The Royal & The Runaway Bride (Dynasties: The Connellys Book 7) Read online

  And Phillip.

  Phillip seemed to know without being told where all the hidden sensitive places were. Where to kiss, where to touch firmly or caress lightly. Finally she felt herself bloom from within. In a brilliant explosion of color and heat, Alex reached climax upon climax, one following the next in such rapid succession, she was unable to discern where one ended and the next began.

  She cried out, tried to silence herself, but couldn’t. Never, never in her life had she felt this wildness, this ecstasy that Phillip had so expertly drawn from her.

  Phillip felt as if he were riding a wildcat. Such a fragile thing Alex had appeared. Yet she was pure dynamite when aroused. As soon as he’d entered her he’d had to fight the almost irresistible drive to allow his own raging bliss to sweep him away. But he’d promised her he’d take no chances with her, and he also instinctively understood that she required more time, more touching before she would be completely satisfied.

  At first, he thought he could count each of her climaxes. Her frantic gyrations alternated with throaty warbles of rich satisfaction, marking each feminine release and the brief respites between. But soon there were no valleys between her wild, skyward flights, and he was amazed by her stamina. How freely she allowed her body to take her away, time and again. He watched her and shared in her rapture.

  Phillip stayed himself far longer than he believed himself capable. He let her use him, meeting every lovely undulation of her body with his own power. Soon he was glad he had waited. At last, she lay beneath him, limp, sated, open to him. He pressed himself deeply within her one last time. Then hastily he withdrew and allowed himself his own release in a fiery stream between their sweat-soaked bodies.

  Such glorious agony. Dying a little, yet living brighter than ever before. Contrasts in reality, yet no less real than the woman beneath him.

  Amazingly, as soon as he was spent, the desire returned stronger than ever. Always before, once had been plenty for him. But with Alex, just a glance at her, a soft touch of her hand on his bare hip, the sound of her sigh, and he wanted her again.

  Phillip rested only long enough to be sure he was capable of what he imagined. Without moving at all, he felt himself swell again, harden, grow hot. Ramping himself up on his elbows, he looked down to see her reaction, for he knew she must feel him against her.

  She said nothing, but the pleased look in her eyes was sufficient answer.

  “Really?” she whispered.

  “Really,” he ground out. “But I don’t dare…you know. Too dangerous.”

  “I know.” She wrapped her delicate fingers around him, and it was enough.

  His final thought before he drifted off with Alex in his arms was that he’d be a fool to let this woman off the island. If only he could keep her with him, just for a while longer.

  Six

  Alex woke to the soft sounds of wavelets lapping against the hull of the dory. Gray and white terns glided in an effortless ballet across a cloudless blue sky above her, calling to one another. She stirred, slowly stretching her legs, then her arms.

  She was a little stiff from having slept outside but not at all cold. Phillip’s body had shaped itself around hers, warming her through the night, as if protecting her not only from the elements but from all possible harm. Even now one muscled arm curled around her waist.

  She gently lifted his arm away so that she could sit up and gaze across the azure water of the cove where they’d anchored for the night. Drawing a deep breath, she closed her eyes and savored the salty air, the gentle rocking motion of the boat, the feeling that she’d left everything behind her that could ever again make her unhappy.

  Incredible.

  “Where’s breakfast?” a deep voice rumbled up at her from the bottom of the boat.

  “Don’t you remember? We ate the last of our provisions for supper.”

  Food was the last thing on her mind at the moment.

  “I remember nothing of last night,” Phillip grumbled, dropping one arm across his eyes to shield them from the brilliant morning sun. He was teasing her, and she loved it.

  “Nothing?” she cooed, trailing a fingertip down the center of his chest. She circled one masculine nipple through the rich jungle of hairs.

  He grabbed her hand and pulled her down on top of him. “Something is coming back to me.” His amber eyes glowed in the morning light. “How about refreshing my memory?”

  Smiling, she bent down and kissed him on the mouth. Once, twice, then a third time, longer, deeper. She decided she enjoyed his morning flavors as well as she had his nighttime ones.

  His hands moved over her body, beneath the loose cotton dress she’d pulled back on for sleeping, as she’d felt nervous about sleeping in the nude. However unlikely, someone might have come by in another boat. Phillip played with her breasts, licked her nipples, and in no time at all she was eager for him again.

  Then, just as quickly he stopped and knelt above her.

  “What’s wrong?” she gasped.

  “Nearly forgot.” He rolled his eyes in exaggerated dismay. “Woman, we have to get ashore and buy some protection. I want to come inside of you so badly I don’t know how much longer I can take it.”

  She laughed, delighted, although she too ached for him. He was capable of bringing her so high, so fast, it amazed her. Their eyes met with sudden understanding. She smiled and nodded. Phillip reached for her and pulled her back into his arms.

  “Touch me,” he whispered in her ear. “Touch me the way you did last night, Alex, and I’ll make sure you don’t start your day restless.”

  She giggled, feeling deliciously wicked. “Deal.”

  Her fingers reached down to him, as he moved his wide, gloriously warm palm between her thighs. Moments later, Phillip’s sensitive touch dredged up from within her a delicious rush of heat and she returned the favor. She smiled with satisfaction at the expression of pure pleasure that came over his handsome features.

  Afterward, they dozed beneath the morning sun, contentedly considering their options for the day.

  “You know, I really am hungry now,” Phillip murmured.

  “Then we’d better set sail,” Alex said. “Where to? Still the Italian coast?”

  He nodded, pushing himself up to step into pants before unfastening the sail covers. “Taranto is the nearest point of mainland to Altaria. Should take us a little over an hour. We can have breakfast, then walk around town, restore our water supply, buy something for lunch if we can find someplace that’s open on Sunday and be back at the villa by nightfall.”

  Alex frowned. It was as if his words had cast a cloud over the dazzling summer sun. “We can’t spend another night in the dory?”

  He looked pleased that she asked. “The owner wants her back in time for fishing early Monday morning. That means on the beach and loaded with bait and equipment before 5:00 a.m.”

  “I see.” She had missed that part of the negotiations, Alex realized, as it had been carried out in the local patois of the island. She felt sorry that their experiment would end so soon.

  Phillip bent down to drop a consoling kiss on the tip of her nose then began to raise the mainsail.

  His bare chest and shoulders gleamed a smooth tan in the sunshine as he walked deftly to the bow. The muscles of his arms and back alternately knotted and flexed as he reached down and hauled back the anchor chain. She admired the masculine contours and longed to trace a finger along each sexy bulge and hollow. Perhaps tonight, at his estate, she would feel his sinews move beneath her hands as he supported himself above her. As they made love yet again.

  This could get addictive, she thought.

  “You’re awfully quiet all of a sudden,” he commented as he dragged the iron anchor out of the water. “Disappointed?”

  No, she wasn’t disappointed. “Oh, about leaving the dory?” Of course that was what he’d meant. She chuckled to herself. “I just thought it was nice last night sleeping under the stars. Then there was the lack of pressure to compe
te with anyone, money no longer being an issue.”

  “I had supposed roughing it might be something you’d be more accustomed to than I was.” He studied her face for a moment, as if puzzled by her comment. “You know, privileged life and all, in my case.”

  “Of course,” she said quickly, realizing how close she’d come to totally slipping out of her role. “We used to camp out all the time, Mom, Dad and me.”

  She was adlibbing recklessly now, but it seemed necessary at the time. Although creating more tales was inevitably taking her further from an opportunity for telling him the truth. Even as Alex further embellished her story, she regretted her runaway imagination, which seemed to have taken control of her mouth.

  “But that was in the state park, back in Illinois. I’ve never slept on a boat before.” That last part, at least, was true.

  “If you liked it so much, we’ll have to do it again someday. How long do you have before you leave Altaria?”

  She dropped her gaze guiltily to her hands in her lap. “I’m not sure exactly. It depends.”

  Lord knew she’d left a mess at home, running out on her wedding as she had. Her poor parents must have made a ton of apologies and excuses on her behalf. It couldn’t have been easy for them.

  Then there were all those wedding gifts. What had become of them?

  Probably they were still on display in her mother’s sitting room on the twin mahogany tables, each with its tiny engraved card to identify the giver. More important things would be on Grant’s mind, at least. Like trying to figure out who had tried to kill her brother, after murdering her uncle and cousin. Who and why?

  “Depends?” Phillip echoed her nonexplanation.

  “On the Connellys,” she said quickly.

  “Of course. I haven’t had a chance to meet the American branch of the royal family, other than the king and his queen. They seem like good people,” he said solemnly.

  “They are,” she said. I love them very much.

  But she couldn’t say that last part aloud. And although he’d brought up the subject of her family, it seemed awkward to just blurt out the truth now. She’d played her charade too well. Phillip was bound to be offended if, so soon after her latest decoration of her story, she admitted to him that she was lying, and had been doing so from the moment they’d met.

  Besides, everything had changed now. Events had somehow been removed from her control. She and Phillip weren’t just acquaintances now. They were lovers. And lovers ought not to deceive each other. Robert had lied to her and used her. That was why she’d left him. How could she blame Phillip if he walked out on her, when she was doing the same thing to him?

  Alex felt physically ill at the thought. Finding herself looking at a future without Robert had been a painful experience, but losing Phillip, even before they had sorted out their true feelings for each other, might well destroy her.

  “Well, let’s just enjoy this day,” he was saying as she put confusing thoughts away for later. He pulled on the halyards, and the big weather-yellowed sail flapped, climbing slowly up the mast on wooden rings that clacked merrily in the breeze. She watched the sail fill with wind, felt the boat respond and begin to move again, coming to life.

  “Yes,” she said, shading her eyes to meet Phillip’s as a gentle sadness tugged at her heart. “There’s at least today.”

  The ache in her shoulder that had plagued her since her fall from Eros had been forgotten last night, but the early morning dampness started it hurting again. She gently rolled her shoulder, easing the muscles, then sat where the sun could warm the joint. Soon the hurt subsided and she lifted her face to the wind and delighted in the smooth, silent glide of the dory as it cut through the glistening water.

  They sailed north then west toward the heel of the Italian boot. In another forty-five minutes she spotted a low, gray ribbon of land.

  Phillip sat in the stern of the boat, tiller in one hand, his other arm wrapped around her. Alex had positioned herself between his long legs, leaning back against his chest, gazing at the horizon as it came closer and closer. Before long she could make out stately cedars and pines, stretching high above a cliff. Rocky ledges dropped down to the water’s edge.

  “How will we get ashore?” she asked. “There doesn’t seem to be very good anchorage close to land, or a beach. Do we swim?”

  “We’ll sail around the bluff and into the bay. There are two or three sandy beaches farther along from here. We’ll pick one and sail the boat right up onto the sand. You won’t even get your pretty feet wet.”

  Phillip studied Alex from above her head. Her cheeks had turned a lovely pink in the wind and sun, and her short, dark hair was ruffled and wild-looking. But there was something fragile about her that he hadn’t noticed before they’d made love. Something that didn’t fit a young woman who made her living disciplining animals that outweighed her ten or more times over.

  When he’d laced his fingers through hers and spread her arms wide as he’d moved within her, he’d sensed how very smooth and soft her palms were. Not calloused and toughened by leather reins, as he might have thought.

  In fact, from the moment he’d met her that night at the palace, he’d thought something was not quite right about her. It hadn’t been a strong impression then, more of a subtle tweak of doubt. But the tweaks had become more frequent and stronger with time.

  Last night and this morning he’d glimpsed underlying traits in Alex that made little sense to him—a vulnerability, an inexperience, a suspicion that sex was newer to her than she let on. These things just didn’t jibe with the earthy, physically adept woman he’d believed he’d met that first night. He wondered if she was keeping something from him. Some part of her life that he should know about, now that they’d become intimately involved. But something made him reticent to ask.

  “Look, there’s a beach. About eleven o’clock,” Alex chirped, interrupting his darkening thoughts. “If we land there, do you suppose a town is close enough to walk to?”

  “Looks good to me.”

  He wondered, was he just being nosy by wanting to know more about her? He wanted to ask her questions, lots of them. But he also didn’t want to spoil their perfect day together. Besides, he was probably digging for no reason. Why couldn’t a woman who worked with horses have soft hands, if she took care to moisturize them? Why should Alex fit a stereotype he’d created for her profession?

  She was her own person, and an American, with different ways of behaving and thinking than the European women he’d met. Why couldn’t he relax and simply enjoy the magic of being with her?

  Because, he answered his own question, you’ve been wrung out and hung up to dry before. Despite his attraction to the opposite sex, women somehow had become the enemy. It was damn hard to trust anyone as pretty and interesting as Alex.

  Nevertheless, he tried to put his concerns out of mind as the boat rushed toward the golden beach on a billow of air. “We’re moving at about six knots,” he said, “too fast for coming into shore.”

  “What do we do?” she asked. “It’s not like we have a motor you can throw into reverse.”

  He smiled. “True. We take down the jib, lessen the push the wind has on the boat. Here, take the tiller. You steer while I lower the sail.”

  She looked hesitant, but took his place and held the tiller steady while he moved forward in the boat.

  “Keep us pointed toward that pink villa a little to your right. Move your hand to the right to turn left, to the left to turn right. The opposite of steering a car.”

  She smiled like a child who has been introduced to a new and exciting game. “I think I can do that.”

  Phillip watched her out of the corner of his eye as he took in the jib then reefed the mainsail to slow them down. She was experimenting with the tiller, trying to find just the right angle to compensate for wind and waves and to keep them on course. She caught on fast, and her delighted smile told him she was enjoying herself.

  Meanwhile, he wa
tched their approach. At just the right moment, he dropped the mainsail to the deck, cutting off the wind so that they would drift the last hundred feet to the beach. The hull scraped the shallow bottom of the cove. He rolled up his pant legs and jumped into calf-deep water and pulled the boat the rest of the way onto dry sand. Alex stepped out of the boat and eagerly looked around.

  “You’re sure this is Italy?” she asked. “I mean, it’s not like there are any signs telling you where we are. We could be anywhere.”

  “Trust me, this is Italy. Ever been here before?”

  She seemed hesitant before answering, which he thought was strange. “Florence, years ago.”

  “Ah, Firenza, yes,” he said. “For the All-Europe equestrian competitions?”

  “Yes,” she agreed quickly, but her eyes didn’t meet his. “Um, which way is Taranto?”

  He frowned at her obvious shift of topic. She seemed eager to avoid talking about her work, and he wondered why. “This way.” He scooped up the water jug from the bottom of the boat. “We’ll need to fill this.”

  They walked for nearly a mile before coming to a village at the outskirts of Taranto.

  Each simple shop along the cobbled vias specialized in one or two items. The panetteria for bread, where rough wooden planks lined stone walls that would keep the loaves cool even on a hot summer’s day. The macelleria for fresh sausage and meats. Cheeses of many varieties were displayed in another window, and the drogheria offered a variety of fruits, vegetables and packaged goods. The only problem was, all the shops they passed were closed on this Sunday morning. But they found a small restaurant where the owner agreed to sell them provisions from his kitchen. They purchased enough food for two meals, filled their water jug and still had a whole dollar left.

  “Should we buy pastries for dessert, or save our money for an emergency?” he asked before they left the restaurant.

  Alex sighed. “I’m dying for something chocolate, but with the better part of the day left I’d be nervous with no money at all. Better save it.”