Prince Charming (22 page)

Taken aback, he burst out laughing softly and hugged her helplessly. “Absurd little darling,” he whispered.

“I mean it,” she protested in full gravity.

“I know,” he said, chuckling, those strange, brief, nostalgic tears rising again in his eyes as he buried his smile in her hair.
This is what I have been missing.

Fullness. Contentment. For the first time in ages that he could remember, he felt like he was really there,
with
her in this moment, not just making an appearance, going through the motions. He felt as though she had given him back everything Julia had robbed him of—his innocence.

She sighed and laid her head on his shoulder, closing her eyes with a blissful little smile, while Rafe glanced up at the cool blue moon. He held her tenderly, his soul mate, neither of them speaking or moving, both listening to the cadence of each other’s breathing and savoring the warmth of having been found.

  
CHAPTER  
NINE

Dani felt like she was dancing on air as they walked back up into the Palazzo Reale, her hand clasped in Rafael’s. If they passed footmen and courtiers and ladies, she noticed them not at all. She only had eyes for Rafael, glancing constantly at his classically chiseled face and needing, perhaps, just a little reassurance that the wonderful, wicked thing he had done to her was no cause for belated regret.

He walked her to her apartment and kissed her goodnight in the little sitting room packed with flowers. Their perfumes intoxicated her like the bottle of wine they had finished.

“I don’t like saying goodbye,” she murmured, a bit tipsy and loath to release her arms from around his neck.

“Would you like me to stay with you tonight?” he whispered, running his hands up her sides in sweet coaxing.

A shiver of temptation ran through her. Pulling back, she looked up at him with a smile. “You’d better not.”

He gave her a charming little sulk. “But I want to.”

“Don’t pout, dearest. You’ll see me tomorrow,” she said teasingly, reaching up to cup his clean-shaved cheek.

“It’s already tomorrow. It’s half past two.”

“Then you’ll see me today. Later.”

“Ah, very well.” But instead of letting her go, his hold around her waist tightened and he brushed the tip of her nose with his own. “So, will you show me that trick of yours sometime, riding the horse standing up?”

“Maybe, when I get to know you better.”

“I like the sound of that. Hmmm, I wonder what presents I can send you tomorrow,” he mused as he stole another little kiss, nipping playfully at her lower lip. “What would you like?”

She smiled dreamily, closed her eyes, and laid her head on his broad shoulder. “I don’t need any presents. I can’t think of a single thing. I’m happy.”

“Then you must let me make you happier still. Name your heart’s desire.”

She pulled back to smile archly at him. “Well, now that you mention it, if you’re really determined, my roof at home needs fixing.”

He groaned.

“Maria could use help caring for Grandfather, and some of the peasants have been asking for months for some repairs to their houses—”

“Can’t you think of anything for yourself, woman? You’re supposed to ask for diamonds or something. I’ll gladly take care of this tedious roof business, but must you thwart my every attempt to spoil you?”

Laughing, she hugged him again. “You are too good to be true, Rafael.”

“I’m true,” he said softly, nuzzling her cheek.

“Then that’s enough for me. There’s nothing else I want.”

“Oh, really?” He gave a sudden, mischievous half-smile in the dark. His caressing fingers dipped flirtatiously between the cheeks of her bottom, and deeper, pressing muslin petticoats against her. “I don’t think that’s
quite
accurate,” he remarked pleasantly as she protested with a shriek and tried to squirm away from him.

He caught her around the waist and stopped her from fleeing, stroking more insistently. Trapped in his arms, laughing and scandalized, she blushed crimson as his slow, wicked touch sent jolts of mad desire zooming through her anew.

“I think there is something very definite that you crave, my dear, and I think I know just what it is.”

“Go away, you incorrigible rake! I’m falling asleep on my feet.”

“All right,” he relented. “But I shall put you to bed first.”

With that, he swept her up into his arms and carried her into her bedchamber, kissing her soundly before laying her down on her bed.

She stared up at him as he bent over her, his hands planted on either side of her, his massive shoulders looming in the dark. His long dark gold hair hung down, shadowing his angular face, but his eyes were luminous in the gloom. He looked like Lucifer, come to her in a dream to seduce her.

She held her breath, staring up at him as his gaze moved hungrily over her face and her body. Then he met her eyes without a trace of a smile but with a hot male aggressiveness that made her shrink back deeper into the mattress.

He was so much larger than she, so richly endowed with raw, rippling, physical power.

“I am burning to make love to you,” he whispered, starkly holding her stare. “I have longed to feel you under me since the first moment I saw you. But,” he said with a sudden, more tender smile, noticing the startled fright in her wide-eyed stare, “I can wait. One more night I can wait, if I must, love. Not a moment more. And then…”—lightly he traced the curve of her face, “Heaven.”

She swallowed hard. She had felt so close to him all evening, she wondered if she ought to tell him now about her great fear of childbirth, though she knew it was her duty to give him a son. But when he looked at her with his gaze so full of admiration, she could not bring herself to reveal her weakness.

Golden, magnificent Prince Rafael thought her fearless and brave. She did not have Chloe Sinclair’s great beauty; she only had her character to adorn her, and she was vain enough to wish to hide it from him that she was actually quite a coward.

He leaned forward, kissed her chest, then, giving her a final smile, pulled out of her arms and walked wearily to the door. She came up onto her elbows and watched him stride away, still a little frightened but thrilled merely by his bold, proud walk. Her gaze moved appreciatively over him, from the powerful breadth of his shoulders down to his lean waist and taut buttocks. She rolled onto her side and propped her cheek in her hand, watching him.

He paused at the door and glanced over his shoulder at her. His white smile was wolfish in the dark, his eyes glittering. “You look good enough to eat, Daniela. Are you sure you don’t want me to stay?”

She sent him a drowsy, sensual smile. “Goodnight, Rafael.”

“Ah, well.” With a long-suffering sigh, he gave her a sketch of an ironic, gentlemanly bow, then went out, closing the door quietly behind him.

Sighing in delicious contentment, she lay back with a smile on her lips, unable to come back to her senses even though she knew she was in deep, sweet peril.
You’re an oddball, a tomboy, a misfit,
her better sense clamored, trying to warn her back from the precipice toward which her emotions were irrevocably stampeding.
You could never hold a man like him.
But she was falling gloriously in love and it felt too wonderful to stop.

Soon she drifted to sleep, dreaming of Rafael…and heaven.

If the royal golden boy had caused a scandal with his intention of marrying the so-called Masked Rider, Orlando knew the next day that there was much more to it than a mere outrageous lark, for today the prince set out—almost deliberately, it seemed—to make enemies. Orlando could not guess what he was up to—a fact which in itself alarmed him, since he had always rather taken Rafe the Rake as a joke.

Today the prince began his casual war on the court by setting the lovely Lady Daniela on his knee just before the fiscal meeting began, and keeping her there for the duration—flaunting his chosen bride in their faces in defiance of his father’s will.

The ministers were infuriated at this utter flouting of decorum: Rafe answered them with a bland invitation to leave if they didn’t like it.

Only the bombastic Bishop Justinian had done so with a thunderous refusal to perform their wedding ceremony until the king had approved the match. Then, in a whoosh of satin robes, he had exited grandly

Lady Daniela had flinched at the bishop’s holy ire, still innocent of how the prince was using her to make his stand. The girl was clearly uncomfortable, but Rafe refused to let her flee, holding her firmly yet gently on his lap and whispering in her ear.

Her wide, blue-green eyes still wore an expression of naive uncertainty, but Orlando noticed that the more the old men nagged and badgered Rafe about various matters, the more the girl’s countenance changed from a blush of maidenly embarrassment to a scowl of brazen defiance, until at length she appeared quite content to stay just where she was, at Rafe’s bidding, his little ally.

The lover and the fighter,
he thought, shaking his head to himself.

Rafe’s light caress on her hair seemed all that stopped the lovely, feral redhead from lunging across the table and lashing out at the men who would dare treat Ascencion’s future king without the pomp and obeisance due his rank. Rafe and Daniela’s united front against the ministers silenced the old men until at last they simmered down to work with little more than a few obtuse grumbles.

The younger men, particularly Adriano and Nic, exchanged disgusted looks with Orlando, but dared not let Rafe see them.

Orlando caught Adriano’s glance and held it for an extra second or two, then the beautiful young man looked away, his high-boned cheeks flushing. Orlando smiled to himself, biding his time. He knew the weak link in the chain that was the prince’s inner circle. Adriano was jealous, mercurial, emotionally fragile. It didn’t surprise Orlando that Rafe’s most ardent follower was so hostile to Lady Daniela.

The ostensible reason for the girl’s presence at the meeting was to take notes, since Rafe could not be bothered to do it himself, but it was distracting how the prince sat at the head of the table with the pretty girl on his lap and could not seem to keep his hands off her. Lounging like some pagan emperor on his throne, signing the fate of millions with one hand, while with the other he was constantly caressing her back, toying languidly with her hair, nuzzling her cheek.

Lady Daniela listened intently to everything with an intensity and a clarity of expression that impressed Orlando. From time to time, she leaned to Rafe and whispered something in his ear, remarking upon what was said, Orlando guessed. Everyone could see that her words commanded his acute attention, but not even the fierce Lady Daniela was brash enough to dare speak her thoughts aloud to the king’s cabinet.

The meeting dragged, argument after argument. Don Arturo was being downright tedious, unable, especially after this latest insult, to concede the smallest point to Rafe, who remained tranquil but would not budge from his veto of the new tax the prime minister was arguing.

Still, he stroked Daniela as though she were a beautiful red tabby cat on his lap.

The way his hand traveled back and forth, slowly, indulgently, possessively, from her arm to her shoulder was maddening to Orlando. Quite without intending to, he kept envisioning them making passionate love. A woman like that, he kept thinking, would give herself completely but only to one extraordinarily fortunate man, and then in his mind’s eye he saw her surrendering instead to
him
. Some of the old ministers looked a bit hot under the collar as well, with the foreplaylike exhibition.

The pair seemed to have an unspoken communication all their own and the chemistry between them made the room sizzle. Everyone was uncomfortable, realizing, perhaps, that Rafe was merely tolerating them and didn’t really need them anymore.

All he seemed to need was Daniela and, perhaps, a bed.

When the gentlemen took a short break at half past ten, some of them gathered at the end of the hall, cursing the prince as an arrogant lech, but Orlando was not convinced it was mere sexual desire that had prompted his kinsman to keep the girl with him so faithfully.