by Tamara Gill
“Quite, sure. And thanks a lot for gulping it all.”
“You are most welcome,” he said while she poured more. “Now, what say you about your vow?”
“How about that not only do I not love you, but most of the time, I don’t even like you. You’re egotistical, crass, bad-mannered, foul—”
“Handsome. Rich.” He grinned.
“Did I mention egotistical?”
“Did I mention I was the best swordsman in all the land?”
Now she was grinning too and the sight of her smile warmed him heartily. So much so, that he pushed back his uncomfortable chair and circled to her side of the table, holding out his hand. “Milady, would you care for a sampling of my thrusting finesse?”
Reddening, she spluttered her latest sip of milk. “I’ve seen quite enough of that particular skill.”
Tossing his head back, howling with mirth-filled pride upon her natural assumption, Wolfe said, “I am not talking about my legendary bedchamber prowess, wench, but my talent for—”
“Whoa,” she had allowed him to pull her to her feet, but then shocked him by placing her fingertips against his lips. “Your talent for kissing has already been established, as well.”
“But that is not my intent, either,” Holding her by her wrists, he drew two of those dainty fingers of hers into his mouth for a good hard suck.
A faint tremor shimmered through her and her sky blue stare became drowsy and dazed. Licking her lips, she said, “Look, I, um, more than anyone, fully appreciate all of your skills, but whether you’re a frog prince or not, there are things about me you have to know.”
“Such as?” He nipped the fleshy pads of each finger on her left hand, then those on the right.
“Well,” she said, with still one more fetching lick of her lips, “first of all, if that was you this afternoon—in the frog suit—I didn’t kiss you for you, the prince, but for you, the frog. You see, I’m a biology teacher, but I used to dream of becoming a world famous biologist and explorer. You know, traveling the globe in search of exciting new species of animals. And, well, frogs were kind of my specialty.”
Not understanding half of what she was saying, Wolfe continued with his sampling of her fingers.
“So you see, when I kissed you, I was kissing the frog—only the frog. I already have a man in my life. The Duke of Cotswold. He’s a wonderful man who—”
“Fails to stir you the way I do just by breathing against your skin?” Wolfe knew his claim to be true by the catch in the wench’s breath and eyes. For much as sun and shadow affected the blues of the sea, his touch affected the heat of her stare.
She jerked her hands free and, because he also knew her to be frightened by the passions he evoked, he allowed her this small taste of freedom.
“Now see?” She tucked her hands into the pockets of her most unflattering robe. “This is just the kind of thing I’m talking about. I’m practically engaged to the duke and he wouldn’t understand about you. Not at all. Which is why I’m now going to call someone to take you to a hospital to get help.”
He waved off her words. “I need no help beyond you immediately granting your love. As for your duke, he is obviously a fool.”
The wench turned her back on him and now it was Wolfe whose breath was catching. In his brief life, no woman had ever turned away from him. Not unless it had been part of an elaborate ruse designed for him to roughly tug her back within the circle of his arms.
In his experience, women had found just being with him tantamount to riding into battle. They expounded at length about his scars and the pain he had endured. They had wanted a piece of him, as if in lying with him they would receive a token of his most fiercely won siege. But this woman, she was an enigma. She seemed to want nothing from him, other than for him to leave her alone—which was the one thing that, if he hoped to keep his current human form, he could never do.
Stepping behind her, Wolfe settled his hands atop her shoulders, gently spinning her around.
“What?” she asked, tears brimming in her big blue eyes. “Please, I’m so confused. Part of me feels sorry for you. Another part is intrigued by you, but every rational cell in my head tells me none of this can be real. Can’t you just go?”
For all of his supposed bravery in battle, Wolfe had always hated seeing a woman cry and so he brushed away her tears before clearing his throat. “You have been truthful with me and now I shall show you the same courtesy.”
On a ragged breath, she nodded.
“Although, no matter how much I wish to honor your request for me to leave, I simply cannot.”
“Why?”
“Because you and you alone hold the key to my future. Whether you believe my tale or not, if, by the next full moon you have not declared your eternal love, then I shall be transformed back into the frog you first kissed—only this time, I won’t be trapped in that most cumbersome body for a millennium, but for all eternity.”
“Really?” she asked with a tiny sniffle.
“Aye. I would not lie about a matter as grave as this, any more than I would lie about my desire to carry you up to bed and keep you there, pendulous breasts bared, nipples ripening in my mouth, legs spread, beckoning my seed.”
“You’re really something.” Laughing, Lucy shook her head. “You almost had me feeling sorry for you, then you started in again with your bedroom banter.” Turning away from him, she headed for the living room where she’d have more space to think. How could she be foolish enough to have not yet summoned the local law?
On the flip side, if—just if—by some crazy twist of fate, what the frog prince admitted were true, then, by the next full moon, she’d have her very own species of frog back.
Granted, she should be committed for even considering his story to be true, but so much of what he said, she knew from her obsession with arcane local history to be historical fact, right down to the fascinating tidbit of the King of Gwyneddor’s first son having been murdered by his stepmother’s lover and the king’s second son having tragically disappeared. At the time, his loss had been blamed on bloodthirsty Vikings, but what if something else had happened?
Beyond those undeniable facts, if she logically thought about it, how else had she in a matter of seconds gone from kissing a frog to being straddled by a naked prince? Despite the mist, visibility on the lane had been more than adequate for her to have seen him well before he reached her—assuming he’d just been your garden variety naked vagabond. Which, he clearly wasn’t.
Which meant...
Hands over her gaping mouth, Lucy struggled with the notion that her prince very well could be telling the truth. If so, then...
He and her miracle frog had been one and the same.
And since she obviously was in no danger of declaring her eternal love...
Her every hope and dream could be achieved in one month’s time. Not only her professional dreams, but her longing to for once and for all reclaim her father’s love and, above all, respect.
One month.
Lucy sat down hard on the sofa and reached for a needlepoint pillow. The stupid thing had taken six months to create. During each of the intricate stitches of the bucolic castle scene, she’d wondered what it must have been like for women living in that time. Women who didn’t just do needlepoint for fun, but to upholster chairs and make tapestries to help keep out draughts.
What have you made lately, Luce?
The question hurt.
She wanted to believe her teaching made a difference in her students’ lives, but they weren’t kids like she’d been. These were a sophisticated lot who, for the most part, couldn’t give a flip about science—why should they when they spent weekends in the south of France, dining with presidents and kings?
What’ve you made lately, Luce?
This time, the question burned.
It’d be so easy—keeping this man. Keeping the frog he might again become.
Seductively easy.
If, at the end of
the month, he didn’t poof back into her frog, then she’d call the police. Everything she’d fought for in her life had been ridiculously hard. Launching her career, fighting for her father’s love. Was it that far out of the realm of possibility to think that maybe, just maybe, Lady Fate had sent the prince to her as a belated consolation prize for all the other assorted crap she’d put Lucy through?
Even if the frog prince turned out to be the fruitcake she still halfway suspected him to be, she was no longer afraid. The fact that he’d allowed her to call things off in her bedroom told her that, whatever else he may be, he was at heart a gentleman. Maybe a horny gentleman. Maybe deranged. But a gentleman all the same—a gentleman from whom she sensed she had nothing more to fear than her own attraction to him.
“Have you decided my fate?”
Hand to her chest, she jumped before glancing his way. “Geez, give me a heart attack.”
“Sorry. Twas not my intent—whatever this affliction of your heart may be.”
“Yeah, well...” As when she’d seen him in the tub, if only for an instant, his expression seemed vulnerable. Somehow soft. Why? Fear of the unknown? Uncertainty where she was concerned?
Breath catching at the sheer tortured beauty of his face, for the first time since her heart raced with excitement over the possibility of getting back her frog, it occurred to Lucy that, in making her every dream come true, she’d be destroying not just Wolfe’s dreams but his very life.
Toying with the pillow’s fringed trim, she said, “I, um, need you to clarify something for me.”
“If I can.”
“Tell me more about this sorceress. You said you refused to marry her pregnant daughter, but that doesn’t seem like enough to inspire such a hatred that she wouldn’t just take your life but destroy it for all time.”
He looked down. “It happened so long ago. I am not sure I remember.”
“Try.”
Crossing to the sofa, he sat beside her, at which point, she politely placed her pillow on his still very naked lap.
He smiled. “Afraid the mere sight of it will inspire lustful needs?”
Yes!
“No.” She licked her lips. “It’s just that we’re talking and while I can’t speak for your times, in my time it’s not considered polite to sit around gabbing without clothes.”
“Tis a shame,” he fingered strands of her hair. “For if more women of your time were to go about their days in the altogether, more of you would be contentedly home with your babes and not off working in faraway fields.”
Lucy snorted. “Voicing thoughts like that, no wonder you got zapped! And I don’t work in a field, but a school. A highly respected school. A school in which I'm quite happy to spend my days.”
Liar. Weren’t you just the other day wishing for a more exciting life?
Shut up! she told her nosy conscience who obviously didn’t know a thing!
“Then I’m happy for you.” Head bowed, he added, “All I meant was that you might enjoy a softer life. For if your duke truly loved you, he’d forbid you to work.”
“Because my William does love me, he wouldn’t dream of forbidding me to work.”
“Monchyn!” The prince spit into the fireplace. “A man who has lost control of his own woman is not a man at all.”
Lucy took a deep, not in the least bit calming breath. She’d look up whatever the prince had just called her beloved later, but until then, “Before you say something so outrageous I’m forced to call the police, get on with telling me about the sorceress and your last night.”
He cleared his throat, staring into the long-dead fire. “Desdemona was beautiful. Her long, pale hair called to mind honey warming in the sun.” His gaze as far off as the thousand-year-old story he presumably shared, he said, “I was not the only man who lusted for her. I was, however, the only man she lusted for in return...”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Aye, you think yourself a looker, do ye, fine Prince?” Desdemona danced around Wolfe where he lay beside the pond, her green eyes sparking in the sun, her hair long and lustrous, playing hide-and-seek games with her lush hips and breasts.
Wolfe, reclining on the grassy hillside, arched his head back roaring with mirth. The wench was not afraid of him, he would give her that. “Come here, you.” He sat up, snagging her about her slim waist. “Let me taste the bounty with which you have teased me all afternoon.”
“Not so fast...” She broke free only to skip through tall grasses, hair streaming like a glorious banner behind her. From his vantage the blue of her dress met with the sky, making the two appear as one. Breath caught in his throat, he could not help but stare. Was she real? Or but a figment of his dreams?
Laughing inside, he figured she had been real enough in weeks past when he had buried himself deep within her womanly folds. “Before I let you kiss me,” she sang, “first, I must have your most solemn oath.”
“Argh!” No longer in the mood for her dancing games but wanting her body, he grasped her about her ankle, pulling her down, then dragging her to lie beside him, her head cradled in the crook of his mighty arm.
“Beast!” she squealed on a breathy laugh, pummeling him when he rolled atop her, lowering his mouth to hers.
“You’ll soon enough think me a beast when we rut right here in this field.” Catching her mid-laugh, he crushed his mouth to hers, stroking her tongue with his own. She tasted sweet, of the apple they had only just shared. He had always been inordinately fond of the fruit. Tasting it on his woman was a most heady pleasure indeed.
“Wolfe,” she said, after he had kissed her till her lips swelled from his pleasure. “I-I have something I need tell you.”
Shaking his head, he moved his kisses further down the fair-skinned column of her throat, “I have no desire to speak.”
“Then what would you do?” she coyly smiled, presenting the dimples he so admired.
Pondering her question, he swept aside great locks of her hair, feasting on the sun-salty skin of her chest. “I suppose I wish to bury myself within you. Drink of you till I’ve had my fill, take you again when the moon rises high and again until the first rays of dawn. Then, and only then, will I allow you time to speak.”
“Allow me?” Her dimples faded to a frown and anger made her warm eyes cold. “Unless you are willing to make me your princess and the seed already planted within me is next in line for your throne, then you have no say in when I wish to do anything.”
He paid little heed to her speech. She had snipped at him thus before, but after he took her teats into his mouth, her wrath always gave way to passion. She would soon enough confess to not being in possession of his growing seed, but of a dream. For lest there be confusion, Wolfe had made it plain during the summer of their first attraction that their dalliance would never lead to more.
He was prince first.
Warrior second.
Lover third.
And even whilst playing the last role, he did not partake in the fickle games of many of his fellow noblemen, by planting the empty promise that, were a wench to but fall into his bed she would be Gwyneddor’s future queen.
“Be gone with your ire,” he urged, smoothing back her hair, admiring its glint in the sun. “I battle enough with my enemies, must I do battle with those I hold affection for as well?”
Ah, that brought the grassy green back to her concentrated stare. “Do you mean that?”
“What?” he asked, slipping his hand down the front of her gown.
“That you hold affection for me.”
When his fingers reached her right breast, he caught the teat with his thumb, rubbing til it rolled hot between his fingers like an unripe berry warmed in the sun. He normally took great pride in watching her gaze darken with need, but today he found no pleasure where there only lived pain. Her lower lip trembled just as tears began to fall.
Removing his hand from her breast, he swiped the offensive, glistening drops from the soft blush of her cheeks. “What
have I done to hurt you?”
She shook her head and looked away, but he was the prince and, as such, no one looked away from him when he asked a direct question. No one. Not even his most favored wench.
“Tell me,” he insisted a final time.
“I am with child, Wolfe. Your child.”
He laughed. “You have said so before and each time you’ve been wrong.”
“This time, tis true. My mother saw the babe in my future.”
“But not in mine?” he asked, mirth crinkling the corners of his eyes. While his father, the king, placed great store in the sorceress’s visions, Wolfe did not. He preferred the certainty of his own might and sheer will to any foolish magic.
“Oh, Wolfe...” Tears flowing once more, she shook her head before looking away. “My mother says you will not make me your future queen. That you are too filled with lust for power and riches.” Turning back to him, she pressed her palms to his chest. “I told her she was wrong. That this was one time in which her vision would not come true.”
“And you know that how?” Wolfe asked, eyes narrowed.
“Because above even myself, I know you. I know that while you have fathered other sons in the past, this one, because he is growing inside of me, will be different. For it is foreseen in this wee one’s future that he is to one day be king.”
“On this, fair maiden, you are wrong.” Abruptly releasing her, then storming to his feet, Wolfe said, “Hear me and hear me well. Tis true, I enjoy burying myself within you, but I regretfully cannot offer you more. As much as it pains me, there will be no marriage between us for the fact that you have naught but your fair hair and pretty smile to give to my father’s kingdom.”
“What of your future son?” she shrieked. “Do you claim him to be of no value?”
Grasping Wolfe’s hand, molding his fingers to her belly’s swell, she said, “Here, deep within me, he already grows. Aye, I, and all the other fair wenches you have rutted, know of your base greed. A greed that denies the fact that even your own father, whom you hold in such high regard, could not keep the woman he did not love. He bartered for his wife for the fettered and bloodied grasses of a battlefield. She was but a chattel, and look what his actions gained him. A dead son—another, who is dead in here.”