Ways To Ruin A Royal Reputation (Mills & Boon Modern) (Signed, Sealed…Seduced, Book 1) by Dani Collins (best contemporary novels .TXT) 📕

talk there about how we’ll portray our relationship.” For the first time in a very long time, he could be with a woman openly with few distractions. He wanted to take her there right now.

Perhaps she read that urgency in him. She flashed him a nervous look, but there was no fright in the depths of her pretty green eyes. Only a vacillating nibble of her lip and another, slower study of his chest and upper arms.

She was going to be the death of him, teasing him so unconsciously and effortlessly.

“Cottage?” she asked skeptically.

He tilted his head. It was an understatement. “A castle on a private island in one of the more remote lakes. The key word is ‘private.’ We can let this furor die down before our attendance at the gala stirs it up again.”

“Are you sure you want to continue associating with me?” she asked anxiously.

She couldn’t be that obtuse.

“I want to do a damned sight more than ‘associate.’” He snagged her hand with his own and brought her fingertips to his mouth, dying to taste her from brows to ankles, but he had places to be. And he was trying not to take when she was vacillating and vulnerable.

She caught her breath and looked at him with such defenseless yearning, he gave in and swooped his free hand behind her waist to draw her close.

She suddenly balked with a press of her palm to his chest. “I haven’t brushed my teeth.”

“Then I’ll kiss you here.” He set his open mouth against her throat, enjoying the gasp she released and the all-over shiver that chased down her body. By the time he’d found the hollow beneath her ear, she was melting into him with another soft cry.

The slippery silk she wore was warm with the heat of her body as he slid his hands to her lower back and drew her closer, inhaling the scent of vanilla and almonds from her hair.

“Luca.” She nuzzled his ear and nipped at his earlobe.

His scalp tightened and a sharp pull in his groin threatened to empty his head of everything except the rumpled bed behind this wickedly tempting woman. One quick tumble to hold him. That’s all he wanted.

“Give me a few hours,” he groaned, lifting his head, but running his touch to her delectable bottom, tracing the curve and crease through the silk as he drew her into the stiffness her response had provoked. “We’ll pick this up later.”

She searched his gaze, still conflicted.

He kissed her, quickly and thoroughly, tasting coffee as he grazed her tongue with his.

“Eat something,” he ordered, then released her and adjusted himself before he left to end his brief reign.

Amy ate. Then she took her time with a long bath and a quiet hour of self-care where she painted her toenails and plucked her brows and moisturized every inch of her skin. She ignored her phone and let the sickening feeling of having her privacy invaded recede while she considered what to tell her best friends.

She was always honest with Bea and Clare, but aside from emailing a promise to call as soon as she could, Amy hadn’t found the right way to explain what had happened between her and Luca.

They would know they were being put off, but Amy would touch base with them as soon as she decided whether she would agree to Luca’s suggestion.

He had a point that appearing to continue their affair would soften the photo from being a lurid glimpse at a king’s downfall to a private moment between a loving couple, but they weren’t a loving couple. They were barely a romantic couple, having met only two days ago.

It shocked her to realize that. They’d shared some very personal details with one another. She’d never talked about her expulsion or her parents’ rejection of her so candidly. For his part, Luca had entrusted her with the secret of his father’s death. On a physical level, they had opened themselves unreservedly.

That meant they had the seeds of a close relationship, didn’t it?

Oh, Amy, she chided herself. She had made the mistake of believing physical infatuation meant genuine caring once before.

Her stomach curdled. She hadn’t shared that part of her story with Luca, had she?

Her affair with Avery Mason wouldn’t come out, would it? Aside from Bea and Clare, who would never betray her, the story had never been confirmed. If any of the catty girls from back then had wanted to take Amy down by repeating that morsel of vague gossip, they would have done it by now. They’d had plenty of opportunities while Amy had been posting photos of herself with movie stars and fashion designers. Even if someone did decide to bring it up, they had no proof. It would be a very watery accusation that would quickly evaporate.

Avery could say something, obviously, as could his mother, but Amy didn’t believe either would. There was no value in destroying their own reputations, and Amy’s parents were equally determined to keep it a private matter. Her mother much preferred to use it as salt in Amy’s wounds, dropping it as an aside to blame Amy for her own tribulations like being dumped by her latest paramour.

That would let up once she realized Amy was still seeing Luca, of course.

There was a bonus! Amy paused the hair dryer to drink in a fantasy of her mother groveling for an invitation to meet Amy’s beau, once she believed her daughter had a real future with royalty.

Which she didn’t. Amy’s soaring heart took a nosedive. Even if they slept together again, their relationship was still about optics. Nothing more.

She ignored the streak of loss that cut through her chest and returned to yanking the brush through her hair as she dried it, ruthlessly scraping the bristles across her scalp as an exercise in staying real.

Luca wasn’t a sociopathic lothario like Avery, but he was a man. The wires between heart and hard-on weren’t directly connected. No matter what she did,