The Princess and the Billionaire (12 page)

He told her what he wanted to do to her right there backed up against the wall of the coffee shop. A line of fire blazed from her brain down to the juncture of her thighs. He brought her right hand to his mouth, then kissed the inside of her palm. Her nipples grew hard in response.

“The waitress,” Isabelle said. “She’s watching us.”

He tossed a twenty-dollar bill down on the table, then held out his hand to her. “Come on, princess. Let’s see what this is all about.”

D
aniel’s apartment was an eight-room duplex on the top two floors of a building that overlooked Central Park. The elevator operator smiled at them as the doors slid open. “Good to see you, home, Mr. Bronson,” he said as they exited the car on the forty-ninth floor.

Bronson met his eyes, equal to equal. “Thanks, George. Regards to Emma and the kids. Tell Jason I hope he wins the quarterback spot on his team.”

“Will do, Mr. B. That’ll make his day.” The man nodded politely toward Isabelle.

She looked at Bronson curiously as he unlocked the door to his apartment. She wouldn’t have figured him to take note of elevator operators or the other people who served him. In the world she came from, they were an invisible part of the landscape of privilege. To Bronson, however, they were real people with names and families.

He swung open the door and motioned her inside.

“It’s a little stark,” he said as he closed the door behind them. “I’m not much on decor.”

She glanced around, quickly noting the white walls, the uncurtained windows, the black leather couch in the middle of the room. Her eye was drawn to an oil painting resting against the far wall. The slashes of crimson paint seemed to throb with life.

“That’s magnificent,” she said, moving toward the canvas.

He followed her gaze. “My sister Pat’s husband is an artist.” He moved toward her.

“You should hang it properly. If you leave it like that, the canvas will warp.”

“I’ll get around to it.”

She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the bloodred splashes of paint. “You should do it now. It would be a shame if—”

“Quiet, princess.”

“—the canvas shifted or—”

“Shut up.”

He reached for her, and she was in his arms in the space of a heartbeat. “You’re going to kiss me now, aren’t you?”

He crushed her closer to his body, so close his heat became her own. “That was the general idea.”

“This seems a wonderful time to do it.”

“My thoughts exactly.”

She lifted her chin. He lowered his head. His breath smelled faintly of coffee. She wrapped her arms about his neck, threading her fingers through the cool, silky strands of his hair. Hunger rose within her, dark and magnificent, a hunger like she had never known before. There was nothing safe about this man, nothing deferential or yielding.

“Open for me, princess,” he whispered against her mouth. “Let me taste you.”

Her lips parted on a moan. He claimed her swiftly, his tongue sweeping across her teeth, tasting, savoring, drawing her into a sweetly fatal battle of parry and thrust, domination and surrender. She wanted more. She slid her hands inside his jacket and frantically worked to strip him of it. He shrugged out of the garment, then threw it across the room, followed quickly by his tie. He pulled her shawl off her shoulders, and it fell to the floor, a pool of black silk.

Still it wasn’t enough. She fumbled with the buttons of his shirt. He reached behind her and tugged at the zipper of her dress. She felt a rush of cool air on her heated flesh, then gasped as he pressed his hand flat against her skin, matching her heat with his own. She bared his chest to her eyes and mouth. The mat of thick hair was soft against her cheek. The smell of his skin made her feel faint with longing. He was more beautifully made than a man had a right to be.

“This isn’t enough,” he said, his voice, a low rumble against the curve of her breast.

“I know,” she whispered in a voice that seemed to come from far away.

Claiming her mouth again, he swept her up into his arms and strode down the hallway, not breaking the kiss. There was a door at the far end of the corridor. He kicked it open with his foot. They fell to the bed together in a wildly erotic tangle of limbs. He pulled away long enough to strip off his clothes.

“Stop.” Her voice was husky with desire. “Let me see you.”

He towered over her as she looked up at him. His body was tanned a light gold all over, except for the faint outline of a small bathing suit. His chest and arms were powerfully muscled. He stood with his legs apart, and a deep throbbing pulse came to life between her own legs as she stared at his erection. He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen, and she wanted him in a way that defied reason.

She lay there trembling as he knelt on the bed beside her. The bodice of her dress had fallen off her shoulders. The skirt was bunched around her hips. The intensity of his gaze both thrilled and terrified her. Instinctively she made to cover herself, but he stopped her.

“You’re beautiful,” he said, stroking the line of her calf with his index finger. “So small, so perfect.”

She gasped as he encircled her ankle with his hand then bent to place his mouth against her instep.

“Don’t,” she whispered. She felt vulnerable and uncertain, more innocent and untried than when her dreams had been the dreams of a virgin.

“I’m going to love you, princess, every inch of you. And I’m going to make it last.”

Shoes, panty hose—her clothing vanished. He took her to a place she’d never been, a place she’d never imagined. She came to life wherever he touched, as if she’d been waiting all her life for the heat of his mouth to awaken her. Her foot, her ankle, the muscle of her calf, the tender flesh of her inner thighs, the—

“Not!” This was insane. He couldn’t. She shouldn’t let him. “You can’t possibly want to—”

“I want you to open for me, princess,” he said for the second time, his mouth against the most sensitive part of her body, the most secret. Her hips began to move to a deeper rhythm, and she felt herself tumbling over the edge. “You’re so sweet, princess, hot and wet—”

Her cry of pleasure filled the room as he flicked his tongue against her swollen flesh, then covered her with his mouth. Wave after wave of sensation swept her farther out into the dark sea of sexuality.

Still it wasn’t enough. The aching void inside could be eased only one way, the oldest way on earth, the most wondrous. His mouth left a hot, wet trail along the flesh of her belly and ribcage. He drew each nipple into his mouth in turn, suckling hard, causing her womb to contract violently in response. She trailed her fingernails across his nipples, then moved down across his belly until she found him. She took him in her hand, the hard length of him smooth and hot beneath her fingers. She wanted to run her tongue up his shaft, taste him, know that she had demanded this fierce response from him.

But Bronson had other ideas. He pushed her back on the mattress, then spread her thighs with his powerful hands. “Tell me what you want, princess.”

She reached for him. He leaned away.

“You know what I want.”

“Say it, princess. Let me hear you say it.”

The words tore from her throat. “You, Bronson. Damn it, I want you.”

He’d waited a long time to hear those words. Longer even than he realized. The sound of her husky voice saying his name was almost enough to bring him to climax. But he wasn’t going to cheat either one of them out of one second of pleasure, not if he could help it.

He positioned himself between her slender thighs. She had a tiny birthmark to the right of her navel, fashioned in the shape of a heart. He leaned forward to kiss it, catching the scent of her, feeling her warmth. She whimpered in the back of her throat, arching her back off the mattress. Those dark, unfathomable eyes never left him. She watched, eyes widening slightly, as he entered her, and he couldn’t remember a moment more powerfully sexual. Or more dangerously real.

It was the last thing he remembered before insanity took hold. They came together with heat and urgency, a mating so primitive that no words could contain the powerful emotions he felt as he buried himself inside her body.

She rose to meet his thrusts, wrapping her legs about his hips and working her muscles in a way that made him groan out loud. She urged him on with hands and mouth and thighs until he came violently, his body wracked with waves of pleasure so intense they bordered on pain.

Afterward, after the storm had passed, they lay together, still joined, her breasts pressed against his chest, her long, dark hair obscuring her face. He touched her cheek with his finger, then brushed her hair back. She nuzzled against him like a kitten.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded. “Mmm.”

He listened to the sound of their breathing, the faraway rumble of traffic on the street below, the ringing of his telephone. He waited for the inevitable moment when he’d grow aware of his cramping muscles, of the hour, of the need to reclaim himself from the situation, but it didn’t come.

Sex was an old and familiar pleasure, but there was nothing familiar about the way he was feeling right now. He felt complete, as if it had taken this moment with Isabelle in his arms to put all the puzzle pieces of his soul into place.

An illusion. It had to be. Some kind of sleight of hand that occurred when the sex was volcanic and the stars were in the right position. It would diminish with repetition, fade away until the whole thing became a question of bodies, not souls. Nothing this good could possibly last. No man in his right mind would want it to.

* * *

The second time they made love slowly. There was a sweet grace to their movements, a tenderness that bordered on sacramental. They climaxed together, one ripple of sensation after another, so deep and intense that it seemed as if they were one person.

Neither spoke of it afterward, but it was there in the room with them, this sense that physical pleasure was only part of what had happened between them.

“Do you remember the first time we met?” she asked as he drew a quilt up over their naked bodies. “The first moment?”

He lay down again and pulled her close until she was lying across his chest. “This time last year. The Tricentennial,” He kissed her mouth. “You were wearing a shimmery peach-colored gown, and your hair was stacked up on top of your head. I kept wondering what you would do if I pulled out the pins and let it tumble around your shoulders. When I asked you to dance, you told me to go to hell.”

“I would never have said something so common.”

He laughed. “You’re going all royal on me, princess.”

“If I recall, you didn’t ask me to dance with you, you asked me to go out onto the terrace for some nefarious reason of your own.”

“I’d forgotten that part.”

“If I’d known how wonderful it would be, I might have said yes.”

“What would you say if I told you I’d only wanted to ask about my chances with your old man and the ski resort?”

“I’d say chivalry was dead and buried, and there was no hope left for civilization as we know it.”

“What else do you remember, princess?”

She looked at him curiously. “Can it be the great and mighty Daniel Bronson is fishing for a compliment?”

“The hell I am.”

“The first time I saw you I thought you were too handsome for your own good, too arrogant for my taste, and too opinionated to ever do business in Perreault.”

“Three strikes,” he said. “I’m surprised you didn’t have me tossed in the dungeon.”

“I also thought you were incredibly sexy.”

“Keep going.”

“So did that cow Greta VanArsdalen, if I remember correctly.”

He flipped her onto her back and pinned her to the mattress. “You were going to say that on TV this morning, weren’t you?”

“If you hadn’t stopped me, I would have.”

“It was a weekend fling, princess. I never saw her again.”

“Do you make a habit of that sort of thing?”

“Weekend flings? I’m not looking for a commitment, if that’s what you mean.”

“Good,” she said, “because I feel the same way.”

“So what is this, princess? What are we getting into?”

“An affair. Sex without complications. When it’s over, we say good-bye and go our separate ways.” She paused. “Why are you looking at me like that? Isn’t that exactly what you desire in a relationship?”

“Yeah,” he said, “but it doesn’t sound the same when you say it.”

“My father played me for a fool, Daniel. So did my sister and her husband. I think that is quite enough for one lifetime.”

“I won’t hurt you, princess,” he said quietly. “That’s the one thing I can promise you.”

“Don’t make promises,” she said, placing her finger against his lips. “Just kiss me.”

* * *

When Isabelle awoke, the room was bathed in the muted blues of dusk. For a moment she didn’t know where she was and she sat up in bed trying to place her surroundings. Daniel mumbled something in his sleep, and she nearly jumped out of her skin in surprise. The whole incredible afternoon came rushing back in on her in extraordinary detail. So that was what all the fuss was about. She’d never imagined the infinite variety possible between a man and a woman. Certainly she had never suspected it during her months with Eric. She didn’t know whether to be thoroughly ashamed of herself or wake Bronson up and do it all over again.

She touched his shoulder. “Daniel.” No response. She said his name again, but he was deeply asleep. Jet lag, the result of his trip home from Japan, had finally set in, and she knew he would be out for hours. In truth she was glad, for it made things much easier.