Sandra Hill (15 page)

When she grabbed his shoulders and dug her nails into the skin and bucked against him in short, rapid convulsions, he arched his head back so that he could watch her coming. It was a glorious manifestation of woman at her sensual, powerful best. Giving all she had to give in the most elemental, earthy way, and taking from her mate in equal measure.

He lost control himself then and surrendered to the pounding, driving instincts of his sex. Finally, finally, he arched his neck backward and roared out his supreme satisfaction.

When he came to his senses a short time later, he found himself lying flat atop Cynthia, his face resting in the curve of her neck and shoulder. Their chains were hopelessly tangled.

He raised his head slightly.

She was smiling.

He lifted a brow.

“The next time you ask a woman to marry you, you should send an emissary…you know, like you royal princes always do.”

“An emissary?” he asked cautiously.

“Yeah. A friend, maybe.”

“A friend?”

“A
close
friend.”

He was beginning to understand. “Like Peter?”

“A very talented fellow, that Peter,” she remarked. Her eyes were twinkling merrily.

“I taught him everything he knows.”

“I’ll bet you did.” She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Have I just been royally seduced?”

“Do you feel seduced?”

“That would be an understatement.”

He grinned.

“Or maybe I just seduced you.” She batted her reddish-blond lashes at him.

Was it possible? Had she turned the tables on him?

“Do you feel seduced?” she asked, tossing his question back at him.

Utterly
. “I don’t know. Maybe you’d better try again. Just to make sure.”

“Good try, Prince. But the drawbridge is back up, and the battlements secured.”

“We could negotiate a truce.”

“I don’t like your method of negotiating.”

“You don’t?”

“Well, actually I do. Too much. Stop smirking. Now that I know what you’re up to, I can fight off your advances.”

“I’m not
up
to anything right now.”

Peter moved slightly, making a liar out of him.

Her eyes went wide. “Would you mind lifting yourself off me? Carefully.”

Hey, he had more reason to be careful than
she did. And now that his brain was returning to normal, he realized the really embarrassing situation he was in. Damp shorts. Less than spectacular holding power in the sexual prowess department. No prospects of a second chance to redeem himself.
Pathetic, that’s what I am. Apathetic putz of a prince!

Finally, they were both back on their respective sides of the bed, both beet red with embarrassment over the clumsy maneuvers necessitated by their enmeshed chains, their disheveled, damp clothing, and the lack of any distraction other than Elvis swivel-hipping away in
Blue Hawaii
. P.T. took a deep breath for courage. “So, are you gonna marry me or not?”

Cynthia began to laugh, and laugh, and laugh.

He was pretty sure that laughter wasn’t a positive sign.

The sight before Cynthia’s eyes was enough to boggle the mind. A real “Candid Camera” moment. If only she had a Camcorder to preserve it for posterity!

Prince Ferrama was teaching Elmer Presley how to do a combined hip swivel and knee gyration to the tune of “Jailhouse Rock.” And he was good. Really good.

To make the picture even more bizarre, Ferrama was wearing a gaudy Elvis suit. A wide belt cinched in the waist of a too-short pair of fire-engine-red bell bottoms studded with black sequins. The sides of the slacks had Velcro strips
that adjusted, presumably as the King gained weight, which was convenient for P.T., with his not-so-convenient chain. Or maybe they belonged to an Elvis impersonator stripper. On top was a matching red, high-collared jacket with linebacker shoulder pads and a little shoulder cape. Unfortunately, he wore the jacket unbuttoned, exposing a tantalizing view of his chest hair, which continually drew her attention like a stud magnet…and not the carpentry kind.

Of course, she was in no position to sneer. She was decked out in a dress belonging to Ruth—a tank-top, one-piece, purple spandex dress worn over her short-sleeved lace camisole. If she had ever had any physical secrets, they were fully exposed now.

Elmer and his three-piece band, the Teddy Bears, whom Naomi refused to allow on the property for practice sessions, had apparently just signed on for a weekend gig at Leonard’s Lounge in Poughkeepsie. Their big break, or so Elmer hoped. But Elmer was worried that he’d get fired on the spot if he didn’t get the King’s sexy body movements perfected. Personally, Cynthia thought he had a lot more to worry about with his voice.

Ferrama, exhibiting more negotiating acumen than he’d ever displayed with her, had talked Elmer into getting them some clothes in return for a few Elvis impersonation lessons. The need for clothing had become desperate. After their encounter on the bed this afternoon, the blushing
prince had plopped himself into the bathtub and washed his own ignominiously damp boxers, muttering something about having given up “dry-run sex” when he was a teenager. He’d refused her offer to dry his shorts with a blow-dryer. Instead, he’d proceeded to walk around after his bath, cursing under his breath, with the nearly transparent, wet shamrock shorts hugging his narrow hips and tight buttocks. Not that she’d noticed.

She’d also bathed. In cold water, without bubbles. The necessity for icing down her raging hormones was paramount. How could she have succumbed to the obvious moves of a devious make-out expert?

Because he
is
an expert, that’s why. And so damn gorgeous. And charming. Not to mention being a
…sigh…
prince. Geez! It appeared her dreams weren’t quite as dead as she’d thought.

“Where did you ever learn about Elvis?” Cynthia asked Ferrama when there was a break in the song. Ruth had just walked in with a tray holding a frosted pitcher of lemonade and four tall glasses. A welcome treat on this humid July evening.

“
Everyone
has heard of Elvis,” Elmer declared indignantly.

Cynthia chuckled. “I meant, how did a prince on the Canary Islands watch Elvis?”

“Haven’t you ever heard of satellites?” Ferrama answered, walking over to turn down the
volume on the tape player. “Besides, my mother remarried when I was ten and we moved to the States…Hoboken.”

“Hoboken? New Jersey?” Somehow Cynthia just could not picture Prince Ferrama in Hoboken, New Jersey.
The Prince of Hoboken
, she mouthed silently.

“Is there any other Hoboken?” he chortled. “Anyhow, Elvis died when I was eleven years old. I know that because he died on my birthday, August sixteenth, and the television kept replaying old Elvis movies after that. Besides”—he took a deep breath, as if about to divulge something against his better judgment—“I’ll admit it, my mother was an Elvis fan. She had every one of his records ever made.” The expression of disgust on his face was pure royal condescension.

“Oooh, oooh, oooh,” Elmer exclaimed, practically salivating. “By any chance, do you still have the collection?”

Ferrama shrugged. “I suppose.” He turned to Ruth. “Are all those boxes still in the attic at home?”

Cynthia was getting confused. “You have a home in Hoboken, too? Besides this castle? And the palace in the Canary Islands? I suppose you have a villa on the Riviera, too. And a little hideaway in Beverly Hills. Not to mention a Manhattan penthouse. Geesh!”

“Hey, I never said I had a palace on Isla de Serpientes,” Ferrama protested. “I distinctly remember telling you that my province was in the
Canary Islands, but I never said there was a palace there. Uh-uh!”

“Island of Serpents! That’s the name of your province?” This prince was sounding more and more…strange.

Ferrama’s right eyebrow twitched. Just once. But it was a definite twitch. In fact, Cynthia had noticed that every time the prince said something that appeared to stretch the truth a bit or seemed a mite devious, his eyebrow twitched. For instance, his eyebrow had practically done the rhumba when he’d asked her to marry him.

“Well, we have a bit of a reptile problem on my island,” Ferrama explained. His eyebrow did a little twitch-twitch.

Elmer groaned and put his face in his hands. She thought she heard him mutter something like, “Dumbest damn prince in the universe!”

“Yeech! Snakes!” Ruth squealed with a visible shudder.

Something still wasn’t right with this picture. “What kind of kingdom has no palace? Even Monaco, small as it is, has a palace.”

“Volcanoes,” Ferrama mumbled.

“I beg your pardon,” Cynthia sputtered.

Elmer’s eyes rolled heavenward. “Why me, God? Why me?”

“A volcano eruption wiped out the castle, and we haven’t had a chance to rebuild. Yet.” Ferrama’s eyebrow did a neat triple twitch.

“There’s a volcano on your island?” Cynthia inquired, more and more suspicious. “Oh, so
that’s why you haven’t finished the renovation here. You need to pump all your extra cash back into the island’s recovery.”

“Volcanoes!” Ruth squealed, almost knocking over the glass of lemonade she was pouring. “Didja see that Tom Hanks volcano movie? I loo-oove Tom Hanks, except he’s too skinny.”

Elmer gave Ruth a little smile of appreciation, then shot Ferrama a disgusted scowl. “Volcanoes?” He threw his hands in the air. “To quote Cindy’s Grandma—”

“Oh, no!” It was Ferrama who put his face in his hands now.

“—empty bladders are loquacious.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“He means, ‘A silent mouth is musical,’” Cynthia interpreted for Elmer.

Ferrama raked the fingers of both hands through his hair with frustration. “Aaargh! Would both of you chuck the proverbs and speak in plain English?”

“Shut up,” Elmer said.

“What?”

“I’m telling you to shut up before you tie a knot with your tongue,” Elmer advised with a weary shake of his head.

“Does everyone want lemonade?” Ruth asked brightly. Elmer made a big deal out of helping her pour each of the glasses and hand them out.

“Where’s your father?” Cynthia was determined to get the missing pieces to the puzzle.

“My father went away when I was still in my
mother’s womb,” Ferrama informed her stiffly as he sipped elegantly at his drink.

She, too, sipped at the sour beverage. Apparently, Ruth wasn’t any better in the kitchen than in the salon. Still, she drank it down, studying Ferrama the whole time. So, his father had died before he was born. How sad! But did that mean the monarchy was a matriarchal one? Why wasn’t he running his own country? There were still too many pieces missing in this puzzle. “Did the crown pass to you then?”

“Crown? What crown?” As Ferrama finished off his lemonade with a pinched mouth—his must have been overly tart, too—Elmer nudged him and whispered something under his breath. “Oh,
that
crown. Well, yes, you could say that, except that I have an uncle who’s next in line before me…uh, Fred.”

“Fred?” Cynthia, Elmer and Ruth all asked at once.

“Frederico de la Ferrama,” he said breezily. “Yep, Uncle Fred. My mother’s brother. When dear ol’ dad flew the coop, Fred became king. Good thing, too, ’cause King Fred makes a much better monarch than I ever would.” He was dabbing at his forehead with a towel; Cynthia couldn’t see if he was twitching.

Flew the coop? Now that was an odd way to refer to his father’s death. Hmmm. He was probably being flip to hide his emotions. Men were such dopes that way. But at least she had an explanation for why Ferrama was a prince, and
not the king. “I suppose you’re next in line, though.”

“Could we please talk about something else? I’m bored with this subject.”

“The wedding will be held on Monday, after I get back from Poughkeepsie,” Elmer informed them as he began to pack up his guitar.

“No!” she and Ferrama said at the same time.

Elmer shrugged. “It’s out of my hands. Orders from above.”

“God talked to you?” Ruth asked in an awestruck voice.

“Yep. He always does, darlin’. And he’s not too happy when he sees hanky-panky goin’ on before the blessed vows.” Elmer gave her and Ferrama a knowing glower of reproval. How could he know of their matinee? Was he a Peeping Tom? No, he and Naomi had been gone all afternoon. Hidden cameras? Nope. She’d examined every inch of the room. But somehow Elmer knew.

She and Ferrama both blushed.

“Listen up, you thick-headed fool!” Ferrama snapped. “I do not want to get married.”

Boy, did you change your tune, buster. A little afternoon delight and you’re reneging on your marriage proposal already?
“Neither do I,” Cynthia concurred. It was the only time she’d ever agreed with the prince. But they had to stand united on this point.

“You will,” Elmer said enigmatically, staring pointedly at their empty glasses. “You will.”

“Do you feel anything yet?”

“Hell, no. Just these scratchy sheets,” P.T. griped from his side of the mile-wide bed. He knew every irregular warp and woof of the bed linens intimately, having tossed and turned for the past two hours, trying to sleep. He’d probably worn a shine on his shamrocks.

“Used to satin, are you?”

Used to satin, are you?
he mimicked silently. The woman’s constant jabs were getting just as irritating as the damn sheets. But he knew it wasn’t his creature comforts she referred to. His bed partner—what a joke that was!—was just as worried as he about Elmer’s parting hint, and their verbal sparring had been going on incessantly ever since. “Only the bourgeoisie use satin
sheets. I prefer Egyptian Pima cotton, never less than two-hundred-fifty count.”

Every once in a while P.T. made a halfhearted effort to reinforce his prince persona. Not that he knew diddly about thread counts. He’d overheard Dick talking to Maureen on the subject one day, though, when his secretary had been about to depart for a white sale at Macy’s.

“Well, you should be thankful we have bed linens at all.”

“No, Cynthia,
you
should be thankful. To me.” In return for the sheets, he’d agreed to stop cursing Naomi nonstop—an activity he’d engaged in for over an hour, at the top of his lungs. That had been after Elmer’s ominous insinuation. By the time his stepsister had relented, he’d been almost hoarse from trying to make himself heard over the bellowing dogs down in the courtyard who, no doubt, thought he was harmonizing with them. Besides that, he’d run out of creative swear words.

Naomi had brought the sheets around midnight. He had to admit she didn’t look half bad, when awakened from her beauty sleep—hair rumpled, wearing a bed shirt that read
I AM WOMAN, HEAR ME RIVET
—even despite her perpetual scowl and pistol.

She’d also deposited some alarming news. “You can quit your bellyaching for the rest of the weekend. The only one hearing you will be the dogs,” she’d informed him as she made a great show of putting on a pair of industrial strength
ear protectors—the kind highway riveters used to block out sounds.

“Yeah, well, maybe I’ll start breaking a certain Elvis record collection…one vinyl at a time. Betcha Elmer rock ’n’ rolls himself up here so fast his blue suede boots leave skid marks on your parquet floors.” Gee, why hadn’t he thought of that threat earlier? Maybe he would be on his way back to Manhattan by now.

Naomi had just smirked at him as she sashayed out of the room, calling over her shoulder, “Elmer and Ruth decided to shuffle off to Buffalo…ah, Poughkeepsie. They won’t be back till Sunday night. He left a message for you, though. The wedding will be on Monday at five…God, the saints, and two hardheaded fools be willing. I assume the hardheaded fools would be you and El Sharko.” He’d heard her chuckling from down the dark hallway before she’d added, “Oh, and another thing. Elmer said to make sure and tell you, ‘Listen to the magic.’”

“Yeah, well, if this is magic, it’s bo-o-o-ring.”

“Thank you,” Cynthia said from the other side of the bed, jarring him back to the present. Her voice was soft with apology, and he recalled that he’d told her she should be thankful to him for getting the bed linens. But then she spoiled the effect by adding, “It’s great that you got the sheets for us, but I still think you should sleep on the floor.”

It was about the tenth time she’d made the suggestion. He knew why she harped on the sub
ject. “Are you afraid to sleep in the same bed with me, princess? Afraid of what you might do…in the heat of the night?”

“Ha, ha, ha. As if! I don’t feel a thing for you…certainly not heat. Elmer must have been playing a joke on us. Ha, ha, ha.”

Yep, she was afraid. Hell, he was afraid, too. And a tad curious. Okay, a lot curious. “I don’t feel anything for you, either,” he lied.

P.T. wasn’t sure whether he could sleep side by side with Cynthia, all night long, without touching her, or other things. And what if he had to do it for seventeen more nights?
Carramba!
He was only human, after all. Even a prince had his limits.

And where was his lofty plan for detachment? He should be aloof. Uninterested.

“Why don’t
you
sleep on the floor? Wall Street traders are known for their tough hides; it shouldn’t be uncomfortable for you. Besides, I grew up with a valet sleeping on a pallet at the foot of my bed. I’m entitled to the bed.”

“Valet, huh? I bet your right eyebrow is twitching.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Every time you fib, your right eyebrow twitches.”

“It does not,” he asserted and put a hand up, just to check.

She laughed, turning toward him slightly. He could just see the smile on her face by the light of the full moon filtering through the window
into the darkened room. More clear were the ten glow-in-the-dark fingernails resting on top of the sheet, but he couldn’t think about that or he really would go nuts. “The twitch only happens in the midst of a lie, silly. Tell me another lie. You’ll see.”

“Hmpfh! I can’t think of any lies.”
She thinks I’m silly. Geesh! I told Dick I was burned out in the charm department. I’m pretty sure silly is not a good thing for a prince. And silly definitely doesn’t cut ice in business negotiations
.

“Say…oh, tell me I’m the most beautiful woman you’ve ever met,” she suggested.

“Cynthia, you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met,” he said in a deliberately low, raspy voice. Under his fingertips, his eyebrow didn’t move even a fraction. “No twitch,” he reported.

“Well, maybe you’re just a selective twitcher,” she declared huffily, “because, believe me, I saw twitches before. Plenty of them.”

“I can make myself twitch…in other places,” he boasted. “
On command
.” Peter perked up with interest, twitched, then snuggled down again when it became apparent he wouldn’t be called to duty.

“Me, too,” she said on a wide yawn.

Peter was definitely interested now. “Me, too? What does that mean? Me, too?” Surely she didn’t mean what he thought she did. The possibilities of all that mutual twitching could be…well, interesting.

“It means you’ve been checkmated, Ferrama. Go to sleep.”

An hour later, Cynthia awakened from a sound sleep and jackknifed to a sitting position. To her right, still on the far side of the bed, Ferrama did the same thing.

“Touch me again and you’re dead meat, mister.”

“I didn’t touch you,” the prince said with affront. “You touched me.”

They looked at each other and the wide expanse of mattress between them. “Elmer!” they both concluded at the same time.

“Am I still…uh, touching you?” he asked tentatively, exploring his lips with the fingertips of one hand.

She thought for a second, then groaned. “Yes, you’re kissing me. Stop it.”

“How?”

“Hmpfh! Isn’t that just like a man! In the midst of a crisis, he asks how good he is.”

He chuckled. “I meant, how do I stop?”

“Oh.”

There was a short silence. “
Am
I a good kisser?”

“Superb. Darn it!” She let out a sigh. “Where’d you learn to do that little fluttery thing with your tongue?”

“Gene Simmons.”

“The musician?”

“Yes. I met him years ago in Cannes at the film
festival. You’d be surprised at what you can learn over a case of French wine. Did you know that Princess Caroline once…well, never mind.”

She closed her eyes and arched her neck, attempting to understand the incredible pleasures stemming from her lips, where a hungry male mouth was pressed…but not really. A telepathic kiss? “Are you thinking about kissing me, and that’s why I can feel it?”

“I’m thinking about a hell of a lot more than kissing,” he choked out. “Especially with your hand clamped around my…oh, ooh, oooh!” He ground out the last word painfully.

“This is horrible,” she cried out with mortification, trying very hard not to think about what she was not really doing.

“No, Cynthia, it is definitely not horrible,” he informed her in a suffocated whisper. “The first thing I’m going to do when I get back to the office is call my broker.”

“Why?” How could he think of business at a time like this? If she was doing what she suspected, her actions went way beyond sexual harassment. “Are you going to report me to the SEC?”

“Hell no. I want to buy stock in the company that makes that glow-in-the-dark nail polish.”

An inordinate pleasure gushed through Cynthia at his half-baked compliment.

After an extended period—about a minute—during which the only sounds in the room were
those of their soft breathing, she asked, “Are you by any chance twitching?” She wasn’t referring to his eyebrow.

“To beat the band.” He paused. “And you?”

“A little,” she admitted.
A lot
.

He released a long male growl of erotic agony and fell back on the bed, arms thrown over his head. Panting, he writhed from side to side.

“What…what am I doing now?”

“You…you don’t want to know,” he ground out, rolling over onto his stomach and burying his face in the pillow.

Yes, I do
.

His body was ramrod stiff, except for an occasional involuntary flexing of his hips. She could even hear the grinding of his teeth as he fought whatever it was she was doing to him. She felt guilty about causing him so much anguish, even though it wasn’t her fault. Not really. “Can…can I help?”

At first she thought he hadn’t heard her. But finally he raised his head and stared at her, a slow smile spreading across his lips.

“I thought you’d never ask, princess.”

“Ouch!”

Cynthia had been shimmying across the mattress so quickly, she probably had brush burns on her behind. Midway she’d run into the prince, who’d been equally enthusiastic in his rush toward her. In all the excitement…and there was a lot of it…her bruised toes had hit
his shin. Even in the semidarkness, she saw bright stars.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, reaching for her. “Am I inside you already? Was I thrusting too hard? I’m not usually so lacking in savoir faire.”

Savoir faire? Thrusting? How does a man thrust with savoir faire?
She put up a halting hand to stop his embrace and squeaked out, “No! Stop!”

Ferrama flinched at the untimeliness of her change of heart, but he didn’t push her. Instead, he dropped his extended arms and waited for an explanation.

Cynthia tried to understand her abrupt reversal. It was the words,
savoir faire
. Never in her life had she heard a man talk about making love with savoir faire. But this guy was a prince. How could she have forgotten that vital fact? Plus, he was her adversary in what could be the most important business deal of her life. And he was probably an accomplice in her kidnapping, too. Was she really prepared to make the mistake of her life for a fleeting moment of pleasure?

Maybe
.

Ferrama tilted his head inquiringly a bare few inches from her. Although he respected her command not to touch her physically, mentally he was skimming his fingertips over her with loving concern…the line of her jaw, her parted lips, the curve where her neck met her shoulder.

She groaned.

“Ah,
querida
, perhaps if you tell me what I’m
doing, I can match it with real actions and slow down the pace.” He was already pulling off his shorts, probably thinking to ease himself between her widespread legs and into her
—Holy cow! When did I spread my legs?—
without any foreplay.
Hah! Any more foreplay and I’ll set the sheets on fire
. With frenzied haste, he managed to push his boxers off his legs and down the chain.

“You’re not inside me, you dolt.” She gasped then as she got her first in-the-flesh gander at Peter. And it wasn’t Peter, the prince, she was gaping at. It was Peter, the penis.
Lordy, Lordy! He does have a rather impressive…uh, royal scepter. No Peter Cottontail here
.

“I’m not?”

“Not what?”

“I’m not inside you?” Disappointment showed clearly in his voice and on his frowning face. He rested his head on his hand and stared at her, still not understanding. “But you cried out in pain.”

“My broken toes hit your shin.” But it wasn’t his shin where Cynthia’s traitorous eyes kept wandering.
Lordy, Lordy!

“I’m sorry. I really am clumsy tonight. Shall I rub it for you?”

“Rub what?”

He regarded her with amusement, sensing the wayward direction of her imagination and her gaze. “Your injured foot.”

Oh
. “No, that won’t be necessary,” she started
to say, but already he was there mentally, his wet tongue licking at the appendages, then taking them one at a time into the heat of his mouth. Closing her eyes, she saw stars again, but not from pain.

“Can I touch you now, Cynthia?” he asked hoarsely. “Really touch you?”

She shook her head, unable to speak.

He made a low growling sound of frustration, which was almost her undoing.

“Business and pleasure should never mix.”
Who was the moron who came up with that warped philosophy?

“Is that another Irish proverb?” he grumbled.

“No, it’s the maxim of my life.”
Moron extraordinaire
. She rotated her head on the pillow to give him mental access to her neck. The guy did sneak from one body part to another with incredible finesse.

“
Maldito
, I hope I’m having as much fun as you appear to be.” He was watching her react to his invisible caresses.

She forced her heavy eyelids open. “Help me here, Ferrama. If we do this, we’ll never be able to face each other in court.”

“Court?” he said stupidly as if it was the first time she’d threatened him with a lawsuit. Or had he thought she’d dropped that notion in the heat of passion?

“Yes, court. Did you think I’d lose my brain as well as my inhibitions when you slipped a drug in my drink?”

“Me?” he inquired icily as he sat up and jerked his underwear back on. “You think I would use drugs to seduce you?”