She froze. A jittery feeling immediately sprang to life in her belly.
They were alone.
As he stared up at her, a dangerous half-smile curved his hard mouth. “Don’t you look pretty,” he said as he idly sucked a peppermint. He began walking slowly up the steps toward her, his hands in his pockets.
Intensely aware of him and ill at ease, Dani swallowed hard at his approach, then made up her mind to walk loftily past him as though he didn’t exist. She lifted her chin and forced herself to proceed down the stairs.
He stepped into her path at about the middle of the staircase. She took a sideways step; he followed, arching one golden eyebrow at her. She stepped back the other way; again, he blocked her, smiling coolly.
“Remove yourself, please, Your Highness,” she said caustically through gritted teeth.
“You have not yet kissed your husband good morning.”
“I am not kissing you, Rafael.”
“All right, then, I’ll kiss you.” He leaned toward her to kiss her cheek, but she lifted the riding crop at an angle across her face, gently barring his way, though his nearness made her shiver and the scent of his candy triggered delicious memories of his kiss.
He seemed to know his effect on her. He grasped her hips, caressing her. “You look like you’re ready to go for a ride, Daniela.”
“That’s right.” She attempted to push him off her. “I’m on my way out.”
“Just kiss me once, then I’ll let you pass,” he murmured.
“I’ve heard that before,” she replied dubiously.
“One kiss.” He paused. “Or would you prefer I kiss someone else?”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Do you actually think you can make me jealous?”
“I’m hoping. Give me one kiss and I’ll be good,” he whispered.
“And then will you go away?”
“If you still want me to.”
“One kiss,” she repeated, her mouth watering at the thought.
He held up one finger, which he then touched to her lips. Reading her wary acquiescence in her eyes, he rested his fingertips gently on her cheeks and lowered his head, brushing his satiny mouth over hers in tantalizing softness. Dizzily, she held on to his waist to steady herself. His kiss alighted with greater intent on her mouth. She closed her eyes and parted her lips.
It was useless.
Passion burned too brightly between them like an iridescent flame. Heat flooded her as he ravished her mouth. He gave her his swiftly dissolving peppermint and took it back again, tearing his kiss away.
With barely restrained force in his touch, he moved her so that her hip abutted the wide, carved-marble banister. He cupped the back of her thigh through her skirts, urging her in wordless coaxing to sit partly on it. Laying her back against the wide flat railing, he leaned over her and devoured her mouth with wild, ravishing kisses. He cupped his hand around her thigh, gently lifting her left leg, as well, to rest on the railing.
She braced herself there with one hand behind her, the other on his shoulder. Her heart raced with wild, reckless thrill while he ended the kiss, slowly lowering himself to his knees on the next step down. She had no idea what he was doing, but she did not possess the strength to protest when he slid her skirts up and parted the slit of her white muslin pantalettes. She tilted her head back in helpless welcome when she felt the pad of his thumb stroke her, and then she gasped as his wet, warm mouth covered her in a fiery burst of icy-hot peppermint bliss.
“Oh, my God,” she moaned. It was all she could do not to fall down the steps.
She heard his throaty laugh at her reaction to his debauchery. Then he used his tongue to caress her with the candy before it dissolved entirely, along with her wits. He slid his middle finger into her as he blew gently on her aroused flesh, sending a fresh wave of icy-hot sensation to rack her body with wild pleasure.
She leaned back weakly on her elbow on the wide marble railing, her other hand still clinging to his shoulder, her riding crop hooked under her finger and trailing down his back, the tasseled tip of it dusting his muscled rear end in tight breeches.
Her chest heaving, she gazed down in an utter, wanton haze of lust at his blond head between her thighs. He licked her in circles lightly, with exquisite finesse, and he said,
“Mmm,”
against her flesh, as though he were feasting on soft, melting chocolates and could not get enough. She stroked his sleek, golden hair while he applied himself to pleasuring her with naughty little flicks of his luscious tongue and his fingers moved in and out of her teeming passage.
God forgive her, but even this shocking decadence wasn’t enough. Nothing would ever be enough but to feel Rafael inside of her, taking what she so longed to give.
He seemed to sense when she grew rigid, poised on the edge of release. She cried out in anguish when he pulled back and gazed up at her, looking tousled and lusty as a wanton god. One glance into his eyes told her that his control was hanging by a thread. His left hand caressed her thigh, his royal signet ring gleaming gold.
He wiped his glistening mouth on his wrist as he held her stare feverishly. “Are you ready now to ask me nicely, love?”
His challenging whisper slammed her back to reality. She stared at him, appalled.
“Absolutely not,” she forced out with knee-jerk defiance.
“Ah, what a shame,” he breathed, regretfully brushing her skirts back down.
She could only stare at him in disbelief, stunned that he would leave her in torment.
Smiling at her, cool anger turning his eyes steely green, he stood and began walking up the steps past her. “Cheer up, Dani. If I have to suffer, so do you. Let me know if you change your mind.”
Dazedly, she moved away from the marble railing and stood unsteadily on the steps. She was shaking with tumultuous emotion and unfulfilled desire. Slowly, she sank down and sat on the step, unaware that he had stopped at the top of the staircase, clenching and unclenching his fists, and now forced himself to turn and look down at her.
She wrapped her arms around herself and lowered her head in despair. All the fight drained out of her. She hated him—needed him. Needed him so much. How could he leave her like this, feeling so empty and alone, ashamed of her own wantonness?
Yet this was precisely what she had done to him on their wedding night, she realized. She heard slow, heavy footsteps as he came back down the stairs to her. He crouched down beside her and leaned close, kissing her cheek.
“I’m sorry, baby, my precious, I’m sorry.” His whisper was raw. “Let me take you upstairs, angel, please. Please. I need you so badly.”
Flinching with want, she tried to pull away from him.
He slid closer. Lifting his hand, he stroked her cheek, her hair. His hand was shaking. He closed his eyes and rested his forehead against her temple. “Dani, please, this is killing me. You’re my wife. Don’t turn me away. You’re all I think about. You’re the only one I want—”
“I am afraid,” she said barely audibly.
“No. No fear,” he panted, grazing his lips against her cheek back to kiss her earlobe. His hand covered her knee. “I’ll make it good for you—”
“Afraid to have a child!” She closed her brimming eyes in fierce anger. “I’m afraid to have a child. I’m afraid.”
He stopped.
There,
she thought. She had said it.
Finally blurted out the truth, the core of fear in the center of all her bravado.
“I am terrified,” she said. “I am a coward.” She felt him staring at her.
“I don’t understand.”
She drew a deep, shaky breath but still could not look at him. “Even if by some miracle your father doesn’t disinherit you, the annulment must stand because I cannot give you an heir. You must find someone else, Rafael. I can’t do it. I cannot.”
He was silent for a very long moment. “Is it…your health?”
“My health is sound.”
“I’m sorry, I’m still not sure I understand.”
She turned to him at last. “Have you ever seen a woman die in childbirth?”
“No.”
“I have. That day in the jail when you asked me to marry you, I knew you would have to have an heir and I thought then that I would face it when the time came. But if I can’t even keep you as my husband, I don’t want to risk dying for you—not that way! I meant it when I said I would’ve taken a swift death at the end of a noose rather than to die that way—in blood, and terror, and screaming. Such screaming as I never heard in all my days—”
“Easy, there. Easy,” he said, laying his hand on her shoulder with a frown of gentle concern. “Dani, not all women die in childbirth. You’re young, strong.”
“My mother died birthing me, Rafael. Grandfather says she was narrow-hipped, the same as me.” Hearing the frantic note in her own voice, she struggled to appear calm.
“But Dani—” His voice broke off and he stared at her. The self-assured Rafael seemed flustered and completely routed by her awful, unwomanly confession.
It was so terribly awkward. But then, ever the prince, he smoothly rose to the occasion. He put his arm around her shoulders and drew her close to him protectively, pressing a kiss to her hair. “Darling, I would never let anything happen to you,” he whispered. “I know you’re afraid. I wouldn’t want to have to go through that myself, but we all must face our fears. I promise you, you’ll have the best physicians—”
“No doctor can control nature, Rafael!”
His soft kiss lingered at her temple. “No, my love, only God can do that. But I cannot believe that God would take you away from me now that I’ve finally found you.”
“Found me?” she said bitterly. “You only wed me to use me, Rafael.”
He met her eyes intensely for a moment, as though there were something profound that he had to confess as well. But his mouth was grim and pale, and he said nothing.
Rising to his feet, he raked a hand through his hair and walked away.
For three days, Rafe put his work between himself and the world. Except for the arduous state occasions when they were required to stand together, eat together, dance together, and play the blissful newlyweds, it was easy to avoid his wife, for he spent most of his time in the administrative block of the palace while she was confined, on his orders, to her pink suite on the third floor.
He ached with want and with a love that terrified him, but in spite of everything, he refused to get rid of her. Doing so would have been tantamount to admitting to Don Arturo and the bishop and Adriano and everyone else who had warned him against this that he had made a mistake in marrying her, and he was not willing to do that. He had made his vows before God and country. He had to save face, and the plain truth was, hang it all, that he wanted to keep her.
Why, he didn’t know.
The memory of her sweet giving that night on the boat, her innocent face flushed with passion and her blue-green eyes filled with sensual bliss, haunted him as the days dragged by.
So supremely self-assured, he had sought from the start of their acquaintance to seduce her, but he was the one who had been seduced. And he hated it.
It was Thursday, late afternoon, when his stomach growled, reminding him he had forgotten again to eat lunch.
Considering the report he had just finished reading, the thought of eating struck him as a trifle unappetizing, in spite of his hunger. No poison had yet been found in the foodstuffs from the royal kitchens, according to the university scientists and physicians whom he had instructed to examine it for any taint. Their methods seemed to him satisfactorily meticulous, and so far all the cats were healthy, but the mere thought quashed his already diminished appetite.
Instead, he moved on to the next order of business, calling his secretary to show in his next appointment.
The fat-bellied Count Bulbati sailed into the small, stuffy salon with his pug nose in the air, clearly a man who did not take Rafael di Fiore seriously.
Rafe could spot the type at a hundred paces.
Ten minutes into their interview, however, Bulbati’s smug disdain had crumbled. Then he began to sweat. Profusely.
Rafe continued to grill him casually and without pity, knowing the man had bothered Daniela. Sooner or later, he knew he was going to have to go crawling back to her, and he wanted some kind of meaningful gift to lay at her feet when that time came.
The ledger books from Bulbati’s jurisdiction under the Ministry of Finance lay open on his desk.
“A very singular mode of wooing, my lord,” Rafe growled as he looked up from the neatly doctored columns of numbers. “Did you really think you could get her to marry you by starving her out of house and home?”
Bulbati swiped at his pale, doughy face with a handkerchief. His sweat made the whole room stink. “I cannot fathom why Lady Daniela is accusing me—”
“Look, you revolting mound of flesh, I’ve had it with your dodging my questions. You and I both know you are guilty. These accounts have been altered and you’re the only one in a position to do that and to profit from it! You are looking at fifteen years or more in prison, my lord!”
“Your Highness, you don’t understand!” Bulbati squealed. “I’m allowed to skim a small portion off the top for myself! It’s all right, you see. He knows about it—” The count suddenly stopped himself with a look of horror.
Staring at him, Rafe sat back slowly in his chair and skimmed his jawline with his knuckles. “Well, this is very interesting. Who has given you permission to embezzle funds from Ascencion’s coffers, my lord?”
Rafe did not show it, but he was a little shocked. He had the feeling he had just opened a veritable Pandora’s box of trouble.
Open those books and you will find the real criminal,
Daniela had said that night at her villa, shooting straight to the mark in her usual Robin Hood fashion.
Bulbati closed his eyes, his pasty skin turning a sickly green color. “Oh, what have I done now?” he said to himself. “Caught between a rock and a hard place. Oh, dear, oh, dear me.”
“I’m waiting.”
Bulbati turned a suddenly desperate expression on him. “Your Highness, you don’t understand. He will kill me!”
“Think about life in prison, my lord. That is what you are facing. You have embezzled from the king; you have abused your office, not only to line your own pockets, but to try to get your hands on an innocent young lady. Your actions are dishonorably vile and your words prove you a coward. If you hope for pity, you will find none here, at least not until you begin to cooperate.”