If these are my last days on this island, I should at least make the most of them.

Nick takes my face in his hands and kisses me hard as he gently pushes me back onto the sofa. I curl my legs around his waist as he grinds his pelvis into mine. He may actually remember to get me off this time.

He slides his hands between my legs and I thrust my hips upward, primed to receive his touch, but all he does is push my panties down.

“No. Get up,” I say a bit too impatiently.

“What’s wrong?”

I push his shoulders back and it takes him a moment to get the hint. He sits back on the other end of the sofa so I can sit up. I have half a mind to tell him he’s doing it wrong, but I can’t. Our last days on this island are supposed to be pleasant.

Besides, I’m pregnant with another man’s child. I can’t have sex with Nick. Wouldn’t that make me a whore? Even if Daimon is dead, he’s dead at my hand. So, technically, that would make me a black widow.

“I’m sorry. I’m just dying to take a shower and a nap. I was a little worried about you choking on your vomit last night, so I didn’t get much sleep.” I stand from the sofa and he stands after me. “I’ll be back later. Or you can come by my place in a few hours.”

He looks a little dissatisfied with this explanation, and with my leaving him with a throbbing bulge in his pants, but he just nods. “Whatever you say. I’ll come by later to check on you.”

We say our goodbyes and I hurry home. After a quick shower, I don’t bother reapplying any ointment or bandage to my scrape. I just dab it dry and slip into a nightgown. Then I curl up in bed, hugging my pillow between my thighs.

“Where are you, Daimon?” I whisper my plea to the bedroom window. “I’m pregnant.”

I adjust the pillow between my legs and the friction sends a tiny shock of pleasure into my clit. Closing my eyes, I imagine it’s Daimon’s bulge, which is a bit more impressive than Nick’s. I wrap my legs around the pillow as I slide it back and forth.

“Oh, Daimon,” I breathe, imagining Daimon’s jeans popping at the seams over his hard cock.

Up and down, forward and backward, he grinds into me until he can’t take it anymore. He must taste me.

I kick off my panties and spread my legs wide, then I reach for my throbbing clit.

“Oh, God! Daimon!”

My hips buck against his mouth as he licks me up and down then in a slow swirling pattern. Oh, that tongue. That beautiful tongue.

“Yes, Daimon. I’m coming.”

My body convulses and as my pussy clenches intermittently, releasing a river of juices for Daimon. I take a moment to collect myself, then I roll onto my side and pull the covers up to my chin. I need to get some rest. Maybe I’ll just stay in bed all day.

Tomorrow, I’ll spend my last day on this island with Nick. And I’ll make love to him, whether he makes me come or not. Because life isn’t always about what you can get. Sometimes you have to give more than you receive.

Then we’ll leave for Monaco. Nick will imagine a beautiful reunion. While I imagine something a bit more bloody.

Alex Carmichael is dead.

Daimon Rousseau may be dead.

But after tomorrow, the Prince and Princess of Monaco will definitely be dead.

Chapter Ten DAIMON

I cut through the neighbor’s backyard to get away from Alex’s cottage. I’m not surprised to find eighty-year-old Ignacio pulling weeds in his strawberry garden.

“Hola, Ignacio!” I shout to him.

He straightens out his crooked back and turns toward the sound of my voice. Flashing me a glorious toothless smile, he waves vigorously. He doesn’t know my name, so he doesn’t return the greeting verbally. All he knows, from the first time I passed through here last night is that I live on a forty-foot sailboat in the harbor on the other side of the island. And that I’m in love with the new girl next door.

I had to be up front with him about this. Then he wouldn’t mind me cutting through his backyard every once in a while. Everyone understands a person in love acts irrationally.

Which is why I’ve given Alex the benefit of the doubt that she purposely left me alive. If she had wanted to kill me, I’m certain I’d be dead. And what I’ve seen while observing her so far only solidifies this theory in my mind.

Alex knew exactly how to kill me without leaving any evidence. The plan she executed at the masquerade ball was not something the average woman her age could pull off. Her only mistake was believing she could set aside her feelings for me long enough to follow through with her plan. Well, that was her second mistake.

Her first was watering down the tranquilizer so she would have time to divulge her plan to me before I fell unconscious. She watered it down too much. I had to pretend to be unconscious, then I had to hold my breath for three minutes and pretend to be dead. I was drowsy enough that I couldn’t fight her off. And I was lucky enough that the drugs slowed my heart rate and weakened my pulse. In her distraught state, she was sloppy when checking if I was truly dead.

After she left, I assumed she would go straight to the airport. So I stumbled out of the hotel and caught a cab to her apartment. The detective in me needed evidence. I needed to know where she was going so that when the drugs wore off, I could find her and make her pay. I didn’t expect to walk into her apartment and hear her sobbing in the shower.

I almost walked into the bathroom and told her I’d forgiven her, but I kept imagining my fingers wrapped tightly around her throat. I knew I had to leave before I did something I would regret later.

Searching her apartment, I found a laptop under her bed with all her flight information. I emailed the itinerary to myself and wiped her hard drive. Then I went through her trash and found the fruit that I had given her. It was just too tempting not to put it back in the fridge to send a message.

I’m convinced Alex knows I’m still alive. In a sick way, Alex needs me as an adversary as much as she needs my cock inside her. As the Americans say, she wants her cake and eat it too.

Well, I am more than ready to give Alex the whole fucking cake, and the cock. But first, I need to make her pay for almost killing me. She’s young. She has many lessons to learn. And I’m going to have a lot of fun being her teacher.

I understand the cruelty in making her pay for a crime that was meant as retribution for my own crime, but she doesn’t understand what happened with her father. The truth is that her father’s death was completely unnecessary. Some of it was error on my part, but mostly it was his own stubbornness. I underestimated the old man’s prowess. He may have been forty-nine years old, but he had a lot of fight left in him from his army days. I should have known this, after the months of research I did on Alex and her family.

I wasn’t supposed to do any research on this job other than Alex’s daily habits. But watching her live her life in the dark sparked my curiosity. I had to find out more. And that’s when I found she’d been treated like a dirty secret for most of her life.

What kind of parents keep their daughter hidden in a dark basement for eighteen years? Their entire house was void of any evidence they even had a child. This madness and the fact that the Princess of Monaco wanted her killed, turned Alex into a mythical figure in my mind. Why would anyone want to hide her away? And why did the princess want her dead?

None of it made sense. Until I traced the curves of Alex’s mouth with my finger and discovered I’d traced those same lips before, with my tongue, when I fucked the princess.

It’s not something I’m particularly proud of. But a forty-two-year-old ex-supermodel is still a very sweet conquest. And I’d never been with a woman twelve years my senior. I’m always willing to try something new. It’s hard to say no when your new boss tries to seduce you. Especially when she is promising you a $20 million payday.