He did not miss the way her gaze darted to the open V of his shirt and the naked muscle inside. She burned for him as much as he burned for her. Their first mating would be fierce and satisfying.
“I do not want convenience,” he said, his mind conjuring images of the night of their betrothal. Yes, the ribbons would come in handy. Perhaps he’d start teaching her here, gently tying her wrists behind the back of the chair, pushing open her night rail, lowering his fingers between her legs…
“What your prophecy wants, then,” she said. “You must marry me to fulfill the prophecy and save your kingdom. I need a husband—at least my mother very much wants me to have one. She has a freehold of this house for her lifetime, but the keeping of me is dear.”
He pressed a kiss to the crown of her head while his fingers discovered the delights of her. Her aureoles were tight, firm little peaks for his touch. He was beginning to lose the thread of the conversation. He knew English very well, but his brain started to revert to Nvengarian, and he had to think hard to translate. “You are not an object to be passed from hand to hand.”
She smiled sadly. “I am well-versed in aristocratic marriages. The higher-born the family, the more a daughter becomes an object to be passed from hand to hand, as you say. Marriages aren’t like in the fairy tales, where they fall in love and live happily ever after. It is how much land do I get, and what alliances can I make, and how can her father influence my career in Commons?”
He wanted to laugh, but he’d never dream of it while her eyes held so much sorrow. “What you say is true. I, too, know much about aristocratic marriages.”
Indeed, not one duke or duchess or prince he knew had married for love. It had all been about connections and who was related to whom. The dukes kept mistresses, and their duchesses sought Damien. Marry for dynastic ambition, keep a lover for the tender side, were the unwritten rules of aristocratic marriage.
“But we have already fallen in love,” he murmured. “Our fairy tale is real.”
“What happens when the prophecy is fulfilled?” she asked, her voice unsteady. “Will we still be in love?”
He wanted to groan with the pleasure of touching her. He brushed fingertips over the tight points of her nipples again, wanting to feel them against his chest. She must be wet and ready for him, he sensed it. All he had to do was coax her. “I hope so, my love. This feeling came unlookedfor, but I do not want it to go away.”
She turned her head to look up at him, her red lips near his own. The scent of her made his already crazed brain madder still. “We fell in love for the prophecy’s convenience,” she said.
“Mayhap.” He caught her nipple between his fingers, tugged it. She gave a little noise of pain, and he released her, but his hardness ached. “You admit we are in love, then?”
“I can find no other explanation for these feelings.”
Her words were formal, but her voice shook. Her breath against his skin sent an explosive spark through his body. He wanted her with the mindlessness of an animal. Any longer in this room, and he wouldn’t be able to stop himself. His control slipped again.
“This is dangerous,” he said, almost to himself. “But I wanted to see you. No, I needed to see you, not just through the convenient peephole.”
Her lips parted, showing him the waiting moisture inside. “Peephole?”
“In the panel. Do you not know of it?”
“Oh, behind the night table? I never pay it any mind.”
“I will have Petri nail it shut. Else I might be tempted to kneel there all night.” Watching her comb out her hair, braiding it, perhaps, to keep it neat in the night. Then to draw off her dressing gown and walk, bare under her night rail, to her bed. The cotton nightgown would cling to the curves of her body, sticking, perhaps, to any damp place.
She’d climb into her bed, lay her head on the pillow, and close her eyes, unaware that he watched, in pain and need, from behind the wall.
“Most definitely I will have him nail it shut. And have him prepare me a cold bath while he is at it.”
She leaned her forehead against his cheek, her eyes half closed while she savored his touch on her bosom. Her breasts were heavy in his hands. He could pull the night rail down and suckle her, taste her until he was satisfied.
He did not believe a day would come when he was satisfied with her.
“I do not want you to leave,” she breathed.
“I do not want to, either.” He traced her cheek, his silver ring winking. “But mayhap I should.”
“No.” She slid her hand up the back of his arm, palm warm on his tricep. “Not yet. I need to touch you. I do not know why.” Her fingers bit through his shirt, points of desperation.
“I know why. It is the same need I feel.” He smiled into her skin. “We will burst into flames, I think, my Penelope.”
“Perhaps we ought to.” Her hands moved from his arms to his shoulders, then to his neck, touching the hollow of his bared throat. He imagined those interested hands roving the intimate places of his body, and he groaned softly, the pain in his groin rising.
She kissed the corner of his mouth. Her lips were innocent, wanting to learn. He slid his hands down her night rail and kissed her deeply.
He tasted sweet innocence experiencing the first longings of a woman. She swirled her tongue against his in an unpracticed manner, and the heat inside him began to beat. Blood lust soared, and his reason began to drain away.
Dear God, I am being punished for every sin I have ever committed.
He’d done them all, lechery, wrath, envy, gluttony, avarice, sloth, and most of all pride. His damned pride. The curse of Nvengarians, pride was.
He’d bedded some of the most beautiful women in the world. He’d gambled on risky investments and won. He’d literally dodged assassins’ bullets that missed him by hairs-breadths. Such attempts made him wilder than ever, as he celebrated in heady joy that he’d cheated death once again.
He’d once made love to a duchess on the parapet of a castle in Bohemia, while a river raged at the bottom of a seventy-foot drop, and her husband slept in the bedroom not ten feet away. An hour before, he’d thwarted another assassination attempt; this one, a man waiting in his bedchamber with a loaded pistol. Damien had heard the click of the flint striking the pan just in time.
The assassin had been taken, and in his rush of heightened elation and fear, Damien had gone to the duchess and dragged her out on the parapet, balancing between life and death while he ground himself into her.
The duchess had made certain all her friends knew, of course, and after that, Damien’s reputation among women had soared. There was nothing, they said, nothing Prince Damien would not do.
Penelope’s fingers tangled his hair. She played her lips over his, her eager kisses driving him wild.
Too soon, and the prophecy will be broken. The words pounded in his brain, as though someone else spoke them.
Why not have her? another, more treacherous voice suggested. Tip her to the floor, strip off the dressing gown, and have her right there. They would marry; what difference did it make whether he took her now or later? The betrothal ceremony would be only a few days hence. Why wait?
It took the iron will that had seen him alive through the mountains of Nvengaria and into the Transylvanian Alps, alone with nothing but the rags on his back, to stop kissing Penelope.
He slowly eased his mouth from hers, her little whimper of regret driving him wild. He took her hands in a firm grip and clasped them between his own.
“Penelope, this is the most difficult thing I have ever said in my life, but we must stop.”
Chapter Eight
She gazed at him through half-closed eyes, her lips swollen and moist. She was ripe for bedding, and a soconvenient bed stood nearby.
“I do not want to stop,” she said.
“I know, love. But if I lose this, if I lose this gamble…” He’d stand against a cold wall in Nvengaria with muskets aimed at him. Alexander would smi
le and take the first shot. And Damien would deserve it for not fulfilling his bargain to his people, for not being their hope.
He could have refused the ring and told Misk and his men to take themselves off when they’d found him in Paris. Instead, he’d realized that he had a chance to put right all that his father had destroyed. A fierce protectiveness had awoken inside him, which had only grown when he’d ridden at long last over the pass between the Carpathian and Nvengarian mountains and looked down to the lush river valley that was Nvengaria. His home.
“Gamble?” Penelope asked.
Damien drew a ragged breath. He had once taken refuge with Franciscan monks in Italy, and one of them had taught Damien how to clear the mind of thought and bodily desires. Damien had never mastered the art of meditation like the monk had, but he’d learned how to calm himself when the need arose.
The peace he’d found in the monastery eluded him here, but breathing gave him something to focus on besides Penelope’s body.
“I will win,” he said, teeth clenched. “We both will.”
“You think the prophecy is making us want each other?” she asked. “That this is not natural?”
Damien raked his gaze to Penelope’s open night rail and the shadow of her breasts within. “No, me wanting you is perfectly natural. You are a beautiful woman.”
She blushed, suddenly shy. “You think me beautiful?”
He lifted her hand and licked her fingertip. “Your beauty is—how do you say?—a fact. Not my opinion.”
“No one has ever expressed such an opinion.”
She cast down her gaze, lashes shielding her eyes. Not maidenly bashfulness; she was embarrassed.
In London, young ladies tried to be thin sticks, starving themselves to look like narrow cylinders in their gowns. Pale hair, pale faces, pale lips, pale hands—this was the pinnacle of beauty, they thought. Walking marble statues, but they were nothing so lush as real Hellenistic statuary. The Greeks had known how to sculpt a woman.
In Nvengaria, the portrait of beauty was wildness. Black hair, blue eyes, high color, a ripe, womanly body. Nvengarians were a temperamental people. They lived at the extremes of anger, joy, love, fear, and elation. Not very restful, but they did not hide their feelings behind stilted conversation and rigid standards of acceptance.
If Damien took Penelope to Nvengaria, hordes of men would swarm about her, admiring her, wanting her. A primal protectiveness welled inside him. If he’d been an ordinary gentleman, he could count on fighting many duels for her. But he was the Imperial Prince, and she would be Imperial Princess. Touching Penelope without permission would be punishable by death.
So sorry, gentlemen. The lady is mine.
He wrapped his tongue about her middle finger and suckled it. His self-control had gone to hell, he who’d always prided himself on his control. He gave a woman pleasure and took pleasure for himself, but always it was controlled. He never engaged his heart, and neither did they. His feelings for Penelope made a mockery of all that.
Penelope’s gaze riveted to his mouth around her finger, her eyes heavy. Knowing he could have her but not yet made his blood boil. She tasted so good. She was warm and salty, and he wanted to suck on her forever.
He deliberately removed her finger from his mouth. He couldn’t resist licking his lips, though, scraping up all the taste of her he could.
“I need to leave you and walk to the passage and back to my room,” he said.
She nodded. “That is probably best.”
“The passage will be dark.” He remained fixed in place. “After a year in a dungeon, I dislike dark, closed-in places.”
“Take my candle,” she said, then her brows drew together in concern. “How horrible. I did not even know dungeons still existed.”
“They do in Nvengaria. My father threw me into one when I was a boy, beneath the castle at Narato. It is remote, damp, and nasty. His lackeys ripped me from bed in the middle of night, half suffocating me. The next thing I knew, I was in a cell with my wrists in chains and the door closing. It was dark.” He drew a quick breath, ageold demons swooping at him from the past. “Penelope, I’ve never been anywhere so dark.”
“How old were you?” she asked gently.
“Twelve.”
“Why would he do such a thing?” she asked, angry.
“My father? I am surprised it took him twelve years to act against me.” He toyed with her fingers while he answered. “A faction had gathered to overthrow him and put me on the throne. With their leader as regent, of course, and me to be their puppet. My father caught them and had them all executed in a gruesome manner. He could not prove I had any intention of going along with it, but to be safe, he locked me away. It took his Council of Dukes a year to convince him to let me out again. Public opinion was turning against him, and they feared an uprising. So my father set me free in a public ceremony—the prodigal son forgiven—then, in the middle of the night again, his men came for me and dragged me into the mountains and abandoned me. My father spun a yarn of sending me away to school in France, then later claimed that I’d run away on my own, because I hated Nvengaria. The truth was, he forbade me to come back. If I returned, it would be to face secret execution. Only the fact that the people of Nvengaria liked me and would never forgive my father if he got rid of me openly, kept him from giving the order to have me killed outright.”
He stopped short, closing his mouth with effort, wondering where the flow of words had come from. He’d never told any living soul the truth of what had happened. Either they already knew, like Petri, or he had no wish to speak of it.
Penelope had done the same with her story of Reuben White’s betrayal. Was the prophecy making them bare their souls to each other? Did it want them stripped naked before one another, and not only in the enjoyable way?
She laid a gentle hand on his arm. “I am sorry.”
Candlelight gleamed on her tawny hair. He wrapped one glistening golden curl around his finger. “I survived. Petri found me, and together, we swarmed across Europe and conquered it. To a boy, it was an adventure; do not feel too sorry for me.”
“Was it?”
Truth snaked out of his mouth again. “No. I was damned terrified. I knew my father would send assassins after me, and he did. Petri and I lived hand to mouth, laboring in fields for food or a bed for the night, or we outright begged if we could not find work. I, the spoiled prince, was kicked in the face by burghers with nothing better to do.”
He omitted the few who had wanted them for a different sort of labor, two handsome Nvengarian boys, and how they’d had to fight to get away.
She slid her palm across his lawn-clad forearm. “That is horrible.”
Compassion rang in her voice. She cared. She was imagining that scared youth and wanting to comfort him. He’d left the boy behind years and years ago, but the tiny part of him who was still that child reached for her comfort.
Oh, no, no, no, he thought, wanting to laugh. You tried to snare me with desire, now you are trying to snare me with her shining compassion.
And I’m talking back to a stubborn, lust-driven prophecy.
“Penelope,” he said. “I will take your candle and return to my room.”
“Yes,” she answered.
He remained on one knee before her, his fingers tangled in her hair, his gaze searching hers. “I cannot seem to move. Perhaps you should stand up and walk away from me.”
“I will try,” she said.
She drew her fingers down the inside of his arm. They played there, exploring muscle and sinew, while she flicked her gaze to his lips.
Damien said, “‘Tis not working.”
“No,” she answered.
“You could shout for Mr. Tavistock. I am certain he would haul me away, and possibly shoot me.”
She smiled, her plump lips curving. “I cannot. I would be compromised.”
He shared her smile. “I can think of far more entertaining ways to compromise you than being shot by your alm
ost-steppapa.”
“You should not think of them, then.”
“True. These pantaloons are already extremely tight.”
Her gaze dropped to the buttons of his pantaloons in a gratifying manner. He had a sudden vision of her snaking her delicate hands to his fly and popping open each button, releasing his arousal from its tight prison. It would tumble out, rock hard, and she would, with wonderment, trace it with her fingers.
He would teach her then, to lean forward and take it into her mouth.
“God and all his saints, help a sinner,” he said huskily.
She raised her eyes. In them he read that she’d been envisioning the same thing. “What do we do?”
“I want you,” he said. “I want to lay you down and come into you until you scream for me. Then I want you to beg for more. I want it so much I will say these crude things to a gently born lady and not care.”
She looked at him with startled eyes and did not answer.
“I have offended you,” he said. “Thank God. You will slap me and tell me I am a rake and a libertine and call for your servants to drag me away.”
“No,” she breathed. “I want you inside me.”
He cupped her face. “Not good.”
“I know. But I ache for you. I want you to touch me here.…” She slid her fingers down her body to where her dressing gown folded in her lap.
He caught her hand. “Do not show me. Else I’ll never leave before tupping you in this chair.”
She gave him a bemused look. “Tupping. A word I have never used.”
“It masks another word I long to use. A good English word that is short and effective.”
A mischievous gleam entered her eye. “I believe I know what the word is. Meagan told me. It is—”
He thrust his fingers across her lips. “Do not say it. Do not, for God’s sake, Penelope.” Or he’d ravish her. He knew it. He’d rip her flimsy nightclothes from her body and thrust himself straight into her.
A madness had entered him, making him feverish and randy and barbaric. He’d descended from mountain tribes that barely contained their violence to build a kingdom, and that feral violence lurked close to the surface.