Prince Charming (21 page)

He lifted his glass to her with a smile and they drank, then they were silent, merely sitting side by side and basking in good company with the evening breeze on their skin as the sun sank lower in the west.

His mind continued to revolve on the topic she had brought up. He spoke abruptly, still staring at the waves. “You know the history, I’m sure, about how my father’s parents were assassinated when they were just a few years older than you and I are now. My father was just a boy at the time, and he was the only one who escaped alive.”

She nodded sadly. “A horrible, tragic blot on Ascencion’s history.”

“Yes, it is. Well, my father suffered a ghastly childhood in exile after their deaths. His experiences hardened him, and he thinks that is the source of his effectiveness as a king. And so he worries constantly that my life has been too easy. ‘They’re going to eat you alive, Rafael,’ he is very fond of saying.”

“Ah, how nice that he has such faith in you,” she said wryly.

He turned and looked at her, taken aback that she understood him precisely. “That’s exactly right,” he exclaimed. “He thinks I’m an idiot. They all do.”

“Well,” she said, “you’re not.”

“No, I’m not,” he replied.

She gazed at him, smiling a little, both of them caught up in the rare instant of crystalline understanding and warm connection, then Daniela lowered her lashes and seemed to hesitate to speak. “You will be a great king, Rafael. Anyone can see that.”

“Ah,” he muttered, looking away.

For a moment she was still, then she rested her hand on his shoulder and caressed him slowly, tentatively. He closed his eyes, lowered his head.

It felt wonderful, her touch. He didn’t want it to end.

Believe in me, Daniela.
The thought whispered through his mind.
Please, I just need someone to want me for me.

“His Majesty may be a hard man and I’m sure it isn’t easy for you, being the object of all his hopes for the future of Ascencion, but he is your father and I’m sure he means well.”

“I’ve lived in his shadow all my life,” he barely whispered. “Nothing I ever do is good enough for him. Just once, I wish he would look at me and say, ‘Well done, Rafe.’ Why should I care what he thinks of me? And still, I do. But every time I try to assert myself in action, all I can think about is what happened when I was a stupid lad, and I’m sure you know that story, too. Everyone does.”

Daniela rested her head on his shoulder, sliding her arms around his neck. “Everyone makes a mistake now and then,” she said softly. “One mistake isn’t the end of the world, Rafael. Maybe your father has forgiven you; maybe it’s only you who can’t forgive yourself.”

“Why should I? I was a fool. Maybe I don’t deserve to rule Ascencion.”

She caressed his tensed back. “Did you love her?”

“I don’t know. I thought so at the time, but maybe not, because it didn’t feel like this.” Alarmed by the soft sincerity in his own voice, he quickly forced a careless, charming smile and looked over at her, but she lifted her hand to touch his lips with her fingertips.

“Don’t do that,” she whispered, her gaze grave and innocent. “It’s not necessary with me. I am to be your wife.”

He stared at her, realizing that in the same manner that he had unmasked her, she had just laid his soul bare. Slowly she lowered her hand.

For a moment he couldn’t find his voice, and then it came out a bit hoarsely. “How is it a provincial little girl like you can understand an international scoundrel like me?”

“We’re not that different. Rafael, there’s something I want you to know.” She stroked his hair as she spoke softly. “You’ve told me what it was like growing up at court amid those false, smiling courtiers, and I understand it’s not your habit to trust the people around you. You don’t have to trust me, either, if you don’t want to. I wouldn’t blame you. But you spared my life, I am in your debt, and the fact stands that I would never betray you. I promise you that.”

He stared at her, thinking of the loyalty that had stopped her from ridding herself of her senile old grandfather when she could easily have placed him in one of the kingdom’s charitable asylums. The same loyalty that had lured her to his pleasure palace to rescue the boy, Gianni, though she risked discovery and arrest. The same loyalty to the two hundred peasants who lived off her land, which had driven her to crime in the first place in order to feed them.

It was a frightening moment, realizing that he believed her words, and that he did not want to hold her at arm’s length—realizing, indeed, that for the first time since Julia, a woman had gotten under his skin.

She laid her hand gently on his cheek and caressed him, and he came back from brooding on his fear to gaze into her aquamarine eyes.

She was so simple, so genuine. He was safe. He knew it, felt it.

Abruptly, he wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her against him, shutting his eyes and burying his face in her hair. His heart was pounding. He felt the fervent, sudden need to shower this woman with everything she had ever wanted, fulfill her heart’s desire, give her anything, everything. Then it struck him that he had become accustomed to buying his women’s affection with material possessions, shiny baubles costing fortunes—worthless, in the greater scheme of things, and all he had been willing to give.

Daniela deserved something real from him. He pulled back just far enough to stare again into her jade-blue eyes.

The golden light of sunset had turned her rich chestnut hair to brilliant sienna and polished her porcelain skin to a delicate hue of creamy peach, but as he gazed at her, her cheeks filled with a wine-pink blush. She looked away.

“You confuse me so,” she said barely audibly.

“How?” he murmured, turning her face toward him again with a gentle touch and holding her in a deep gaze.

“You say you are only using me to win over the people, and then you look at me…like that.”

“Like what? Like I want to kiss you?” he whispered, smiling faintly. “Because I do.”

She appeared not to know what to say. Resolutely, she turned around and sat facing forward between his spread thighs, her back to him.

He realized her shyness had just caught up with her. He wrapped his arms around her waist and set his chin on her shoulder.

“I am no expert on comportment, Your Highness, but I don’t think this is proper,” she said, holding herself stiff and prim as he cuddled her.

“Proper?” He chuckled. “They’re calling you the bandit princess, and I’m still Rafe the Rake. I would say, my little cabbage, that we passed ‘proper’ long ago.”

“Don’t call me a cabbage,” she mumbled.

“What do people usually call you, then?”

“Dani.”

He smiled and gave her a squeeze around her waist. “Well, that suits you. It’s a hellion’s name, all right. You can call me Rafe, if you like.”

“I don’t wish to call you Rafe.”

“No?”

“It is a scoundrelly name.” She looked over her shoulder at him archly. “I shall call you Rafael, like the angel.”

“Hmmm, an optimist, are you?” He sifted his fingers gently through her hair, then massaged her scalp and neck and thin shoulders until he felt the tension easing from her.

She sank back against his chest with a luxurious sigh. “That feels wonderful.”

“I should probably warn you I’m rather gifted with my hands.” He nuzzled her ear and felt her tense again as he explored the curve of her neck with little nibbling kisses, but as he continued massaging her shoulders, again she slowly relaxed. “You have such pretty arms,” he said, caressing his way down them to her wrists. Then he gently took her hands, linking his fingers with hers. “Are you uneasy with this?” he whispered, pausing, feeling as careful with her as though he were still just a youth with his first lady love.

“No,” she said quietly.

“Good.” With his fingers still threaded through hers, he drew her hands back and pinned her arms ever so gently behind her for a moment, gazing down her gown’s neckline at her creamy, lifted chest. Her breasts were small but delightfully pert, firm. He wondered if he could fit her whole breast in his mouth. She’d like that, he thought with a narrow smile. He fixed her hands behind his waist and reached down to caress her slim sides.

“It’s getting dark,” she said rather breathlessly. “Shouldn’t we perhaps be getting back?”

“I like being on the water at night. You can’t see, you can only hear the waves and smell the salt, and you have to feel your way back to shore…feel your way through the dark,” he whispered as he ran his hands slowly over her flat belly and upward to her breasts. “A man has to know exactly what he’s doing.”

She arched back against him with a soft catch in her breath as he cupped her small, fine breasts in his large hands. Her generous nipples turned hard under his lightly circling thumbs.

“Rafael,” she moaned breathlessly, flexing against him so that her breasts seemed to swell wantonly into his hands. Her arms were wrapped behind his neck. “We…can’t. We are not married yet.”

“You’re in no danger, my love.” He slid his hands back down her belly and began stroking her thighs. “I don’t wish to deflower you tonight. Tonight I just want to learn what you like.”

“But I—I don’t know what I…like….” Her voice trailed off on a dreamy gasp of pleasure.

“Well, then,” he whispered, “let’s find out.”

With her head cushioned on his chest, she turned her face to him, seeking his mouth in innocent ardor. He lowered his head and parted her lips with a languorous stroke of his tongue, savoring the taste of her. She reached up, caressing his cheek as they kissed in slow, soulful intensity.

While she ran her fingers through his unbound hair, Rafe continued kissing her, deftly inching her skirts upward over her exquisite legs. His heart pounded as she let his hands roam up under the gathered layers of silk gown and muslin petticoat. He groaned when his fingertips came to the edge of her white stockings and found warm, ineffably tender skin. His groin flooded with heat and his body turned rock hard in an instant, but he fought to hold his throbbing need in check, unwilling to push her too fast.

She was so fragile and small, so precious in his arms. She was so different from everyone he knew, the hardened, calculating creatures of the court. Dani might think herself tough and independent, but he ached to protect her nearly as fervently as he longed to give her pleasure. Inexperienced as she was, he hoped to lessen her anxiety about their wedding night by letting her glimpse the joys that lay in store for her.

Under her dress, he explored her skin, gently kneading her hips and stroking her soft, flat belly, devouring her mouth all the while. He caressed the reticence out of her, until there was no tension under his hands, only rising, supple warmth, turning swiftly hot and frantic.

Behind his closed eyes, he smiled to himself as his leisurely pace made her restless. She arched and writhed slightly between his legs in virginal frustration, an impatient moan in her throat. Her hips lifted with sweet craving as his right hand glided down her belly. He knew just where she wanted to be touched and was glad to acquiesce.

When he stroked her tenderly and found her core soaked with silky wetness, throbbing under his fingertips in pure feminine invitation, he felt his tight rein on self-control fly apart. He went still, warring with himself, growing drunk on her sighs of urgent need.

“Rafael, Rafael…”

Heroically, he conquered himself and kissed her earlobe. “Dani. Would you like to watch?” he whispered in wicked softness, sliding her skirts higher with his other hand.

“No! I couldn’t!” she panted, scandalized.

“Watch.”

Her chest heaved. “No! Don’t…make me.”

A satyric smile curved his mouth, for he heard the eagerness in her voice. Perhaps it was time for the little Masked Rider to have a new adventure.

“Why not? Is it sinful?” he whispered. “Don’t you like it? Do you want me to stop?”

“Rafael,” she pleaded, melting back against him.

“Watch me touch you,” he murmured as his fingertips began to circle. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of, my darling. You’re allowed to do everything with me. I only want to fulfill your desires. Watch me pleasure you. Look at how beautiful you are…your sweet body. I love to touch you. You’re like a goddess, Dani, like Artemis of the moon, the huntress, free and untamed. You are the changing moon, my wild, virgin love.”

“Oh, Rafael.”
She turned and kissed him ardently.

Inexplicable burning wetness rose behind his closed eyes for an instant at her purity, then quickly fled as their kiss ended.

He kissed the curve of her neck, moved by her shy uncertainty as she lowered her head and observed him touching her, panting slightly. She wrapped her hands around his bent knees on either side of her and leaned back weakly against his body.

She was so ready, he thought in agony, his hardness chafing against her back through their clothes. It would have been so easy to lay her down and take her now, here on the warm, glossy planks of the deck, that still held the heat of the sun, but he repeatedly shoved temptation aside, vowing to prove his respect for her by making their wedding night her first time.

“Is this too hard?” he asked as he touched her.

“Perfect,” she breathed, arching wildly.

He smiled against her neck. His thumb deftly teased her jeweled center while his middle finger gently stroked inside her tight, fluid heat, and as he kissed her ear and the back of her neck, in mere minutes she gave in completely. Her fingers dug into his breeches-clad thighs as she gasped with amazement, then moaned her delight, laying her head back on his shoulder as she moved with his touch.

Victory enraptured him. He gathered her tightly in his arms before her feminine groans of bliss had barely ended. He turned her to face him and held her with an almost savage sense of possession. She wound her arms around his neck and clung to him, her sweet body limp.

“Oh, Rafael,” she whispered, with wonder tinging her voice. She buried her face against his neck for a moment, then lingeringly kissed his cheek. “I think—I think I must have needed that,” she confided as she slowly caught her breath.