The Winners' Circle

As she stood in the small hallway that either led back to the reception, or to the bank of lifts that might take her away from the Langsford, the muffled sound of the party reached her ears and she knew she didn’t want to go back in there. She quickly retrieved her long, thick coat from the cloakroom, changed out of the painfully high heels into warmer and much more comfortable black boots and slipped into the lift before anyone could see her leave.

As Mason descended nearly thirty flights, she calculated how long she’d have until the bus came back to pick them up. Two, maybe three hours. She looked at herself in the gold-tinted mirrored panels, and instead saw two hazel eyes in a chiselled marble image of male perfection staring at her as if he knew something about her she didn’t know.

‘I had it under control,’ she whispered angrily to the image of a man she feared she might never forget.

The doors to the lift opened and she strode across the black and white chessboard foyer, her eyes cast down as she held a stern conversation with herself. She’d definitely had it under control, she assured herself as she pushed, too heavily, on the spinning circular doorway, the resulting force shoving her out onto the pavement beyond and straight into the back of...

Oof.

The air was knocked from her lungs the moment her chest met a deliciously muscled back, even if it was a bit painful. She reached out a hand to steady herself, only to find that her fingers had wrapped around a forearm, also disturbingly muscular.

‘I’m so—’

Her apology was cut short as the stranger from the balcony turned, pushing her off balance, and she would have fallen if he hadn’t pulled back the arm she was still clinging to. Instead, she found herself chest to chest with her apparent rescuer.

‘We must stop—’

‘Don’t finish that cliché,’ she warned.

‘Are you always this angry?’ he asked, the half-laughing, half-genuine curiosity dancing in his eyes.

‘No, I’m just...’ She shook her head to loosen the thoughts that were churned up by the very sight of him. ‘Usually more coherent,’ she added ruefully, an answering smile pulling at her lips.

She stepped back, away from the heat of him, the smell...something she wanted to take a little longer to discern. If she’d thought there was power in the man from across the room, being this close, being held by him, was overwhelming. Casting a glance upwards, she could see golden flecks in his impossibly dark eyes, flecks that sparkled with mischief. His lips, curved into an almost irresistible smile, were full and indiscreetly sensual, and Mason found herself responding in a way that was wholly unexpected and inappropriate.

She turned away from the sheer magnetism of the man and looked up and down the street, surprised to find it so quiet. Everyone must either be at their own party, or in Times Square, she mused as breath streamed like smoke into the night air about them.

This was silly. She had to get over him. Over herself, more like.

‘Thank you,’ she said, the words white on the air in front of them, neither, it seemed, willing to look at the other. ‘For...’ She used a hand to gesture up and behind her back towards the balcony.

From the corner of her eye, she saw his powerful shoulder shrug, and felt rather than watched his lips curve into an ironic smile. ‘You had it under control.’ A heartbeat later, ‘You’re leaving?’ his accented voice asked. She couldn’t place it. Somewhere from the Arab states, clearly. But not one she’d encountered at her father’s horse farm before.

She frowned at his question. ‘No,’ she said, once more looking up and down the strangely quiet street. She offered her own shrugged shoulder. ‘The bus coming to take us back to our accommodation isn’t arriving until one a.m.’

‘Our accommodation,’ he mused. ‘Our being you and...’

‘The other trainee jockeys,’ she said, deliberately ignoring his leading question.

‘One of whom would be...’

‘Scott. Yes. He is one of the other trainee jockeys.’

‘And you don’t want to go back to the party.’ It was a statement and a warning, all in one.

Mason pursed her lips into a pout and shook her head, still looking out into the street before her, rather than see—or feel—his eyes on her.

‘I’m hungry,’ he announced in a way that seemed to involve her somehow. ‘With absolutely no ulterior motive, would you like to go and get some food?’

She willed him silently not to hear the rumble of her stomach. The mention of food was enough to set her mouth watering. ‘Weren’t you waiting on Francesca?’ the question was out of her mouth before she could stop it, knowing that it would betray more than a passing interest in him.

‘Who?’

‘The girl you were talking to...’

‘The brash American?’

‘Yes, the brash American,’ Mason replied with a laugh at the apt description of her friend.

‘No, she turned her attentions to a duke when she realised I wasn’t interested.’

He’d moved slightly, subtly, without her noticing, so that he was now clearly within her line of sight. His eyes grazed a little too long over her features, but not in an unpleasant way. It sent sparkles spreading across her skin, and down into a stomach that was now past the ‘growling’ stage, and quickly moving on to the ‘eating itself’ stage.

‘Food would be good. Though we’re not going to find anywhere open. It’s nearly midnight on New Year’s Eve.’

‘They’ll open for me,’ he said confidently.

‘Why? What’s so special about you?’

‘I’m a prince,’ he said with all the arrogance the title implied.

* * *

The sound of her laughter still rang in Danyl’s ears as they picked their way through silent, snow-covered streets, his personal bodyguard hanging a suitably invisible distance behind. It wasn’t that no one else had ever laughed at him before, at least not since he’d met Antonio and Dimitri. It was the laugh itself. A sound so pure, so unbridled, that the only thing that matched it was the joy expanding in his chest. There was something about the fiery young woman. She was like a present that he wanted to unwrap. Slowly.

Even bundled up in the thick winter wool coat she wore, she seemed impossibly small. Something that clearly suited her chosen occupation. How on earth she was able to wrestle control over a powerful thoroughbred, he couldn’t fathom, but somehow he relished the chance to discover. The thought fired the blood in his veins and he silently cursed himself. He should know better. But as a stray tendril of that honey-brown hair escaped the confines of where she’d pushed it into the collar of her coat, he desperately wanted to sweep it back, just to feel the silken smoothness of it.

He let her lead him through the streets, almost sure she didn’t have a particular destination in mind, especially when she paused at a crossroads, looked up and down, and as if at the last moment decided on a left-hand turn.

‘So where in Australia are you from?’

‘Ah, well done. Americans often mistake my accent for English somehow. The Hunter River Valley. It’s in New South Wales.’ The longing in her voice prompted his next question.

‘You miss it?’

She looked up at him with a smile that was both wondrous and a little sad.

‘Yes.’ She shrugged her slim shoulders in the overly large winter coat. ‘This is...strange, and... unfamiliar—but oddly familiar if you know what I mean? Too many TV shows, I suppose.’

She scrunched her nose up as she chose her words. He liked it. It was cute. Though he couldn’t remember liking cute before.

‘New South Wales is beautiful. And open. Not like...’ She gestured with her hands towards the tall buildings around them in explanation.

‘It takes a while to get used to.’

‘Different to where you’re from?’ she asked, cocking her head to the side, as if trying to work something out about him.

‘Yes, very different to Ter’harn,’ he replied, putting stress on the name of his country.

‘And Ter’harn is...?’

‘On the African continent. But it has the benefit of being a coastal country, so has deserts, mountains and a seafront.’

‘What more could you want?’ she asked, smiling, stirring the pit in his stomach.

I could want not to go back. I could want not to take the throne.

But he didn’t say those things. He never said those things.

‘So why are you here in New York?’ he asked instead of voicing his secret thoughts. Because he was genuinely concerned that she’d somehow be able to pull them from the vault he kept them in.

‘To study, train and learn. I’m going to be a jockey,’ she said with pride. Genuine pride, not embarrassment or shame, not coy. ‘My father trained some of the best riders in the world.’

‘And he trained you?’

‘Oh, God, no,’ she said, laughing easily again. ‘He wanted me as far from professional riding as possible. But I had the bug. I have the bug. He...gave up a lot for me. And though he might not have wanted me to ride, I see how proud he is when I win. It’s a legacy and I want to live up to it.’

For a moment he wondered if someone in the palace might have put her up to this. But there was nothing in those eyes apart from truth. And suddenly, he was just a little jealous. He’d give almost anything to feel that way about being a future ruler. To want it, to want to be good at it. He wondered if he ever would.

They rounded the corner and found themselves at Washington Square Park, still open even at this time of night. It was littered only with the die-hards, freezing their backsides off in the middle of winter. He was about to ask about her mother when she spun around to face him.

‘So what do I call you?’ she asked, rubbing the bite of the cold winter air from her hands. ‘My liege? Your Highness? O Great One?’ she asked, turning back to cross the road, leaving him standing in a stream of her gentle mockery.

‘Danyl’s fine,’ he said with a laugh as he caught up with her. ‘And you?’

‘Mason,’ she tossed over her shoulder as she walked through the iron fencing around the park. She’d been marching ahead at such a pace, he almost walked into her as she pulled up short to look at the figures playing chess.

‘Chess!’ she exclaimed wholly unnecessarily, though he enjoyed the sheer delight in her voice. ‘I’ve always wanted to play but I never had time to learn. Not with all that was needed doing on the farm.’

‘Lucky,’ Danyl replied. ‘My father made me play almost every night. He would spend hours preaching the importance of each piece, valuing the Knight above all others and how it could teach me to be a better ruler.’ She’d turned to look at him and narrowed her eyes at his tone. Could she sense the slight bitterness he tried to hold back from his words?

She turned back to the players—old men sitting at the small tables, chessboards etched into the surfaces, wrapped in layers clutching steaming cups—and Danyl felt oddly nostalgic.

‘My father gave me a set when I left to come here for university.’

‘That’s lovely,’ she said with a gentle appreciation.

‘He kept back the Black Knight,’ Danyl amended drily.

She laughed a little and stepped back towards him. ‘I think that’s sweet,’ she decreed.

‘I think it’s silly,’ he responded, taking a step closer to her, bringing him into the warmth she emanated, that slight trace of lime and bay he’d caught earlier.

* * *

Mason looked up at the Prince before her, wondering at the ease that had descended between them. The laughter he drew from her, the memories. Usually she was much more self-contained, ‘closed off’ as Francesca had complained once. But walking with him, talking to him...it felt as if she were a different person, as if she were being her true self, but better. It was a strange feeling.

From the streets and out of the surrounding buildings, voices began to cry out. The countdown to the New Year had begun. The cries rose up around them, breaking into the moment of silence Mason might have held for ever. They were standing so close she could feel the heat from his body.

Ten, nine, eight...

He was so much taller than her, she had to angle her head back to look up at him. Rather than making her feel small, as her diminutive height usually did, it made her feel protected, surrounded by him.

‘Would it be inappropriate for me to kiss you at midnight?’ he asked. His voice, lower and huskier than it had been before. She felt, rather than saw, his palms flatten out against his legs, as if he were preventing himself from reaching for her. Until she gave him permission. Until she allowed it.

She shrugged her shoulder as the subtle tension that had hummed between them since leaving the Langsford built to fever pitch. Her heart was pounding in her chest. The way it had been as she’d led them further away from the hotel. It increased as the time to midnight decreased. Was she really going to let a prince kiss her?

Seven, six, five...

‘I suppose it’s not as if you’re spoilt for choice,’ she replied, looking around them briefly at the few groups that had spilled onto the roads around the park, before being pulled back to his gaze—the one that had not left her.

‘There’s always a choice, Mason.’

Four, three two...

He was giving her an out. He knew it, she knew it. But, looking into his deep smoked-whisky-coloured eyes, she thought she might drown, thought she might not be able to breathe if she didn’t take the chance...the chance to act on the heady desire sparkling between them.

In answer to his question, she reached up to his tie and gently tugged his head down towards hers.

One.

His firm lips pressed against hers, sending a thousand little bursts across her skin...but it wasn’t enough. As his tongue gently swiped over her bottom lip, flames licked up her spine and shivered out over her entire body. Another swipe begged entry, a third demanded it, and she opened her mouth and met his tongue with hers. Her hands came up to the lapels of his coat, pulling him towards her, clinging to them as if she could no longer stand on her own two feet. Need and desire almost crushed her. Adrenaline poured through her veins as she pulled him deeper into a kiss she would never forget.

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