Penelope & Prince Charming (8 page)

His father had expected him to die in obscure poverty, if the assassins did not kill him, perhaps in some poetically dingy room in Paris or Rome. Instead, Damien had returned with wealth and influence behind him, a result of canny investments and years of working his fingers to the bone. In the end, it had paid off, letting him live in comfortable style.

Damien had until Midsummer’s Day to return to Nvengaria with Penelope. He did not have time for slow seduction; he had to be swift and sure, yet not let things happen too soon. It was enough to drive a grown prince mad.

The panel swung open into the passage. Damien moved the small piece of furniture and stepped around it
into the room. Behind him, Petri obligingly closed the panel.

Penelope saw him in the mirror. The brush hesitated, hovering in the gold cloud of her hair. She did not cry out; she did not turn and demand to know what he thought he was doing. She simply watched him, her green eyes waiting.

Need sliced through him. Prophecy or no, this woman was beautiful. In dishabille, she was breathtaking. Her hair hung in a wave of dark gold, almost bronze-colored, to her hips. Lighter streaks roped through it, drawing his eye down its length.

He wanted to be naked and have that hair pouring over him. He wanted her to be naked and on top of him, the heat of her body blending with his as he made love to her in slow, sensual strokes. His breathing hurt him, and another part of him did, too.

Not yet,
he admonished himself.
She will be in my bed soon enough. She will yield. And then…

His mind whirled with
and then.

She wanted him, too, he sensed that. She made none of the signals of the high-born women who’d wanted his seduction. No sly looks and come-hither smiles, no swish of hips or “accidental” lifting of skirts to bare silk-clad ankles.

Penelope simply wanted him with basic, primitive desire, the same that pounded through him. They were being pushed together by some invisible force, one that wanted them together no matter what. There was a mindlessness about the force—it did not care what else they felt, as long as they came together.

That mindless force made his feet move, taking him across the room to her, his hunger for her building in every step.

In the mirror, Penelope watched him come, her hairbrush still. He’d been handsome enough in his formal suit and
cravat, she thought, but half-dressed, his shirt loose and open, he looked raw and barbaric. He might be a prince, but there was nothing civilized about him.

She sensed what she had when she’d seen him on horseback, a man in tune with wildness. Nvengarian rule was brutal, from what she’d read, much closer to England’s own medieval times than the modern-day monarchs more interested in fashion than in ruling.

Political debates in Nvengaria could end in a duel to the death with swords, right in the council chambers. Men dueled in England, of course, but with rules and a gloss of respectability about it. Nvengarians went about armed and fought each other with vigor at the drop of a hat.

Watching Damien, his hair loose on his shoulders, his handsome, chiseled face so different from an Englishman’s, she could well imagine him drawing a sword and plunging it into the chest of his enemy in the middle of the council hall.

He stopped behind her, tall in the mirror, the heat of his body brushing her back. The scent of brandy clung to him. Slowly, while she sat in mute contemplation, he gathered her hair in his hands, lifted it from her neck, and let it spill through his fingers.

Her hair falling on the back of her neck was cool and soft and erotic. He watched her in the mirror, his eyes intense.

He took the hairbrush from her and pulled it through her hair, watching the bristles furrow the gold. She closed her eyes, savoring the feeling as the brush moved from her scalp all the way to the ends of her hair.

He lifted her hair again, this time resting his hand on the nape of her neck, brushing the fine hairs there. Strong feeling shot through her. She felt her private places growing damp, and he’d only touched her neck, for heaven’s sake.

“I regret,” he said in a low voice, “that I caused you and your family pain. But my coming here was necessary.”

“To find your princess,” she murmured.

“To find you.”

He pulled the brush through her hair again, then let his fingertips drift over her skin, a gentle touch from a powerful man.

“You should not be in my bedchamber,” she pointed out.

He plied another stroke of the hairbrush, then leaned down and rested his cheek against hers. Unshaven bristles scraped her skin. “Tell me to go, then.”

She opened her mouth to send him away, then closed it. All the resolve and resistance she’d felt in the folly had gone.

“You cannot ask me, can you?” he asked. He was serious, not mocking.

“No.”

He set down the brush and slid his arms around her, palms resting just above her breasts. “It is the prophecy. It wants us to fall in love.”

“A prophecy is a prediction,” she said, puzzled. “It cannot want anything.”

Can it?
His hands were hot through her thin dressing gown and night rail. She had the sudden urge to move his palms down to cup her breasts. Her face heated, but the wanting did not cease.

“This prophecy is old magic,” he said. “It was created hundreds of years ago when the line of Prince Augustus was lost. Maybe all that time changed it from mere words to something powerful. Perhaps it believes in itself so much that it forces us to believe in it.”

She watched him, her green-gold gaze meeting his blue one in the mirror. “I would say that was ridiculous, if I did not feel…”

“I know what you feel.” He glided his hands inside her dressing gown, smoothing the tops of her breasts beneath her night rail. “I feel the same. We need to be together. I do not believe the prophecy will let us turn aside.”

She dropped her gaze. She loved his hands on her, wanted them all over her. No, she
needed
them to be all over her, needed it in a kind of mindless frenzy.

Damien smiled to himself. This was dangerous, but he knew how to hold back. He could have her, maybe make her taste what was to come, without taking her too soon and breaking Sasha’s rules. He was adept; he could show her many things without being inside her.

His touch unnerved her, he saw, but she would not pull away and titter or pretend modesty. She had modesty, but not coyness. She’d kissed him well and good in the folly by the river, her mouth seeking, her desire strong.

He drew his fingers down the curve of her breast, feeling the nubs tighten and rise against the night rail. His blood stirred, the ferocity of his forefathers boiling to the surface. He wanted to drag her to the carpet and have at her. A ribbon trailing across her dressing table beckoned to him. A few games would not go amiss, either.

“I was betrothed twice,” she was saying.

He leaned down and traced the shell of her ear with his tongue. “I know. Miss Tavistock told me.” A protective fire kindled inside him. “If you let me, I will duel with these gentlemen and punish them for hurting you.”

Her eyes widened, gold flecking the green. His ancestors raged some more within him, encouraging him to find these gentlemen and make them very, very sorry they’d made Penelope cry.

As though she sensed his violence stirring, she said quickly, “I cried off. I told them to go. They did not abandon me.”

“If they had been good to you, there would have been no need to tell them to go.”

She swallowed. “Mr. White—Reuben—I discovered by accident that he wanted a marriage of convenience.
His
convenience. I heard him speaking to his friend that with my dowry and family connections, he could pay his debts
and set himself up well. Then he’d think nothing of returning to his mistresses. Both of them. The most beautiful women in London, he said. Nothing like his overly plump, dull-haired wife-to-be.”

She drew a sharp breath as she finished, as though she’d never meant to say those words aloud.

“Hmm,” he said. “I have changed my mind about sparing him, I think.”

Any man who looked at this woman and thought
overly plump
and
dull-haired
was blind and a fool.

Sword fodder
.

“Where can I find this Mr. Reuben White?” He kissed her cheek and quietly slid the tape of her night rail through its knot. “I will have Petri bring him here, and I will have a chat with him.”

“Damien.”

His temperature soared. He liked his name on her lips. He liked the way her tongue touched her teeth on the
D
and how her lips closed on the
M
.

Say it again, love.

“It no longer matters,” she said. “What I meant to explain was that he wanted a marriage of convenience. Which is what you want.”

The lacing of the night rail loosened and he slid his fingers inside, finding the bare flesh of her bosom. His arousal, which had been plenty hard since he’d entered the room, lengthened and tightened still further.

He felt his control slipping. He should go.

Not yet. Let me stay here a little longer.

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.