The Pirate Prince (50 page)

“I love you.” She unfastened his breeches, kissing his belly. “I love you, Lazar,” she whispered again. “My Lazar.” She kissed his neck, teething him lightly. “My beautiful savage. My husband.”

“My wife.” He pulled her down flat against him, holding her lithe body as his member throbbed hotly against her belly. After a deep, sweet, silken kiss, he cupped her face in both hands, staring up soberly into her eyes.

“I will never be worthy of you,” he told her. “Never.”

She cast him a slow, lazy grin as her hair swung down around his face like a curtain.

“Probably not,” she murmured, “but I’m giving you the next sixty years or so to try.”

“Scoundrel,” he whispered, laughing breathlessly, then she stroked him to raging arousal.

In a few moments, she took him inside her. He let out a sharp groan of torturous pleasure.

“Oh, you
did
miss me, didn’t you?” she purred, easing him in slowly all the way, inch by inch.

She sat up, and he watched her ride him, her eyes closed, her face luminous with ecstasy. She tilted her head back.

“You are so beautiful,” he vowed.

He pulled her down against him, swearing his love countless times in a fevered whisper, pausing only to kiss her, but words were not enough.

He laid her down on the bed and showed her, offering her everything he was with every stroke, every caress, every breath. She reached for him, and he filled her tenderly, deeper and deeper still, wanting everything, all of her. He wrapped her legs around his hips, glorying in the softness of her skin and the tight wetness of her passage.

“Never leave me again, Lazar. You are my very soul.”

His only answer was to gaze deeply into her eyes so she could see for herself that he never would, not for all the world.

Her release when it came was the purest surrender. Sweeter than honey, she flowed for him with anguished cries of passion that floated out to the cool night. Then he let go, clutching two handfuls of her silky hair, gasping her name as he flooded her womb with his essence.

For some time, he lay atop her, stroking her hair as she held him in her embrace, her thighs still enclosing his hips. With a sigh, he braced himself on his elbows and gazed down at her, her lovely face cupped in both his hands.

Her unfathomable eyes swept open under the gold-tipped lashes, and she held him in a gaze that swam with love. “Tell me again that you love me.”

“I love you. I love you, Allegra di Fiore. I cherish you and need you, and I am yours completely.” He bent his head and brushed her lips lightly with his own. “Thank you, my wife, my dearest friend. Thank you forever for loving me.”

Later that same night, hand in hand, Lazar led Allegra down into the secret tunnels of the Fiori, and they climbed out into the cellars of the old, burned Castle Belfort.

They came up through the ruins into the cool air of night and spent hours walking the grounds where their city would stand. Without the two million gold ducats, they would have to build more slowly, but though the job would be harder, Lazar said nothing was impossible for them.

Here would be the senate rotunda, there the new cathedral; in the center of the grand city square would be the monument bronze fountain dedicated to King Alphonse and Queen Eugenia, and a smaller, marble stone commemorating Lady Cristiana, the one person who had tried to get justice for the Fiori and had been killed for it. Where that cluster of pines towered would be the gilded opera house, and on that far hillcrest he’d build the new, majestic Palazzo Reale, where they would grow anew the vine of the ancient royal family in their children and grandchildren.

They joked and debated as always, and kissed often, but as they wandered farther from the vicinity of Belfort, mostly they were silent, walking arm in arm.

“You’ll have to talk to Darius,” she told him. “His feelings were deeply hurt, you know.”

He nodded. “If it’s all right with you, Allegra, I’d like to make the boy my legal ward. He has no family.”

She smiled up at him with soft pride. “I think that’s a splendid idea.”

Near dawn, they found a spot on a ridge overlooking an olive orchard, and sitting side by side, they watched the sunrise.

Allegra looked over at Lazar, taking in the sight of the orange morning light softening his rugged, chiseled features.

How much he’d taught her, she mused, and how much he’d grown. His anger had been transformed to strength, his pain to wisdom, his bitterness wiped away by love.

“Lazar?” She linked her fingers through his.

He was the king, but when he turned to her, the roguish sparkle still danced in his sea-black eyes. He drew her hand up to his lips.

“Yes,
chérie
?”

She smiled tenderly at him. “Welcome home.”

At noon they walked down the aisle of the sumptuously decorated cathedral. The church was packed with dignitaries from the courts of Europe, and after they exchanged their vows, Pope Pius rested the burden of the thick golden crown on Lazar’s head.

In turn, Lazar carefully placed the slender, diamond- and emerald-studded diadem on Allegra’s head, then raised her from her kneeling position to stand beside him. When they kissed, all the nobles and dignitaries burst out in thunderous applause that echoed like the roar of the sea beneath the soaring arches of the cathedral.

At last, following the varied ranks of the entourage, the king and queen of Ascencion came out to stand in the sunshine. The air was filled with deafening cheers and applause. Clouds of flower petals rained down on them in the light breeze. Lazar’s superbly fitted coat was white with gold braid, and at his side he wore his jeweled broadsword, Excelsior.

They paused on the top step outside the massive open doors of the cathedral, waving to their people. Allegra kept her chin high, though until that moment she had no idea what sort of reception they would give her—Monteverdi’s daughter—as their queen.

Though Lazar stood beside her, his white-gloved hand holding hers protectively, for a moment she was truly afraid, longing with all her heart to be accepted by the people and the land she loved.

Suddenly a fat, ill-kempt little man appeared near the front of the crowd and began waving his cap, rousing the onlookers until scores of people were shouting with him, “God save the queen!”

Allegra had to bite the inside of her mouth to keep from laughing at Bernardo’s antics.

Lazar winked down at her as if to say,
I told you so
.

Then he embraced her, Ascencion embraced them, and on that tiny island in the jade sea, peace reigned.

“Romance is the literature of possibility,” states award-winning author
Gaelen Foley
. “Romance celebrates the richness and beauty of living and reaffirms the eternal truth that love is the glue that holds the universe together. And, of course, it’s wicked fun!”

After earning her B.A. in literature from the State University of New York at Fredonia, Gaelen moonlighted as a waitress for nearly five years while devoting her daylight hours to honing her craft. Her first book,
The Pirate Prince,
won the
Romantic Times
Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best First Historical Romance and was nominated for the Holt Medallion for Best First Book. She is also the author of
Princess
.

Gaelen lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, Eric, and two spoiled bichons frises, and is hard at work on her next novel.

Readers can write to the author at: P.O. Box 522, Library, PA, 15129, or e-mail her via her Web site at www.gaelenfoley.com

By Gaelen Foley
Published by The Random House Publishing Group

THE PIRATE PRINCE

PRINCESS

PRINCE CHARMING

THE DUKE

LORD OF FIRE

LORD OF ICE

LORD OF DESIRE

DEVIL TAKES A BRIDE

CHAPTER ONE

Ascencion, 1805

The sound of her rapid, shallow panting filled the narrow space between the dark green walls of the garden maze. The hedges towered over her, closing in on her, and the pounding of her pulse was so loud in her head she knew they would hear. She inched down the narrow lane, her bare toes creeping silently over the cool, lush grass, her chest heaving. Constantly she looked over her shoulder. Her whole body was shaking, her hand bleeding, maybe broken from punching him so hard, bashing him in his smug, sneering face with the sharp edge of her huge diamond ring, but at least she had managed to throw herself out of Philippe’s iron grasp, and had torn into the maze, where she thought she could evade them.

She dared not call out for help because only the three men would hear. No one else was outside on such a night, when the breeze spattered rain from a sky deepest indigo smeared with gold clouds. The cicadas roared in waves, while the wind, as it rose and fell, brought fragments of a tinkling minuet spilling out over the vast gardens and the royal park from the ball in progress. Her engagement party, which her fiancé had been unable to attend.

She jerked her face wildly to the left, hearing movement on the other side of the dense hedge.

He was right there
. Her heart pounded. The acid taste of the wine she’d drunk earlier rose in the back of her throat. She could see the shape of him, tall, bedecked in his finery. She could see the shape of the pistol in his hand, and she knew her light-colored silk gown was sure to be visible through the branches. She crouched down and moved silently away.

“Don’t be afraid, Serafina,” came Henri’s mellifluous voice from several rows away in the other direction. “We’re not going to hurt you. Come out, now. There’s nothing you can do.”

They had split up so they could surround her, she thought. She choked back a sob, clawing to keep hold of her fragile control as she tried to decide which way to go.

Clenching her fist so tightly her nails dug into her palm, she huddled against the bush, edging inch by inch down the lane. She heard the lulling splash of the fountain in the tiny center courtyard of the maze, and she used the sound to try to orient herself. She had run around in this maze since she was a little girl, but she was so frightened she had lost all sense of direction.

At the end of the lane, she pressed her back flat against the scratchy bushes, too scared to turn the corner. She waited, trying to gather her nerve, her stomach in knots, shaking, praying.

She didn’t know what they wanted. She had been propositioned many times by the gilded, predatory courtiers of the palace, but no one had ever attempted to haul her away before. No one had ever used guns.

God, please
.

She would have cried, but she was too terrified. The breeze rose again. She smelled cut grass, jasmine, man.

They’re coming
.

“Serafina, you have nothing to fear. We are your friends.”

She bolted, her hair streaming out behind her. Thunder rumbled, the scent of a summer storm on the wind.

At the end of the lane, she stopped, too petrified to turn the corner again, lest she find Philippe or the blond one, Henri, standing there, waiting to catch her. She kept thinking how her ex-governess always said something like this would happen to her if she didn’t mend her wild ways, stop acting so bold. She vowed she would never be bold again. Never flirt. Never trust.

Her chest lifted and fell, lifted and fell.

They were coming. She knew she could not remain where she was for more than a few seconds longer.

I am trapped. There is no way out of this
.

And then there came another voice, barely audible, a mystic whisper.

Princesa
.

The single word seemed to rise from the earth, or to slip out of the very air.