Princess in the Iron Mask (5 page)

Blood pooled in his groin and his mouth turned as dry as Arunthian dirt. He had to drench his lips with moisture in order to speak.

‘I have a jet on stand-by. We’ll leave the country within two hours.’ Lucas could have her home within five and his job would be done. In future he’d only have to see her at state functions. By then, having appeased his newfound sexual appetite, he’d be able to look at her without imagining her naked. For he knew her body would be sublime. Soft and pliable to his steel and strength, and tall enough to be the perfect fit.

‘Rather presumptuous of you, isn’t it?’ she said.

Madre de Dios!
Had he said that out loud? Lucas focused on her bent head as she slid the files lying on her desk into a large briefcase, one on top of the other.

He cleared his throat of pure want. ‘What is?’

‘To assume I’m leaving with you.’

The tightness in his neck drained down his spine. ‘Apologies,
Just Claudia.
’

Her hand stilled, and from his sideways vantage point he watched one eyelid shutter while she inhaled deeply, her breasts rising with life, pinky rouge blooming up her cheeks.

Did he affect her? The notion sucker-punched him straight in the solar plexus.

Her gentle touch forgotten, she began to ram two or three more files into the case, pushing until the bag was fit to burst. Maybe she was imagining it was his head. Oh, he certainly affected her. With annoyance rather than sexual attraction. Instead of relief he felt ridiculously irked.

How typical that the one woman in the world he could never have was a nemesis he instinctively wanted to devour.

‘So. What is your decision?’ He already knew it, but if she wanted to put up the pretence of a fight he would humour her. For now.

Kid gloves were his current choice of weapon.

‘I’m coming with you.’

His lips curved.

‘But not today.’

They flattened faster than a bomb detonation site.

‘What?’

‘I need three days,’ she said, adamant.

‘Impossible.’ He wouldn’t last two days without assaulting her gorgeous mouth.

Lucas worked to his own schedule, but just the thought of spending time near that sensational body while his stomach churned with a noxious mixture of frustration and fury ratcheted his deadline up into the red zone.

‘Delaying the inevitable is not only a foolhardy display of awkwardness on your part but a waste of time.’

‘Not for me. I need to go back to my apartment and pack. I have a personal matter to attend to, and most of all I need time to think,’ she said, tucking a wayward curl around the delicate shell of her ear.

‘Think?’ What did she need to think about? How many lab coats to pack? ‘I have no time to spare.’ Lucas blinked. Wait a minute... Personal matter?
Dios,
he’d never thought of that. And why did it make him feel like punching the wall?

‘Tough. Find time. Because I’m not going anywhere today.’ There it was again—that surge of heat when she used that sexy, stern voice.

And there
she
was, being selfish again. Why did he keep forgetting what kind of person she was? ‘Claudia, I cannot stay in London. I have to work.’

‘Oh,
really?
’ she said, yanking the case off the table and almost toppling over as it fell to the floor with a thud. ‘Well, now you know how I feel. I’m being dragged away from mine for three weeks. I’m sure you can afford to take three days.’

His nostrils flared. ‘My terms—’

‘Lucas,’ she said, attempting to disguise her rude interruption with an untried honeyed tone that made his skin prickle, ‘you will quickly come to realise I forget nothing. Your terms are—and I quote—three weeks’ leave, effective from nine this morning. Coupled with my return to Arunthia. On no occasion did you state a day of departure.’

Dios!
Lucas seethed. She was impossible. ‘It is almost noon. You have eight hours.’ Let it not be said that he couldn’t compromise.

Arms crossed tight, her full breasts were pushed upwards to stretch the stiff cotton and she canted her hip in a sexy pose. The ten-bell alarm siren going off in his head almost rendered him deaf. Almost.

‘Two days,’ she bartered.

Lucas ground his jaw. ‘Twenty-four hours. Final offer.’ He was crazy. Certifiable. A day of Claudia would tip him over the edge of reason to plummet headlong into insanity. He did not negotiate.
Ever.
People obeyed him. Always.

She smiled. It might have been small and somewhat triumphant, but she actually smiled at him.

Lucas felt his eye twitch.

‘Done,’ she said, all smug sweetness.

God help him if she ever put her heart and soul into it. Because Lucas had an uneasy feeling it would be him that would be ‘done’.

‘Fine,’ he snapped, his abnormal behaviour pushing his soaring anger levels from dangerous to critical.

He only prayed her apartment on the Thames had separate floors. Or at least a fifty-foot distance between bedrooms. Fighting with bloodthirsty night demons would be child’s play in comparison to the blistering temptation that would be down the hall.

* * *

Lucas didn’t look happy, Claudia mused. Waves of dark fury poured from his tight shoulders, much like the rain streaming in rivulets down the black bodywork of his Aston Martin Vanquish.

The engine of his Aston Martin Vanquish roared like a sleek panther as he revved his displeasure, and she wiggled on the cream cowhide in an attempt to cover her quivering reaction. She’d never thought of a car as arousing before. Well, she’d never thought of
anything
as arousing before. Today seemed to be a day for firsts. Even the heady smell of leather and damp clothing couldn’t douse the warm, woodsy scent of Lucas lingering in the air.

With the exception of his barking request for her to enter her address into the sat nav, their drive to her apartment had been deadly silent. Now, parked at the kerb, she was desperate to be away from his fiercely primal aura. She was so tired she no longer had the strength to argue, and her legs throbbed so viciously she’d be lucky if she made it inside the building, let alone up the stairs.

‘Erm...thanks for the lift, Mr Garcia. Unless the gods grace me with a reprieve, I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Without further ado, she yanked hard on the door handle. After a third
kerthunk,
she surrendered, directing her voice to be sweet. ‘Could you open the door,
pleeease?
’

‘Claudia,’ he growled, nostrils flaring, his chest heaving with barely suppressed anger. Staring out of his window at the three-storey townhouse where she lived on the second floor, he twisted his long fingers around the dark wood steering wheel. Maybe he was imagining it was her neck. ‘Have you ever once acknowledged who you
actually
are?’

‘Who I am?’ she asked wearily, not entirely sure what he was getting at and unable to summon the energy to care.

‘Yes, Claudia,’ he said slowly, as if speaking to a child. ‘A member of the Arunthian Royal Family.’

Never.
‘Not really. Can I go now?’ She gave the handle another tug.
Kerthunk.
A long sigh poured from her lungs.

‘How long have you lived in this...this place?’ The way he said
place,
as if the word was rat poison on his tongue, was like taking a grater to her nerves. Without bothering to look out of the window, her mind’s eye recalled a picture of the tired frontage of this Victorian townhouse on a less than stellar street. What was he getting into a funk about?
He
didn’t have to live here.

Claudia bit her tongue and thumped her head off the rest. ‘Oh, about eighteen months, I think.’ She slept most nights in the lab—more for convenience than because of the emptiness that shrouded her body when she lay between cold damp sheets, she was sure—but she kept that titbit to herself.

Lucas continued to fume, steam blowing from his nose as he stared out of the front windscreen. ‘You could’ve been abducted fifty times over,’ he growled, and she lifted her head from the buttery soft leather to see him scrub his face with rough hands. ‘Burgled, raped, assaulted,’ he went on. ‘What the
hell
were you thinking, Claudia?’

Pushing down on the froth of fury bubbling up her throat, she pursed her lips. He’d turned from blackmailer to over-protective bore!

‘You’re overreacting, Mr Garcia,’ she said calmly. ‘This is a decent area and I have an excellent alarm system. Anyway, who would look at...?’ The words died on her tongue as she realised how pitiful she would sound if she said
me.
She knew she wasn’t pretty, and she’d given up wishing she looked like one of her famed-for-their-beauty sisters long ago. Right now, faced with the most astoundingly handsome man she’d ever seen, she couldn’t face the prospect of his sympathy or his averment.

‘Who would look at
what?
’

For the first time in thirty minutes he turned to look at her. The intensity in his sapphire blues acted like a laser beam and, as if locked on target, she couldn’t tear her gaze away.

Choosing her words carefully, she said, ‘Who would look twice at a normal person? The problems start when people appear moneyed and pampered. I bring no attention to myself. No one would give me a second glance.’

Jaw dropping open, Lucas slowly shook his head incredulously. ‘And what if your cover was blown?’

‘I would move. Can I go now?’

‘No. You
cannot
go now,’ he said fiercely, and her hackles prickled. ‘Why are you not living in the
security-enhanced
apartment on the Thames?’

Claudia stiffened and finally managed to wrench her gaze away. ‘How do you know about—?’ She held up her hand in a stop sign. ‘Forget I said that. I needed to be closer to work.’ A half-truth, but that was all he was getting. It was seriously unnerving to know someone had files detailing her life events. She imagined it read like a chronological disaster essay.

‘You gave it up?’ he asked, his brows almost hitting his hairline. ‘To live
here?
’

For some reason she actually followed his finger, which unsurprisingly pointed to her flat. ‘Yes,’ she said simply.

‘
Dios,
Claudia!’ His hands lifted as if pleading for patience from the heavens. ‘How can an intelligent woman be so unthinking?’

A ball of fury began to swirl in her stomach, and no matter how hard she sucked in air the motion picked up pace like a cyclone. ‘Now, just wait a minute—’

‘You have no regard for your safety. None,’ he said with a slash of his hands. ‘I have seen safer streets in the slums. Well, I will tell you this right now. We are not staying here.
Comprende?
’

Her mouth shaping for a scathing retort along the lines of
It’s none of your damn business,
she felt his words loop round her skull like a broken record. Her hand crept up to her throat, where her pulse jumped erratically. ‘What do you mean,
we?
’

‘From the time you agreed to the terms to the time we arrive at the Arunthian palace you are under
my
protection,’ he grated, seemingly not entirely happy with the prospect.

Well, neither was she!

‘Next time you barter with me, Claudia, you’d better think twice about the consequences. For the next twenty-four hours we are stuck together. Whether you like it or not.’

Oh, God. As Shakespeare might say, she’d been hoist with her own petard.

‘Clearly you don’t,’ she said. She felt sick. She felt dizzy. Was it physically possible to strangle yourself?

‘I have better things to do than babysit a self-centred, senseless, se...
Arrrrggh.
’ With a frustrated roar, he pushed open the car door and launched himself from the bucket seat. Before he’d even slammed it shut she yanked on the handle to follow him. And finally the rotten thing worked!

‘Whoa—wait a minute,’ she said, veering round the front bonnet, sloshing in puddles. Freezing water seeped into her shoes, while the rain lashed down to drench her hair and pummel her skin. Vision blurring, she pushed her glasses on top of her head, visor-like. ‘Where I live has
nothing
to do with you.’ By the time she’d caught up to him he was pacing back and forth on the walkway in his usual caged predator manner. ‘You barge into my life and proceed to conduct some sort of military operation. And now you’re going on like an interfering, dictatorial knave!’

Suddenly he stopped and turned on his heels to face her. ‘Do you have an aversion to authority, Claudia? Is that what this is? You don’t like being told what to do?’

The grey silken weave of his sartorial suit darkened to almost black as huge rain droplets seeped through his clothing. His over-long hair was already dripping, plastered to his smooth forehead and the high slash of his cheekbones. And—
oh, my
—the sight of him, wet and dishevelled, flooded her core with heat. Like this he was far more powerful and dangerous to her equilibrium. He looked roguish, gloriously untamed.

Her heart thumping so hard she could hear her pulse echo in her ears, she had to scroll back to remember what he’d said.
Oh, yeah. The brute.

‘No, actually, I don’t. Do you think it’s right to force someone against their every wish? To blackmail in order to do your job?’ Something dark flashed in his eyes but she was too far gone to care. ‘And because I dare to put up some sort of fight you deem me selfish and irresponsible. Do you have
any
feelings?’

‘I am not paid to feel,’ he ground out, taking a step closer towards her.

‘It’s a good job, ’cos you’d be broke,’ she replied, taking a step back.

Lucas pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. ‘You are the most provoking woman I have ever met.’

A mere two feet away, Claudia could feel the heat radiating from his broad torso. Oh, God, she had to get away from him before she did something seriously stupid. Like smooth her hands up his soaked shirt. ‘You know what, Lucas? You can sleep in your posh car for all I care. Frankly, I’ve been more comfortable on the 271 bus from Highgate. I’m staying here.’