A feminine laugh.
He couldn’t recognize that voice. He just couldn’t. His heart sank to his toes, though, because he did. For decades he’d lived with untimely interruptions, but this was the last moment that he wanted another one. He grabbed a towel, trying to be ready for anything even as he doubted it was possible.
Like Pierce’s worst nightmare, Farah appeared in the doorway to the locker room. She posed, framed in the opening, and surveyed him with an expectant smile.
It had been seven years since he’d seen the princess, and Pierce couldn’t help but wish it might have been a little bit more.
Just one more day would have been enough.
Hell, an hour would have done it.
He wrapped the towel quickly around his waist, which seemed to amuse Farah. He turned off the water and held his ground. He didn’t say anything, because he had no clue what the script might be or why Farah was even there. He certainly didn’t reveal that he knew her, because he was certain her arrival had the undivided attention of the other men in the locker room.
Where was Rodrigo? The head of security for the royal family seldom let the princess out of his sight. How had she evaded him?
And why?
Her Royal Majesty Princess Farah Elizabeth Fleur LeMayne-Rashid had obviously been to a party since she was dressed to dance. She wore shiny black platform shoes with spike heels that added a good six inches to her height, and she was already a tall woman. Her dress, which was a generous description of her garment to Pierce’s thinking, was a tube of black stretch velvet generously adorned with rhinestones. It covered her from underarm to thigh and left very little to the imagination about her body in between. The diamond choker around her neck was certainly genuine, as would be the gems in the rings on her fingers and earrings dangling to her shoulders. Her dark hair fell in flowing waves to her waist and there was a white fur coat slung over one shoulder. As ever, it was her eyes that Pierce found striking: they were indigo blue and thickly lashed, both beautiful and unexpected.
She was a woman now, no longer a teenager growing into her beauty. Pierce could understand the stunned silence in the locker room, but folded his arms across his chest. He was no pushover when it came to this princess, and no matter what she wanted, it wouldn’t hurt to remind her of that. She was fiercely intelligent as well as gorgeous, so he waited for a cue—or a clue.
She waited for a moment on the threshold, giving everyone a chance to get a good look. She’d been raised to understand how to make an entrance and had apparently refined her skills since her paths had last crossed Pierce’s. Her eyes narrowed a little as she studied him, and he knew his resistance had been noted.
Farah flicked her hair over her shoulder, laughed at the men behind her, then pointed to Pierce with a manicured nail. It matched her red lipstick perfectly.
“You!” she breathed, the single word filled with sexual innuendo. Those eyes danced with the same mischief Pierce remembered all too well, as if they shared a private joke. Then she strutted across the tiled floor toward him, hips swinging, her every move filled with invitation.
When she was standing in front of him, their gazes level, she dropped her voice to a possessive purr. “I choose you.”
Pierce was well aware that the other men had crowded into the archway to make sure they didn’t miss a single detail. He’d have to make sure neither he nor the princess slipped in the drool.
No, her safety wasn’t his responsibility anymore. Farah was on her own.
She planted that hand on Pierce’s chest when he didn’t reply and pushed him back against the wall. He found himself engulfed in a cloud of her perfume, the wet tiles pressing against his back, then Farah’s hair obscured his vision and her lips touched his earlobe. “I need you,” she whispered so softly that even Pierce could barely hear her. Then she grazed his ear with her teeth, pinched his nipple and retreated one tiny step. She was watching for his reaction and he could see how much she was enjoying herself.
She was a hundred times more trouble than she’d been as a five-year-old and a thousand times more beautiful. She’d always loved to defy expectations and she’d always had confidence, but he wondered now whether those two traits had gotten the princess into more serious trouble.
Despite himself, he felt that old urge to protect her.
But he wasn’t on the payroll anymore.
“Come dancing with me,” she invited in that sexy low voice. It was more of a command and she clearly expected him to comply.
Not for the first time, Pierce wanted to remind the princess that everything wouldn’t always go her way. “I have other plans,” he said and started to turn around, as if he would continue his shower.
Farah was fast. She dropped her hand to the knot in his towel and flicked it away, prompting the laughter of the other men. She backed across the shower room, waving the towel at him as if he was a bull and she was a matador. The men laughed harder.
“Come dancing if you want it back,” she taunted.
“There’s a whole pile of clean towels in the locker room,” Pierce replied and headed out of the shower nude, leaving Farah behind.
He anticipated that she would flick the wet towel at him. Farah didn’t take well to being dismissed. She never had. Pierce heard the towel move, then pivoted to snatch the end of it in his hand before it could snap against his butt. He gave it a hard tug and Farah nearly fell off her heels. He wondered whether that was an accident as she tumbled toward him and he instinctively caught her.
She laughed at him. “Now,
