Princess in the Iron Mask - By Victoria Parker Page 0,42

she’d ever thought up. So why did it also feel like the most wonderful?

Risking another look at him, she bit her inner cheek.

Fingers curved over his mouth, he stared into the distance, his other hand clenching and releasing where it lay on his thick thigh. One look and that wicked, salacious torrent doused some of her unease. She brushed her hair from her face with the back of her unsteady hand and straightened in her seat.

Fear has no place in your heart right now.

She could do this. Absolutely. He was worth it. She wanted a taste of passion. Just once in her life. And she trusted him. It was perfect.

She could do this.

After all, had he not told her she was capable of anything she put her mind to?

CHAPTER NINE

THAT’S OKAY, THEN. Because I just want sex too.

Lucas scratched his name along the bottom of another LGAS contract, no doubt scoring the wood beneath, then flexed his neck, rolling the stiffness from his shoulders.

Dios, the woman was going to be the death of him. And, although she’d seemed to accept his ‘impossible’ decree in the car, he could not shake the sense that he was staring down the barrel of a gun.

‘I’m done. We can go, if you’re ready.’

Claudia’s soft voice, a tad apprehensive, drifted from somewhere over his left shoulder.

‘Sí. One moment.’ Feet flat to the floor, he pushed his chair back from the small table where he’d set up a temporary office in the corner of the boutique. Twisting at the waist, he bent double and wedged the papers back into his briefcase on the floor.

The click-click of heels on parquet snagged his attention and his gaze darted to a pair of... He swallowed. A pair of sexy-as-hell black peeptoe heels, adorned with a diamond and sapphire-encrusted brooch just above small toes.

A tsunami thundering through town couldn’t have stopped his eyes from doing a slow glissade over sculpted ankles, up over sleek honey-gold skin that sheathed the sexiest pair of calves he’d ever seen...until they disappeared at the knee beneath the flirty edges of a sapphire-blue pleated skirt. No, he amended, his heart thumping in his chest, it was a dress, skimming the lush flare of her hips, cinching the small span of her waist with a black silk sash. At the full curve of her lush breasts his eyes lingered, just a beat, before rising to the slash neck and floating down the length of her arms to stop at her wrists.

His pulse spiked so hard a shaft of pain shot across his chest.

A delicate throat-clearing made him blink. He was half out of his seat, staring like some doe-eyed recruit, for God’s sake.

Lucas bolted upright. The chair hit the floor with a thud and his eyes careened into Claudia’s.

‘Do I look okay?’ she asked, head canted, sucking provocatively on her lower lip, her brow creased in an endearingly nervous little frown.

‘Sí,’ he said, searching for the right words, cursing himself that he was ill equipped to do her justice. You look beautiful wasn’t quite right, because nothing on earth was as beautiful as her face. Sophisticated? Or just downright knee-knockingly gorgeous? In the end he settled for the absolute truth, knowing she needed to hear it. ‘Words fail me, Princesa.’

One corner of her delectable mouth lifted. ‘That’s good, right?’

Shrugging, he made his reply lazy, despite the magnitude of its importance. For it was extraordinary to believe a woman of such beauty disliked her own reflection. Believed she was imperfect in any way. When in reality the only thing she lacked was self-confidence. Well, not today. ‘Sí. Very, very good. It is also unheard of.’

Her smile blazed to killer proportions before she gnawed her lip and slowly, warily, closed the distance between them.

‘Claudia?’ he growled, not liking where this was going. Or possibly liking it too much.

Being assailed with her vanilla-drenched scent doubled the dose of want and he stiffened from top to toe as she curled her fingers round the lapel of his jacket, tugged...rose on her tiptoes and dropped a delicate kiss on his cheek, whispering, ‘Thank you...’ against the sensitive skin on the underside of his ear.

A shudder racked down his spine and he fisted his hands to stop himself from hauling her close. Instead he watched her long nimble fingers stroke down the lapel of his jacket—an innocent touch he swore he could feel against his bare skin—then turn on her kitten-heels towards the door, hips swaying with a natural hypnotic rhythm that