Royally Claimed (10 page)

He reached under her shorts, inhaling sharply when he realized she wasn't wearing any underwear. His fingers found her damp core, opening her and playing with her hard little clit, teasing until it swelled. She widened her stance and spread her arms for balance on the sink top.

“You want me to take you like this?” His hands caressed and molded her bottom cheeks.

She couldn't speak, only nodded.

“God, Julia, you turn me into an animal.” He nudged her knees even wider with his and pushed the fabric to the side. Somehow the band of fabric made her feel even more naked than if she had been totally bare. He gripped her hips and thrust into her, letting out a groan as he settled himself to the hilt.

“Move,” she moaned, when it seemed as if he was determined to drive her crazy and stay still.

He pistoned in and out of her, shoving his hands under her tank top to cup her breasts. His big fingers
rolled her nipples into diamond hard points, sending jolts of lust triangulating down to her clit.

She tossed her head back and he bit her earlobe. “Touch yourself, Julia. Rub your clit for me.”

She did as he commanded and looked into the mirror above the sink. She gasped. Her eyes were dilated and hazy, her hair a wild tangle.

Frank caught her gaze in the mirror. “Look how sexy you are. I can't even leave you long enough to undress you.”

They both appeared dressed, but it was obvious that he was possessing her body. And possessing her mind and heart, as well.

J
ULIA STOOD UP AND SET DOWN
the paint roller, noting the smears on her fingers. The downstairs bathroom was mercifully a sandy taupe color now, covering Benedito's unfortunate experiments in interior design. Along with Julia's help, Frank had ordered sets of pretty aqua and off-white towels and rugs as well as some pale blue-green bottles made of bubbly glass. Although Frank was a typical guy and not interested in scented candles, she'd also convinced him to order several creamy vanilla pillar candles of varying heights and widths. He could understand the need for emergency lighting, but explaining tea-lights to him just resulted in incredulity that anyone would want such a useless, tiny candle.

The vanity was a rich, dark mahogany with a marble top, solid marble, not laminated to look like marble, or even cultured marble. Frank had mentioned casually that the quarry in Italy had sent him pictures of various slabs until he saw one that he liked.

Julia could see why he liked it. It probably would have made a nice statue for some church somewhere,
because the stone was almost flawless, a beautiful creamy color that would look wonderful for years.

She decided not to wash the paint off her hands and brushes in the zillion-dollar sink and went into the kitchen.

Frank was doing the same, washing grime off his hands. She nudged him aside playfully, dunking her hands under the running water. He dumped soap on her and started scrubbing her hands with his.

His hands were such a contrast to hers—dark and tough, but with a gentle touch. Her hands were pale with long fingers, well-suited to stitching up lacerations and inserting IV lines into patients. Once, she even got to deliver a baby—not by choice, of course, since the mother had been in her car in the emergency room driveway. The paperwork afterward had been horrendous, but she got a secret thrill from seeing her name on the baby's birth certificate.

“I delivered a baby once,” she blurted.

“You did?” His hands tightened for a second on hers. “Whose?”

“A patient who was having her fifth baby. They got caught at a train crossing and by the time they pulled into the emergency room driveway, the baby was coming. All the docs were tied up so I pulled on my gloves as I ran and got there just in time.”

“That's amazing, Julia. You must have been so proud.” He dried his hands and gave her the towel.

“It was special.” She sighed, hanging up the towel on a hook near the stove. “Maybe I should have been a midwife. It's a happier profession than patching up sick and injured people all the time.” But she knew why she hadn't gone into midwifery—for several years after
breaking up with Frank, she had a hard time looking at babies without imagining a dark-haired, dark-eyed laughing baby that looked suspiciously like him. Now that she was thirty and her biological clock had started making ominous noises, she didn't think that situation would change any.

“You could always retrain for a different specialty or get a different job. The emergency room sounds almost as dangerous for the staff as it is for the patients.”

He didn't know the half of it, but she shook her head and pulled a couple of bottles of orange soda from the fridge, giving one to Frank. It had a distinctly different taste than American orange sodas, more tangy like real oranges. “I've never spent much time around babies aside from my training.”

He thanked her for the soda and took a deep drink. “That hits the spot. It's getting warm outdoors. As for babies, right now I have five nieces and nephews, all under six years old or so. Two of my sisters married right out of university and have been having babies every year, it seems.” He smiled fondly. “They are quite adorable, and besides, it takes my mother's attention off me, at least temporarily.”

Because his mother wanted him to settle down and have a baby? Of course she did. Frank was the only son of a family that relied on the ancient custom of primogeniture—where the oldest son inherited everything. He would need a son of his own to keep up the tradition and not splinter the family holdings. Now that he had passed his thirtieth birthday, maybe his biological clock was ticking, too.

But she didn't ask. She was afraid to bring up the question, afraid to hear the answer. For all she knew,
his mother had picked out a suitable upper-class Portuguese maiden for a potential bride. Maybe she was even a virgin. Was that a requirement to marry a duke? Virginity—at least for the women—had been a requirement to marry into royalty for hundreds of years, petering out only in the last couple decades.

Curiosity overcame her. It wasn't as if she were still a virgin, although that was in fact his fault in the first place. If he hadn't been so darn sexy at twenty and she hadn't been so crazy about him…well, as the saying went, the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. She'd eagerly participated in the Azorean version of the
droit de seigneur,
the largely legendary custom of the lord of the manor to get first dibs at the local virgins. “Are you seeing anyone at home?”

He looked shocked and then guilty. Guilty?

“Frank, did you forget to mention something? Or someone?”

“Julia, it is not what you think.”

Her stomach knotted, the orange soda suddenly making her queasy. She forced herself to speak calmly. “Why don't you tell me what is going on?” After all, she didn't have any claim on him—not anymore.

He set his bottle down on the counter. “My sister has a friend—her name is Paulinha and we've known each other for years.” He sighed. “Paulinha has never made it much of a secret that she considers me more than a brotherly figure. But me, I didn't feel the same. On the other hand, I always thought that I would be married with a family by now. Paulinha is a soft-spoken woman, shy and good-natured.”

Julia blinked her eyes hard. Her own escapades at work would definitely not qualify as soft-spoken and
shy. Although she was fairly good-natured, wasn't she? Maybe not, especially to the crazy patient who'd cracked her in the head. But that was his fault, not hers, and she tried not to feel guilty for getting herself out of that mess.

Undoubtedly Princess Paulinha would have screamed or swooned like a proper upper-class Portuguese
senhorinha
. Julia had swooned, sure, but she had the concussion to blame. Even then it was only a temporary swoon before she'd done what she had to do.

“And you see Paulinha as a possibility in the marriage and family department?” Julia fiddled with the soda label, peeling the corner down with her thumbnail. Was it weird or what, discussing eligible women with the man she'd desperately loved so many years ago? How sophisticated they both were.

“No.” His reply was short and immediate. “Not anymore. I was considering spending more time with her to find out if there could be sparks between us, but the ever-practical Benedito pointed out that I was fifteen hundred kilometers away from her and it didn't seem to bother me.”

“And Benedito could tell you weren't pining away for her?” she asked skeptically.

“Oh, yes. Benedito knows pining when he sees it.” He gave her a crooked smile. “His rural yokel facade hides a master observer of human nature. Besides, he has known me since I was a baby.”

“Did you pine for me, Frank?” Was that why Benedito had practically shoved them together at the farmer's market?

“What do you think?” He set his bottle down on the
counter with a harsh clink. “I never wanted you to go in the first place.”

She bit her lip. “And I missed you, too.”

“We were both young and stupid,” he said bluntly. “I try to think that everything happened for a reason, but it was difficult for me for a long time.”

“But now we're both here and having a good time together, right?” Emotions from the past and present were threatening to overwhelm her, so she strove for a light, happy tone.

“Right. A good time,” Frank echoed, a faraway look in his eyes. He gave a quick shake of his head and came back to the present. “Speaking of a good time, I made plans for us to go to São Miguel for the day. The bathrooms are both finished, so we deserve a break before tackling that red abomination in the bedroom.”

“Great!” Julia could use a good distraction. Standing around painting and talking to Frank about heavy topics was bringing up more than she bargained for. “Let's get some groceries, as well. We're almost out of coffee.”

He gasped. “No, not the last of the coffee! There's no way I can lift a paintbrush without my caffeine.”

“So running out of food is acceptable, but not coffee?”

“Exactly.”

“A man after my own heart.”

He finished the last of his soda and rinsed the bottle. “I am indeed.”

Julia gave him a wary look, wondering if he meant that literally, as well.

“I can have the boat ready in ten minutes. Do you need to stop by your parents' apartment for anything?”

She nodded. “Water the plants, check the mail, that sort of thing.” She had only been gone a few days, but her parents were relying on her to make sure their place was still in one piece.

“Sure. We'll get some lunch and then shop for groceries right before we come back.” He kissed her lightly before striding out the door. God, he looked as good from the back as he did from the front.

Julia disposed of her own soda bottle, determined to stop agonizing and mooning over everything. She had agreed to stay with him on a temporary, spring-fling basis, not for deep heart-to-heart, soul-baring conversations.

Maybe it was the fact they were the only two people on his island, an island heavy with meaning and memories. A trip to cheerful, relatively crowded São Miguel would lighten her mood. It was difficult to keep her focus on the present—her heart wanted to go back to the past and her mind wouldn't stop thinking about the future.

 

F
RANK EASILY DOCKED AND
secured the boat at the marina on the island of São Miguel. He helped Julia down the ramp. “How is your head feeling today?”

She blinked. Come to think of it, her head had been fine the past several days. Maybe fantastic regular sex released some of those natural endorphin painkillers. “I'm doing really well, Frank. No problems.”

“You sure?” He stared at her. “Because if you're feeling up for it, I thought we could take a side trip to one of the smaller villages here. You haven't seen much besides the main town here and my island, which doesn't have anything interesting to look at.”

She squeezed his hand, letting her breast rub against his arm. “It has you.”

“Well, that is…” He cleared his throat, a ruddy flush creeping under his olive skin. “Anyway, you have to tell me if it's too much for you.”

“I'm a sturdy girl, Frank. I'll let you know if you're too much for me.” She could tell he was about ready to pitch her back on the boat and return to their island, or at least far enough out to sea to have some privacy. But she tugged him along the dock to the sidewalk. Nothing wrong with a little anticipation. “Where to?”

“There.” He pointed to the motorcycle rental shop next to the marina.

She grinned. “I haven't been on one of those in years. Can we get the blue one?”

“Sure.” He rented the blue motorcycle along with a couple helmets and went over a quick safety lesson with the shop owner. Julia fastened the smaller helmet onto her head and Frank double-checked the strap. “No point in giving you another headache.” He fastened a backpack to the rack behind her.

This probably wasn't what her doctor had in mind, but she didn't care and hopped behind Frank. He took off and she wrapped her arms around his waist.

After a couple minutes, she got used to leaning with him as he went around corners, holding on tight as he braked for the occasional pedestrian or farm animal. They were pretty much at the same pace. In fact, Julia thought she could jog faster than they were riding.

She pinched his hard stomach to get his attention and he jumped, turning his head slightly. “Are you okay? Do you want me to slow down?”

“No, Frank. Go faster.”

“What?” He pulled up to a stop sign leading into a more rural, hilly area and flipped up his visor.

She flipped up hers as well so he could see her. “Look at me—I'm doing fine. I don't want to take a spill, but I'm not made of glass, either. It's a perfect day to be out here on a motorcycle—let's take advantage of it.”

His white smile sparkled against his skin. “Get ready.” He flipped down the visor and she did the same. Checking for cross-traffic, he gunned the machine along. Finally, the wind was whipping past her face, the air clear and fresh as it rolled in from the Atlantic. The road curved and dipped through green hills and rocky black soil. She spotted small settlements with low-slung white houses, sheep and cattle dotting the hills to graze.

She settled her cheek on Frank's back and sighed in happiness, her cares and worries flying away like unsecured cargo. And good riddance. She didn't want any of them back, especially those heavy memories that gripped her mind as the headaches had gripped her skull.

He patted her hand resting on his middle, as if he picked up on her thoughts. He was so sweet. He'd always been that way, even when his sweetness—and stubbornness—had caused their previous breakup. Of course it couldn't have been her own legendary stubbornness that contributed to it, not at all. Her motto back then should have been
My way, or the highway.

She'd just been scared and upset. Instead of choosing to cling to him during their rough times, she'd shoved him away. Even after returning to the States, she thought about calling him a hundred times, a thousand
times. He would have been easy to find at the university, and maybe they could have patched their relationship back together. She could have called his estate in Portugal and passed along a message. But she hadn't—and neither had he. Why was that? Was he as scared as she was? It was hard to imagine strong, brawny Frank being afraid of anything. She wanted to ask him but couldn't shout such a deep question like that as they rocketed along the highway.