The Illegitimate King (Castaldini Crown 3)

Not that she blamed her father. He’d done what he had to rule a kingdom. It had been her mother who’d been unable to understand the nature of their political marriage or accept it, who’d wanted to turn it into a love match and had only managed to drive her distant husband further away. Ferruccio was everything her father was—including whatever had driven her mother to destruction—a thousand times over.

The memory of her mother’s life scared her enough to douse the insanity.

She started struggling in his arms, as if fighting for her life.

He stiffened for a long moment, unable to make up his mind whether her struggle was an attempt to get closer or away.

He finally grunted something and tore his lips away from hers, put her down.

Panting, every muscle spasming with the slow poison of the need he’d infected her with—a need that would eat through her if it went unappeased—she stumbled away, searching desperately for her equilibrium.

For a few seconds, the flames blazing on the poles surrounding her made her feel like an animal trapped within a circle of fire. As her mind rebooted, she realized how apt that fear was. She might not be physically trapped or in danger, but she was in every other way.

And her trapper—her hunter—was closing in on her again.

She squeezed her eyes shut, bit down on her lip, hard, to stop herself from turning around and throwing herself into his arms and letting him finish what he’d started.

His hands descended on her shoulders, pulled her back against him. She couldn’t even tremble, could only lean back limply, exposing her neck for him to nuzzle. He took this as consent, again cupping her breast, her sex, rocking her against his arousal as he suckled her earlobe, whispered in her ear, “I didn’t intend to go this far. But I touched you, and you responded and…”

She pushed out of his arms. This time he let her go at once. She finished rearranging her clothes, gave him a sullen look. “Sure, it’s my fault, because I ‘responded.’”

He shoved his hands into his pockets, drawing her eyes to the huge bulge in his pants. Her insides clenched. She swallowed. Dio, she was literally drooling over him.

“I’m not saying it’s your fault. I’m saying I’m not proud that I set out to kiss you and almost ended up taking you. I never lose control like that, never surrender to the heat of the moment.”

“No? Excuse me if I don’t believe that, what with you being oversexed and overendowed, as well as overeverything else.”

He looked incredulous. “You think I would have gotten where I am today if my libido had any say in my actions and decisions?”

“You’re a man, aren’t you? I’d say libido is the only thing that has a say in your decisions where women are concerned.”

“Then you don’t know much about men. Real ones, anyway. A man steered by his libido ‘where women are concerned’ is an immature dolt who ends up destroying what he achieves by making the wrong decisions at the wrong times for the wrong reasons.”

“I happen to agree. So you’re saying I made you lose your legendary control? Good one. Especially since you don’t want me at all. This is just a hostile takeover for you.”

He gave her a sweeping, lustful glance, huffed a short laugh. “You clearly have no concept of what hostile is. Or an inkling about what I’m like when I am. And if you think almost taking you standing up and becoming rock-hard whenever I so much as think of you isn’t wanting you, I wonder if you even know the basics of the male sexual response.”

“You’re just aroused by the game you’ve been playing. You know, the one where you get to enforce your will on the only woman, it seems, who has ever said no to you.”

A merciless gleam entered his eyes as his lips curled. “Your resistance always did infuriate me, when I sensed your answering desire. And now that I’ve felt how incendiary that desire is, and how it sets me on fire, if I wanted you to the factor of a thousand before, I now want you to that of a million. But even if it did get out of control, this explosive episode proved one thing. When I take you, Clarissa, it will be because you’re begging me to.”

She glared at him, hating him more for being so right about the magnitude of her desire. She had to vanquish it if she wanted to survive. “I wonder what level your arrogance can reach before you overdose on it. That would be a well-deserved end, not to mention an effective and fair solution to this mess. And before you gloat some more about how much I want you, that doesn’t mean I’ll act on it. I want to eat chocolate fudge day and night, but you won’t see me giving in to the temptation any time in this life.”

“But bingeing on me won’t make you fat and sick. Giving in to the temptation of falling into my arms and bed will provide rigorous workouts that will keep you in perfect shape and health, and the calorie-free pleasure I’ll saturate you with will make you realize you’ve been starving, make you wonder how you’ve lived so long with such deprivation.”

She felt as if the whole world had become a tiny room, with its walls closing in on her. He was just too much, too powerful. Unstoppable. And when he turned coaxing, seductive, he was devastating. She couldn’t resist him. And she had to.

There was only one way she could think of to stop him. Make him angry.

“Why don’t you just drop the act? You only want me because I’m the king’s daughter. That has always been my attraction, hasn’t it? You’ve acquired everything else—God only knows how—but now the world has gone so crazy, you can become Castaldini’s future king—and you still want to acquire me as the most suitable accessory to your impending royal status.”

Ferruccio felt his heart turn to stone inside his chest.

He’d long believed she looked down on him because of the circumstances of his birth.

But not only had she now intimated that she believed he’d attained his wealth and power through criminal methods and that she still cringed at the idea of giving in to the desire that seethed like a bound beast between them, not only had she just confirmed his worst suspicions why, but she’d revealed that the situation was worse than he’d thought.

She thought he’d been pursuing her to acquire her lineage by association, still wanted it even now, to paint himself with her legitimacy. She didn’t just think him a lowborn bastard but a sleazy social climber.

And she called him arrogant.

If he thought he’d enjoy punishing her for her arrogance before, he would now outright relish it. In every way imaginable.