alone. Always waiting, as locked away from pleasure as any sleeping princess in a glass coffin.
Rose took a haggard breath. If she could not have the romantic dream everyone else in her family had, she would take what joy she could in the life that was left to her. She would take risks. She would be bold.
Slowly, Rose untied her bikini top and dropped it to the floor. She untied the bottom and kicked it away. Climbing naked into the bathtub, she sank beneath the fragrant white bubbles. Closing her eyes, holding her breath, she slid all the way down beneath the water.
When she rose up from the bath a moment later, her hair soaking wet, she felt reborn.
She heard a choked gasp behind her.
Xerxes was now standing by the bathtub, staring down at her. Following his eyes, she saw rivulets of water running between her breasts, saw her nipples flushed deep pink. They pebbled beneath his gaze.
With a gasp, she sank into the water, covering her body with thick white bubbles.
“You said you would turn around!” she said.
He gave a low laugh. “I never said I wouldn’t turn back.” He sat on the edge of the large tub and looked down at her. “You are so beautiful,” he whispered, running his hand along her naked shoulder, visible above the bubbles. “The most magnificent woman I’ve ever seen.”
She blushed. “You’re just tipsy on champagne.”
“I haven’t had any champagne.”
She blinked, glancing at the nearly empty bottle next to the bathtub. Who’d drunk all that, then? By the way her body felt pleasantly separated from her brain, the answer was appallingly clear. She shook her head. “You…are you trying to…”
“To what?”
“Get me drunk?” she blurted out.
His sensual mouth curved. “Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “You tell me.”
He stroked her water-slicked blond hair curling over her collarbone. She looked up at him breathlessly, her neck tilting back. He leaned over her, his lips inches from hers. Her mouth inched toward his, wanting him to kiss her. Willing him to kiss her.
“Turn around,” he ordered, and without thought she obeyed, turning her face toward the window.
She felt his hands fall heavily on her naked shoulders. He began to slowly rub circles into the overwrought muscles of her neck and shoulders. She closed her eyes. It was bliss. It was heaven. It was…
Dangerous.
“So you think I am going to all this effort to seduce you,” he said quietly.
Hearing him actually speak the words made her fears seem ludicrous. He was a powerful, ruthless millionaire with the world at his fingertips. And he’d told her he loved another woman—someone he intended to trade for Rose. She was just his captive, his pawn. Why would he go to such effort to seduce Rose, the ex-girlfriend of his enemy, a waitress and twenty-nine-year-old nobody? Her cheeks became hot. “I know that sounds ridiculous.”
“You’re right,” he said quietly. “I am going to seduce you.”
Her eyes flew open. As he continued to sensually rub her neck and shoulders, she stared wide-eyed out the window. In the silence, she saw the slender black silhouettes of palm trees swaying in front of the brilliant white clouds lit up by the moon, saw the stars twinkling in the night.
She felt the intense pleasure of his touch. Felt his strength. Felt his power.
When he leaned over her, she felt his breath against the crook of her neck, then his lips brushed the tender flesh of her earlobe.
“I want you.” The whisper of his lips against her skin caused a sizzle of fire down her body. “And I intend to do everything I can to win you.”
She felt dizzy, the world trembling all around her. She was naked in the warmth of the bath he’d drawn for her, tipsy on his expensive champagne. But most intoxicating of all was this feeling building inside her, this strange ache of forbidden desire. She felt his cotton shirt brush against her hair, felt the warmth of his muscular arms lean against hers.
She closed her eyes, waiting for him to seize her, turn her around in his arms and pull her into his hot embrace. Waiting for him to end this sweet torment.
He was going to kiss her…wasn’t he?
“I want you, Rose,” he whispered. “So much.” He took a sudden deep, ragged breath, then said in a low voice, “But you deserve better than a man like me.”
And suddenly, his warmth was gone.
Startled, she whirled around. In her movement, she splashed bathwater and bubbles wildly to the floor.
All she saw was his retreating back as he left her. Without a backward glance.
You deserve better than a man like me.
The next morning, Xerxes woke up stiff and sore from sleeping alone outside in the hammock on the beach. He still couldn’t believe it.
He’d had her. Naked and ripe for the taking. He’d seen it in her body’s reaction to his touch, in the quiver of her neck and shoulders beneath the stroke of his fingers, in the flush of heat on her skin.
He’d had her. Getting her to release him from his promise, luring her into just gasping out the words kiss me would have been the easiest thing in the world.
It had taken slightly longer than he’d thought it would, but he’d finally succeeded in getting her where he wanted her. Bedding Rose last night would have been at once his revenge—and his reward.
And yet he’d let her go. He’d stumbled away from the bathtub, and her body covered with bubbles, without a word. Once outside, he’d stripped off his dusty clothes and dived naked into the sea to clear his body of dust. To clear his soul of desire.
You deserve better than a man like me.
Now, raking his hand through his hair, he twisted his aching neck to crack the aching vertebrae. After sleeping outside all night, he cursed himself silently. Why had he let her go last night? Why had he shown such foolish mercy?
“I’ll have faith…” He heard her voice like music, and remembered the way she’d looked at him with eyes of endless blue. “A life without faith, without being brave enough to risk loving someone and be loved in return, is no life at all.”
Xerxes’s lip curled. His frustration and lack of sleep were clearly melting his brain!
He’d come to the Maldives yesterday filled with optimism, after his chief bodyguard had told him Laetitia had been sighted here. He’d known if he could find her on his own and get her safely to good medical care, he would have no need to deal with Växborg. Once Laetitia was well, she could divorce him herself. And Xerxes—he could keep Rose for himself.
But after almost a year of repeated sightings that proved false, Xerxes should have known better than to hope. The small hut at the end of the dusty road on the other side of the island had been deserted. Talking to the neighbors, they discovered that someone who looked like Laetitia had indeed been there. But she’d been moved just two days before, and they did not know where she’d gone. Her caretaker, a toothless old woman who spoke no English and had no medical training, had been paid in cash. The woman said that the young sleeping woman still lived. That was all she knew.
Returning alone to the honeymoon cottage, Xerxes had been furious and angry—at Växborg, but even more at himself.
Why couldn’t he find Laetitia?
Why