King's Ransom Read online

  Do not go there, his heart warned him. Not now.

  By some miracle he managed to suppress that memory as he cantered back to the palace, his bodyguard a half length behind him, then took up the pressing duties that awaited him. The memory stayed successfully buried the rest of the day by sheer will. He met with the Privy Council as arranged for several hours that afternoon and managed to keep his mind on the serious business of running the country.

  He met briefly with his cousin Zax to discuss the current threat assessment—and was perturbed by what had nearly happened to Juliana that morning. But he trusted Zax as he trusted no other man, and when he immediately ordered increased security he knew he didn’t have to spell it out—Zax would know what needed to be done and wouldn’t delay carrying out that command.

  His appointments with the head of the Zakharian branch of the Red Cross and the delegation of international businessmen who were seeking investment opportunities in Zakhar went off without a hitch. A three-hour reception and state dinner with his cousins and the ambassadors of half a dozen countries, all vying for favored-nation status—Zakhar was small but strategically situated at a crossroads—was followed by a performance of the Zakharian Symphony Orchestra in the new Drago Performing Arts Hall in the ambassadors’ honor.

  Only Andre knew that all the while he was smiling politely and conversing with the ambassadors over dinner, he had no idea what he was eating. Only he knew that he heard nothing of the reportedly magnificent performance by the symphony orchestra beyond the opening bars of music. He’d stood to applaud when the ambassadors in the royal box stood, and had shouted “Bravo!” along with the rest of the audience. In between he fought a protracted battle with himself to hold back the memories that threatened to swamp him.

  But when he finally slept he could no longer deny the one memory that had haunted him for years. The memory that had finally caused him to start setting things in motion three years ago to bring Juliana back to Zakhar. The memory Juliana so obviously wanted to forget.

  Then the dream engulfed him.

  * * *

  Andre sighed and turned over, the simple cotton sheet rustling beneath him. It wasn’t going to work tonight. He had ridden Balthazar until he’d finally taken pity on the horse and returned to this lonely, empty cottage, knowing it wasn’t enough. That he wasn’t exhausted enough to keep his desires at bay. Not tonight.

  One more night, he’d told himself sternly as he groomed Balthazar, then led him into the stall, fed him and covered him with a blanket. And then she will be thousands of miles away. Safe from herself...and me.

  But it had been a mistake to let himself think of Juliana, even in this way. Because thinking of her made him want her. Wanting her made him need her. And needing her was driving him insane. His body throbbed and ached for release. Not the release he could give himself, which he’d resorted to on far too many nights already, but the release he knew he could have with Juliana. Only with Juliana.

  She wants you, an insidious little voice said inside his head as he turned over again. You could have her. It would be so easy.

  Easy in one way, yes. Juliana loved him, and she would give him her body as willingly as she had given him her heart. He could make love to her as he’d yearned to do for the past two years. But he’d been having this same argument with himself—and winning—for those same two years. He wasn’t falling into that trap now.

  Because he knew himself, knew his constant nature. Knew he was like the first Andre Alexei, who had loved his Eleonora beyond all reason, even unto death. Making love to Juliana would seal his fate...and hers. He could never make love to her until it meant as much to her as it meant to him. Until she knew there could be no going back after that moment. Until she acknowledged she belonged to him the same way he belonged to her.

  Forever and a day.

  Eventually he dozed fretfully, only to dream of her. Come to me, Juliana, he dreamed. Come to me.

  He woke to the sound of hoofbeats and a horse neighing softly. At first he thought he’d dreamed it, although that wasn’t how his dreams usually ended. Then he heard a voice that was both dream and reality calling his name. He pulled on his riding breeches and was outside the cottage even before she’d dismounted.

  “What are you doing here, Juliana?” he demanded harshly, his hand automatically grasping the reins below the bridle. She just gazed down at him in the moonlight, and she didn’t have to say a word. He knew. “No,” he told her, steeling himself against temptation.

  She slid off her horse’s back before he could stop her, and then she was standing so close to him he could feel her trembling. “Please,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I know you want me, too. I know it. I heard you calling to me. I can’t go away without...”

  “No,” he said again, leading her horse to the tiny stable, putting distance between them as he cared for the horse. When he looked up from his task she was nowhere in sight.

  “Juliana?” he called, but she didn’t answer. He put the currycomb down and walked outside. Still no sign of her. But the door to the cottage was open the way he’d left it when he’d come outside. And he knew where she’d gone. “No,” he whispered to himself. But the insidious little voice inside his head insisted, Yes. Yes!

  The open doorway pulled him, lured him, and when he stood on the threshold he saw by moonlight what he’d known in his heart he would see. Juliana was sitting on the edge of the single bed, her clothes a pile on the floor where she’d dropped them in her haste to disrobe. If she’d been completely naked he might have been able to resist her. But she’d pulled the cotton top sheet so it was draped over the most vulnerable parts of her body, and that one insecure gesture pierced his defenses as nothing else could have.

  “Juliana...” he said helplessly, his body reacting in predictable fashion, blood pooling between his thighs, until he could count his heartbeats in the pulses.

  “Please, Andre...I love you...and I have to know...”

  From the safety of the doorway he said in a guttural voice, “You do not know what you are asking.”

  Her face resolved into a maturity that was unexpected, and the pleading look changed into determination. “Yes, I do know,” she told him quietly in the voice of a woman, not a girl. “If you care for me at all, don’t let me leave tomorrow without knowing what it means to be yours...just once. Please give me tonight. And let me give you tonight, too.”

  It swept over him like a tidal wave, the wanting and not having, the desire to hold her tight and never let her go, the need to show her how precious she was to him. And something more. The sure knowledge that he could no more walk away from the gift she was offering than he could walk out of his skin. He was shaking with the force of his desire, but one shred of sanity remained. One last chance for both of them. If he could make her run...

  He quickly unzipped his riding breeches and stripped them off, letting her see him naked, letting her see the enormity of his need. Then he slowly walked toward her, until he stood only a step away. “This is what you are asking for, little one,” he said softly, grasping himself crudely. “Is this really what you want? Me, inside you?”

  He had hoped to shock her with his words, his size, with the realization of what was to come and the very real possibility of pain, but he was the one who was shocked. Without hesitation she reached out a hand and touched him, and a spark of electricity passed between them. Andre felt her touch everywhere, sizzling through him, leaving him gasping. His erection swelled even more, the skin feeling as if it would burst. And then it was too late. It had already been too late from the moment he’d seen her wearing nothing but moonlight and a cotton sheet.

  Naked and trembling, he knelt before her, gazing deep into her eyes as he reached for the sheet...and tugged gently. Then she was naked and trembling, too, but not with fear. Desire. Desire that matched his. Her eyes told him she wasn’t afraid, but they also told him what he already knew—this would be her first time with a man. Which me
ant he had to go slow. He had to build her desire to fever pitch before he did anything else.

  If he could hold himself back. If it didn’t kill him.

  He reminded himself she had led a sheltered life. Her mother had died when she was a little girl, and though she was close to her ambassador father, it wasn’t the kind of closeness a girl had with her mother. She might know the basics of what went where—impossible not to know that in this day and age—but he doubted she had any idea of everything he wanted to do to her. Would he shock her? Offend her? Or would she listen to her heart and know that every way he touched her was right...because he loved her?

  She made room for him on the bed, her eyes on him betraying a nervousness she wouldn’t acknowledge. She didn’t know what to do with her arms, her legs, and they shifted restlessly. Then she lay back against the pillow and hesitantly parted her legs. He laughed softly, shaking his head. “No, little one. That is not the way. Not your first time. Not even your thousandth time.” He brought his body gently over hers, feeling her tremors of uncertainty. And suddenly it wasn’t so difficult to hold himself back. He smiled down at her and his voice was little more than a deep whisper when he said, “Let me show you, Juliana.”

  * * *

  Juliana tossed and turned restlessly in her sleep, moaning to herself. The dream had come despite her stern warning to herself at bedtime. She wanted to stop the dream, but she couldn’t, and now it was too late. The dream consumed her, controlled her. Naked and trembling.

  * * *

  Juliana knew the moment Andre surrendered to her...to the desire racking his beautiful body. His eyes, his face were transformed, and she thought, He loves me. He couldn’t look at me that way and not love me. It gave her the courage she needed to be a woman for him, and not a girl shrinking away from her first sexual encounter. But this isn’t sex, she reminded herself with joyous anticipation. This is love—mine and his.

  She slid sideways on the bed, making room for him. Nervousness returned out of the blue, but she lay back against the pillow and hesitantly parted her legs. Then was startled by Andre’s soft laughter as he rose over her. “No, little one,” he told her. “That is not the way. Not your first time. Not even your thousandth time.” His voice dropped. “Let me show you, Juliana.”

  With exquisite care and knowledge of women she didn’t stop to question, he showed her. His big hands roamed her body, slowly, achingly, caressing every inch of her skin, building her desire step by incredible step. He was hot and hard against her, but he seemed to have an iron control over his body, because he refused to succumb to her frantic hands, her desperate pleas that he take her now...now. Instead he wove a magic spell as his hands lightly touched her here and there, until she was weeping from the beauty he created, until she was shaking and crying for him to release her.

  She clung to him as tremors pulsed endlessly through her body, and he kissed away her tears. Then he moved, positioning himself at the damp portal of her womanhood, and thrust deeply. There was a brief, sharp pain, and Juliana couldn’t hold back her sound of distress. But he was kissing her again, swallowing her pain and making it his own; his lips, his hands apologizing for having to hurt her this once.

  “Never again,” he promised her, remaining motionless.

  Juliana sensed he was waiting for her body to accommodate his, waiting while her inner depths stretched and contracted, accepting his invasion, waiting while a fine sheen of sweat broke over his body from the strain she only vaguely understood. He was so deep, so tight; she couldn’t believe they had ever been apart. Then he withdrew slowly, agonizingly, and the emptiness was unbearable. “No,” she breathed, clutching at his hips until he filled her again with another sure thrust. And another.

  “Now,” he whispered to her in Zakharan, his eyes alight in the darkness. “Now it begins.”

  * * *

  Juliana woke with tears on her cheeks. “Andre,” she whispered, her throat aching. She didn’t understand, would never understand how Andre could have made love to her with such exquisite tenderness, and then...

  Remember the rest, she told herself savagely. She impatiently threw back the covers and rose, then moved to the open window and stared out at the sleeping streets of Drago at the bottom of the hill. She was angry with herself for crying for the moon, for crying for a fairy tale that had no basis in reality. Angry for shedding tears after all these years for a man so cruel, so uncaring he could humiliate her by sending agents to tell her he wanted nothing more to do with her.

  She couldn’t control her dreams, but she could control her waking thoughts. And while she acknowledged he had never seduced her—he didn’t have to; you threw yourself into his arms, into his bed, she reminded herself, the memory a humiliating scourge in her mind—she could never forget he didn’t even have the common decency to tell her himself that the one night she’d begged him for was all they would ever have.

  Juliana wrapped her arms around herself as a cold hollow feeling settled in the pit of her stomach, remembering how she had wept through the night after his Zakharian agents had left—her heart breaking, her dreams shattered. Remembering how she’d asked herself again and again how the gentle prince she’d known for years, the tender lover who’d made her weep with ecstasy, could be the same man who had sent her money as a parting gift as if she had been a whore—used and discarded without a second thought.

  No. Even if he could explain why he’d sent agents instead of telling her himself, she could never forgive him for the money and the degrading, soul-destroying words that had accompanied it. Never.

  Chapter 6

  “Cut!” the director ordered.

  “Save the lights,” someone called out, and the hot lights were mercifully shut off. Juliana took a deep breath and expelled it slowly, evenly, letting the tension out at the same time. She wanted to wipe her forehead, but she knew better. The makeup team moved in quickly. One woman patted gently at Juliana’s face, blotting the perspiration beading beneath her fluffy bangs. Somebody else handed Juliana a cold bottle of water, and she gave him a grateful smile before she drank thirstily. Work on her went on even as she drank—makeup touched up, hair brushed and the dresser assigned to her fussed over a streak of dust that had somehow mysteriously appeared on the back of her midnight blue velvet skirt. A few feet away Dirk was being given the same treatment.

  The director came over to talk to Juliana and Dirk. “That was good, really good, but not quite what I was hoping for. Let’s try one more take, okay?”

  “Sure,” Dirk said.

  “And this time, Dirk, see if you can add a little more...euphoria?...when you hear the news Eleonora gives you. I mean, this is the first child whose paternity won’t be questioned. The first child after Eleonora was ransomed. Not to mention neither of you were sure Eleonora could even have more children after everything that happened to her.”

  Dirk was quiet for a moment, and Juliana gave him an anxious look. Then he smiled. “Sure thing.”

  After the director walked away, Juliana waited until everyone else had walked off the set, too, then said softly, “You okay?”

  Dirk’s smile faded, and the eyes he turned on Juliana were bleak. “It would be easier to express euphoria over Eleonora’s pregnancy if I wasn’t praying Bree would...”

  “I know.” She put her hand on Dirk’s arm, wishing she knew what to say to him. “It would be easier for you to understand if you were a woman,” she told him, her heart aching. “When a woman loves a man, really loves him, she wants to give him the immortality only his child can give him. No price is too high to pay, not even her own life.” She breathed deeply, searching for something more she could share to make him see things from Sabrina’s point of view.

  “But that’s not all,” she said eventually. “To feel another life growing inside you, knowing it was created from the love the two of you share...this is what Bree is experiencing. I know it. Not that she doesn’t want to live,” she added, blinking hard against the emotions well
ing up in her, not wanting to ruin her makeup, “but we all die at some point. And giving you this gift means that no matter what, your love will live forever.”

  Dirk stared down at her, an arrested expression on his face. “I didn’t think of it that way. I just... Thanks.” He lifted her hand and kissed it. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get this scene in the can so I can go find Bree and tell her I understand...finally.”

  Juliana and Dirk took their places on the set. When she turned her head she was startled to see Andre standing in the shadows, watching, his face hard and cold, one of the bodyguards who followed him everywhere right behind him. How long has Andre been there? she wondered. And why is he upset?

  She thought about what she’d just told Dirk. The words had somehow poured out of her, and she realized she hadn’t just been talking about Sabrina. She’d been talking about herself, too, about the way she’d felt toward Andre...once upon a time. At the time she’d prayed she was pregnant, wanting his child with an intensity she hadn’t really understood until she found out it wasn’t going to happen. But then she’d told herself it was probably for the best, that there would be other chances for them.

  That was before she’d learned the truth. Before she’d learned that one chance was all she would ever have. And not just because Andre would never be hers. There would never be a child for her because there would never be another man whose child she would want to bear.

  * * *

  Andre watched Juliana touch DeWinter’s arm and stare up at him, an expression of pleading on her face. He couldn’t hear what she was saying, but whatever it was seemed to move DeWinter. When DeWinter raised Juliana’s hand and kissed it something cold and terrifying sliced through him.

  The fingers of Andre’s right hand unconsciously curled into a fist. DeWinter touched Juliana at the reception, too, he remembered, with his wife standing right there. Are they having an affair? His cousin Niko’s offhand comment yesterday about the apparent closeness and obvious affection between the two movie stars had flicked Andre on the raw, and he’d been hard-pressed to hide his reaction from his cousin’s curiously intent stare. Somehow he’d managed it, had managed to present a front of casual indifference, but inside he’d been seething. He still was. Andre would never have believed the Juliana he knew could have an affair with a married man, but then...she had changed. She wasn’t the woman he remembered. She was hard. Cold. Cynical.