A Prince For Sophie (5 page)

But he had words to say to her, and he needed to get them said. “Sweetheart, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking over the last few days. I couldn’t see how we could fix this rift between us, as much as I wanted to. And then, last night—” he paused, for the beauty of what had passed in the night between them staggered him, even now. When she blushed, he was delighted. He kissed her lips lightly. “After last night, I realized that it was simple, really. My Hannah, I can live without my crown, but I cannot live without you.”

“Alex…what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I love you, and if the prospect of becoming a queen is too much for you to manage, then I’ll abdicate. Michael is ready to be king. He’ll be a good king, I think.”

When she cupped his face and kissed him, his heart caught.

“Yes, my love, Michael will make a very good king. Someday. If you don’t mind, I don’t want to think about that day right now. It floors me that you would give up so much just so we can be together. But it’s not necessary. I…I let what
was
get in the way of my seeing what
is
. I’m so sorry for that. Sorry to have put us both through this turmoil.”

“Now it’s my turn to ask. What are you saying?”

“I love you, Alex. Who you are. What you are. I love what we are together, and that’s the most important thing of all. You’re not Jordan. You’re not looking for a workhorse to marry. Whatever there is to be done in the weeks and years to come, we’ll do it together. I won’t ever feel alone with you.”

He thought it would be impossible to love her any more than he already did. He’d been wrong. “Sweetheart, of course you’ll never feel alone. Because you’ll never
be
alone.”

He couldn’t wait another moment. His arms around her, he kissed her, his tongue slow and thorough in his tasting of her. As always, she responded to him so sweetly, so completely. He felt his penis harden, and knew if he were to touch her between her gorgeous thighs, she’d be wet. They were destined, he was certain, to share many years of laughter and love and passion. And oh, how he was ready for their life together to begin!

He weaned his lips from hers, then cupped her face with his hands.

“Hannah, I love you. Will you marry me?”

“Yes. Oh yes, please, Alex. I want more than anything to be your wife.”

Nothing would do but that he taste her again. The kiss went from sweet to carnal in a heartbeat. He might actually have acted on the desire that was streaming through him, but something caught his attention.

He broke the kiss and looked around. “Do you hear music?” he asked, bringing his attention back to Hannah.

She frowned, and cocked her head to one side. Then she smiled. “I do. It sounds like the
Halleluiah Chorus
.”

“It does indeed. I wonder what that means?”

Hannah laughed, got to her feet, and reached out to him.

“I have no idea, Your Majesty. I only know that right now, I want you. Shall we go to your bed?”

“No, my darling. Let’s go to ours.”

She was going to be a few minutes late, but that suited her fine.

Sophie reasoned that if she entered the formal reception room after everyone else was inside, there would be no opportunity for Stephan to waylay her again, as he’d done twice already.

She’d had an enjoyable breakfast in the kitchen that morning. To her absolute delight, the staff soon relaxed with her there, and they carried on as she imagined they did most mornings, bantering back and forth, happy, it seemed, in their work.

It had been a slice of normal life, an occurrence extremely rare in Sophie’s experience. Philip and Rachel seemed more at ease with that transition from royalty to normalcy. When Philip was at work, she was certain that ‘the prince’ was nowhere to be seen. Rachel had always appeared to be at ease in a crowd, too.

Sophie really was very much her mother’s daughter.

She’d had that unhappy thought on her mind as she’d left the kitchen on her way back to her suite or she surely would have seen him. He’d been lounging in the foyer, just by the base of the stairs. However, she hadn’t noticed him until she was almost beside him.

“Ah, my favorite after-breakfast dessert. Perfect.”

She’d looked up, and he’d simply slid his arm around her and laid his lips on hers. This kiss had been both more and less than the first one. Tender and questing, his tongue engaged her own in a silkily seductive dance. The kiss had been hot, fluid, liquefying her bones, shaking her to the core, tapping something within her she’d not known existed. And it was shorter, at least she thought so because it seemed to be over before she’d wanted it to be.

Shaking her head, she determined that she would have to put that man and his lascivious lips out of her mind. She didn’t know why Stephan was doing this. It certainly wasn’t to garner attention or make another woman jealous, for both times there had been no witnesses but the two of them.

Opening her door just a crack, she peered left and right, checking for that kiss thief. Telling herself it was relief and not disappointment she felt when no one was in sight, she opened the door fully, then closed it behind her.

She was certain as she made her way down the central curved staircase that Stephan would already be in the reception room with his parents. It had been several hours since she’d seen him, and surely by now whatever mood had possessed him had likely burned off.

The formal reception room was one that was used most often for official welcome parties. Elegantly decorated in white and gold, with turquoise and ruby accents, the room was her favorite of all the official rooms in the palace. There was a doorway that connected it to the ballroom, but otherwise the room was accessed by means of a door from the office corridor. Opening that door, she could hear the voices ahead in the room proper. Just a short hallway kept her from seeing everyone. Three doors opened off the hallway. The two on the right were bathrooms, the one on the left a large cloakroom.

As she drew even with the latter, the door opened suddenly. Yanked into the room, she found herself pressed up against the closed door before she could even blink.

Stephan’s smile was as playful as some she’d seen on the children’s faces at the orphanage where she worked. His body didn’t feel like a child’s, though, as he pressed against her, bringing his face close so that only a bare inch separated them. From somewhere deep inside her, warmth began to spread. Her breathing hitched and she couldn’t help the instinctive act of licking her lips. His eyes widened, his nostrils flared. He thrust his hips slightly, and the evidence of his arousal nestled against her.

“Kiss me, Sophie.”

She should have said no. She should have pushed him away, demanded he leave her alone, and insisted he keep his distance.

She did none of those things. Instead, she wrapped her arms around his neck, lifted up, and placed her mouth on his. And went wild.

Frenzied, her lips and tongue assaulted his, driven by some demon craving she didn’t understand. Desperation to taste all of him, to taste all that she’d never known her entire life filled her. As his flavor drenched her, as the scent of him seeped into her, as his hands blazed a trail of heat and longing across her back and down to her bottom, she thought she’d die if she didn’t get what she needed—even as she admitted to herself that she had no idea
what
she needed.

“Easy, little one, I have you.”

His words came to her through the haze of heat and shivering tension that filled her. She whimpered and he responded. And then her eyes widened as she felt his hand cup her left breast. Her nipple tightened almost painfully. He pinched it, and she had no choice but to roll her hips forward.

He gasped and his own hips pressed back against her as if he couldn’t help himself. “Let me taste you here.”

His lips left hers, traveling down her chin to her neck. The sensation of his tongue lapping her throat nearly took the strength right out of her knees. She felt the tugging and understood he was opening the buttons of her blouse. Then he moved her bra out of the way and took her turgid nipple into his mouth.

Fire sparked, traveled her veins and arteries, and emerged as a ragged plea from her throat. Spellbound, she grabbed the back of his head hard, fingers tangling in his hair and pushed her breast more fully into his mouth. Beyond desperate, she couldn’t control the sounds that tore from her throat or the spasms that clenched her belly and seemed to come from deep in her womb.

His voice a growl, he paused in his ministrations long enough to say, “Here, now. Take it, little one. Take what you need.”

She didn’t know what she needed and nearly told him so.

His hand, under her skirt, his fingers stroking across her silk-covered mound robbed her of speech. When those clever fingers breached the silk and slid just slightly into her, she lost all vestiges of propriety.

Her orgasm was sharp, hard, and left her reeling. Wave after rippling, shivering wave washed over her, drowning her in sensation. She was vaguely aware that Stephan held her close, crooned soothing sounds into her ear. She knew his hand cupped her and that she had moved against that hand and those clever fingers and felt a tiny twinge of pain as she did so. She knew her moisture was his, now. She could only hang on, her head falling to his shoulder, as it tapered off.

“I never believed in them.”

She regretted the words immediately. Despite what had just happened, that had been too intimate a thought to share with anyone.

“So that was your first, then. As I will be your first.”

“No.”

“Darling, yes.”

He smoothed down her skirt, and stepped back.

He shocked her to her core when lifted that wonderful, magical hand to his lips and sucked the fingers that had been inside her. She felt her face flame. Looking down, she saw her blouse was still open, that her breast with its swollen and wet nipple was exposed above her bra. Fingers trembling in mortification, she covered herself and buttoned her blouse.

“You confuse me. I don’t understand any of this.” Refusing to look at him, she didn’t even give him a moment to respond. Opening the door, she fled across the hall to the lavishly appointed bathroom.

She needed time to calm down, to rebuild her defenses. Though she thought that second task was likely not going to happen.

* * * *

“It’s a sad state of affairs when a son isn’t on hand to greet his mother.”

Stephan smiled, and immediately corrected the unintentional slight, approaching his mother and kissing her on the cheek.

“Forgive me, Your Majesty. That was thoughtless of me.”

He was aware of the maternal scrutiny he received, and merely smiled through it. Fortunately, Hannah came over and, as he suspected might happen, the two women began to talk as if they were old friends.

Easing back, he accepted a glass of wine from a waiter, then moved toward the wide open door that led to a stone balcony with steps to the gardens below.

He didn’t know what had possessed him to play the roué with Sophie. Despite his reputation, this behavior was not his usual way of establishing a relationship with a woman. Oh, he’d fully intended to kiss her. And he’d planned to woo her into his bed. Slowly, with thoughtfulness and sensitivity and gentle courtship.

Instead he’d launched an all-out sensual assault. First thing this morning he’d awakened with a hard cock and thoughts of the ice princess. If she hadn’t stepped out in front of him just as he was walking down the hallway, he might never have grabbed her up as he had. Then, later, he’d been at the foot of the stairs when he’d looked up and seen her approaching. The look on her face had been so utterly sad he couldn’t help himself. The problem, of course, with stealing tastes of the delectable treat named Sophie was that now he felt desperate to have her completely.

He hadn’t understood, though, until just moments ago, how truly innocent she was.

I never believed in them
. That she still had her virginity didn’t surprise him nearly as much as that statement had.

Whatever could have happened, or not happened, in her life to cause her to doubt the existence of pleasure between a man and a woman?

The lady in question entered the room, looking every inch a princess. He smiled when he realized she was again looking at everyone but him. She made her way over to his mother and Hannah. He decided to bide his time, but fully intended to speak to her. Maybe he could persuade her to accompany him someplace away from the palace. He knew her family kept a fine string of horses at a farm just outside the city. Perhaps he could persuade her to go take him there.

Watching her closely, he could see by her body language she was getting ready to take her leave of his mother. Which meant, being a good little princess, she would make her way over to his father, who appeared to be deep in conversation with Alex. Naturally, since Stephan had yet to greet his father himself, he walked over to the men.

“Ah, there you are. Your mother was concerned.”

He shot his father the same kind of grin he had his mother. His father and Alex were of an age. His father was showing silver wings at his temples, but he was a fit man, had been physically active all his life, and was now a hale and hearty fifty-one.

His family had always been a close, loving one. When he’d been a child, his mother had organized picnics and excursions where it would just be the family, no attendants or servants in sight. The bond he shared with his parents and his younger brother Jonathan was a strong, happy one.

“
Maman
is always concerned. I believe that is what keeps her so young and beautiful.”

His father laughed, as did Alex.

“Do not let your mother hear that opinion,” his father advised quietly. “Women do not have the same sense of humor as do we men.”

“On this, I would have to agree,” Alex added. Stephan noted that his gaze wandered over to Hannah. The look he saw in the man’s eyes was very similar to the one he often witnessed when his father looked at his mother.