“What you do to me,” he rasped, and opened his mouth over hers.
She arched up, feeling all that bare skin, warm and alive. The hairs on his chest tickled over her nipples, teasing them into points as he kissed her. His thigh was between her legs, pressing insistently into her. Making her widen her legs and gasp.
She clutched his shoulders, feeling his muscles shifting beneath his skin. Feeling a sense of wonderful freedom. This, this, must be what it was to be truly happy.
To be happy in love.
She opened her eyes.
He shifted, lifting his head. Kissing along the underside of her jaw. “Are you ready now?”
She tilted her head back. “Yes.”
“Then put my cock in you now, Wife.”
She widened her legs and reached down, grasping that heated length of flesh. Placing it at her entrance where she was wet.
She looked up at him. “I love you, Raphael.”
He gazed into her eyes and thrust into her, burying himself to the hilt with one movement. When he was fully seated, his flesh in hers, linked to her as intimately as it was possible for a man to be with a woman, he paused and said, “You are my wife and my love, Iris. Without you I die.”
He lowered himself so that he lay completely on her, his body covering hers, and he began to move. Gently rocking. Hardly thrusting at all.
The movements so subtle and yet so right that they nearly drove her insane.
Iris gasped and twined her legs around his, locking his body to hers so that they moved together.
Grinding.
His shoulders shone with sweat. His eyes were feral and he gritted his teeth as he worked his cock into her. Seeking her pleasure and his.
She moaned, long and low, wanting to arch, to thrash, to scream. Instead she opened her mouth and bit his shoulder, tasting salt.
Tasting want.
Then she gasped. “Please.”
“What do you want?” he whispered in her ear, an incubus, dark and alive and in her. “Tell me. What do you need?”
“I …” Her mouth opened, wordless.
“Tell me,” his smoky voice curled around her.
“You.”
He chuckled, dark and low.
“This?” He thrust short and hard into her, the impact sending jolts of pleasure through her body. “Yes, that,” he murmured to himself as if pleased, and did it again.
And again.
Until the heat between them combusted. Until she felt hot liquid wash over her limbs. Until she looked up and wondered why she’d ever thought his gray eyes emotionless.
He was watching her with passion. With lust.
With so much love.
She felt tears in her eyes.
He groaned above her, his hips jerking without rhythm, but all the while he watched her with those eyes.
And when he at last stilled and rested his sweaty forehead against hers, he whispered, “I love you.”
Epilogue
Now the days went by and time trundled on until at last it came to be that a year and a day had passed.
Ann took the few things she had brought with her into the barren wastelands. Everything fit into a small sack. All but her mother’s pink rock. That she held in her hand.
She turned to the Rock King. “I’ll away, then.”
He sat by the door to his grim tower and he didn’t look up. “Indeed.”
She hesitated. He’d never shown her affection, but his arms had been warm in the night. “Will you bid me farewell?”
“Farewell, my wife.”
She took a step, but then whirled to face him again. “You could come with me!”
At last he looked at her, his black eyes grave.
“No, I cannot.”
Ann frowned. “Why not?”
“Because I am cursed to remain here,” he replied simply.
She looked at him, this stern, gray man. Looked at the ugly black tower and the surrounding barren landscape.
Then she looked to where she knew her father’s hut lay. “I’ll come back.”
“No,” he said gently, “you won’t.”
And she wanted to argue, but she knew he was right. No one came back to him.
At that moment her heart broke for him.
Ann dropped her little sack. “Then I’ll stay with you.”
For the second time only she saw surprise in his eyes. “What?”
She nodded. “I’m staying here with you as your wife.”
He stood, his fists clenched. “For how long?”
“For always.” And she held out her mother’s pink pebble to him.
As she said the words the ground trembled beneath her feet. The tower shuddered and fell, rocks tumbling down to be swallowed by the earth. All around them green grass, verdant trees, and blue streams billowed up from the ground, overwhelming the dull rock. Where once the black tower squatted, a shining gold-and-white castle stood.
The doors opened and a crowd of people swarmed out, soldiers and ladies in fancy dresses, farmers and townspeople, children and old crones.
Ann turned to look in astonishment at the Rock King, but he had changed as well. Where before he had been dreary gray and black, now his hair was a burnished brown, and his eyes glowed clear blue. He wore fine velvet clothes in shades of red and green and purple, and she fell to her knees before him, for she knew him to be a king.
But the Rock King smiled and drew her up to stand before him. “Sweet Ann, my wife, my queen. You have broken a seven-hundred-year-old curse, one that bound me, my people, and my lands. In all my many cursed years I have never known anyone as kind and loving as you. Will you stay by my side and rule my kingdom with me as my beloved bride?”
“Oh yes,” Ann said. “And I think, if you agree, that we ought to have at least a dozen children and live happily ever after.”
“Wise woman,” said the Rock King, and kissed his queen.
—From The Rock King
FIVE YEARS LATER …
“Did you know they bloomed here?” Iris asked her husband.
It was spring and they stood on the banks of the small river that ran beside the ruins of the old cathedral at Dyemore Abbey. The stone arch rose into a clear, blue sky and below, the scattered stones that had once made up the cathedral were carpeted with yellow. Hundreds of thousands of daffodils, wild in this part of England, had taken over the old ruins and made a home for themselves. The view was gorgeous. The daffodils rolled in a yellow-dotted wave right up to the stream itself and splashed over onto the opposite bank, disappearing into the little wood there.
“No,” Raphael said. “Or if I did, I don’t remember.”
He lifted his face to the sky, a smile curling his lips.
He smiled more now—not frequently, to be sure, but often enough for Iris to know that he was happy with their love and what it had brought.
A sharp bark made her turn her head. Tansy came racing through the flowers, almost taller than she, her jaws wide in doggy joy. Behind her, and much slower on chubby legs, was the Earl of Cyril, better known as Johnny, aged nearly three and the apple of his papa’s eye.
“Mama,” said Johnny when he at last made her side. “Fwowers.”
He held up two daffodils much the worse for wear.
“How lovely, darling,” Iris replied, taking the offering. “Wherever did you find them?”
Johnny, who was a terribly serious child, turned and pointed to the vast sea of daffodils. “Dere.”
And Iris heard the most wonderful sound in the world: a deep, rich chuckle, coming from beside her. She turned and smiled at her husband.
He still had times when he was moody, and once in a while dark thoughts seemed to consume him, but especially since the birth of Johnny those times had been more and more infrequent. And when he had started laughing—just before Johnny’s first birthday—Iris had known true joy.
They were still rare enough, Raphael’s laughs, that she cherished each one. Was thankful for each one.
Because she knew what a journey her husband had had to make to come from despair to happiness.
“Papa, hungwy,” announced Johnny, and held his arms up imperiously to his father.
Iris raised her eyebrows. Johnny had inherited his father’s height and was a sturdy little boy. She could no longer carry him—not in her condition—and she was secretly amused that Raphael indulged him enough to carry him all the way back to Dyemore Abbey.
But he bent and lifted their son, setting him high on his shoulders, where the similarity between the black curls on the little boy’s head and the man’s ebony locks was unmistakable.
Johnny settled with the complacent satisfaction of a child who knows he will be taken care of.
Raphael turned to Iris and glanced at her swollen belly, his eyebrows drawing together. “Are you sure you can walk back to the Abbey? We should not have come so far today.”
She rolled her eyes at him. “I’m fine. The baby won’t come for another two months at least.”
“Very well,” her husband decreed, “but we shall go slowly, and I want you to take my arm over the rocks.”
“Of course.” Iris stood on tiptoe and kissed him beneath the interested blue eyes of their son.
And then, with Tansy bounding by their side, they went home for tea.
Don’t miss Hugh and Alf’s story. Turn the page for an excerpt of Duke of Pleasure
Chapter One
Now once there were a White Kingdom and a Black Kingdom that had been at war since time began.…
—From The Black Prince and the Golden Falcon
JANUARY 1742
LONDON, ENGLAND
Hugh Fitzroy, the Duke of Kyle, did not want to die tonight, for three very good reasons.
It was half past midnight as he eyed the toughs slinking out of the shadows up ahead in the cold alley near Covent Garden. He moved the bottle of fine Viennese wine from his right arm to his left and drew his sword. He’d dined with the Habsburg ambassador earlier this evening, and the wine was a gift.
Firstly, Kit, his elder son—and, formally, the Earl of Staffin—was only seven. Far too young to be orphaned and inherit the dukedom.
Next to Hugh was a linkboy with a lantern. The boy was frozen, his lantern a small pool of light in the narrow alley. The youth’s eyes were wide and frightened. He couldn’t be more than fourteen. Hugh glanced over his shoulder. Several men were bearing down on them from the entrance to the alley. He and the linkboy were trapped.
Secondly, Peter, his younger son, was still suffering nightmares from the death of his mother only five months before. What would his father’s death so soon after his mother’s do to the boy?
They might be common footpads. Unlikely, though. Footpads usually worked in smaller numbers, were not this organized, and were after money, not death.
Assassins, then.
And thirdly, His Majesty had recently assigned Hugh an important job: destroy the Lords of Chaos. On the whole, Hugh liked to finish his jobs. Brought a nice sense of completion at the end of the day, if nothing else.
Right, then.
“If you can, run,” Hugh said to the linkboy. “They’re after me, not you.”
Then he pivoted and attacked the closest group—the three men behind them.
Their leader, a big fellow, raised a club.
Hugh slashed him across the throat. The leader went down in a spray of scarlet. But his second was already bringing his own club down in a bone-jarring blow to Hugh’s left shoulder. Hugh juggled the bottle of wine, seized it again, and kicked the man in the balls. The second doubled over and stumbled against the third. Hugh punched over the man’s head and into the face of the third.
There were running footsteps from behind Hugh.
He spun to face the other end of the alley and another attacker.
Caught the descending knife with his blade and slid his sword into the hand holding the knife.
A howling scream, and the knife clattered to the icy cobblestones in a splatter of blood.
The knife man lowered his head and charged like an enraged bull.
Hugh flattened all six foot four inches of himself against the filthy alley wall, stuck out his foot, and tripped Charging Bull into the three men he’d already dealt with.
The linkboy, who had been cowering against the opposite wall, took the opportunity to squirm through the constricted space between the assailants and run away.
Which left them all in darkness, save for the light of the half moon.
Hugh grinned.
He didn’t have to worry about hitting his compatriots in the dark.
He rushed the man next in line after the Bull. They’d picked a nice alley, his attackers. No way out—save the ends—but in such close quarters he had a small advantage: no matter how many men were against him, the alley was so cramped that only two could come at him at a time. The rest were simply bottled up behind the others, twiddling their thumbs.
Hugh slashed the man and shouldered past him. Got a blow upside the head for his trouble and saw stars. Hugh shook his head and elbowed the next—hard—in the face, and kicked the third in the belly. Suddenly he could see the light at the end of the alley.
Hugh knew men who felt that gentlemen should never run from a fight. Of course many of these same men had never been in a real fight.
Besides, he had those three very good reasons.
Actually, now that he thought of it, there was a fourth reason he did not want to die tonight.
Hugh ran to the end of the alley, his bottle of fine Viennese wine cradled in the crook of his left arm, his sword in the other fist. The cobblestones were iced over and his momentum was such that he slid into the lit street.
Where he found another half-dozen men bearing down on him from his left.
Bloody hell.
Fourthly, he hadn’t had a woman in his bed in over nine months, and to die in such a drought would be a particularly unkind blow from fate, goddamn it.
Hugh nearly dropped the blasted wine as he scrambled to turn to the right. He could hear the men he’d left in the alley rallying even as he sprinted straight into the worst part of London: the stews of St Giles. They were right on his heels, a veritable army of assassins. The streets here were narrow, ill lit, and cobbled badly, if at all. If he fell because of ice or a missing cobblestone, he’d never get up again.
He turned down a smaller alley and then immediately down another.
Behind him he heard a shout. Christ, if they split up, they would corner him again.
He hadn’t enough of a lead, even if a man of his size could easily hide in a place like St Giles. Hugh glanced up as he entered a small courtyard, the buildings on all four sides leaning in. Overhead the moon was veiled in clouds, and it almost looked as if a boy were silhouetted, jumping from one rooftop to another …
Which …
Was insane.
Think. If he could circle and come back the way he’d entered St Giles, he could slip their noose.
A narrow passage.
Another cramped courtyard.
Ah, Christ.
They were already here, blocking the two other exits.
Hugh spun, but the passage he’d just run from was crowded with more men, almost a dozen in all.
Well.
He put his back to the only wall left to him and straightened.
He rather wished he’d tasted the wine. He was fond of Viennese wine.
A tall man in a ragged brown coat and a filthy red neckcloth stepped forward. Hugh half expected him to make some sort of a speech, he looked that full of himself. Instead he drew a knife the size of a man’s forearm, grinned, and licked the blade.
Oh, for—
Hugh didn’t wait for whatever other disgusting preliminaries Knife Licker might feel were appropriate to the occasion. He stepped forward and smashed the bottle of very fine Viennese wine over the man’s head.
Then they were on him.
He slashed and felt the jolt to his arm a
s he hit flesh.
Swung and raked the sword across another’s face.
Staggered as two men slammed into him.
Another hit him hard in the jaw.
And then someone clubbed him behind the knees.
He fell to his knees on the icy ground, growling like a bleeding, baited bear.
Raised an arm to defend his head …
And …
Someone dropped from the sky right in front of him.
Facing his attackers.
Darting, wheeling, spinning.
Defending him so gracefully.
With two swords.
Hugh staggered upright again, blinking blood out of his eyes—when had he been cut?
And saw—a boy? No, a slight man in a grotesque half mask, motley, floppy hat, and boots, battling fiercely with his attackers. Hugh just had time to think: Insane, before his defender was thrown back against him.
Hugh caught the man and had another thought, which was: Tits?
And then he set the woman—most definitely a woman although in a man’s clothing—on her feet and put his back to hers and fought as if their lives depended on it.
Which they did.
There were still eight or so of the attackers left, and although they weren’t trained, they were determined. Hugh slashed and punched and kicked, while his feminine savior danced an elegant dance of death with her swords. When he smashed the butt of his sword into the skull of one of the last men, the remaining two looked at each other, picked up a third, and took to their heels.
Panting, Hugh glanced around the courtyard. It was strewn with groaning men, most still very much alive, though not dangerous at the moment.
He peered at the masked woman. She was tiny, barely reaching his shoulder. How was it she’d saved him from certain, ignoble death? But she had. She surely had.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice gruff. He cleared his throat. “I—”
She grinned, a quicksilver flash, and put her left hand on the back of his neck to pull his head down.
And then she kissed him.
Alf pressed her lips against Kyle’s lovely mouth and thought her heart might beat right out of her breast at her daring.