Taming The Prince (Crown & Glory Book 8) Read online

  Don’t think about it, Cordello. Just forget all about that stuff.

  Of course, forgetting about all that stuff was going to be just a tad difficult for him to manage, seeing as how he was trapped with her indefinitely, in a room that was barely big enough for one person, let alone two. And seeing as how she kept talking in that incredibly sexy voice. And seeing as how she looked all rumpled and adorable and sexy. And seeing as how the top button on her blouse was still unbuttoned and still hinting—sexily—at the pale pink lace and ivory flesh beneath.

  Shane stifled an inward groan and squeezed his eyes shut tight.

  “I say, I do feel a bit better for having slept,” he heard Sara say in that refined, reckless—sexy—voice.

  Well, that makes one of us, he thought.

  “Did you manage to get any yourself?” she added.

  Did he get any? Oh, now there was a loaded question.

  “Sleep, I mean.”

  Oh, that. Not in this lifetime or any other.

  “You’d feel better if you could.”

  And I’d feel even better if I…and you…could—Enough, Cordello!

  He forced his eyes open again, but alas, Sara Wallington still looked way too sexy for his comfort. Worse than that, she was gazing back at him as if she expected him to do something. Something like, oh… Shane didn’t know. Maybe crawl over to her side of the cramped space and pull her into his arms and cover her mouth with his and—

  “Did you hear the Black Knights say anything while I was sleeping?” she asked. “Did they do anything I should know about?”

  Oh, excellent, he thought. Way to go, Sara. Talking about their current predicament was as successful as having a bucket of ice water tossed in his face—or elsewhere—in cooling his ardor.

  He shook his head. “Nada,” he told her, still trying not to notice that unbuttoned button. “I haven’t heard a thing. No movement, no talking, nothing. They might as well be sleeping themselves.”

  She studied him intently for a moment. “I suppose they do need to sleep, as well, don’t they?”

  “Yeah, but it’s not likely they’ll do it while they’re on watch. And anyway, I figure it’s probably afternoon now, local time.”

  “Yes, it is,” she said readily.

  Her quick agreement surprised him. “How can you tell?”

  She shrugged. “I just can, that’s all. As you said, though,” she hastily backtracked, “none of them would be sleeping on watch, regardless of the time, would they? Still…”

  Her voice trailed off, as if she were thinking about something, though Shane was pretty sure her thoughts didn’t run along the same lines his had been running along. His suspicion was confirmed when she added softly, “We’ll have to figure out some way to escape, of course.”

  He expelled an incredulous sound at that. “And how are we supposed to do that? Not only do they outnumber us, but they’re armed. They’re also the ones with the keys to the doors and the car. Not to mention we have no idea where we are, and are therefore at a slight disadvantage. I mean, hell, even if we get out of the house—which isn’t likely—how do we know which way is the right way? We could end up in an even worse situation than this. And what if we don’t speak the language? How are we supposed to get someone to help us?”

  “I speak the language, regardless of what it is,” she assured him. “Have no fear there.” Her voice hardened and her expression grew grave as she added, “And trust me, Mr. Cordello, when I tell you that a worse situation than this probably isn’t possible.”

  For a long time, he only gazed at her in silence, wondering what she knew that he didn’t know, and how she could know it so well. Then, softly, “Shane,” he finally said.

  She narrowed her eyes at him curiously. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Enough of the ‘Mr. Cordello’ stuff. My name is Shane. You’ve called me that once. There’s no reason for you to go back to formalities.”

  Except, he thought, that formalities might be a good idea, considering how informal his thoughts about her were becoming.

  “Fine,” she replied. “And, of course, you must call me Sara.”

  “Is that an order, General Wallington?”

  She smiled. “Yes, I suppose it is.”

  Neither seemed to know what to say after that, leading to a long silence that seemed to want to stretch on to forever. Before it could get too awkward, Shane said the first thing that came into his head. “So how did you become so militant, anyway? Is your father in the Penwyck Royal Navy or something?”

  She smiled cryptically…and, he thought, a little sadly for some reason. “He was in something like that, yes.”

  “Army?” Shane said.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Air force?”

  “No.”

  “Marines?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “Then what?”

  She turned away, her smile now seeming nervous somehow. “My father worked for the government,” she said evasively.

  “And you’re following in his footsteps?”

  “You could say that.”

  “Ambassador?”

  “Of sorts.”

  Shane gritted his teeth. “Why don’t you like to talk about yourself? What are you trying to hide?”

  She shrugged, steering her gaze at some point behind Shane, but there was nothing casual in her posture at all. “I’m not trying to hide anything,” she told him. “There’s just nothing to tell, that’s all. I’ve led a very boring life, I assure you.”

  “I bet there’s plenty to tell,” Shane countered. “I bet your life has been fascinating.”

  “Well, you’d lose both bets. My life has been utterly uneventful.”

  “Until now,” he pointed out.

  This time, when she replied, she looked him square in the eye. “Until now, yes.”

  “So how did you get to this point, hmm?” he asked.

  “Probably the same way you did. Wrong place, wrong time.”

  Shane shook his head decisively. “No. Something tells me you were right where you were supposed to be, at exactly the right time. There’s something going on here that you’re not telling me, but I’m damned if I know what. Something you’re involved in that you don’t want me to know about for some reason.”

  She expelled another one of those anxious chuckles. “What a vivid imagination you’ve got.”

  He grinned knowingly. “Yeah, haven’t I, though?”

  Hastily, she changed the subject. “How about you, Mr. Cordello?”

  “Shane,” he corrected her.

  “Yes, of course. How about you?”

  He noticed she didn’t speak his given name. Again. Apparently, she couldn’t do that when the situation was less volatile. Or maybe when the situation was more intimate. Interesting, that. “What about me?”

  “What’s brought you to this point?”

  “A hijacking,” he replied succinctly.

  “You know what I meant,” she countered.

  “Not really,” he said. He smiled again, surprised to realize that it felt like the flirtatious one he only used with women he was trying to lure into bed. Okay, so maybe that wasn’t so surprising, after all, all things considered. “Not unless you’re just trying to get to know me better.”

  She shrugged. “Well, it’s not like we have anything better to do with our time, is it?”

  And, oh, put like that, didn’t it sound as if she was just so interested in getting to know him better? Shane thought wryly.

  “We could play Twenty Questions,” he suggested. Suggestively, he hoped, because on top of all the other erratic—erotic—thoughts he’d been having about Miss Sara Wallington, he hadn’t quite been able to banish the memory of how she had been looking at him just before they were hijacked and kidnapped. “We never did get to play our game before. We were rather rudely interrupted.”

  “Mmm,” she replied noncommittally. “Strangely, this isn’t normally how things turn out whe
n I meet a man for the first time.”

  “You don’t say,” Shane replied, feeling surprisingly playful now. “What does normally happen when you meet a man for the first time?”

  She lifted one shoulder and let it drop, an action that made her blouse gape open a bit more, enough for Shane to get more of a maddening glimpse of the lacy bra and soft skin beneath. He bit back a groan and tried very, very hard not to notice. Honest, he did. Really.

  “We usually go to dinner and a movie,” she said. “Or, if I like a man very much, we go dancing.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I let him walk me home.”

  “And then?”

  “And then what?” she asked, looking genuinely puzzled.

  “Do you invite him in?”

  She gaped softly. “Of course not. Not on the first date.”

  “Not even for a nightcap?”

  “Certainly not,” she answered crisply.

  “Like to play hard to get, do you?”

  She leveled a steady gaze on him. “I assure you, Mr. Cordello, there is no playing involved. I am hard to get.”

  “Shane,” he said again. “You’re supposed to call me Shane.”

  And of course she was hard to get, he thought. That was what was going to make having her all the more fun, once he caught her. Because he knew in that moment that he was going to catch Sara Wallington. Better still, he was going to have her. Eventually. Once they got out of this predicament. And they would get out of this predicament, he thought further. Eventually.

  “Ah, yes,” she said, bringing him back to the present. “So I am.”

  But so she wasn’t, he couldn’t help noting. Again. “It’s interesting that you keep forgetting to call me by my first name,” he said.

  “Is it?”

  “I think so.”

  “Mmm,” she said again. But she offered no further clarification.

  Another one of those awkward silences threatened to follow, so Shane hastily tried again. “So,” he said, “you want to try again?”

  “Try what again?”

  “Twenty Questions. Because I’m thinking of something really good right now.” He tried really hard not to leer as he added, “And I bet you could guess what it is in a lot less than twenty questions.”

  Five

  Sara shook her head in response to Shane’s suggestive suggestion. “I’d much rather hear about you and your brother, Marcus,” she told him. “One of you may, after all, be the next reigning king of my homeland. It isn’t every day a woman is presented with an opportunity like this.”

  And oh, wasn’t that just the biggest understatement she had ever uttered in her life, Sara thought as she studied him more resolutely. He looked like hell, all scruffy and unshaven and exhausted. His blue eyes were smudged by shadows beneath, and his shaggy brown hair was shaggier than ever, falling over his forehead and nearly into his eyes, giving him the appearance of some menacing highwayman.

  At some point, he’d torn a hole in his jeans, a straight slash across the right leg that left his knee exposed when he bent it to make himself more comfortable. His white T-shirt was looking a bit rumpled beneath his jean jacket, but it still hugged his lean, muscular frame like a lover’s embrace. And he had a hole in one sock, she further noted with a smile, something that made him incredibly endearing somehow, as if he needed someone to take care of him, because he couldn’t even manage his socks.

  Not that she saw herself as a candidate for caretaker, mind you. Sara had no desire to care for anyone except herself. And not that Shane Cordello needed to be made any more endearing to her than he was already. Because even looking like hell, he was somehow infinitely more appealing to her than any man she had ever met. Too appealing, she realized. Because ever since waking from her nap, she’d been much too aware of his presence. Worse, he was present in a way that men simply were not present with her. Certainly not this soon after meeting one. In fact, she couldn’t think of a single man of her acquaintance who had captivated her as quickly and as thoroughly as Shane had.

  Oh, dear. This really wasn’t a good time for that.

  “Tell you what,” he said, scattering her thoughts. “I’ll answer your questions about me and Marcus if you’ll answer my questions about you. Ten questions each,” he added. “That’ll be twenty questions.”

  “All right,” she told him. “Sounds fair.”

  “You go first,” he said.

  She eyed him intently as her questions about him tumbled through her brain—for truly, it was Shane she most wanted to learn about, and not his brother, Marcus—and she tried to decide which one to ask first. Finally, what she settled on was “Where did you go to college?”

  “UCLA,” he replied promptly.

  “And what was your major?”

  He grinned cockily. “Girls.”

  She muttered a soft tsk before pointing out, “That’s not a major.”

  “Not an officially sanctioned one, maybe, but it is a major. And with a lot of college guys, too.”

  “And did you earn your degree in this major?” Sara asked saucily.

  “Whoa, yeah,” he replied with a chuckle that bordered on arrogant.

  Sara couldn’t help laughing, too. “What was your minor then?”

  “Goofing off,” he said. “Aced that one, too,” he added proudly.

  “And what was your paper degree in?” she asked more pointedly. “Can you even remember?”

  “That one I had a little trouble earning,” Shane said without a trace of apology. “Never did get it.”

  “Why not?”

  He shrugged. “I wasn’t the college type.”

  “But why not?” she asked again.

  Another shrug. “I didn’t take well to sitting in classes all day. I wanted to be outside. Wanted to be doing something.”

  “You don’t think studying is doing?”

  “For some people it is,” he conceded. “But not for me. I like working with my hands. And I like fresh air.”

  “So you dropped out?”

  He nodded. “In my third year. I got a job pouring cement on a construction site and, after a while, I worked my way up to foreman. I like what I do,” he added adamantly, as if it were very important that she understand that. “I’m proud of my work.” Then, “That’s ten questions,” he told her. “My turn.”

  “That wasn’t ten,” she immediately contradicted him.

  “Yeah, it was.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  He held up one hand as he began to enumerate. “Where’d I go to college, my major, my minor, my paper degree and a bunch of ‘Why nots’ and stuff in between. Ten total.”

  “You can’t count the ‘why nots,”’ Sara told him.

  “Why not?”

  “Because they’re not real questions.”

  “They have question marks at the end.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “That makes them questions.”

  “But—”

  “So now it’s my turn, and here’s my first question for you.” He pointed a finger toward her abdomen as he asked, “Did you know your shirt’s unbuttoned?”

  It took a few moments for Sara to realize a few things. Number one, that he had turned the tables on her so smoothly and so completely. Number two, that he had, in fact, asked the question that he had asked. And number three, whether or not he had been serious in asking the question. That in itself branched off into a couple of other moments, as she first had to glance down at the garment he indicated to see if the question actually applied—it did, unfortunately—and then she had to decide whether or not the question was an appropriate one for him to ask. It wasn’t, not for mixed company. Of course, their present situation being a bit, oh, bizarre, she supposed it was all right to make allowances.

  But still.

  When her brain finally stopped buzzing with all its strange musings, Sara hastily lifted a hand to her blouse and fastened not just the button to which Shane had referred, but
every other button, as well, until her collar nearly strangled her in its closeness. She heard him chuckling as she completed the action, and she supposed it was a bit late for modesty at this point, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to undo what she had done. All she could do was glance up again to see him sitting on the other side of the room, his elbow propped on one bent knee, his fingers curled loosely over his mouth, laughing at her.

  “Is there something you find humorous, Mr. Cordello?” she asked.

  He dropped his hand from his mouth, but still folded it arrogantly over his knee, and grinned devilishly. “You know, I don’t have to answer that question, because it’s number eleven.”

  “I’ve stopped playing,” she said crisply.

  “Have you? Really?”

  “That’s three questions you’ve asked now,” she pointed out before she could stop herself.

  He laughed again. “So you are still playing,” he said smugly. “Thanks for answering my questions, even if I had to infer your answers, because you didn’t really answer, and even if you did, it was really only one answer for two questions, which means, if I wanted to, I could disqualify those answers—and therefore those questions—and ask you another question or two instead. But I won’t do that,” he told her magnanimously. “Because, hey, that’s just the kind of guy I am.”

  In response to his assertion—or whatever all those words strung together had been—all Sara could manage was an impatient expulsion of air, followed by a softly muttered “Oh, please.”

  Shane didn’t seem put off by her reply, however, because his pompous expression grew even more arrogant. For a moment, he only gazed at her in silence. Then he must have been struck by something, because he heaved himself over onto all fours and began to crawl slowly—intently—across the few feet of flooring that separated them.

  For some reason, watching him approach her in such a way made Sara feel as if she had become some small prey who was caught in the hypnotic glower of a fierce predator. Try as she might to make herself move—or even to make herself look away, to break that hypnosis—she couldn’t budge. Not that there was anywhere for her to go, she reminded herself. But she didn’t have to just sit there, gazing back at him, as if she were completely under his spell, did she? She wasn’t defenseless, after all. Well, not normally. With Shane drawing nearer, however, she suddenly felt as if she hadn’t a grain of self-preservation left inside her.