‘But I can’t...’
‘But you can. You can accept that this is never going to happen—that you have failed. Whoever advised you to come here you should let them know that they sent quite the wrong person to plead their case. They would have done better to send your father—I might actually have listened to him more than I would to you.’
He heard her sharply indrawn breath and almost turned to see the reaction stamped on her face.
Almost. But he caught himself in time. He was not going to subject himself to that sort of temptation ever again.
‘So now just go. I have nothing more to say to you, and I never want to see you in my life again.’
Would she fight him on this? Would she try once more to persuade him? Dear God, was he almost tempted by the thought that she might? Fiercely he fixed his gaze on the darkness beyond the window. A darkness in which he could see the faint reflection of her shape, the pale gleam of her skin, the dark pools of her eyes. The silence that followed his words was total, and it dragged on and on, it seemed, stretching over the space of too many heartbeats.
But then at last he saw her head drop slightly, acknowledging defeat. She turned one last look on him, but clearly thought better of even trying to speak as she twisted on her heel and headed for the door, slender back straight, auburn head held high.
It was only as the door swung to behind her, the wood thudding into the frame, that he realised how unconsciously he had used exactly the words that she had thrown at him in their last meeting in Mecjoria ten years before. She had been the one to turn and walk away then too, marching away from him without a backward glance, taking with her the last hope he had had.
Recalling how it had felt then, it was impossible not to remember all he had ever wanted and now could never have—all over again. He had wanted to belong, damn it, he’d tried. He’d thought that when his parents had reconciled that at last he’d found the father, the family, he’d always wanted. But his father’s illness had meant that he had never had the time to make a reality out of that dream. It had all crumbled around him.
But this time it had been his own decision to throw it all away. He had had his revenge for the way she and her family had treated him, turning the tables on her completely and reversing the roles they had once had. It should have been what he wanted. It should have provided him with the sort of dark satisfaction that would have made these last ten years of exile and of struggle finally worthwhile. But the troubling thing was the uncomfortable sensation in the pit of his stomach that told him that satisfaction was the furthest thing from what he was feeling. If anything, he felt emptier and hungrier than ever before.
The royal document still lay on his desk where he had dropped it, and for a moment he let himself touch it, resting his fingers on the ornate signature next to the dark-red seal. The signature of his grandfather. King of Mecjoria.
King.
Just four letters of a word but it seemed to explode inside his head. Ria had offered him the chance to return to Mecjoria, not just as himself—but as its king.
It was ironic that Ria claimed to have come here today to ask him to take the crown—to be King of Mecjoria when all that her appearance had done was to bring home to him how totally unsuited he was for any such role. He had failed as a prince, but that had been as nothing when compared to his failure as a father. But she thought that she could persuade him that he was needed in her homeland.
Her homeland. Not his.
But then she had said that the only alternative was for Ivan to be king. What a choice. Poor Mecjoria. To be torn between a bully boy and a man who knew nothing at all about being a royal—let alone running a country. His father’s country.
His father must be spinning in his grave at just the thought.
And yet his father had had Ivan sussed even all those years ago. From the corners of his memory came the recollection of a conversation—one of the very rare conversations—he had had with his dying father. Weak, barely able to open his eyes, let alone move, his father had known of the stand-up argument, almost a fight, Alexei had had with Ivan the previous day.
‘That boy is trouble,’ he had whispered. ‘He’s dangerous. Watch him—and watch your back when you’re with him. Never let him win.’
And this was the man who could take over the throne—unless he stopped him.
Moving to the window, he looked down into the street to see Ria’s tall, slim figure emerge from the front of the Sarova building and start to walk away down the street, pausing to cross at the traffic lights. He had wanted her to leave, so why did he now feel as if she was taking with her some essential part of him, something that made him whole?
The part he had once thought that Belle would fill.
‘Hell, no.’
He turned away fiercely as the scene before him blurred disturbingly.
Did he really think that Ria would fill that hole in his life? It was just sex. Nothing but the reawakening of his senses that had started from the moment he had walked into the room and set eyes on her. And he had the disturbing feeling that there was only one way to erase the yearning sensations that tormented his body.
The only real satisfaction he could find would be to have Ria—the Grand Duchess Honoria—in his bed so that he could sate himself in her body and so hope, at last, to erase the bitterness of memories that had been festering for far too long. But he had just destroyed his chances of ever having that happen. He had driven her away, and in that moment he had believed that that was the wisest, the only rational course.
Except of course that rationality had nothing to do with the burning sensuality of his reaction to her, the carnal storm that still pounded through him, even after she had left the room.
Rationality might tell him that walking away from her was the sanest path to take but the bruise of sexual hunger that made his body ache still left no room for sanity or rational thought. This restless, nagging feeling was so much like the way he had felt when he had first come to England, into exile with his mother, a feeling that he had thought he had subdued, even erased completely. One brief meeting with Ria had revived everything he had never wanted to feel ever again, but in the past those feelings had been those of a youth who had not long left boyhood behind. Now he was a grown man, with an experience of life, and Ria was a full-grown woman. He wanted Ria as he had never wanted another woman in his life, craved her like a yearning addict needing a fix, and he knew that these feelings would take far more than ten years longer to bury all over again—if, in fact, they could ever be truly buried at all.
He had vowed to himself that he would throw her out of his life and forget about her. Already he was regretting and rethinking that vow, knowing that forgetting her was going to be impossible. He was going to have her—but it had to be on his own terms.
CHAPTER SIX
‘YOU MUST HAVE this wrong.’
Coming to a dead halt, Ria stood in the doorway, staring out across the airport tarmac, shaking her head in disbelief. The sleek, elegant jet that stood gleaming in the sunshine was not at all what she had been anticipating and she couldn’t imagine why anyone should think that it was there for her.
When she had arrived at the airport for her flight home, she had been feeling more raw and vulnerable than she had ever been in her life. With her one hope gone, the future now stretched ahead of her and her country, dark and oppressive, with no way of rescue or escape unless she took the way her father had planned.
She certainly hadn’t expected to be greeted by a man in uniform, swept through the briefest of security checks and delivered out here where the luxurious private jets of the rich, famous and powerful waited for permission to take off to whatever private island or sophisticated resort might be their ultimate destination.
‘There really has to be some mistake...’ she tried again, coming to an abrupt halt at the foot of the steps up to the plane, as he stood back to let her precede him.
‘No mistake.’
The words came from above her, at the top of the steps, and in spite of the noise of the wind blowing across the tarmac she knew immediately who had spoken.
The open door at the head of the steps was now filled with the tall, powerful figure of Alexei Sarova, the man she had believed she had left behind in London and would never, ever see again. Casually dressed in a loose white shirt and worn denim jeans, his hair blown about in the breeze, his powerful frame still had a heart-stopping impact, an effect that was multiplied a hundred times by his dominant position so high up above her.
‘No mistake at all,’ he said now, dark eyes locking with hers. ‘I asked for you to be brought here.’
‘You did? But why?’
‘It seemed ridiculous to let you fly cattle class when we are both going to the same place.’
‘We are?’
Had she heard right? Was he actually saying that he was flying to Mecjoria? Could he be thinking of agreeing to her request that he claim the throne? The man who had turned his back on her both physically and emotionally.