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His Majesty’s Mistress

Excerpt

Chapter One

Prince Lorenz Karayan ignored the telescope mounted on the resort balcony in favor of gazing at the single woman on the beach below.

He didn’t typically allow women to distract him. Not from scanning for hidden threats and certainly not from leading his country into the modern world one trade agreement at a time. Yet here he was, restlessly pacing the lanai of a playboy suite, setting aside meetings with the European Union to visit the Maldives and judge what amounted to a swimsuit competition.

Women.

Mothers. His hadn’t come right out and said, “It’s time you married,” but her feigned cough and suggestion he make an appearance in her place had been as transparent as her off-hand, “Andrea Ponsonby has put it all together. You’ll enjoy her company.”

No doubt Andrea had ‘put it all together,’ perhaps even putting the idea into his mother’s head. Andrea wouldn’t be the first woman aspiring to marry a future king.

Lorenz grimaced at the streaks of foam that crawled up the beach and broke around the ankles of the slender brunette while he tried to recall what Andrea looked like. Blond and pale, but she’d make him a good wife. If he had felt ready for one.

Which he wasn’t.

Bending to set his elbows on the balustrade, he conceded that attending to responsibility trumped any lack of readiness he felt. He never shirked his duties to the crown and had been aware of time ticking down on his bachelorhood since his father’s heart attack two years ago. The next generation needed to be produced. He was the last of the line.

Veering from that thought, he tapped impatient fingers against the rounded teak rail and continued his brooding. Making love to a woman had never been a chore. Marrying an attractive, respectable woman in his social class—the Ponsonby family were English aristocracy—and breeding progeny with her was not asking too much of him. Andrea was not only appropriate, she was practical. She understood such a marriage would be about greater things than love, which was perfect because Lorenz guarded his heart as diligently as he guarded his person. His brother’s death had been a brutal lesson in the necessity for both. He didn’t wish to fall in love. Ever. 

As for letting a woman influence him, none could. Except his mother. Lorenz never liked to disappoint her. She’d suffered the worst loss any mother could endure. More than two decades had passed since a madman had shattered their family, leaving one piece missing, but his mother grieved his brother’s murder every day. If giving her grandchildren eased her pain in even the smallest way, Lorenz owed it to her to seed them, crown or no crown. 

Therefore, it was time he married. 

The thought chafed, though, leaving him disgruntled and angry with himself for reacting to the brunette strolling the sand below. She paced so alluringly, striking a pose, cocking a hip and showcasing the back of her long, tanned thigh through the slit in her sarong, then kicked at shin-high waves, playing with her hair as she gazed toward the horizon. She knew she was being watched. She would glance up soon to see if he was biting.

Any other day of the week, little mermaid.

The gods must be testing his fortitude, reminding him that his one vice—indulging a healthy passion for beautiful women—was about to be curtailed. He could almost hear laughter in the distant roar of waves breaking against the reef that protected this cove. What was it about hearing the jangling harness of domesticity that turned a nice-looking woman into an irresistible one? 

She was built better than ‘nice,’ he had to admit. Dark honey-toned skin gleamed over an athletically fit body which still managed to possess luscious curves in all the right places. Very tempting.

Tempting enough he angled the telescope to capture her in its lens as she turned.

Her bikini top was more string than fabric. Its Caribbean blue matched the surrounding ocean. And her eyes. She caught the telescope aimed on her. Her weighty, rounded breasts lifted as though she drew a sharp breath of surprise. 

His own breath stopped in his lungs as he recognized her. Regan Butler. One of the models he was here to judge. She was even more alluring than her photos suggested. And even more shameless than her reputation foretold, if she was attempting to lure him like this. 

To his discredit, he found her very appealing. Almost worth abandoning his principles for.

Lorenz took an appraising detour down her narrow waist, watched her taut, tanned belly pull in, fantasized about how it would feel to span those hips with his hands as he skimmed the drift of cotton away, then came back to her startling eyes. They were piercing blue in a fine-boned face that spoke of both fragility and strength. Her haughty brows were regal while her vulnerable mouth begged a man to softly bite and gently plunder. Her dark wavy hair glinted ash-gold lights from its midnight depths, making an elegant frame for her stunning countenance. 

Those eyes were the show-stopper, though, growing indignant at his continued focus, spitting disdain that made the color of her irises spring out like a splash, flying up to hit him with a sizzle.

He straightened, wanting to view her with his naked gaze. She was quintessential female to his primitive male. He could have her with a nod of his head. His libido kicked at the thought, flooding with greater power as she held still, locked in place by his unwavering attention. Very convincing. Very effective. He wanted her. Intensely.

Which was her purpose, the sly tart. She didn’t know her efforts were wasted. He’d just decided to court Andrea. He wasn’t a man to be led so easily by his loins. Her assumption that he was weak enough to be turned against his morals infuriated him almost as much as the fact he was sorely tempted to do so.

She must have sensed his glower. She gave a shudder and jerked her gaze away, searching left and right as if looking for escape. His brain said, Let her go, but his barbarian blood protested. He clenched his hand on the rail while the impulse to leap over it, drop to the sand and pursue her, burned in his gut. He ground his teeth, willing her to look up again, suppressing a shout to insist on it as she hurried away. 

With a flip of her hair and a defiant, final glance up, she moved through the gate at the bottom of his private stairs, ducking beneath his garden landing.

Ambrus’s voice gave an instruction over the sensor in his ear, but Lorenz overrode the bodyguard’s order that she be intercepted. She was going through with trying to sleep her way to success? He bit back a laugh of cruel enjoyment. Let her try.

Pinching the tip of his collar where the security mic was attached, he commanded grittily, “Let her through.”

* * *

Regan Butler had been escorted past enough Authorized Personnel Only signs in the last ten years to know they were usually shortcuts for utility staff through unpainted hallways and busy kitchens. She needed a shortcut now. 

That had been the Prince of Anezka on that lanai! The first rule of this contest—her own, but implicit in any contest—was to avoid consorting with the judges. 

It had taken her too long to realize it and the very last thing she needed was anyone seeing her gawking up at him, gaining an impression she was trying to sway his vote.  

She shouldn’t have lingered on the beach, but she’d been deep in thought about the competition and her family, not wanting to count any chickens while dreaming about finally justifying the attention she’d garnered all her life. Perhaps she could finally offer some compensation to them. She knew how lucky she was to have been adopted into their fold. She carried an enormous sense of debt because of it.

Her sister would never believe that Regan felt any such thing. She didn’t believe that Regan longed for exactly what Frieda had: a quiet life with a good man who genuinely loved her, along with a pair of children sweeter than Devonshire cream. It wasn’t even something Regan would settle for. It was something that felt so far beyond her reach she wanted to cry. 

If she had been good at dating and romance, she might hold out some hope for herself, but her one attempt at an affair had failed so badly, she didn’t trust herself to try again. So, the ache of envying her sister was in her, along with the ache that her sister envied her.

Someday, Regan wistfully promised herself. Someday, after she had everyone else squared away, she might revisit the idea of having a family her own. For the moment, her pipe dreams didn’t matter. Helping her sister and her niece were all that mattered. Knuckling down to a superficial career that paid ridiculously well wasn’t so bad. Especially when it sent her to an exotic island like Ilha Maringa.

In her reverie, Regan had turned back to the resort, determined to enjoy the luxury and ignore the homesickness of being half a world from England. 

As she turned, she realized she was being watched. It had spoiled her enjoyment as she realized the man was baldly staring at her from the second floor—through a telescope, no less! 

She’d cut the jerk her pithiest look. Then he’d straightened and—

Gads, what a man! Tall, dark, and handsome came penny a pound in the modeling world, but they didn’t all radiate such a sense of power. Not just the kind that came from wealth, although she imagined he had that, but an aura of leadership and confidence and physical strength. If he had opponents in any arena, he conquered them. She knew it innately. 

The prince.

Recognition had her fleeing instinctively, heart thumping. She cut into the first stairwell she found, then ran straight into a guard who was so intimidating, she froze, trying to catch her breath. This wasn’t a waiter’s route to a breakfast bar. It doubled back. The guard waved her up, giving her no other option. 

Oh, no.

With heavy feet, she climbed to the upper landing. 

Prince Lorenz of Anezka opened the gate with an inviting squeak of its spring. 

“Looking for me?”

She started to shake her head, but voices were drifting up through the open iron rails of the stairs below her. They were familiar enough that Regan knew they were part of the photography crew she’d been working with the last few days. 

She couldn’t move, sickened by the thought she could be caught entering the prince’s private domain. Turning around would be worse. She’d look like she was leaving it. She couldn’t take another nightmare of the world gossiping about her fictional sex-capades. Her family couldn’t withstand it.

Panic shot her soundlessly up the last few stairs where she pressed him to move back from the edge of visibility. He caught at her, trying to stall her, but she pinned her lips shut and shook her head, silently begging him to keep quiet as she dragged him toward the open double doors to the interior of his suite. 

Being here was wrong. All wrong. But she would explain as soon as they were out of earshot.

Pull turned to push. His strength overpowered hers as he took the lead and plunged her into a bedroom. Not a lounge? Oh, damn. He kicked back, slamming the louvered door, making her jump. When her knees hit the edge of the bed, she crumpled. He came down on top of her, braced on his arms so he hovered over her, hands pressing into the mattress behind her shoulders. 

He caged her, but didn’t touch her. 

“What are you doing?” she hissed. 

“What are you doing?” The scent of ocean and subtle male cologne lingered around him, settling across her with the lightness of a silk sheet, faintly tinged with manly heat. 

Regan tried to hold herself rigid. Tried to keep the tension in her arms as she pushed at his wide chest, trying to tell him she didn’t want whatever he was offering. The thought of having sex with a stranger did nothing for her, but her hands had their own ideas. 

Something in her softened. Her arms felt weak, her palms weren’t pushing, they were feeling. 

As her elbows hinged, his intense gaze flared with heat. He relaxed onto her. 

“You work fast,” he commented, gaze turning cynical amusement. 

Her stomach knotted. Was that a remark based on what the gossip sites said about her?

“I was looking for a shortcut to the top,” she defended in a whisper, conscious of the distant laughter she could hear over the hiss of the surf. Why hadn’t the gate been locked at the bottom? Anyone could make this mistake.

“And you imagined you’d get there through my bedroom?” His English was perfect, but lightly accented with an Italian musicality and gruffer Slavic tones. The kingdom of Anezka was tucked into the alps between Italy, Austria, and Slovenia. 

It really ought to be a crime, this lethal sex appeal he possessed. It assaulted her senses, hitting her low, making her work to remember where she was as his voice continued in a mesmerizing tone.