THREEDAYSAWAY, and they’d returned to the palace with its timetables and strictures. Lise was torn. For a brief time she had found a measure of peace, away from the capital. Those days were like an oasis of calm in the middle of a wasteland of grief. She hadn’t wanted to leave the tranquillity of Rafe’s home in the mountains, where she might once have pretended they were simply a man and a woman united by shared grief, and not who they truly were. A man who wanted power from a beneficial marriage and a woman forced to marry by her constitution. No matter what Rafe had shared with her, that was their truth. They were who they were, and life wasn’t all glitter-covered fantasises but full of harsh realities. Living with the dark, twisting ache that she didn’t deserve any meagre shred of happiness.
Yet her pain had dissipated to a background hum in the fog of passion in Rafe’s arms. All she could think about was what he’d done to her. The exquisite sensation of his mouth on the heart of her, the way she’d broken apart under his wicked tongue. Her craving for more, foreverything. The heat rose in her chest, and she was sure the blush bloomed over her face.
‘They call this informal?’
Her stomach swooped as Rafe walked into the dining room. He’d taken a call for business and hadn’t followed her to breakfast, so she’d thought she’d have longer to eat without him. At least in the mountains she could walk the narrow cattle trails to escape. To create a little space, since being back in the palace allowed her none. Here, togetherness was everything. The illusion of Queen and King working together for the good of the country.
The man in question glowered as he looked at the expansive table, set in full silver service for two. Lise sat at one end. A place for him lay at the other where a patch of sunshine hit the table. In front of the setting lay perfectly pressed newspapers. If it weren’t so real, it might have been comical.
‘We’re serving ourselves. Here, that’s almost considered to be camping.’ The laden buffet could have fed a family of ten, rather than the two of them. Though she hadn’t eaten much of the magnificent meal set out on the sideboard. Since they’d returned to the palace her stomach had recommenced twisting itself into complicated and uncomfortable knots.
Rafe snorted. ‘I’m not sitting so far away we need to phone each other to speak.’ He strode to his end of the table, grabbed the cutlery and newspapers and placed them next to Lise. ‘It’s ridiculous.’
She nodded to the end of the table he’d vacated.
‘That was my father’s place. He liked to read the paper in the sunshine.’ Lise sipped her coffee. ‘My mother sat here because she said the sun ruined her skin.’
‘I’m not your father.’
The memory of the King, sitting at the end of the table poring through the papers, sliced like a shard of glass. But her father wasn’t here any more and, no, Rafe was most definitelynothim. No man of her family would have worn jeans to the breakfast table. Even very fine jeans, that hung low on the hips and showed off the distracting vee of a man’s torso. Nor would they ever have worn a business shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Rolled-up sleeves would have been sacrilege and meant showing muscular arms. If they’d even had muscles, which she wasn’t convinced of, but Rafe most definitely did. The magnificent swell of his biceps when his shirt was removed, his powerful chest. The corded tendons straining as he’d dropped his head between her legs and...
‘Lise?’
He was standing at the sideboard now, plate loaded with food. He probably needed to eat quite a bit, to keep his energy up for...all the things she refused to think about at this moment because she was becoming quite obsessed with ideas of Rafe permanently shirtless.
‘I’m sorry. Yes?’
The corner of his mouth tilted in a lopsided grin as he strolled back to the table. Could he tell what she’d been thinking? No doubt. She’d bet the Crown jewels he knewexactlywhat had been distracting her. He placed his plate on the tabletop.
‘I said, to me, an informal breakfast suggests something like breakfast in bed.’
Swoop.Her stomach dropped once more and her heart took off at a race. The feeling more intoxicating than slaloming cross-country through trees. And more dangerous.
She nibbled a bread roll and took another sip of coffee. ‘I’m sure breakfast in bed has never been served in the palace. It’s not done.’
Rafe hadn’t sat down. He moved towards her, and she was forced to tilt her head up to meet his gaze. ‘Use your magisterial powers to order breakfast in bed and make it so.’
Could he see the desire that curled slow and hot through her belly? Winding deep and low on a seductive journey that made her thighs clench together and her nipples bud and prickle in her bra.
‘For both of us?’ Her voice came out as a breathy whisper. It sounded like an invitation when she meant they could both dine alone in their respective rooms, didn’t she?
‘Perhaps you could join me? My bed is bigger. A perfect place to consume a sumptuous meal.’ Her breath caught when he dropped his head to hers. His lips at her ear, his words caressing her throat as he murmured, ‘More room to indulge in...eating what I prefer.’
She closed her eyes, memories cascading over her like a flood of warm water. Rafe, holding her hands above her head. Pinning her with his dark and heated gaze.
‘Look at you, laid out for me like a feast.’
He could spread her out, here on the table. There was no one to see them...
A subtle cough behind her jolted Lise from the addictive fantasy. Rafe whispered into her ear, ‘Breakfast in bed tomorrow.’
It wasn’t a request and the decadent promise in his voice threatened to liquefy her bones, till she slid off the chair and melted in a puddle on the floor. She was sure none of that was at all regal of her. Queens didn’t melt or swoon.
Rafe didn’t seem likewise affected. He turned to the butler who stood behind them and raised his eyebrow in a supercilious way even her father would have been challenged to replicate.
‘Yes?’
‘Coffee, Your Majesty?’