover from this explosion of feeling. Never in a million years.

Lips locked, she cried into his mouth, the sound of her sensual elation throwing him over the edge, tossing him into the black depths of ecstasy.

Hurling him into the unknown.

* * *

Light flickered in his brain and Lucas prised his eyes open to the darkness of night. He’d slept?

Warmth smothered the right side of his body and half of his chest...Claudia. She mumbled something, almost a cry, the high pitch snapping him to full lucidity, and Lucas tightened his hold on her waist.

‘Claudia?’

She struggled against him and he instantly loosened his grip, cupped the back of her head, softly kissed her temple. ‘Wake for me, angel.’

She stilled before the tension drained from her spine and she fell back against his chest. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m okay. Truly.’

‘You were dreaming?’

‘It’s being back here. So strange.’

Her skin was damp, clammy. ‘Not a good dream,’ he said. Statement. Fact. Lucas knew too well the cold sweats, the shaking so hard it was impossible even to drink water.

‘Not really,’ she mumbled, snuggling into his side, hiding her face. ‘It’s nothing.’

His stomach tensed and he nudged her softly with his arm, needing to see her face. She turned her head and lay down, facing him. ‘Do not hide from me, Claudia. I cannot bear it.’

Nibbling on her bottom lip, she gave him a searching look. ‘I just have this nightmare sometimes. It’s a memory, that’s all.’

‘Ah, that’s all?’ he said, trying to tamp down on the flare of anxiety because he knew the power of memories. How they could haunt you. Drain your very soul.

She had demons of her own; he’d known that, hadn’t he? ‘You tried to tell me on the plane, I remember.’

‘Did I?’

That she couldn’t recollect spoke volumes. But then he remembered her panic, the fear that had sliced through the very heart of him.

‘Tell me your dream,’ he said, sweeping a lock of damp hair from her cheek with his fingertip.

He could see the hesitation in her eyes, couldn’t understand it. ‘Claudia?’

Searching his eyes for a long moment, she seemed to look for sincerity or wonder if she could trust him—not with her body or her safety but with her secrets. Her past.

‘Trust me,
cariña.
’

Wriggling from his hold, she rolled onto her back and pulled the sheet up to her neck. Lucas ignored the cold chill sweeping over his body; she needed space. He understood. So he moved onto his side to face her, bent his elbow and rested his head on the ball of his hand.

Staring up at the ceiling, she began to talk, her voice detached. ‘I must’ve been twelve. It’s my last memory of being here.’ Her brow creased as she delved into the past. ‘It was one of those hot clammy days that made me feel so sick I could hardly breathe...hardly walk. My mother took me to the hospital. I think they’d had some specialist flown in.’ She shuddered, gripped the sheet at the delicate dip in her throat. ‘I could hear every word through the open door, but my legs... I couldn’t move to close it. I covered my ears but she was ranting at him. Railing. Going on and on. I’d never heard her in such an awful state.’

She huffed a laugh, the sound so damn hollow his guts twisted.

‘You’ve met her, Lucas. So chillingly calm. So strong. But this day she was almost wild.
“Look at her!”
she screamed to the doctor, jabbing her finger in my direction.
“Just look at her. My beautiful daughter is no more. You have to do something.”
On and on she went, for what felt like hours.’

Lucas watched her knuckles scream in protest as she twisted the sheet in her fingers, her eyes closed, her teeth sinking into her lower lip as she stifled her sorrow. And he’d swear his chest had cracked open.

‘Someone carried me out to the car. She was so deathly silent and I was so numb. She couldn’t bear to look at me. When we reached the Arunthe tunnel there was traffic everywhere.’

Her chest rose and fell with short, sharp breaths and the need to touch her, hold her, was so strong his arms ached.

‘I think we’d been followed,’ she continued, brushing hair from her damp brow with trembling fingers. ‘There was always stuff in the papers, wondering what was wrong with me. Why I was kept under lock and key while my sisters enjoyed their independence. I think being so secretive must’ve made it worse.’

The room was dim, but Lucas saw one silvery droplet trickle down the side of her face. The pain in his chest tore up his throat.
‘Querida—’

‘Suddenly,’ she said, ‘men were crawling over the car like locusts, banging on the windows so hard I thought the glass would shatter. They yanked at the door handles, over and over, trying to get in. And my mother... She pushed me down—said I had to hide, to stay out of view in case they saw me.
“No pictures of her,”
she was screaming.
“No photos. No photos.”
Yelling. Crying.
“They can’t see her like this.”
I just wanted to die. That’s exactly what I wished for.’

Her voice trailed to a pained whisper and Lucas strained to hear her.

‘She screamed at the driver to move forward and he tried to switch lanes. He tried. He
tried.
’

Lucas ground his jaw so hard a shard of pain shot up to his temples. ‘The car crashed?’

‘Yes,’ she said, her chest rising as she struggled to wrestle her emotions into submission. ‘Next thing I knew I was in London. Hidden. Locked up.’

Her voice ebbed once more and Lucas leaned closer.

‘The Princess in the Iron Mask.’

‘What?’
he said, frowning deeply, sure he mustn’t have heard her correctly.

‘That’s what the other children called me. Although it was probably my own fault. I had at least two copies—you know, the novel by Alexandre Dumas? The mask they needed to hide the face of the King’s twin?’

He jerked upright, shaking his head. Adamant. Goddamn furious. ‘No, Claudia.
No.
’

‘Yes.’

‘That was just children being mean and spiteful because you are royalty. Most children dream of such a thing,
querida.
’

She dashed her hands across her cheeks. ‘And my mother saying those things? Was
she
just being mean? Telling everyone I wasn’t beautiful any more? That she couldn’t bear to look at me? Touch me?’ Her voice hitched on the last word and she flung back the covers and vaulted off the bed. ‘I need to go now.’

‘No!’ he said, lunging, grabbing her hand, keeping her at the side of the bed until he stood before her. Cupping her face, he looked deep into her eyes. ‘Listen to me, Claudia. I’d say your mother was past herself with worry because no doctor could diagnose or even help. She had to watch you suffer. Can you imagine that?’ Lucas tilted her face, needing her to see the conviction in his. ‘Think of how you feel when you sit with Bailey. It hurts you,
sí?
’

She nodded, just once, eyes flooding, spilling. His heart tore.

‘I’d say your mother didn’t think or realise the words she spoke would affect you so. Whilst she is not the most affectionate of people, I believe in this case she was unthinking. Not uncaring.’

‘You think she honestly cared about me? She cast me out. I was dispensable to them.’

‘Impossible,’ he said fiercely. ‘You are far from dispensable,
cariña.
And you were
not
cast out. The accident, I think, was the last bullet for her. If I had been in the same position and you had almost died I also would’ve taken you away. Far, far away. Somewhere safe. Where you could get help. St Andrew’s is the best—world renowned.’

‘And would you have left me there, Lucas? Alone? They hardly came. I waited. And waited.’

His stomach wrenched. Little wonder leaving Bailey had killed her.

Would he have left her? The answer hovered on his tongue. For what peace would it bring her? He could never say the words pounding at his temples, fighting to break free.

‘Your parents had a country to run, Claudia—a country in trouble at the time. I remember those years. Your parents had other children. Duty. Responsibilities.’ Even as he said the words they sounded hollow, knowing the price she’d paid. Her parents had sacrificed her happiness for the good of thousands. Something he’d done over and over in his career.

‘Trust
you
to see it that way,’ she said, bitterness lacing her voice, twisting her head until his hands fell away—hands that now felt bereft. ‘Of course you’d have left me. Duty. Obligation. That’s all you ever talk about. You’re just the same as them.’

He closed his mind to the disgust in her eyes. ‘I see both ways. For a young sick girl to be left in a foreign country. Isolated in such a way.’ His chest felt crushed by the impact. ‘It must’ve been very hard for you.’

He knew all too well the emptiness, the fear she would have felt—could feel it now, brewing in his system like poison. Fear that made you weak. Angry. Resentful. Determined at any cost to close the door to your heart and never reopen it.

‘Dios.’
The truth slammed into him, almost knocking him off his feet. ‘So blind,’ he said, scouring her face, drinking in her amazing beauty and tender vulnerability while the last remaining fragments fell into place. The final piece of intelligence he needed to create Claudia Verbault.

‘What happened when they came to see you,
cariña?
’

Her gaze fell, drifted to the window as the first strokes of dawn broke through the slit in the drapes. ‘I wouldn’t speak to them. Not one word. When I grew older, got better,
had
to speak, they started making demands for me to return. I pushed for my independence. I wanted my freedom.’

‘No, Claudia,’ he said, shaking his head slowly. ‘You pushed them away because you were hurting. Your freedom was a ticket to a pain-free zone.’