The Prodigal Prince's Seduction / The Heir's Scandalous Affair: The Prodigal Prince's Seduction

Then she turned her head, turned up eyes glittering with the wonder of what they’d shared since they’d met twelve hours or a forever ago, whispered, “Ora, per favore.”

Now, please. Indeed. So this was it. The moment of truth.

He’d never sung in another’s presence. Not since primary school, anyway. And he was about to sing to this enchanted creature who’d appeared out of nowhere and made him forget everything, his exhaustion, his wariness. The world.

He let his arms tighten around her for a moment before he stepped away. Then he went down on one knee.

A sharp gasp tore from her. Then, with another distressed sound, she swooped down, tried to pull him up.

He tangled his hands into her hair, tugged gently, brought her down for another of those fleeting, tormenting kisses.

Then, as his lips clung to hers, he breathed the first line of Caruso. “Qui dove il mare luccica, e tira forte il vento…”

Here where the sea sparkles and the wind is blowing…

She bolted up, severing the last clinging touch between their lips, and staggered back to lean limply against the railing, her eyes stricken, her lips parting on choppy puffs.

He remained kneeling at her feet, giving his voice full rein as he continued to sing the song he’d only ever memorized because he felt like he was soaring when he let his voice ride the beauty and power of the melody, never giving a moment’s thought to the lyrics. Now the lyrics seemed to have been written so that he could describe these moments with her. They took on meanings their writer hadn’t intended, poured into the mold of the moment.

Then he came to the refrain, and that, most of all, resonated with the exact expressions that crowded inside him, let the passion she’d aroused in him take shape and sound and flow with the fervor of the timeless words.

“Te voglio bene assai, ma tanto tanto bene sai. È una catena ormai, che scioglie il sangue dint’e vene sai…”

I want you so much, I truly want you so much it’s now like a shackle that melts the blood inside the veins, you know…

Tears gushed from her eyes, and her face shuddered with too many emotions to follow, let alone fathom. She seemed in pain.

Alarm and suspicion crashed inside his head. What if this song provoked raw memories, if he’d managed, not to please her, woo her, but to upset her? He surged to his feet. He couldn’t stop his arms from gathering her to him until he had her off the ground and in his safekeeping.

“Durante…please…” The quivering of her voice augmented his alarm, made him hold her away so he could ascertain her state, apologize, divert her agitation. His gut clenched, now he grimaced as he saw her lips working before he realized they were forming a tremulous smile. “Please…don’t stop.”

His whole body slackened with relief.

She swayed when he set her back on her feet, gripped his arms, eagerness blazing on her face. “Please, please keep singing. I thought I could imagine how incredible you’d sound, but it seems even my imagination is tone-deaf.”

He guffawed. There was no way he could ever predict what she’d say next. “If so, how do you know if I sound incredible or not?”

“Oh, my ‘difficulties’ lie in tone reproduction, not recognition. And then this…” She waved both hands at him, before taking them both to her chest to press her heart in a gesture so moved and moving he groaned. “…transcends hearing. Please—sing.”

He plastered her against him, no longer restraining his urgency, one hand dipping below her corset-like top to bask in her firm softness and heat, the other digging into her mane, turning her face up for his worshipping. And he sang.

The liberation, the exhilaration was indescribable. To cut the tethers of separateness and wariness and propriety, to let himself go, let his voice boom with passion, break with poignancy. The storm of emotions and expressions that raged on her face with every note, the tears of acute enjoyment that streamed, were the purest form of adulation he’d ever had, the only he craved having.

When the last vibrato died away, she was panting, then she flung herself at him, pressed her wet face into his chest, until he felt her fervor practically eating through it, her essence permeating it. “Grazie, Durante. Molto, molto grazie.”

It was a long time before either of them stirred. It was she who moved, casting stunned looks around, before looking up at him sheepishly. “It’s morning.”

“Sì, that’s what usually follows dawn, I hear,” he teased.

Something warm danced in her eyes. “I wouldn’t know. I’m no expert on dawn or how long it takes to break. I’m always in a coma from one until seven a.m.”

“So this is your first time staying up all night?”

“It’s my first time…for just about everything.”

There was no doubt in his mind that was the truth. There was no thought of hiding how he felt in return. “Sì. For me, too.”

The blast of delight in her clear-again eyes made him feel limitless, swathed everything in new meanings and depths. He basked in it all until contrition entered her expression. “I kept you up all night on a work day.”

He waved it off. “Why did I strive so hard to be where I am if not for the flexibility of forging my own timetable?”

“Who’re you kidding? You crack the whip over your own head harder than you do over anybody else’s.”

He guffawed again, loving this. “Very subtle way of saying I’m a slave driver. One with a fetish for self-flagellation.”

“I bet you didn’t become who you are by being flexible with your time and taking days off.”

“To put your mind to rest on the sacrifice of my taking a day off, I can afford to in this instance, because before we met I put in thirty-six hours of work, more than covering for it in advance.”

“Oh, God…that means you’ve been awake for forty-eight hours now. And I kept you up all night yakking and singing and…and…”

“And being tormented within an inch of my sanity? Laughing my head off? Confessing my darkest secrets? Being fully alive?”

“Yeah…uh…all that,” she croaked. “But I bet you were longing to hit the sheets.”

“The only sheets I want to hit are those with you spread out on them. Being with you has been the most worthwhile reason to forgo sleep that I’ve ever had. I never realized there was anything to want as fiercely as I want a steady supply of sleepless nights with you.”

She stared up at him, motionless, breathless. Then the first tremor broke through the stillness. The second merged into a stream that shook her. Gratification swelled, that he affected her to that extent. He might not be exhibiting the same outward manifestation, but she shook him, too, to the core.

He embraced her again, absorbed her tremors. They were her response to him made tangible. They belonged to him. He wanted them, along with everything that made her herself.

He’d given Giancarlo orders to keep sailing until he told him otherwise. He wanted to keep on sailing, never to return her to her life, never to return to his.

He was thinking she’d say yes if he proposed that radical plan when she raised an agitated face, whispered, “Take me home, please, Durante.”

Five

Durante raised an eyebrow at Gabrielle’s TriBeCa apartment building’s concierge in response to his open surprise and curiosity. Very strange reaction coming from someone whose job description was headed by discretion and diplomacy.

Did the man recognize him? Or was it his tenant’s return dressed in an evening gown in broad daylight, escorted by a strange man?

He did see recognition in the man’s eyes. Which wasn’t strange. Royalty was an endless source of public fascination and romanticizing anywhere in the world. But it was far more so in the States, especially in New York, his adopted home for the last five years. It seemed New Yorkers clamored for anything that would transport them from their hectic lives. Being a prince of an exotic kingdom, combined with his vast wealth, was the stuff of fairy tales to them. That this view did not match the reality of his life had nothing to do with their perception of it. The perception was there to stay.

So the man recognized him. But Durante was still convinced his second interpretation of his reaction was the correct one. Which led to another conviction. The incident had so surprised the man because he hadn’t seen her coming home with a man before. She’d told the truth about first times. As he knew she had.

Not that he was “coming home” with her. He was taking her to her door, had no idea if she’d invite him in.

She’d asked him to take her home after he’d again stressed his open-ended desire, had barely spoken during the ride there. Considering how fluent she’d been up until then, her fraught silence had disturbed him more by the minute. He’d tried to tell himself she was exhausted, that not everyone was an insomniac able to function on sporadic half hours of sleep. But what if this night hadn’t meant as much to her as it had to him? What if she’d decided that it wasn’t prudent to let things develop further?