by Alice Sharpe
“It’s not Doyle,” she said finally, mopping at her eyes with the washcloth he’d snagged off the table and handed her. She cast him a look from beneath her lush lashes. “It’s you.”
“Me?”
“I thought I’d lost you,” she mumbled. “I mean, I know that’s dumb, you wouldn’t even use my name. But now you say Analise with such tenderness.” Another swift glance followed by, “Why is that?”
He wasn’t sure what to say. Peering into her eyes didn’t help. Every flip comment that occurred to him sounded hollow in light of her distress and what she’d been through and the misery he’d fought thinking of her all alone with those men. He heard himself mumble, “It’s because I got to know you while I looked for you.”
Her brow furrowed. “I don’t understand. How could you get to know me when we were apart?”
“I got to know the you inside of me,” he said, compounding the confusion he felt about everything and yet also sensing that he’d actually hit close to the truth. “I got to know the you in here,” he added, and this time touched his chest over his heart. “The you that I’d spoken with and kissed and been afraid to want.”
The tears dripped down her cheeks as she stared at him. “All I could think today,” she said softly, “was that I was so sad I hadn’t slept with you the night before this all happened. If I was going to die, then I was sorry I hadn’t been with you just that once.”
“You’re a princess, Analise. You have a big future planned. You don’t want to jeopardize it. God, am I really saying this?”
She put her lips against his ear. “For this one night I don’t have to be a princess. For this one night maybe I could just be a woman.”
He was so afraid he would miss something she said or misunderstand a nuance he all but stopped breathing. He still couldn’t believe what he was hearing—
“I thought wanting you would go away when I saw you again, if I saw you again,” she added. “But it didn’t.”
“Analise,” he whispered, pulling her even closer. “You’re all I can think about, too. I couldn’t stand knowing how frightened you must be. When I saw Harley and Toby, I about died inside thinking you might suffer the same fate.”
She slowly touched his mouth with hers, ran her tongue across his lower lip. “So you’ll take a bath with me?”
“Of course,” he muttered.
She stepped away and unbuttoned her blouse. It slid off her arms and onto the floor and he did everything but gasp with instant, flaming desire. Her jeans came next. She stood before him in skimpy silk underwear, as perfect a woman as he’d ever in his life seen and though it was too poorly lit to tell for sure, he imagined her cheeks were flushed the same pale pink as her bra.
“Your turn,” she said.
He pulled off the flannel shirt and the T-shirt beneath, hoping the sudden flare of her eyes meant she appreciated him the same way he did her. She put a hand on his chest and ran cool fingers down toward his button fly. One more inch and he wouldn’t make any promises…
She undid the first button and he took over because he could feel her hands trembling. Standing there in briefs that strained to keep him covered, he reached for her.
Her passionate response to their tongues entwining shot through him like a red-hot branding iron. He couldn’t kiss her deep enough, fast enough. Her hands traveled across his back and up into his hair. He would gladly have inhaled her if he could have, absorbed her through his skin until there weren’t two people standing together, but one. Her bra came off in one easy movement—the feel of her bare breasts pressed against him drove what little sanity he had left right out the window.
They were a runaway train. What was happening was going too fast for a bathtub. Still kissing her, he slid his arm beneath her ripe bottom and carried her into the bedroom. He sat down on the mattress, her in his lap, and kissed her again and again, his need for her swelling between them, until she stood up and slipped off her panties. She pulled him to his feet and guided his briefs down his legs, her lips grazing his sensitive flesh and raising the stakes. Reaching for her, kissing her, he gently laid her down on the quilt and wished it were covered with rose petals. She was far too beautiful for such modest surroundings…?.
For a moment he marveled at the ivory symmetry of her body that shone like a distant star in the dimly lit room, but she soon took his hands and pulled him down on top of her, pulled more quilts atop them, making a cocoon for two in the cold snowy night.
“Oh, Analise,” he whispered against her ear. “I have to have you.”
She answered him first with kisses, but then she cupped his face until he opened his eyes and gazed down into hers. “This can’t change things with Ricard,” she said softly. “I want you to understand that.”
“I know,” he murmured against her lips, teasing her legs apart with his fingers.
Again she responded like kindling touched with a lit match. He wanted to look at her, touch her, kiss and suck every little inch of her, but it wasn’t going down like that. This wasn’t going to be gentle and exploratory. From the beginning, he’d accepted the fact she was untouchable, unattainable and now to feel her naked skin burn with the same combustion as his own made his head reel.
“Come to me, come to me,” she whispered urgently as he suckled each pink nipple. Her warm, eager hands guided him, her legs wrapped around his. He needed little encouragement. Her eyes closed as he penetrated her.
A small cry escaped her lips. Too late he realized he’d hurt her but when he tried to pull away, she caught his rear in her hands and pressed him closer. “Don’t go,” she whispered, her hips rising to meet his. “Stay with me.”
As if he could leave. Her passionate cries echoed in his mind and in his heart as though filling all the cold empty places he’d almost forgotten existed.
Next time, tenderness, he promised her as they each surrendered to the other.
AFTER ADDING MORE hot water to the bath tub, they climbed in together, Pierce in the rear, Analise in his arms, her back against his chest. During the time they’d spent in the bedroom, the candles had burned down even farther and the room was now intimate and remote.
“We should try to catch a little sleep before we go,” Pierce said.
“Mmm,” she said, trying to sound enthusiastic, but going back meant the end to this fantasy. Well, it had to end eventually. Although she was anxious to reassure her family of her safety and check on Toby and most important of all, complete her mission for her mother, she would have to reassume her old life. Trouble was, in the course of the past two days, she’d lost sight of exactly who that Analise was. Was that what love did? Did it shift things around deep inside? Did it change you?
How could she marry Ricard?
“Analise? You’ve gotten so quiet.”
She wasn’t sure how to answer so she snuggled closer to him. The hot water felt tepid next to the heat he generated inside her core. This was heaven, right here in this tub, in this man’s arms. Baths would never be the same again.
She was getting maudlin. Enough of that. “I was thinking how much I love baths. My mother used to say she got wetter than I did when she bathed me as a baby because I splashed so much.”
“I would have thought she’d have a servant supervise your bath,” he said lazily.
“No, she was very hands-on with my brother and me. Giving a baby a bath can be fun, you know.”
“I know,” he said, his voice suddenly distant and she wanted to kick herself for reminding him of his son. “Patrick loved them,” he added.
She was proud of him for staying with the memory of his baby. That took courage. “I bet he was adorable,” she murmured.
“Yes, he was. He had a mind of his own, though. I used to think he’d grow up to be as stubborn as my father and older brother, but he never got the chance to grow up.”
She wanted to ask him more about Patrick but she hated to pry. On the other hand, if she’d lost a child, she’d find comfort in sharing thing
s, so she decided to take a chance. “Would it be too painful for you to tell me how he died?”
He laid his cheek against the top of her head. It took him a moment to respond. “Have you ever heard of SIDS? Do you know what it is?”
“Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.”
“That’s right. I was the one who found him that morning. The only positive thing was that he looked peaceful so it couldn’t have been painful, at least that’s what the doctor told us. He just…stopped living. I went into his room because he was late waking up. It was a Saturday and Erin was sleeping in. Patrick was just lying there, eyes closed, totally relaxed-looking, but I think I knew something was wrong way before I touched him.”
“Oh, Pierce,” she said, turning in his arms so she could see him. His eyes were dark pools in this light but the pain still showed. “I’m so terribly sorry.”
His nod was almost imperceptible. “I picked him up and just stood there, holding him. I knew there was nothing that could bring him back, he’d been gone too long, he was cold, and…so I just held him. I think I thought it wouldn’t be real until someone else knew. That’s how Erin found us. She called the ambulance. I couldn’t bear to turn him over to strangers.”
Analise heard the catch in his voice and her heart ached for him. She kissed his shoulder, and laid her cheek against his muscular arm. “I think I understand,” she said.
“It’s been seven and a half years. He’d be about Toby’s age.”
“I’m sure he would have been a beautiful little boy.”
“Yeah,” Pierce said, and hugged her tighter. “He would have been great, but at least I had him for a year. It wasn’t nearly long enough, not by a lifetime, but it was something.”
They were silent for a while until Pierce spoke again.
“Analise, you had never made love before tonight, had you?”
“No.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-six.” She smiled as she added, “Oh, I can almost hear you thinking, ‘How can a twenty-six-year-old woman be a virgin in this day and age?’ Well, it wasn’t easy, let me tell you. But my mother impressed on me how important it is to save yourself for your husband. How vital, really.”
“Vital?”
“Wasn’t it you who reminded me a little while ago that I am a princess?”
“Meaning there are stricter standards?”
“More or less. Besides, I’ve been informally betrothed for seven years. My fiancé is an important man in his own right with a very proud family. I’ve always known where my destiny lies.” She paused for a second before softly adding, “Where it still lies.”
“I’ve never heard anyone actually use the word betrothed before.”
“It’s old-fashioned, just like me. But in the years to come, at least I’ll have this night to remember,” she added, leaning back against him. She wouldn’t add her next thought which was a repetition of what he’d said minutes earlier: It wasn’t nearly long enough, not by a lifetime, but it was something.
“So, no regrets about having sex with me?”
“No regrets.”
“Good. I have to say, for a beginner, you show real promise.”
She laughed softly, but had to swallow a sudden sob and was glad he couldn’t see her face, witness her tears. She loved the warm, solid feel of his nude body touching her back, his arousal hard against her tailbone, the way his hands linked under her breasts on top of her belly.
“So what will Ricard say when he realizes you’ve slept with another man?”
“Nothing,” she said, knowing it was the truth. Ricard would not expect her to be as pure as the driven snow. He sure as heck wasn’t. Purity wasn’t the issue, but she wasn’t going to go into that with Pierce.
“Yep, a continual source of amazement,” he mused above her head, his voice soft and loving. Soft and loving. He was hers for this moment, but even if she wasn’t bound to another man, there was no future for them, they were too different, they needed different things.
Was the love she felt right now enough to compensate for the years of loneliness looming ahead? It would have to be.
His hands once again began exploring her body, creating a million sensations as they slipped over her wet skin. She closed her eyes.
“Now it’s your turn,” he whispered against the back of her neck. She turned her head to look at him. “Be mine one more time.”
One more time, she thought as his kisses devoured her.
Chapter Seventeen
The snow had stopped during the night. Before the sun was up, Pierce got the horses saddled and ready to head back to the ranch. A few minutes later, Analise slipped into the barn, carrying his saddlebag. Her voice was soft when she spoke as though she was afraid someone was listening. While he strapped on the saddlebags, he saw her gaze dart over and over again to the trailer in which she’d been transported while drugged, gagged and bound.
“Are they under the tarp?” she whispered.
“Yeah. I’ll lock the place up. They’ll be safe here until the authorities can come get them.”
She shuddered and looked away from the ominous mound.
The ride back was slow but it was also peaceful and gave Pierce lots of time to think. His mind raced through images from two decades before when he and his brothers had roamed this land on horseback, every ridge and hollow familiar, to a decade before when he was married and a father to a beautiful little boy, to a few hours before when he had buried himself in Analise Emille.
She sat astride the horse in front of him, a slender figure in the dim reflection of light off snow, a natural horsewoman. If she was flawed, he couldn’t see it or bring it to mind. Everything about her appealed to everything in him.
And she belonged to another man…
It wasn’t until daylight that the sun actually showed up for the first time in days. As its rays spread into the eastern sky, he realized he hadn’t thought of Italy and Westin-Turner Enterprises once in the past several hours.
Bob Turner must be about ready to blow a gasket.
“I REALLY AM all right,” Analise told her father and mother who were each on an extension of their phones. She pictured them sitting in separate rooms, her father in the castle office, seated at the huge desk that had been given to his great-grandfather by a Russian czar many years before. Alexander, thirty-eight now, married, his wife pregnant with their first child, would sit at that desk within months; he might even be a better king than her father.
Her mother would be in her suite overlooking the mountains, much as the Westin den overlooked the Rockies. An attendant or secretary was no doubt very close by, so her mother would not reveal how tense she was. Analise could hear it in her voice, though, and marveled that her father could not. Analise suspected that the twenty-year age difference between her parents as well as their wildly divergent interests made them a mystery to one another even after all this time.
Don’t be too judgmental, she chided herself. You’re headed for the same sort of marriage to the same sort of man…?.
There was no way to tell her mother that she hadn’t yet had a chance to complete her search as her father must never get wind that there was one.
“Your aunt and uncle are on their way to Wyoming to meet with Toby’s doctors, but I heard from them a while ago. The boy is expected to make a complete recovery,” her mother said. “In fact, I gather he awoke during the air transport and was quite vocal about your safety.”
“I’ll call and reassure him,” Analise said. “It’s been a nightmare here. The police are finally on the ranch questioning everyone. General Kaare and Mr. Vaughn are acting pretty darn haughty and my new maid is in bed where she’s been since the kidnappers whacked her on the head. The blow apparently started a string of migraines.”
“Oh, my.”
“She’s agreed to see a doctor tomorrow. Anyway, the police are still here. It’s not only my kidnapping and Toby’s injuries, but the deaths of three other men in Wyoming and
the possible murder of the driver in Seattle. I’m not sure when we’ll get out of here.”
“Has the press shown up yet?” her mother asked with a quiver in her voice. She was not publicity-shy; she’d long ago explained to Analise that it was the price for the privileged life they led, but this was different. All they needed was some enterprising reporter trying to figure out why Analise was in Wyoming. A connection between the queen and Pierce’s absent mother would inevitably be uncovered and from there—
Analise couldn’t bear thinking about it.
“Not yet,” she said.
“Stay as long as you must, then come home where you belong,” her father said. “Despite what Mr. Vaughn perceives as possible environmental concerns, I intend to throw all my weight behind the pipeline proposal. If Chatioux does not take advantage of this situation, the bid will go to Russia and that will weaken our position even further.”
“I think that’s wise,” Analise responded. “From what I understand, there are safe ways to go about construction.”
“We will just make sure it’s done correctly. You have a good head on your shoulders, Analise. You’ve conducted yourself like a king’s daughter.”
She smiled into the receiver. Leave it to her father to admire grace under pressure.
“There’s one more thing,” she added. “It’s very possible that one of the people traveling with me is connected with this situation in some way. You should assign someone to look into everyone’s background.”
“It’s already being done. General Kaare suggested it when he called earlier.”
They spoke for a few more minutes, then disconnected. Analise had tried to give her mother clues that there hadn’t been an opportunity for “sightseeing” hoping she’d catch on that her mission was as yet undone, but she couldn’t tell if her mother had caught them.
The next call was to the hospital where Toby had been taken late the night before. His grandmother from Canada answered, and much to Analise’s relief, Toby was able to speak into the phone, as well.