A Queen for the Taking? by Kate Hewitt Read Free Book Online

the sound spreading over her like chocolate, warming her in a way she didn’t even understand. This man was frustrating and even hurting her and yet...
    She liked his laugh.
    ‘I am glad for it,’ he told her. ‘Anger is better than indifference.’
    ‘I have never said I was indifferent.’
    ‘You have shown it in everything you’ve said or done,’ Sandro replied. ‘Almost.’
    ‘Almost?’
    ‘You are not quite,’ he told her in that murmur of a voice, ‘as indifferent as you’d like me to believe—or even to believe yourself.’
    She felt her breath bottle in her lungs, catch in her throat. ‘I don’t know what you mean, Your Highness.’
    ‘Don’t you?’ He leaned forward, his eyes glinting silver in the candlelight. ‘And must I remind you yet again that you are to call me Sandro?’
    She felt her blush deepen, every nerve and sinew and sense so agonisingly aware. Feeling this much hurt . She was angry and scared and, most of all, she wanted him...just as he knew she did. ‘I am not inclined,’ she told him, her voice shaking, ‘to call you by your first name just now, Your Highness .’
    ‘I wonder, under what circumstances would you call me Sandro?’
    Her nails dug into her palms. ‘I cannot think of any at the moment.’
    Sandro’s silvery gaze swept over her in lingering assessment. ‘I can think of one or two,’ he answered lazily, and everything in her lurched at the sudden predatory intentness in his gaze. She felt her heart beat hard in response, her palms go cold and her mouth dry. ‘Yes, definitely, one or two,’ he murmured, and, throwing his napkin on the table, he rose from the chair.
    * * *
    She looked, Sandro thought, like a trapped rabbit, although perhaps not quite so frightened a creature. Even in her obvious and wary surprise she clung to her control, to her coldness. He had a fierce urge to strip it away from her and see what lay beneath it. An urge he intended to act on now.
    Her eyes had widened and she gazed at him unblinkingly, her hands frozen over her plate, the knife and fork clenched between her slender, white-knuckled fingers.
    Sandro moved towards her chair with a loose-limbed, predatory intent; he was acting on instinct now, wanting—needing—to strip away her cold haughtiness, chip away at that damned ice until it shattered all around them. She would call him Sandro. She would melt in his arms.
    Gently, yet with firm purpose, he uncurled her clenched fingers from around her cutlery, and the knife and fork clattered onto her plate. She didn’t resist. Her violet gaze was still fastened on him, her lips slightly parted. Her pulse thundered under his thumb as he took her by the wrist and drew her from the chair to stand before him.
    Still she didn’t resist, not even as he moved closer to her, nudging his thigh in between her own legs as he lifted his hands to frame her face.
    Her skin was cool and unbearably soft, and he brushed his thumb over the fullness of her parted lips, heard her tiny, indrawn grasp, and smiled. He rested his thumb on the soft pad of her lower lip before he slid his hands down to her bare shoulders, her skin like silk under his palms.
    He gazed into her eyes, the colour of a bruise, framed by moon-coloured lashes, wide and waiting. Then he bent his head and brushed his mouth across hers, a first kiss that was soft and questioning, and yet she gave no answer.
    She remained utterly still, her lips unmoving under his, her hands clenched by her sides. The only movement was the hard beating of her heart that he could feel from where he stood, and Sandro’s determination to make her respond crystallised inside him, diamond hard. He deepened the kiss, sliding his tongue into her luscious mouth, the question turning into a demand.
    For a woman who was so coldly determined, her mouth tasted incredibly warm and sweet. He wanted more, any sense of purpose be damned, and as he explored the contours of her mouth with his tongue he moved his hands