A Ring To Secure His Crown

‘I’m only the spare,’ he cut in with an exaggerated sigh as she leaned heavily back. ‘I get that totally. You’re saving yourself for the man with the crown.’

Her hands clenched into fists as she looked at him with burning eyes. ‘You are a really horrible man, you know that?’

‘And you are a very beautiful woman.’ A look of incredulity flickered across his face. ‘Wait, are you...?’ He put a finger to her chin and lifted her face towards him. ‘Yes, you’re blushing!’

‘I am not blushing.’ A sudden possibility had occurred to her, one that would explain his outrageous attitude and the reckless gleam in his eyes. ‘Have you been drinking?’

‘Not for at least two hours.’ He raised his voice to reach the man in the driver’s seat. ‘Charlie, what time did we leave?’

‘I believe it was four a.m., sir,’ the man with the tattoo responded in a cultured voice.

‘Really? Oh, well, I’m totally sober...well, maybe not totally,’ he conceded. ‘Oh, here we are.’ The car drew up outside the embassy. ‘Oh, and I almost forgot, Luis sent his love, and this.’

He leaned across and the sudden shock that had held her immobile as his lips covered hers faded into something else as the slow, sensuous exploration deepened. Sabrina was not sure how her arms came to be around Sebastian’s neck but they were, and she was kissing him back as if he were water and she’d spent the last week in the desert. She had never before felt, never imagined anything like the sudden explosion of hot need inside her.

A need that intensified as she felt a shudder move through his lean body and felt the touch of his tongue between her parted lips. She moaned into his mouth and pushed her body into his as he kneaded his fingers into her hair. She felt on fire, filled with an aching need to...what?

Luckily, before she found the answer, as suddenly as it had started the kiss stopped.

She sat there, shivering, eyes wide, sucking in air in tiny laboured gasps as he leaned back in the seat staring at her, his hypnotic blue stare searing. Hot, dark streaks of colour emphasising the contours of his sharp cheekbones.

‘How dare you?’ The sound of her open palm making contact with his cheek was shocking.

He lifted a hand to his cheek and drawled, ‘Don’t slap the messenger, cara.’

‘You are vile!’ She choked, almost falling out of the car when the door was opened by someone wearing a military uniform.

She could hear his laughter as she walked stiffly up the shallow flight of embassy steps.

CHAPTER TWO (#u3b5b09f7-8bd3-559b-b8b8-f8bdf5b4fd57)

SEBASTIAN SET HIS shoulder to the stiff door that opened out onto a small Juliet balcony. It gave suddenly, filling the warm room with a welcome breeze. The view was as dramatic as the plumbing was idiosyncratic. His shower had run cold and then it had almost scalded him. Oh, well, maybe it was time he learnt how the other half lived, even if that half could claim a heritage as illustrious as his own, such as it was.

For a moment his lip curled into a cynical smile. For reasons obvious when you considered his nickname at school had been the royal bastard, Sebastian had never been able to take the whole heritage thing seriously.

A tap on the door made him turn, but before he could respond Luis walked into the room, his normal smile absent.

‘Reading your body language I’d guess you were just told you’ve got weeks to live, or you’ve just had a heart to heart with our father. How is His Royal Highness?’

Luis’s heavy sigh and despondent attitude would normally have evoked a sympathetic reaction from Sebastian, but today the only thing he felt was a surge of irritation. Didn’t Luis realise that until he showed a bit of backbone the King was never going to stop trying to micromanage his life? Maybe not even then, Sebastian, a realist, conceded. If he were in his brother’s shoes...

But you’re not, are you, Seb?

Luis gets the crown and the girl.

‘I didn’t think you’d come, neither did...anyone.’

‘You asked.’

Actually his father had ordered, which under normal circumstances would have guaranteed Sebastian’s nonappearance, and yet he was here. So why? He rubbed the towel across his dripping hair and veered away from the question in his head before it formed.

‘I asked the last three times I came to visit the Summervilles.’

‘You know I have an allergy to duty.’

‘So you keep telling everyone. Seriously—’

‘It is a very serious allergy.’

‘I wanted you to get to know Sabrina.’

‘It’s you she’s marrying.’ And me she’s kissing, he thought, the sharp twinge of guilt he felt drowned out by the stronger slug of lusty heat that accompanied the memory of those soft, sweet-tasting lips. If Luis had kissed her more often maybe she wouldn’t have melted in his arms.

That’s right, Seb, because it’s never your fault, is it?

He waited for the familiar hit of mingled frustration, sympathy and affection as he watched Luis walk, shoulders hunched in defeat, across the room. Instead, Sebastian found himself feeling anger and something that, had the circumstances been different, he would have called envy.

But of course it wasn’t.

Envy would mean that his brother had something that he wanted, and Luis didn’t.

Luis was welcome to the crown.

There had been a time when they were growing up that being pushed into the background and being referred to as the spare had got to Sebastian, but that had been before he had recognised that it was a lot worse for Luis, carrying the expectations of a country on his young shoulders. Luis had no choices—even his wife was picked out for him.

Luis was welcome to his bride; Sebastian had his freedom. His father had told both of his sons that privilege came with a price; well, so far he’d been proving his father wrong. Sebastian enjoyed the privileges that came with his title without any of the responsibilities.

And Sebastian didn’t want to marry Sabrina—he didn’t want to marry anyone—he just wanted to take her to bed. Even thinking about her now, and that miracle of a mouth of hers, made smoky desire slither hotly through him.

He ignored it. He’d kissed Sabrina and he wasn’t going to do it again, even if the primal attraction that drew him to this woman was stronger than anything he could ever remember feeling. He knew himself well enough to know that it would pass—it always did.

And in the meantime there were plenty of women to kiss who were not about to marry his brother, who were not about to throw away their lives. Her business, he reminded himself, her choice.

Luckily he had recognised, before the entire kiss incident in the car had got out of perspective, the real danger of building it up into something it was not. She had an incredible mouth, beautiful lips and they made him hungry. The need to taste had swept away every other consideration in his head, but it had been what it was: a ‘perfect storm’ moment. Or maybe a perfect moment of madness, fuelled by the alcohol he’d imbibed much earlier in the morning at the nightclub, where he had been even more bored than usual.

The chances were, seeing Sabrina here, in her natural environment, as a woman who represented everything he had been rebelling against and rejecting all his life, that he would regain his normal objectivity.

‘I didn’t expect you to come, but I’m glad you did. I do appreciate the support.’

‘Support?’ Sebastian queried with a frown.

‘I can’t say I’m exactly looking forward to tonight.’

‘Performance anxiety or...don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts?’

Luis turned away but not quickly enough to hide his flush of annoyance at the joke that presumably offended his highly developed sense of duty. If it was annoyance?

Guilt? Could he have hit a nerve? Was his brother having second thoughts? Sebastian dismissed the possibility almost straight away, no matter what his personal feelings. For Luis, duty, no matter what form it took, came first.