New Year Escapes. Leslie Kelly

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      “This is your room.” Maximo opened one of the doors and gestured for her to go inside.

      She looked back down the endless hallway and cursed the fact that she hadn’t been counting doors on her way down. She was never going to find her way back.

      “Don’t worry, I’ll escort you back later,” he said, amusement lacing his voice.

      “Businessman, prince and mind reader?” she asked.

      “I promise you I can’t read minds. Faces are another matter. And you have a very expressive face.”

      She put a hand to her cheek. She had always prided herself on control, and that included control over what she let others see. She didn’t like that he had the ability to read her.

      “Don’t worry,” he said laconically, “it wouldn’t be obvious to everyone. But when you are worried you get a little crease between your eyebrows.”

      She rubbed at the spot absently, trying to smooth it. “Well, who doesn’t?”

      “You don’t like that I can read your emotions?”

      “Would you like it if I could read yours?”

      He frowned. “I don’t consider myself an emotional man.”

      “You showed plenty of emotion when you found out about the baby,” she said softly.

      “Yes. Of course I did. The love a parent feels for a child is above everything else. It’s as natural as breathing.”

      “Not to everyone.” She thought of her own father, unable to love anyone anymore after the loss of his youngest daughter.

      “It is to me.” He shifted, his jaw clenched tight, the tension evident in his entire body. “Selena and I wanted very much to have children.”

      For the first time Alison wondered what it must be like for him to be having a baby with a woman who wasn’t his wife. She’d had plans, dreams that hadn’t included him, and it was the same for Maximo. When he’d pictured having children he had imagined sharing it with his wife, the woman that he loved. As far removed from perfect as this was for her, it must be much more so for him. Her heart squeezed. She didn’t want to feel sorry for him, didn’t want to understand him, didn’t want to see, even for a moment, why he might be right to ask her for marriage. But she did. In that moment, she did.

      “Why don’t you go in and rest for a while. We’ll meet my parents for dinner in a couple of hours. Your things should already have been brought in.” Maximo seemed to be done discussing the past, and she wasn’t going to press him for more.

      She stepped into the room and her eyes widened. It was decked out for a princess. From the plush cream carpets to the lavender walls, the rich purple bedding and the swags of candlelight fabric that were draped over the canopy bed frame. This bedroom was a feminine fantasy. And she couldn’t help but wonder who the fantasy had been created for. The prince’s mistresses? She could hardly imagine a man like him would be without female company for very long.

      Completely without permission her mind began to play a slideshow of what that might look like. She could see it clearly. Maximo’s hands gripping a woman’s rounded hips, his dark hands covering full breasts, kissing the white column of his lover’s throat. And when she saw strawberry blond hair fanned out over the pillow she blinked to try to banish the images. A hot tide of embarrassment assaulted her when she realized she’d cast herself in the part of Maximo’s lover. It was laughable. Apart from the fact that she had no desire to sleep with him, there was no way he would want to take a twenty-eight-year-old virgin to bed.

      She knew that some men got off on inexperience, on being a woman’s first lover, but she had a feeling that at her age it ceased to be sexy and started to look a lot more as if there must be something wrong with her.

      “This is nice,” she managed to squeak out through her suddenly tight throat.

      “Glad it meets with your approval. Is there anything you’d like to have brought up to you?”

      A sudden roll of nausea assaulted her. “Yes. Saltine crackers. And a ginger ale if there’s one handy.”

      He drew his eyebrows together, his expression full of concern. “You are not feeling well?”

      “I’m never feeling well these days.”

      “This is normal?”

      She shrugged. “Morning sickness. Although mine lasts most of the day. But yes, that’s normal for some women.”

      “Rest,” he said, his tone commanding. “I will see that you are cared for.”

      Suddenly she was so tired her only wish was to comply with his command. “Thank you.”

      He turned and left the room, closing the door behind him, and she stumbled to the bed and climbed on top of it, relishing how she sank into the soft bedding. She didn’t bother to take her shoes off or to get under the covers, and in a matter of seconds she was completely dead to the world.

      When Maximo returned to Alison’s room half an hour later with her requests she was sound asleep, her arm thrown over her face, her hair spread into a golden-red halo. His eyes were immediately drawn to the gentle rise and fall of her generous breasts. She was an amazingly beautiful woman.

      Kissing her had been shockingly exciting. He couldn’t remember the last time simply kissing a woman had aroused him so much. Maybe when he’d been a teenage virgin, but certainly not any time in the twenty years since then.

      He hadn’t intended to kiss her. Not yet. Seduction wasn’t the way to win Alison over to his way of thinking. She was cerebral; the way to appeal to her would be through logic and reason, not through sensual persuasion. At least that’s what he’d thought. She’d been surprisingly passionate in his arms, a little hesitant, but she’d been all the sweeter for it.

      The temptation to join her in the bed, to lift the hem of her shirt again, touch her flat stomach and move higher to the lush swell of her breasts, was so powerful his teeth ached. It wasn’t only his teeth that were aching, either. He steeled himself against the hot flood of arousal that was coursing through him, fighting to maintain control over his body.

      “Alison, cara.” He reached out and touched her bare arm and desire raced through him like a shot of pure liquor into his system. She was so beautiful. So different from any other woman he’d been with or even wanted to be with.

      Always he’d gravitated to tall, slender women. Models, actresses, women with style and sophistication. Alison was slender, her waist small, but she had a woman’s curves; her hips rounded, her breasts enticingly full.

      Unlike the extremely fashionable women he’d preferred in the past, Alison seemed to dress simply to stay warm, or to avoid indecent exposure. There was nothing unflattering about her wardrobe, but there was nothing especially flattering about it, either. It was as though she honestly didn’t give it a second thought. She had been wearing some makeup the first day he’d met her, but today she’d gone without it entirely. Most women of his acquaintance would have moaned about how pale they looked without it in an effort to get some sort of compliment. Alison didn’t seem to care either way.

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