"It’s difficult to say what’s going to happen," the doctor told Ariston when he went to ask for more details about his son’s condition. "Of course, there have been terrific strides made in the care of premature babies. But I don’t like to give any promises at this stage, because premature infants’ immune systems aren’t fully developed and neither are their lungs. It’s very easy for them to catch an infection and have it become serious. "Ariston nodded, his throat tight. He’d just tried to promise Lucette it was going to be okay. But she was right: he couldn’t promise anything. And he didn’t know if their marriage, fragile as it was, would survive this.He stood outside the neonatal ICU and watched his impossibly small son flail with tiny red fists. He was covered in tubes to help him breathe, eat, and live. It made Ariston ache with fierce love—and a desperate fear.Eventually, he went back to see Lucette . She was awake in bed, and while the sight of her lifted his spirits, the

It's love again...TITLE: A VIRGIN FOR HIS DESIRES'Excuse me.’Orla had been so focused on watching the bustle of guests in the ancient palace courtyard, where two of her closest friends had just been married, that she hadn’t realized that she was blocking the pathway to the garden. She had intended to make her way to one of the pavilions put up for the wedding celebrations, but had become distracted by the magical, intoxicating atmosphere of it all.The male voice was authoritative and deep—velvet-rough, Orla decided, as though the nap of the fabric had been brushed to reveal the strength that lay beneath the silky surface. Just hearing it made her feel as though that same fabric had brushed against her own skin, and the sensual effect on her sent small electric shocks of awareness darting through her. His accent was recognizably English, public school and university honed; the accent of a man who took both position and wealth for granted as his right of birth. The accent of privile

His father had laughed at him, and so had she—the slut who had ultimately been responsible for the death of his mother. The official cause of her death had been pneumonia, but Arni knew better. His gentle, beautiful mother had died of the wounds inflicted on her heart and her pride by a tramp who hadn’t been fit to breathe the same air. He loathed the kind of woman his father’s lover had been—greedy, sexually available to any man who had the price of her in his pocket.He had been reluctant to return to Ralapur at first, when Anmol had succeeded their father, but Anmol had persisted, and out of love for his brother, Arni had finally given in. Even now, he wasn’t sure if he had done the right thing.The boy who had walked away from a life that held the status of being his father’s second son into an uncertain future where he would have nothing but his own abilities, had returned to the place of his birth a very wealthy man, who commanded respect not only in his own country but througho

Orla didn’t stop to look over her shoulder to see if he was still watching her. Once she was inside her room with her door locked, she leaned back against it, unable to move whilst cold shock and nausea filled her. She started to shiver. What on earth had she done? And, more importantly, why had she done it?How had she let that happen, after all these years—years during which she had worked so assiduously to make sure that it did not? Why, when she had so easily resisted the sexual appeal of so many other men, had she behaved like that with this one? What was so special about him that he had so easily broken through the wall she had built around her own sexuality, setting it free to make its demands heard?Panic was clawing at her like a wild animal desperate to escape captivity. She couldn’t allow her sexuality to have its voice. She couldn’t allow it to exist, full stop. She knew that. Her great-aunt had warned her often enough about what was likely to happen to her—the degradation

The rush of sensation pounding through her veins wasn’t just a mixture of anger and fear; Orla knew that. But she still froze into rigid rejection when his mouth covered hers. Angrily, he nipped at her lower lip, shocking the rigidity out of her body and replacing it with a primeval angry heat of her own that came out of nowhere, compelling her to respond to him with equal ferocity.How could such blatant savagery be so erotic? How could she feel as though something inside her was breaking apart and consuming her? How could she be standing on her tiptoes to take as much of his punishing kiss as she could get?He freed one of her wrists to slide his hand into her hair, his fingers splayed against her scalp to hold her head still as he punished her mouth with kisses of such sensual savagery that they were almost a form of torture. a torture she never wanted to end.The raw sound of their increasingly laboured breath broke the calm silence of the gardens with a raw sexuality that demande