His Majesty's Mistress

He caged her, but didn’t touch her. 

“What are you doing?” she hissed. 

“What are you doing?” The scent of ocean and subtle male cologne lingered around him, settling across her with the lightness of a silk sheet, faintly tinged with manly heat. 

Regan tried to hold herself rigid. Tried to keep the tension in her arms as she pushed at his wide chest, trying to tell him she didn’t want whatever he was offering. The thought of having sex with a stranger did nothing for her, but her hands had their own ideas. 

Something in her softened. Her arms felt weak, her palms weren’t pushing, they were feeling. 

As her elbows hinged, his intense gaze flared with heat. He relaxed onto her. 

“You work fast,” he commented, gaze turning cynical amusement. 

Her stomach knotted. Was that a remark based on what the gossip sites said about her?

“I was looking for a shortcut to the top,” she defended in a whisper, conscious of the distant laughter she could hear over the hiss of the surf. Why hadn’t the gate been locked at the bottom? Anyone could make this mistake.

“And you imagined you’d get there through my bedroom?” His English was perfect, but lightly accented with an Italian musicality and gruffer Slavic tones. The kingdom of Anezka was tucked into the alps between Italy, Austria, and Slovenia. 

It really ought to be a crime, this lethal sex appeal he possessed. It assaulted her senses, hitting her low, making her work to remember where she was as his voice continued in a mesmerizing tone.

~

Dear Reader, 

I wrote this in my pre-published days. Harlequin rejected it and so did some other publishers, so I shelved it and moved on. 

It has sat on my hard drive for so long that the characters referenced using a PDA—Personal Digital Assistant. That’s how we were referring to smartphones back then. 

When I was talking to a writer friend about resurrecting old manuscripts, I remembered this one. I dug it up,  reread it, and even though I can see why it wasn’t picked up by publishers, I still liked it. 

I gave it a light edit. My daughter said I should have left those PDA’s in there, but I turned them into phones. I tweaked a few things, but this is largely as I wrote it nearly twenty years ago. 

And, since I was preparing to open my bookshop, I thought this would be a fun snapshot for my superfans who might be interested in my earliest writing. I hope you enjoy it.

P.S. The original title was His Majesty’s Inappropriate Mistress–is there an appropriate one?–but the shorter title looked better on the cover.

Happy Reading!