It was a word which had been drummed into him from the moment he’d been born. A concept which had driven him all his life. It had been duty which had made him focus himself on his lessons and fencing skills, rather than give in to the bitter tears of a deserted child. Duty which had made him fulfil his end of this marriage bargain with the young Albastasian Princess.
Couldn’t he—for once—take a break from the crushing weight of royal expectations? Suddenly, he felt a jolt of his own power as he looked at her. ‘I want so badly to make love to you.’
He saw her bite her lip and gaze at the ground, as if seeking an answer amid the strands of silvered straw which lay there, and when she raised her head again, her face was serene and very solemn, as if she had come to some swift conclusion of her own. ‘I want that, too.’
He sucked in an unsteady breath, his body warming as he acknowledged her instant capitulation. ‘And I suspect that if I drew you into the shadows now and laid my hands and my lips upon your body,’ he continued, ‘you would again be mine.’
‘R-Roman,’ she said shakily, but she didn’t contradict him.
‘But we aren’t going to do that.’
‘We...aren’t?’
Was he wrong to enjoy her obvious disappointment? No, he was not. For didn’t her response indicate that the balance of power between them was more equal than he’d thought, and perhaps that was something he needed to address.
‘No, we aren’t.’ He paused just long enough to give her a taste of doubt, because wasn’t uncertainty one of the most powerful aphrodisiacs of all? ‘Instead, I will come to your suite tomorrow. At midnight.’
Her eyes widened. ‘But you can’t! You know you can’t. Tradition states—’
‘I don’t give a damn what tradition states because I am King now and I make the rules.’ He lowered his voice, even though there was nobody within earshot. ‘I have no intention of broadcasting my movements to palace staff but neither do I intend to have sex with you on a sofa, or rammed up against a wall, or lying on the dusty ground of the stables, even though the prospect of not doing that right now is almost unendurable. I want to share your bed—properly. As Roman, not Constantin. As the man I am and not the man I was pretending to be. But I need you to be certain that this is what you want too, Zabrina.’ He paused. ‘This is to be no hot-blooded and hasty liaison, fuelled by rampant hormones and frustration, which is why I’m giving you adequate time to think about it. Because if, for any reason, you decide that you would prefer to wait for our wedding night to be intimate with me again then you must send me a signal.’
‘How?’
His eyes gleamed like the blade of a sword. ‘If you wish me to share your bed, then you should light a lamp in your window tomorrow night, and leave it unshuttered. If the light flares, then I will come to you. But if shutters are closed then I will not, and we will never refer to the matter again. It will be as though we never had this conversation. Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Zabrina?’
‘Yes,’ she said, in a voice so quiet he could barely hear her response. ‘I understand.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ZABRINA SHIVERED AS she positioned the light in the centre of her bedroom window, thinking how strange life was. One minute you could be watching a film about a mermaid and wondering how she could possibly keep her hair looking that shiny when it was constantly immersed in salt-water, and the next...
She licked her dry lips.
Next you could be sending out a secret and silent message as you waited for your lover.
And she didn’t have a clue what she was getting herself into.
Should she be in bed, waiting for Roman to arrive? Surely it wouldn’t be a very attractive sight if she were caught anxiously pacing the floor—even if she was clad in a delicate nightgown which she had plucked from her trousseau with trembling fingers. Maybe she ought to be in bed, carefully positioned against the pillows, with her newly washed hair falling artfully over her shoulders. No. No, she couldn’t do that. She would feel like a fraud—an imposter—and it would make the situation even more unreal than it already was.
There was a light rap on the door and then
, without any prompting from her, it silently opened and closed again and there was Roman in her suite, dominating the space around him, dominating everything with his aura of alpha masculinity. For a moment Zabrina said nothing—but her breathing was so erratic she doubted she’d be able to speak any kind of sense in any case. Because, as always, his brooding beauty stopped her in her tracks. For once his muscular body was clothed in muted colours—presumably so he would melt into the background as he made his way from his part of the palace to hers. But no matter what he wore, his aristocratic bearing always shone through, like a diamond in a pile of rubble.
Yet her own royal status suddenly seemed to count for nothing. She felt like a fraud despite standing before him in her provocative lingerie, which was presumably perfect for an assignation such as this. But how she looked on the outside wasn’t how she felt on the inside. Her fluttery excitement kept morphing into worry that she wouldn’t be able to handle the way he made her feel, because wasn’t the underlying message she was getting from him that this was supposed to be about sex, not emotion?
The King probably thought she knew how these midnight encounters worked, when the truth was she didn’t have a clue. So did she have to go through another humiliating disclosure about her lack of experience and hope he’d believe her this time—or did she pretend, and try to pick things up as they went along?
Yet wasn’t the whole point of their relationship supposed to be honesty?
‘Roman—’
‘Shh. Just let me take you to bed, Princess. Because I don’t think I can wait for a moment longer.’
His soft words shushed her. They bathed her in silk. The slight cracking of his voice was hugely flattering and suddenly Zabrina was in his arms and his fingers were pushing back through the spill of her hair and he was kissing her as she’d never been kissed before. Stars splintered at the backs of her eyes as she kissed him back, as if they couldn’t get enough of each other. He groaned against her mouth and then suddenly he scooped her up into his arms and carried her into the bedroom, the mattress dipping beneath her as he laid her down on the huge divan.
Without taking his eyes from her face he began to unbutton his shirt, but still she said nothing. For hadn’t his soft words been a tacit order not to break the spell of what was about to happen—and wasn’t the truth that it really did feel like magic?
Zabrina watched as he peeled off his clothes until his golden flesh was naked and rippling in the lamplight. Her mouth dried as he joined her on the bed and he pulled her against his powerful frame. He let out a long sigh as his fingers began to reacquaint themselves with her aching body but there seemed a different kind of urgency about him tonight as he kissed her. Her nerves were quickly dissolved by the sweetness of his mouth roving over her neck, her hair and her breasts and Zabrina was writhing with impatience when at last his hand moved beneath the delicate nightgown and began to ruck up the slippery fabric.