Penelope & Prince Charming (22 page)

Rituals first. He broke the kiss. “Ready yourself,” he said in a low voice. “I will come to you.”

Penelope looked up at him, startled. She nodded once and turned away, apparently forgetting what she wanted to argue about.

As she hastened to the stairs, he gave her a little push on her backside. That earned him a glare, but he saw the need building in her eyes. This ritual would be sweet.

Hot water slid down Penelope’s back where Meagan poured it from the pitcher. The pitcher slipped and a cascade hit the floor, splashing all over Penelope, Meagan, and Penelope’s mother. Penelope expected Lady Trask to shriek about her ruined dress, but she’d had plenty of champagne, and like Meagan, she dissolved into giggles.

All very well for them, Penelope thought. They were not standing stark naked in the middle of the antechamber on a piece of oilcloth, shivering while soapsuds and sloshes of water dripped from her body. The bath that
Sasha had commanded to be built steamed gently nearby. Not long from now, Damien would come in and the ritual would commence.

“Do hurry,” she said.

“Penny, dear, this is no time for maidenly vapors,” Lady Trask said. “You have already been in his bed, why are you suddenly shy?”

“It is different, somehow. It is more…”

“Official?” Meagan suggested. “Whereas a few days ago, you were only being naughty.”

Penelope’s face heated. “Everyone knows what we are going to do. I feel them waiting out there. The other day it was private. Now I am on display.”

“At least Damien did away with having a crowd watch you bathe each other,” Meagan pointed out. “Good heavens, Sasha wanted to invite twenty people, and seemed most puzzled when Damien objected.”

“Sasha is a strange man,” Lady Trask agreed. She absently squished a sponge against Penelope’s shoulder. “He does love his rituals.”

“He’s harmless,” Meagan proclaimed. “Damien says he went a bit crazy being in a dungeon so long. Goodness, I would too.” She suddenly looked mournful. “After tomorrow, I’ll never see you again, Penny.”

“Do not say that,” Penelope said, her jaw hardening. “You will come to Nvengaria. I will visit England. I’ve said so.”

“It is such a long way away,” Lady Trask said sadly.

“Mama, you are getting water all over your frock. Now do not start crying, because I will, and we do not have time. Sasha said Damien would enter at nine o’clock precisely.”

For some reason, she did not want to be standing upright, nude and wet, when Damien walked in the doors. She wanted to be in the bath, seated, the water up to her neck. She felt somehow that she could face him like that, not exposed, shivering, and vulnerable.

Lady Trask nodded, letting tears flow. “You are my daughter, Penelope. Of course I must grieve you leaving me behind, even though I am so happy you have made such a match. I never would have thought you’d catch a prince.”

“Mama.”

Lady Trask threw her arms around Penelope, soap and water and all. “Oh, my darling, I do love you so. I am so happy.”

“So am I,” Meagan said. She burst into tears and flung her arms around Penelope from the other side.

They cried and hugged each other, until all three ended up as wet as could be.

Out in the hall, the tall case clock struck nine, echoing and sonorous. They broke apart, panic taking over.

“Wait, you’re still soapy,” Meagan cried. She threw water from an ewer at Penelope as she ran for the bath. The water arced through the air, half of it splashing Penelope, the other half soaking the blue silk wall covering.

Penelope stared in dismay, but Lady Trask burst into giggles. “Excellent, Meagan. I always hated that wallpaper. Penelope’s father picked it out.”

Penelope climbed the two stairs to the platform and lowered herself to the marble bench inside the bathtub, water sloshing.

Just in time. At the same moment, the door pushed open, and Damien, clad from neck to ankles in a sumptuous dressing gown, crossed the threshold. Sasha stood behind him, his hand over his eyes.

Damien’s dark blue gaze took in the two dripping, smiling women, then moved to Penelope waiting in the bath, her arms crossed modestly over her breasts. She sensed his body tighten, though he made no perceptible move.

He slowly approached the bath and stepped up to the platform. Penelope fastened her attention on the brocade slippers covering his feet. His strong ankles showed be
low the hem of the dressing gown, just touched with dark, wiry hair.

“Lady Trask, Miss Tavistock,” he said in his deep voice. “You may go.”

Meagan and Penelope’s mother clung to each other, giggling. “Au revoir, Penelope,” Meagan said, then the two of them hastened from the room, holding each other as they went. Their high-pitched laughter echoed through the hall.

Damien kept his gaze on Penelope, but his eyes were amused. “I can do this alone, Sasha,” he said in Nvengarian.

Sasha peeked through his fingers. “But the ritual must be followed precisely, Your Highness. I must ensure—”

“Penelope understands it. She will make sure I do it correctly.”

Sasha glanced quickly at Penelope, head and neck alone visible above the lip of the bath, and nodded in relief. “That is so. Yes, the princess will know how to do it.”

He bowed low and marched smartly out of the room, banging the door behind him. After a moment came the sound of a key in the lock.

“You see,” Damien said, “already they have decided who is the stronger in this marriage. The fair Penelope, not the Imperial Prince.”

“I am certain he did not mean that,” Penelope said.

“I am certain he did.”

He let his gaze rove her, from her pinned-up hair to her bare throat to her body under the steaming water. “Penelope, you are the most beautiful woman I have ever beheld in my life.”

Penelope did not answer. She could not believe the truth of this, and concluded the prophecy must be working through him.

His eyes darkened. “I have been going mad with wanting you.”

She pointed with a dripping finger at the side of the
tub. A huge bath sponge sat on a tray next to a dark bottle of Nvengarian wine and two goblets. “We must do the ritual. With the sponges and the wine and everything.”

“Have no fear, I will do Sasha’s ritual.” The glint in his eyes turned wicked. “But I imagine it will be much more pleasant without anyone watching.”

She shivered. “Does the betrothed couple truly have to bathe in front of their families and friends? Sasha seemed surprised you did not want to follow the tradition.”

Damien loosened the first fastening from his dressing gown, baring his column of throat. “The bathing ritual is ancient, not always observed these days. But ours is a royal wedding, and so we must do the most arcane, bizarre rituals historians like Sasha can find. We are special, and we must suffer for it.”

She let her gaze linger on the hollow of his throat, which was damp with perspiration and the steam of the bath. “It must seem strange to you, as well,” she said. “You grew up in the courts of Europe, not Nvengaria.”

He unhooked the next fastening, baring the line of his collarbone and the hollow between his pectorals. “The courts of Europe have strange rituals all their own, which I am happy to abandon.”

“What sorts of rituals?” Penelope asked, more to keep her mouth moving than because of interest. Watching Damien slowly bare himself was far more intriguing than explanations about odd customs.

He pulled the next fastening apart to reveal his taut abdomen and the line of hair that pointed downward from it. She saw no waistline of breeches or linen band of underbreeches under the dressing gown, nothing but sundarkened skin that paled a little below his navel.

“None very interesting,” he answered.

He unfastened two more silken ties, and the dressing gown fell all the way open. His legs were strong and straight and long, and his erection, dark and rampant,
stood out from a circle of curled black hair between his legs.

Strange that simply seeing him erect for her brought such a flush of heat. She suddenly wanted to grasp the organ in her hand, to feel it warm and rigid against her palm.

She dragged her gaze away as Damien slid the dressing gown from his shoulders, letting it fall down the steps in a velvet wave.

“I do not mind that you like to look,” he said. He carefully slid out of his slippers, his bare feet sinewy and strong. “Stand up.”

Penelope lowered her arms from her breasts and rose on shaking legs, water cascading from her body in hot rivulets. When she stood upright, the water came to her hips, baring her navel and waist. She felt horribly exposed, and yet her skin prickled with excitement.

Damien took one step down to stand on the marble bench that a stonemason had constructed very quickly for a very high fee, which put Damien’s lovely male organ more or less on Penelope’s eye level.

She gazed at it in fascination. The tip was dark, the flange taut and flared, his entire length swollen as tight as could be. A bead of moisture rested in the tiny slit in the tip and she imagined his seed spilling inside her, as it had days before, when they had made love in the heat of the afternoon.

For some reason, she wanted to let his staff fill her mouth, to feel the rigid tip pressing the inside of her cheek. She wanted so much to understand what he was, even if she never understood why he fascinated her.

She ran dripping fingers lightly along his length, leaving a streak of water behind. He sucked in his breath, and she looked up at him. “I am not schooled,” she murmured.

His eyes were heavy. “Do whatever you like.”

Whatever she liked. Her mind filled with wicked imaginings, and she blushed.

She was happy that he’d showed her he was no stranger to wickedness, and liked wickedness in her. She remembered how he’d dipped the tip of his tongue between her buttocks, so briefly, and yet the feeling had sent her to heights she’d never imagined.

He would not be a conventional lover, and he would not expect her to be. Perhaps he did not know how to be. If the whispers she’d heard from the ladies at the fete, about Nvengarians and their lovemaking practices, were true, Damien would not expect propriety in their bedroom. Or their bathroom. She could be as daring as she wanted.

Her heart beating in strange, quick beats, she traced the flange of his arousal with one finger, then she leaned forward and kissed the tip.

“Taste me,” he whispered, his voice husky. He touched her cheek, his fingers warm.

She wanted to, by all means. Quickly, before she could sway herself from it, she grasped him lightly with her fingers and pulled him gently into her mouth.

Heaven existed after all.
It existed in the form of this exquisite woman taking him and teasing him with her hesitant, inexperienced tongue.

He let his head drop back, his eyes closing, hands curling to fists.
Love, love, I treasure you more than kingdoms.

Her tongue moved, rubbing all over the sensitive place under his tip. He made himself hold still and let her play, even though he wanted to have her, have her. This was her first time; she did not need him to press into her mouth, much as he longed to.

Sweet woman, she opened her mouth wider and inched her lips down his length. His hand moved to her hair, curling in the silken strands, loosening the bindings that held it in its knot.

Damien knew the touch of women. He knew what they liked and what they wanted from him, and it varied little from country to country. Easy to remain in control of himself with a woman who knew exactly where and how
long to stroke, how to press her fingers behind his scrotum to both arouse him and keep him from finishing too soon, how to know where he was least and most sensitive.

Penelope knew nothing. Her questing fingers brushed the stretched skin at the base of him, the tight hotness of his balls, the sensitive length of the underside of his shaft. Her tongue moved around the tip, exploring it, dipping behind the flange and back over the top. The occasional scrape of her sharp teeth was incredibly erotic.

He felt his seed start to build, wanting to spring out and flow into her mouth. Or, better, between the exquisite softness of her breasts.

Control, control. The charming Prince Damien is ever in control.

His body was not listening. It wanted the beautiful woman whose fingers and mouth quested, curious, his blushing bride learning what it was to be with a man. This daring woman he’d enticed into sin was catching on to what sin was very quickly.

“Penelope,” he gasped, his voice hoarse. “Stop.”

He spoke in Nvengarian, because he’d descended to a basic level where he could not think over words and what they meant. “Stop.”

She drew back, removing the glorious touch of her lips, and turned pink. “I am sorry,” she said in halting Nvengarian. “I do not know to make—pleasure to you.”

The garbled grammar and her oh-so-sweet accent snapped the last of his control. He dropped from the marble seat, sending a wave of displaced water over the edges of the bath and down the steps to soak his dressing gown. He lifted her, the water giving her buoyancy, parting her legs so that her opening was pressed directly against his erection.

“Wrap your legs around me,” he said.

Their hips were underwater. Holding her firmly, he guided her legs around his hips, then reached between
them and opened her wide enough to slide his thick arousal inside. He took his fingers out of the way, clasped her buttocks, and pushed all the way in.

Her eyes widened. Water was not the best of lubricants; it dried delicate skin, and he had the sudden insane wish to be in a vat of scented oil with her. They’d slide together without friction, and he’d be in her tight and hard with no impediment. The lovemaking would be slippery and wild and they’d no doubt drown for their pains.

“Damien.” Her chest pressed tight against his, droplets trapped between them, the tips of her breasts pebbling against his skin.

Inside her, God, tight and warm and pulling him into her. He was surrounded with her, skin and breath and scent. She pressed her cheek to his and wrapped her arms around his back, holding on.

He said breathlessly, “You are only allowed to speak Nvengarian when we make love.”

She looked at him, perplexed. “I must have more lessons,” she answered in that language.

He pressed deep inside her, fingers digging into the soft mounds of her buttocks. “Yes. Many, many lessons.”

“You are…” She fumbled for the phrase. “You fill me.”

He made a raw noise, unable to think anymore. He turned with her, setting her back against the lip of the bath. Her legs wound firmly about his hips, small feet pressed into his thighs. He wanted to stay inside her forever, to let this moment go on and on and on. But his body had other ideas.

Prince Damien’s legendary control vanished. He kissed and bit her and thrust his tongue into her mouth, impatiently tasting, digging hard into mouth and between hips at the same time. The noises that came from his throat were animallike, and he could not stop them. Perhaps Nvengarians and logosh weren’t so far removed from each other.

She made no noises at all, only silently rocked under him, her frantic fingers in his back letting him know that she felt the madness too.

“Ah, damn,” he shouted as the first spurt of his seed shot into her. He clenched his muscles, trying to stop it, trying to stay locked with her longer. But his hips rocked in uncontrolled rhythm, his body doing what it was meant to do, pushing his seed from himself into her.

Blood roared in his ears, dimming the sounds of the sloshing water, her needy cries, his own hoarse moans.
Want you, want you, love you, love, love, love.
The words marked his thrusts. He wasn’t certain if they came from his mouth or only whirled in his brain.
Love. You.

One final, savage push, and suddenly everything finished. He held her as long as he could, his breathing hollow, his legs shaking. His cock was still rigid, still needy, but the fever had dwindled the slightest bit. His face was covered in sweat, droplets of sweat and steam rolling from his skin.

One by one, he released his fingers from her buttocks, smoothing the skin he’d likely bruised. Her legs still wrapped around him, his arousal firmly inside her, as though she couldn’t let go.

He raised his head to kiss her and found her face wet with tears. They tumbled from her eyes, her lashes wet, her mouth twisted with weeping.

The sight smote him. “Penelope, God, did I hurt you?”

She hesitated a moment, then shook her head, moving her mouth in a little smile.

“I have never done that,” he said. “I am strong, I meant to gentle it…”

She put her wet fingers to his lips. “You did not hurt me. Not like you mean. I am crying because you make me feel beautiful.”

Tears spilled from her eyes. He kissed one away. “You are profoundly beautiful.”

“I want you to think that without the influence of the prophecy.”

“Scrag the prophecy. This feeling is deeper than magic.”

She traced his cheek. “I never in my wildest dreams thought I could have a man like you.”

He smiled. “Do not flatter me yet. You have not lived with me.”

“I thought I was not the sort of woman a man could love. I broke my betrothals because I did not want to settle for someone who did not want
me.”

“I know.” He regretfully slid out of her, his arousal still aching.

“And then I saw you. It might have been the magic, but I wanted you so much. I cried out for you, even though I tried to pretend to everyone, myself included, that I did not.”

“Sweet love.” He kissed her. “I made no secret that I wanted
you.”

“I craved you, and I want to be with you forever.” She put her hands on each side of his face. “I still crave you, and I am jealous, and I
hate
those women who have been with you. I have become charged with emotion, wild with it, and I never was so before.”

He trailed a lazy finger down her throat, the hot water making him languid. “Yes, you were, love. You locked it inside you, until a mad Nvengarian came to let it out.”

“You have rearranged my entire life.”

“I know.” He kissed the line of her hair. “I know, my love.”

“I fear I will make a terrible princess. I have no idea how to be a princess.”

Her voice was tinged with panic. He smoothed his hand down her spine, trying to soothe her. “It does not matter. Sasha and I will guide you.”

“The prophecy could make you find a girl with a silver ring, but that does not make me a good princess,” she babbled. “Someone like the Russian countess or the English baroness would at least know how to give banquets and receive ambassadors. I was raised to be an English housewife.”

“Penelope.” He took a step back, slowly unwrapping her body from his. “The last thing I need is a woman with ideas of letting Russia get its great teeth into my little kingdom. Nor do I need an English aristocrat giving me his daughter for some kind of political gain. A simple English miss is exactly what I need, and you are the English miss I want.”

“I know nothing of political intrigue.”

“I know,” he said fervently. “That is one of the reasons I want you.”

Her eyes were a mystery. “If not for political intrigue, I would never have known you.”

“That is likely so.” He brushed a gentle hand across her skin. A woman did not want to hear that she was a safe bride. She wanted to hear that she was irresistible and maybe even forbidden, so that the gentleman risked much for her in the name of love.

The truth was, Damien had risked everything for her, including his life. “I need you,” he said. “Not for Sasha’s prophecy, not to be princess. I need you for myself.” He leaned down and nuzzled her neck so he would not have to look at her while he spoke. “I need you to save my life.”

“So that Alexander will not execute you?” she asked, puzzled.

“I do not mean that. I need you to keep me from becoming like my father. He was a monster; he destroyed everything he touched. He was so filled with hate and envy and anger that he could not let anyone love him.” He raised his head, displaced water droplets spattering.
“Sometimes, when I am enraged, when I demand things to happen, I hear his voice in my mouth, I hear his words. From me, and I cannot believe it.”

Her tone turned worried. “If you know, you can stop yourself.”

“But what if I cannot? What if Alexander is right and the very worst thing that can happen to Nvengaria is to have me as prince? My father executed everyone who remotely disagreed with him. He ruled by absolute terror. He drove my mother to take her own life and executed his best friend, Alexander’s father, the man who kept my father plied with drink the night I was born. He was godfather to me. And yet, the day of the execution, my father snatched the musket from one of the marksmen and fired the killing shot himself.”

Her lips parted. “What had your godfather done?”

“Nothing at all, except remonstrate with him for how he treated my mother. My father, insanely jealous, accused the man of being her lover, then of plotting to assassinate him and take his place. Which was utter and absolute idiocy. He even made Alexander watch the execution, to learn what happened to a man who was not loyal. My father was a madman.”

“But you are not.”

“How do I know? Madness is inherited. How do I know I will not drive you to do what my mother did? Penelope, I do not know what I am.”

The words ripped out of him. And why the hell was he busily telling her things that he’d never before told a mortal soul? Why was he constantly baring himself to her, prostrating himself before her and essentially saying,
Here is the wreck you have agreed to marry, God help you.

“You are my love and my prince. That is all.”

He held her, closing his eyes against the moisture in them. “No, he is here inside me like some damned ghost, like the demon your logosh turns himself into. That is
why I am Prince Charming, as you call me, to hide the demon. I have been fighting him all my life.”

She buried her face in his neck, her soft body and sweet scent penetrating the sharp fear. “You no longer have to fight him alone.”

His arms tightened around her. Water trickled down his back as she soothed the hair at the nape of his neck. “I love you, Damien,” she whispered.

It didn’t reassure him, didn’t make all his fears go away that she’d agreed to help him. But it would be so much easier facing them with her.

“I want to make love to you again,” Damien said. “Right now.”

She jerked her head up, startled. “What about the ritual?”

“Later.” His arousal had sprung to life again, sorrow and fear giving way to hard need.

He turned her around and put his hands on her shoulders. “Get out of the bath and lie on the floor. Sasha left enough towels to cover a bed.”

“But…”

He closed his hands on her skin, letting his fingers bite. “Your first lesson in becoming a princess is to obey your prince at all times and without question.”

She sent him a skeptical look over her shoulder. “I am certain that is not a requirement. I will have to ask Sasha.”

He let his eyes go wide in mock severity. “I am the Imperial Prince of Nvengaria.”

“And I am Princess of Nvengaria, descended from one of the joint rulers. This makes me Imperial Princess, does it not? The equal of you?”

He wanted to laugh suddenly. She had spirit. “You question the will of your husband? English girls are raised to be obedient, are they not? And you just took a vow—before a vicar, no less—to obey me, did you not? Now get on the floor and make ready for me.”

She turned around, smiling seductively, one hand out as though to stop him. “That is not very charming, my prince.”

“I am tired of being Prince Charming. I wish to be the prince inside my wife.”

She might be an innocent, she might know nothing about being a princess and a woman of the world, but she knew how to entice, whether she understood her power or not.

“My modesty, sir.”

“You are naked in a bath with me,” he pointed out.

“Only because of the ritual.” Her smile widened. “Unless this is how all Nvengarians bathe?”

“It will be in our household. The Imperial Prince and Imperial Princess’s bath chamber will be installed as soon as we reach home.”

“Which we will never do if we do not complete the ritual.”

He growled. The feral sound filled the room, and to his gratification, Penelope’s eyes widened.

She tried to run. She made it up the step to the edge of the bath before he caught her. She stifled her squeals as he swept her up and carried her to the pile of towels that could have dried a household of ten, and laid her down.

She peered up at him under lashes lush and thick, smiling like she’d done something clever.