Princess (20 page)

He was silent, running the brush in long strokes through her hair, all the way down her back.

“It’s sweet to see the way you take some of those hopeless cadets from the military academy under your wing and try to stouten their courage—mustn’t forget courage, one of your most famous qualities. You are an example to so many of those young men, but it never goes to your head,” she mused. “I love it that you walk away from fights with stupid, loudmouthed men who could not possibly survive you. I think it’s charming that you have a wise saying for everything. Oh, and one of my favorite things about you is that, come what may, you always,
always
have a plan. I love it that you are always kind to shy people— Darius?” she asked suddenly, noticing his stillness.

She turned to him and found him head down, shoulders stiff.

“Sweetheart?” She lifted his chin with two fingertips.

His eyes were tempestuous with emotion, his gaze stark and perfectly wretched.

“Darling, what is it? Have I said something wrong?”

It appeared he could not speak.

She waited, petting his forelock out of his eyes.

“No one ever said anything like that to me before,” he said in a choked whisper.

“I could go on,” she said with a tender smile.

“Please don’t. I couldn’t bear it.”

“Darius. Darling, listen.” She caught his face gently between her hands. “How can you not know these things? Is that why you push yourself so hard? Can you doubt your own worth? Is that why you must work ten times harder than any other man, and take all the dangers on yourself, and even starve yourself, to achieve some kind of ideal perfection? Yes, I know about that, too, so don’t try to deny it.”

He gave her a look of hopelessness.

“Darling, you have nothing to prove. Why do you have to be perfect?”

“I’m not perfect.” He tried to pull away, but she didn’t let him, and he didn’t fight her. He just sat there and shut his eyes for a moment, his jaw set at a stubborn angle. “I’m not even close,” he whispered.

Pained by his confession, she leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “You’re wrong, Darius. Hear me:
You are
good enough.
You are perfect just as you are—”

He jerked his face away impatiently.

“You are,” she said emphatically. “All your striving, just let it go for now, my dear. Give yourself some healing time, yes? Do it for me?”

He slid her a wary look. “For you?”

She ventured a faintly teasing smile. “I don’t have to pull rank on you, do I?”

His wariness gave way to a bittersweet smile. Slowly, he shook his head at her.

I love you,
she thought, holding his gaze with a smile on her lips and tears in her eyes. She lifted her hand and brushed his forelock out of his eyes. “Sleepy?”

He nodded.

“Come.” She blew out the candle and arranged herself under the light cover, holding out her arms to him. He came to her.

Darius lay on his stomach beside her, his face turned to her, his right arm sprawled across her midriff, his fingers resting in the crook of her left elbow.

They were silent.

He stared at her in the dark. She caressed his heavy arm.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

“Today.”

“What about today?”

“I am happy,” he said, as if testing the word, strange to form, on his tongue.

She smiled at him.

“This . . . warmth,” he whispered. “I have never known anything like this in my life. There could be no better gift than to be with you this way. Thank you for this day. Thank you for the things you said.” He moved toward her and kissed her mouth lingeringly, then laid his head on her chest and went to sleep, one hand tangled in her hair, as if to make sure she wasn’t going anywhere during the night.

Eyes closed, she nestled her face against his hair, loving him, suffused with a tender sense of protectiveness toward him. She closed her eyes in bliss.

Mine,
she thought. Arms around him, she drifted off to sleep.

He awoke in the pearl-gray light of dawn and knew that overnight his whole world had changed. The scent of her skin filled his nostrils, the softness of her body pillowed his head. She was still sleeping, one slender arm still draped around his neck.

Darius lifted his heavy head from her chest and gazed down at her, utterly lost in her. He stared at her bare skin, pearlescent in the half-light, her elegant white shoulders. Her robe lay in a pool of blue satin on the floor beside the bed, for he had found it had been impossible to sleep the whole night through without touching her again, waking her with kisses and caresses, catching her cries of climax on his tongue.

Her sooty curls fanned out on the pillow in luxuriant disarray. Her plump, berry lips were slightly parted, her breathing steady and slow. The warm, white sheets that smelled of sex were tangled around her hips like the garb of a classical goddess.

Closing his eyes, he savored the memory of her surrender, then pressed a gentle kiss to her skin and rested his head on her midriff. It was the most peaceful moment of his life.

In far-off regions of the house, he could hear the servants at work. He could smell breakfast cooking, could hear his men changing shifts below as the weary night guard shuffled into the barracks and the day men took their places. His impulse was to rise and follow his usual regimen: wash up, get dressed, check in with his squadron, exercise his horse, practice until breakfast, eat, and oversee the day. But last night he had made a decision to explore another kind of life . . . while he still had time.

Hope, he mused, was a dangerous thing. Even now it was whispering to him that if he could shoot Napoleon and escape from Milan, he would be incontestably worthy of Serafina then.

He’d be a hero to the world. All Europe would hail him. He could look Lazar in the eye and ask him for his daughter’s hand.

Hope would have him ignore the fact that the chances of survival were nil.

Heedless of the impossibility of it all, his heart soared with the dreams which for years he had been pretending did not exist. He owned an excellent property overlooking the sea on the outskirts of the city of Belfort. He’d build her a house there on the crest of the hill, a villa of casual elegance just to suit her, with red-tiled roofs, breezy, arcaded walks, fountains, enormous gardens, a domed menagerie for her animals. He’d buy her dresses and let her give parties, even if it meant seeing all those artificial people he despised, just so he could watch her shine. And if he ever felt ready to share her, he’d give her a child. . . .

Agonized, he lifted his head again and gazed down at her, this soft, fragile, yet feisty, maddeningly willful, irresistibly charming, and generous, most necessary creature.

How had he lived without her this long?

Wistfully, his gaze followed the intricate coils of one sable curl, twining over her shoulder and down across her slowly rising and falling chest, spiraling soft black silk on her white-blossom skin. She had the longest lashes he had ever seen. Tiny, very light blue veins graced her eyelids, and her delicate skin was as soft and white as the petals of a camellia.

Her beauty depressed him under the circumstances.

Morosely, he rolled onto his side next to her, planted his elbow on the pillow, and watched her sleep in an unbearable mix of adoration and despair, but then his heart lifted when he caught the flicker of a smile on her lips as she slept.

Little imp, what was she dreaming? he wondered in soft delight.

The smile faded, only to burst out a moment later with a sudden giggle that woke her.

When she realized she had waked herself with laughing, Serafina laughed harder, and when her violet eyes opened, she didn’t seem to find it the slightest bit strange that she should awake to find the king’s top assassin gazing, lovelorn, down at her.

“You must tell me,” he drawled.

Her just-waking voice was pebbly, scratchier than ever. “I was having the funniest dream! It was about you! Wait—first kiss me!” She threw her arms around his neck and gave him a kiss on the lips, stretching her slim, supple body slightly against him. Then she hugged him warmly. “Mm, Darius, you feel so good to me.”

He scooped her into his embrace and rolled onto his back, pulling her atop him. Her wanton ringlets swung down around him in sable cascades. He loved the way her light weight felt atop him, her lush breasts pressed to his chest, her thighs straddling his hips. He ran both hands from her shoulders down the curve of her back to her bare backside, cupping both soft, firm cheeks in his hands.

“You were saying?” he asked politely as his rod roared to fiery life, rock-hard and ready.

“Feeling frisky again, Colonel?” she purred, her violet eyes laughing at him.

He reined in his want by an act of will, folding his arms under his head. “I want to know what you were dreaming about me that was so frightfully funny.”

With a cheerful grin, she pushed herself up to kneel astride his waist. She yawned and stretched wide, fully natural with her nakedness before him. He watched the lift of her breasts and the slimness of her flat waist, just as she no doubt intended him to.

She threw her hair back over her shoulders to give him an unfettered view of her exquisite self, then coiled her mane into a long, silky black rope, and held it piled on top of her head. A few stray ringlets fell free, softly framing the delicate sculpture of her face.

“I was dreaming about the time you were first assigned to the Household Guard, protecting me and my brother. Remember those days, Darius? You must have been, what, about eighteen?”

He winced. “You’re making me feel old, child.”

“You are old.”

He scowled. She laughed and leaned down to kiss him. “Ohh, I’m just teasing you.” He hoped so, for at thirty-four, he was fourteen years her senior.

“How scared I was of you,” she blithely continued. “So stiff and serious! So dignified!”

“Well, naturally. I was outraged that a mighty warrior like myself should be assigned for a royal nursemaid,” he said.

She laughed. “I was dreaming of the first day you showed up at the nursery. I was never so scared in my life!”

“Of me?”

“Ugh!” she exclaimed, fluffing out her hair so that it spilled around her upper body again. “Those fiery black eyes—that scowl! You marched in when I was in the middle of a temper tantrum.”

“I remember. You’d flung yourself onto the floor. Whenever your nurse tried to lead you away, you’d make your entire body go limp—”

“Like a noodle,” she chimed in.

“So that if anyone wanted to move you, you had to be dragged.”

“Nobody dared drag me,” she archly pointed out. “What a spoiled little monster I was.”

“Not spoiled,” he said softly. “Just headstrong. And unhappy. Besides, whatever it was you were protesting, you had smacked your head on the floor when you threw yourself down. That’s why you were crying.”

“Everyone was cajoling me, ‘Oh, please, Principessa, what do you want? Name your price, anything, just stop screaming!’ I’m thinking,
I want my Mama, but she’s got more important
things to do, like saving the world. I want my Papa, but he’s
always busy.
If I want to see either of them, it has to be at the appointed time and I must be on my best behavior. I hate my nurses. There’s nobody nice in the whole world!”

Darius shook his head, watching her with a half-smile.

“I’m kicking and thrashing down on the hard floor. My baby brother—whom I despise—is caterwauling somewhere nearby. Ten frazzled adults are pleading with me, and then I see these shiny black boots with silver spurs. Up and up I crane my neck, feeling icy doom upon me.”

He laughed. Her eyes sparkled, starred with black lashes.

“Do you recall what you said to me, O fierce one?”

“That I would box your ears?”

She shook her head. “Worse. You called me a baby and told me I was making a fool of myself. I hated your guts,” she declared, then smiled. “For about ten minutes. You got rid of my governesses with one of your scowls. ‘Back off!’ you said, with your voice like a whip. I said to myself, ‘Well, at least he has a brain.’ You made me do everything I didn’t want to do, such as eating my food rather than painting the nursery walls with it, but do you know what? Whenever you were around, I always felt calmer. Strange,” she purred with a suddenly mischievous look.

She leaned down and slipped her arms around his neck. “For when I’m with you now, calm is the last thing I feel. No . . .” She caressed his bare chest. “I must confess to a most feverish state of excitement.” She gave him another soft kiss full on the lips.

His hands molded the curve of her lower back, and his temporarily slackened arousal responded at once. He was solid in seconds, his blood hot for her. He caressed her thighs astride his hips, wondering if she was game for more love play or if he ought to give the girl a decent break. She made a soft sound of pleasure at his caresses.

Entranced by her innocence, he slipped a hand around her nape and kissed her, wondering how much longer he could go on like this. The need to lay her down and bury himself inside of her was almost more than he could bear.

She ended the kiss with another happy little sigh and laid her head on his chest, stroking his biceps. He kissed the top of her head and moved his arms around her, linking his fingers over her silky-smooth back.

“How about your childhood, Darius?” she asked at length. “What was that like?”

His long, leisurely caress froze midway down her back. His whole body tensed. She couldn’t have found a better way to quash his amorous mood.

She pushed up from his chest and looked at him with calm, penetrating intelligence, as though she had long since deduced it had been horrible.

Horrible.

When he found his voice, it came out a trifle hoarsely. “Let’s not spoil the day.” He forced a false, painful grimace of a smile.

She blinked slowly, her eyes still sleepy, and searched his face with a troubled look of compassion. She nodded and gave his cheek a soothing caress with her knuckles. “It’s all right, Darius. It’s all right.”