37 Her Highness and the Bodyguard

by Christine Rimmer

  But he couldn’t kiss her, either. Couldn’t take away all her clothes and bury himself in her velvety heat....

  That was forbidden.

  That could never be again.

  It was torture of the most unbearable kind. And every soldier knew how it went when you were tortured. If your tormentor was good enough, eventually, you would give it all up—betray your family, your country, all you held dear.

  Just to make the agony stop.

  “Marcus?”

  He blinked, opened his eyes to darkness.

  And remembered. Her Highness Arabella’s wedding. Rowdy’s Roadhouse. The crash.

  Rhia actually was pressed against him. His dream of being tortured endlessly by an unflagging state of arousal was real.

  “Are you awake?” she asked.

  “I am now,” he grumbled and set his mind to blocking out the ache in his groin.

  Wrapped in their cocoon of blankets and the tarp, they were warm, and that was what mattered. His socks were already dry and he didn’t have to worry about her getting frostbite or pneumonia—or worse, freezing to death before rescue came.

  “The snow?” she asked.

  He peered over the seat. “Looks like it’s still coming down.”

  “What time is it?”

  He freed his arm long enough to look at his watch. “Ten to two.”

  “Your phone?”

  He tried the headset. “Still out. Go to sleep. In a few hours, this will all be over.”

  She didn’t do what he asked her to do. But then, she rarely had. “I have a confession,” she whispered.

  “Save it for a priest.”

  She made a low sound in her throat. A soft sound. A sexy sound. A sound that seemed to go straight to his tortured privates. “I told Alice about us. She’s known for eight years. One week after I dropped you off at LAX, I called her and told her everything.”

  He wasn’t surprised. “That wasn’t wise.”

  “She would never tell anyone. She never has.”

  God in heaven, she felt good in his arms. And she smelled so good, like vanilla and jasmine flowers and something else, something that was only her. He would know her in the darkest part of the blackest night, in the crush of a crowd, blindfolded. “Rest.”

  “You keep saying that.”

  He almost pressed a kiss into her dark, fragrant hair. But he caught himself just in time. “We have to sit here like this to stay warm. We might as well get some rest.”

  “Or we could talk.”

  “There is nothing to talk about.”

  “Liar.” She said it very low. And vehemently. “You are such a liar, Marcus.”

  He didn’t argue. She was right. He had told the lies that he had to tell. And he had no intention of digging into the truth tonight.

  Or ever.

  She let out a sad little sigh. “We have so very much to talk about. If only you would.”

  “No, we don’t.”

  She was silent then. Which was good. They only needed to get through this night without doing something foolish, without saying all the things that were too dangerous to say. Then they could both return to their separate and very different lives. Which was as it should be.

  He rested his head back against the ice-cold side window and told himself to sleep, to block out the soft, tempting, never-forgotten shape of the woman in his arms—and not, under any circumstances, to think about the past....

  * * *

  Marcus did sleep.

  And he dreamed about the things that he’d sworn not to think of.

  He dreamed of that time six years ago, when she came home to Montedoro before her junior year at college and sought him out.

  Somehow, she had learned his private email address. Three emails she sent him. He didn’t respond to the first two. He consigned them to the trash and told himself that the wisest response to her was no response at all.

  He never should have presumed even to speak with her in California. But something so impossible had happened the day before. And he was still reeling from it, his whole world tilted sideways, off its axis. Gone completely wrong.

  She had challenged him and he had dared to respond as an equal might.

  And after that, somehow he couldn’t walk away—didn’t want to walk away. Not right then. He wanted to be with her, even though such a thing was completely forbidden.

  To be her friend for that brief time had been unacceptable. To be her lover?

  It was so much more than wrong. It was a desecration of all he held sacred. He owed everything to her family. Her Sovereign Highness Adrienne was a fair and just ruler, and a generous one. She truly cared for the lowliest of her subjects. She helped to fund St. Stephen’s. And every year at Christmastime, Her Sovereign Highness would visit. She would come bearing gifts for each and every orphaned child and she would personally speak with every child who was old enough to form a recognizable sentence. Every year from the year he was three and his adoptive parents returned him to the orphanage like a defective toy, the sovereign princess spoke with him. And every year, she seemed to remember the things he had said the year before.

  When he was six, he told her he wanted to be a soldier for his country, to join the guard, to serve the princely family. Her Sovereign Highness took him at his word. He received the education he needed. He began to train for the Sovereign’s Guard at eighteen. But even before that, he was taken under the wing of Sir Hector Anteros, who was then the captain of the guard. Sir Hector was the closest thing to a real father that Marcus had ever known and Hector had seen to it that his protégé received an officer’s commission after graduating from the University of Montedoro at the age of twenty-one. Marcus was no one, a foundling. And yet, because of Princess Adrienne, the future he’d only barely dared to dream of was his.

  Essentially, Marcus owed the princely family his life, his education, his relationship with the man who paved the way for him and his livelihood. And he had repaid their endless kindness by seducing one of their daughters.

  So yes. When Rhiannon sent him those first two emails six years ago, he had pretended that he didn’t receive them. But then came the third email in which she threatened to seek him out in person, to come to the barracks not far from the palace where he lived and demand to speak with him. At that point, he’d agreed to meet with her in secret.

  She chose the place. It was a short drive out of Montedoro, in the French countryside, a deserted farmhouse that belonged to her family. He arrived first.

  He was standing on the front step, wondering if she had come to her senses and decided to stay away, after all, when a small yellow sports car appeared racing toward him along the dusty front lane. She pulled up a few feet from the steps and got out.

  Her coffee-brown hair gleamed in the summer sun. She wore a sleeveless red cotton dress and she stood by the car and looked up the steps at him and he was in hell. Wanting to run to her, to reach for her, needing the feel of her flesh beneath his hands in the same way he needed to suck in his next breath.

  And knowing that taking her in his arms could not, under any circumstances, be allowed to happen. Touching her would be too dangerous. Once he had his hands on her again, he might never be able to let her go.

  He saw in those big dark eyes that she was going to say things that could never be unsaid. And so he had stood there, in the shade of the olive tree by the padlocked door of that plain farmhouse, and listened to her say those things.

  “I think...I love you, Marcus. I think we made a giant mistake, to end it the way we did. I think of you often. All the time. It’s as though you’re somehow inside my heart. Here.” She laid her slim hand above her breast. “As though you’re somehow in my blood. Don’t you...ever think about me? Don’t you ever think you might want to try again?”

  And then he said the lies he had to say. “No. I’m sorry. I don’t want to try again. I’m content, I promise you, with the agreement we made two years ago. I wish you well. And now, would you please
get back in that little yellow car and drive away and never try to contact me again?”

  “But, Marcus...” She spoke gently. Carefully. Her enormous eyes beckoned him down to drowning. “Don’t you ever even wonder if we might have made a mistake? Don’t you ever wish or imagine that it could be different for you and me?”

  “No,” he said, again, his tone as deliberate, as carefully controlled as hers. “The mistake was on my part, to have ever dared to touch you or even to speak with you.”

  “But, Marcus, that’s not what I meant.”

  He put up a hand. “Please. Hear me. The mistake was not that we ended it. The mistake was that it ever started in the first place. All I want from you, ma’am, is for you to keep the promise you made to me two years ago.”

  She had stood there, so beautiful it ripped his heart in two to look at her, and she had cried. “‘Ma’am.’ Oh, you can’t be serious. Ma’am?”

  “I would like for you to go now.”

  “Oh, God.” She stood there in the dirt drive and stretched out her hands to him. “Please, Marcus. Please. Won’t you just give us a chance?” The tears tracked down her soft cheeks, dripped over her chin. “I miss you. So much. Couldn’t we just talk it over, at least, just... Oh, Marcus. Don’t do this, don’t just send me away.”

  But he had to. In time, he knew, she would thank him for it.

  He made himself stand there, still and straight as any statue. “You must go, ma’am. There is nothing more that I can say.”

  She stared at him through red, wet eyes for an endless moment. And then, with a ragged sob, she buried her face in her hands. He stood there, frozen to the spot, knowing that to move so much as a centimeter would destroy his control and have him running to her, grabbing her close. So he didn’t move. He stayed where he was and he watched her slim shoulders shake as she strove to collect herself.

  After forever, she dashed away the last of her tears, wiped her arm across her running nose and drew her shoulders tall to face him again. “I think you’re a coward, Marcus.” Her voice was cold now, frosty with disdain, though her swollen, red eyes remained turbulent, shining with the last of her tears.

  He didn’t speak, didn’t move. He only waited, willing her to go.

  “All right, then,” she said at last. “Goodbye.”

  He watched her turn from him, hating himself for the pain he had brought her, a really bad emptiness in the center of his chest—and yet, even then, certain that it was the right thing he was doing. She got in the car and drove away.

  And that was it. The end of it.

  In real life, anyway.

  But in this dream he seemed to be having, the ending at the farmhouse steps was...changing.

  Morphing into something altogether different.

  In this dream, he was hard. Aching for her. In this dream, she turned to the yellow car, as before. She pulled open the door, as before.

  And then she pushed it shut again.

  Not as before.

  Everything went haywire then. She whirled and came to him, racing up the steps, her face flushed, still swollen from her fit of weeping, her dark hair coming loose from its pins, falling to curl around her unforgettable face. “Tell me again,” she demanded. “Tell me how you want me to go....”

  And it was too much.

  Pure need took over. He reached for her. She came to him, sighing, twisting in his arms. He realized she’d been facing away from him, leaning against him. But now she had turned, so she lay against him face-to-face, her soft breasts smashed against his chest, her warm breath flowing across the flesh of his throat.

  And suddenly, they were on some narrow padded surface inside the locked, deserted farmhouse. It was dark and cold in there, but they had their body heat to keep each other warm, a tent of blankets to shelter them.

  She kissed him, her mouth opening, a night-blooming flower, under his, her breath flowing into him, their tongues meeting again, at last, after an eternity of loneliness and denial. He stroked her tongue with his, caressing, touching all those secret, wet, slick surfaces beyond her parted lips.

  His arms were filled with her, so warm and soft and perfectly made. And so very eager. Her hair tumbled down, tangling around them, a dark web of curling silk.

  So real, the taste of her. Nothing an ordinary soldier like him should ever be allowed to know. Honey. Ambrosia. The food of the gods. She tasted of all the things he had no right to touch. She tasted of paradise.

  Real.

  So real...

  Better than all the hungry, lonely, longing dreams of her in all the years since...

  She gasped.

  And she wiggled against him, driving him wild, as she slid her arms up his chest and used her soft, slim hands to frame his face.

  “Marcus. Marcus, are you asleep?” Asleep? He tried to capture her mouth again, but she retreated, though her soft hands still held him, one on either cheek. “Marcus.” Her voice was sweetly scolding now.

  Awareness dawned: the heat between them, the hard door at his back. The cold just beyond their tent of blankets and tarp....

  It seemed so real because it was real.

  He opened his eyes. She was right there, her eyes waiting, shining at him through the dark.

  “Sweet holy virgin,” he heard himself whisper.

  She moved, her body shifting a little between his legs, reminding him sharply all over again of how much he wanted her. He stifled a groan of need as she said, “And here I thought you had finally admitted you just had to make love with me....”

  She was right. He had done exactly that, more or less. In his dreams.

  Literally.

  “Rhiannon, I...” He had no idea what to say.

  She leaned closer again, sliding against him, stroking him with that fine body of hers. He gritted his teeth, absolutely certain he was going to lose it any second now. Her soft lips just barely brushed his. “I have a question.”

  He made a sound, a helpless, yearning, croaking sound.

  Her lips moved against his. He felt the whisper of her warm breath across his mouth, over his cheek. “It’s been a terrible night, Marcus. Worst of the worst.”

  “Er.” Again, he had to swallow a groan. “That was a question?”

  “I’m getting there.”

  Yet another tortured sound escaped him.

  And she said, “My question is, why not?”

  He didn’t have to ask why not what. He knew exactly why not what.

  She stroked the stubble-rough side of his face and whispered softly, in a voice of purest temptation, “Why not go ahead with it? Why not do what neither of us can stop wanting to do, just one more time?”

  He knew exactly how he should respond to those dangerous questions. He needed to take her by the shoulders and put her gently but firmly away from him. But instead, he muttered in a rough, choked growl, “It would be...wrong.”

  She used the backs of her fingers to stroke the close-clipped hair at his temples. “I don’t care, Marcus. I really don’t care if it’s wrong. I only want one good thing to remember about tonight, one sweet, naughty secret to make it...not quite so awful. I thoroughly understand that it’s never going to be, between you and me. That it’s over and it’s been over. For years and years.”

  He tried to speak.

  She put her soft hand between them and covered his mouth with her palm. “Shh. Not finished.” He gulped and nodded. She took her hand away and brought her lips close to his once more. “But tonight, well, it’s all been a complete and utter disaster. And now, here we are, waiting for the storm to end so that we can go our separate ways, waiting for the morning, keeping each other warm. And I say that now, tonight, is the only opportunity we’re ever going to get to be together one more time. I say that the way you were kissing me just a few minutes ago, even if you were half-asleep, proves that you wouldn’t mind doing exactly what I’m suggesting.” She rocked her hips against him then—to prove her point, he supposed. And she did prove it. He groaned
out loud that time. He couldn’t stop himself. And she made a low, triumphant little sound. “Yes. That’s what I say, Marcus. Yes. You and me. Tonight, right now. One more time....”

  He exerted a superhuman effort of will and said, “We cannot. It’s too dangerous. I’ve brought nothing to protect you.” She knew his stand on contraception. He’d grown up without a father or a mother. He was adamant that his children would have both, and that he would only have children by his wedded wife.

  “It’s not a problem. I have condoms.” She held one up.

  He scowled at it through the dimness. “My God.” She had actually planned to spend the night with a stranger from Rowdy’s Roadhouse, then?

  She slipped the condom somewhere back under the blankets and got up even closer, nose to nose with him. “Don’t ask, all right? Just accept that I have them, and let’s take it from there.”

  It was too much. The whole day of watching her, remembering and trying so hard not to remember, yearning and telling himself he didn’t burn. Chasing her down when she tried to get away from him. And then being forced to watch her some more while she danced with one cowboy after another. Having to take down that fool who had dared to go too far with her.

  The drive through the blizzard. The old man in the pickup. The crash.

  And most of all, the hours with her pressed up close against him, making him burn for her, bringing all the old memories flooding back so powerfully he couldn’t deny them, breaking his lonely, solitary heart all over again.

  It was too much.

  If she still wanted him for one last time, who was he to deny her?

  To deny himself?

  To hell with denial. For once. For tonight.

  She made a small, hopeful sound.

  And what was left of his resistance crumbled to dust.

  He took her mouth, hard and deep. She opened for him. He wrapped his arms good and tight around her and he kissed her long and thoroughly, with no holding back.

  “Oh, Marcus.” She sighed when she lifted her mouth from his.

  And then they were fumbling, getting their clothes out of the way without completely undressing, trying to keep the blankets and the tarp close around them as they got their bodies bare enough to touch, to stroke.