The Prince's Pleasure. Robyn Donald

the rebels want it too. However, they don’t trust anyone—not even anyone from the other side of the world.’ His voice hardened into iron. ‘When Guy appeared they recognised him from the gossip columns and realised they had the perfect way to stop me from double-crossing them. According to the Prime Minister, he is quite safe.’

      ‘And you believe him?’

      ‘That far, I believe him,’ Luka said deliberately. ‘And I believe that if any word of this peace initiative gets out to the media Guy could be in serious trouble. Before anyone knows of any possible treaty, they want the deal to be signed and sealed, with a peace-keeping force already on the island.’

      Dion frowned. ‘Why?’

      ‘Because,’ Luka said evenly, ‘the neighbouring state is poised to march across the border and take over. They’ll stay on the sidelines as long as they think the two sides are bleeding to death, but any hint of peace will see them invade. Guy is being kept three miles from the border on the main route to the capital city.’

      Dion swore this time.

      ‘Exactly,’ his Prince said harshly. ‘He’s safe as long as no one knows anything about the possibility of a treaty between the Sant’Rosa rebels and the government.’

      ‘So what do we do?’ Dion asked, crisp and professional.

      Luka said deliberately, ‘From what I heard last night, the rebels won’t be too hard to persuade—especially if they’re promised a place in the new order of things. The government has guaranteed this. I’ve put out feelers amongst the local refugees from Sant’Rosa—apparently there are several with direct links to the rebels.’ He looked at Dion, recognising the other man’s frustration and need for action. ‘Make sure the jet’s ready to fly—we may need to airlift them into Auckland and take them up to the beach house. Apart from that, you’ll do nothing—yet.’ He smiled ironically. ‘And before I start work on a peace plan that will satisfy both sides, I plan to swim.’

      Dion said, ‘Guy is tough, Luka. He’ll probably get himself out of there.’

      Luka gave a crooked smile. ‘I know.’ He paused and said abruptly, ‘There is something else you can do. Make sure Alexa Mytton is not permitted into the hotel until after the conference is over.’

      Although he turned up the jets in the private pool to full power, swimming didn’t clear his mind. Instead of working out a way to free his cousin, or bring both bitterly divided sides to a neutral meeting place, all he wanted was to feel Alexa’s hair around him like some silken tent, each coiling tress caressing his skin into feverish ecstasy. He wanted her to look at him with her ice-clear dangerous eyes smouldering with desire, in the full knowledge of what she was doing. He wanted to feel that passionate mouth on his skin…

      He hauled himself out of the pool and strode towards the shower, sweat gathering on his forehead as his body responded to the goad of his thoughts.

      More than anything in the world he craved to take her, bury himself deeply in her strong slenderness, mark her by his possession so that any other man’s touch on her would be unthinkable—an insult, an unbearable horror.

      Because he was fastidious—and circumspect—there hadn’t been many women in his bed, but without conceit he knew he was a good lover. Partly it was his true appreciation of women’s needs, his pleasure in their softness and their curves, his understanding that making love was an infinitely greater risk for a woman than for a man. But it was the self-mastery taught to him by the courtesan his father had summoned as a sixteenth birthday present that brought his lovers to sobbing fulfilment before he yielded to his own climax.

      And it was that control that enabled him to keep himself emotionally distant from each one. He’d been trained in a hard school to think of his country before anything else.

      Yet now he’d been ambushed by a hunger that clamoured to take a woman hot-bloodedly and without finesse, loosen control and let mindless white-hot passion ride him to satiety.

      A photographer, for God’s sake! And sniffing around now, at the very worst of times. One hint of publicity and the desperate men he’d met last night would disappear out of New Zealand and back into their tropical jungle, and more people would die, more children would grow up uneducated, knowing only war and famine and disease.

      And Guy, his younger cousin, could well lose his life.

      With a quick, savage flick of his fingers he turned the shower onto full, and when that didn’t tame his rampant body he punched the palm of one hand with a clenched fist and fought the dangerous frustration with hard common sense.

      Where had he seen those astonishing eyes before, so pale they were almost transparent, their colour a violent contrast to her warm Mediterranean colouring of creamy skin and copper hair?

      A knock on the door brought his head up. ‘What is it?’ he asked with harsh precision.

      ‘A message, sir,’ his private secretary said urgently. ‘The one you’ve been waiting for.’

      That night, as she cooked dinner and ate it without tasting a mouthful, Alexa replayed over and over again that scene with Prince Luka.

      It didn’t take a psychologist to explain the electricity that had scorched through her at his touch. She’d been caught off guard by potent physical attraction, the kind of sensual intuition that splintered the bars of caution and common sense to whisper alluringly of feverish, compelling sex, to counsel surrender to a passion she’d never expected to feel.

      Basic, earthy, almost entirely amoral, it should repel her. Emotionally and intellectually it did.

      Unfortunately some rash, previously unsuspected part of her found Prince Luka wildly exciting. He’d kissed her like a conqueror, and she’d let him—worse than that, she’d gloried in it, because she’d known she’d breached some barrier in him.

      Even more intriguing was that hint of vulnerability, of hidden secrets. Perhaps she could do some research on him—

      ‘No!’ she said, outraged.

      And she should stop beating herself up! It wasn’t as though she was the first woman to have found him attractive. Every magazine and newspaper in the western world was a witness to the number of women who’d fallen for his particular brand of Mediterranean glamour. And as well as being dynamically sexy, he’d been surprisingly kind when she’d started falling to pieces.

      The telephone rang. ‘Alexa,’ Carole said in a flat voice, ‘something’s happened that’s rather—upsetting.’