“And now?” she prompted, hoping unworthily for a compliment.
“Now I want all of you.”
He spurred forward, muttering something under his breath that made her burn from the inside out. It sounded like, “In my bed.”
***
The summer progress through Wallachia, or Tara Romancu as the natives named it, was a revelation to Ilona. Not just because she learned about the country and the people who were to be her own, or because she saw sights of great beauty, although that was part of it. But much of her wonder was in learning about Vlad through his feeling for places, through his people’s feeling for him.
From fortresses such as Rucăr and the new one he was creating at Bucharest, to monasteries such as the fortified island community at Snagov, she saw what he had done and how the people greeted him. He wasn’t always loved. In many places, where he’d had cause to visit the full force of his implacable justice, he was truly feared. But everywhere, she saw respect. In many places, there was appreciation for the improved prosperity or safety that the prince had brought about. And in a few places, where he’d spent some time, such as the monastery at Snagov where he sometimes retreated for peace and contemplation, she found a genuine love.
She began to understand that he shone in the eyes of others beside herself, that his brilliance drew people to him, fascinated them, and held them. And strangely enough, his people, the ordinary peasants, seemed as proud of his cruelties as of his greatness. Perhaps they recognised his courage in looking always toward the greater good.
Although seeing the country in his company was a delight for Ilona, she was glad to rest at the castle at Poenari on the River Arges for more than one reason. Her mother was showing signs of fatigue at the constant travel of the last few weeks, and, besides, despite its controversial beginnings, the castle felt curiously like home.
So, while her mother recuperated, Ilona rode out in the sunshine every day, sometimes with Turcul’s wife and an escort, sometimes with the prince. In the more relaxed formality of Poenari, sometimes she even rode out alone with Vlad, and those were the days she secretly liked best, when he would talk to her about great matters as well as small ones, and they had the opportunity to know each other better and grow closer.
Sometimes, as their horses rested, she wanted to take his hand as they walked along forest trails. She wanted to kiss him in the sunshine and feel him crush her in his arms. But he rarely took such advantage of their time alone, and she couldn’t help feeling disappointed. Especially when she knew the desire was there, simmering so near the surface.
Once, as he helped her remount and settled her in the saddle, without warning he buried his face against her thigh and seemed to inhale her. His breath burned through the fabric of her gown, shocking and thrilling in equal measure. Her hand trembled as she reached down and touched his hair.
He spoke into her thigh, muffled and uneven. “I should separate us, send you away from me. I’m no saint, and I cannot bear this…”
“What?” Ilona asked in distress.
An extra breath of laughter burned her leg, and he raised his head. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t bring myself to let you go out of my sight.”
For the rest of that day, it seemed he meant what he said, literally. Riding home, eating dinner in the castle, she kept looking up to find his gaze upon her, curiously dark and predatory. It made her uncomfortable, yet it thrilled and excited her too. She wasn’t quite sure what to do with such feelings, so when her mother retired early to bed, she used the excuse to go too, not long after her.
In the end, she didn’t go to bed, though. She was too unsettled to sleep in the same chamber as her mother. She went to the top of the nearest tower instead and cooled her burning body there.
Perhaps she’d known he would be there. Certainly, when she heard the soft, approaching footsteps, she didn’t expect anyone else.
Wordlessly, he took her in his arms and kissed her more deeply than ever before, while his hands, bolder than ever before, roamed over her hips and breasts. He pressed his lips to the pulse beating frantically at the base of her throat and with his hands on her rear, pressed her into his body. Their clothing preserved few secrets now. Devastated, shocked, yet completely given over to physical sensation, Ilona could only cling to him and wait with delicious joy for whatever would come next.
When his mouth took her breast, she thought she would die of pleasure. Throwing her head back, she gasped and gasped again. He pulled her head back up and returned to kissing her mouth, while his hand covered her breast’s nakedness instead.
Trembling, awash, she felt the cool stone against her back. His hand tangled in her skirts, and then he paused and lifted his head. Through the hot, friendly darkness, his eyes glittered.
“What am I doing?” he said shakily. Slowly, he lowered his forehead to touch hers. “What am I doing?”
Ilona, who was more concerned that he keep doing it, had no answer to offer.
“Kiss me,” he whispered. Without hesitation, she lifted her mouth to his. He accepted her kiss with grace and tenderness, but it was his sigh of relief that made her understand he’d been asking for forgiveness.
When his hands touched her, it was to draw her gown and undergown up over her breasts and shoulders. “Good night,” he murmured. And Ilona, feeling like a dismissed attendant, could only walk numbly away from him.
***
Although Ilona thought she understood some of the reasons that made him do it, what she chiefly understood was that she’d been rejected. She’d made her offer with words the last time they’d been together in this castle. And now, surely, her body had made an even more blatant invitation. And still he sent her away.
She felt like the eighteen-year-old Maria, setting out to seduce him in Hunedoara and being sent back to her room like a naughty child who was beneath him.
Wildly, she began to imagine that she’d got it all wrong, that this was merely a political alliance after all. He’d never said that he loved her. Dear God, had she mistaken politeness for love? Was she really so naïve?
Since she’d tossed and turned for most of the night, and since her mother was complaining about it, she rose early and went down to the kitchen in search of food. She would avoid him today. And if they met, be strictly formal from now on. She would invite, would allow, no more such scenes as last night’s.
Her determination was put to the test rather sooner than she expected. For as she emerged from the kitchen with a laughingly presented piece of new bread, she almost ran into Vlad, informally dressed in an open shirt with his doublet dangling unfastened over his shoulder.
Wordlessly, she stood aside to let him pass. His eyes searched hers.
“Good morning.”
“Good morning,” she managed.
Something flickered in his eyes. It might have been a smile or understanding. He said, “Will you ride with me?”
No! I will not ride or walk or stand still with you.
“Please. I’d like to talk.”
She swallowed, knew she would regret it. She nodded once.
The smile grew stronger. One of the cooks emerged from the kitchen with a grin and an apology and edged past them.
Vlad warned, “I won’t be good.”
Her heart turned over in her breast and seemed to fall with a clunk. She said haughtily, “I will,” and brushed past him.
***
She vowed to ride in silence, but Vlad made up for it with a flow of charming and often funny conversation that almost made her forget. She couldn’t help smiling sometimes, and once she laughed out loud, though she cut it off again quickly.
They rode along a forest trail for some time before he veered off it between two large beech trees. Ilona wanted to ask where they were going but refused to open her mouth.
I’m being childish.
I don’t care.
The sun glinted in ever-changing patterns between the trees. The horses’ hooves made soft, muffled thuds on the forest floor, ai
ding the illusion that they were the only two people in this world. Birds sang and fluttered among the branches, and occasionally some small animal rustled in the undergrowth. It felt warm and cosy and isolated. Sweet forest scents filled her senses, melting her anger and humiliation.
Vlad reined in his horse, dismounted, and tied the reins loosely around a branch. Lifting the pack from behind the saddle, he unloaded a blanket and spread it on the ground while Ilona watched. Then he turned and reached up his arms to her.
Since she didn’t want to appear churlish, she permitted him to lift her down, but she held herself stiffly and wasn’t surprised when he released her as soon as her feet were on the ground. In the past, he might have stolen a kiss, or at least lingered close to her.
“Please, sit,” he invited.
She knelt on a corner of the blanket and sat back on her heels. Vlad lowered himself to the ground, leaning his back against a tree and drew one knee up under his elbow while he watched her.
“Before I say anything else, would I be right in assuming your displeasure with me this morning has more to do with what I didn’t do last night than with what I did?”
“You are impossible!” she burst out. “Self-satisfied, arrogant, overweening…”
When he laughed, it fuelled her anger even further so that she barely noticed he’d moved until he pushed her onto her back. When she lashed out at him, he caught her hands, holding them on either side of her head while he straddled her body, looming over her.
The words dried up in her throat. Her heart hammered like a bird’s in the jaws of a cat.
“I’m all of these things, and worse,” he confessed. “But not with you. Ilona Szilágyi, I want a perfect world to live in with you. I want a priest to marry us and the world to recognise me as your husband before I take you to my bed and keep you there. But the world is not perfect, and neither am I. Part of me refuses to give in to my body’s lusts until we have that perfection. And part of me…”
“What?” she asked hoarsely when he stopped.
“Part of me wants to take, and to give, what happiness I can in the present and save my sanity if nothing else. And so…and so, I have come to the conclusion that all I can do is lay the matter before you and let you choose the way for both of us.”
She felt her eyes widen. Yet when he would have released her hands, she gripped his fingers so fiercely that he stayed where he was.
“What way are you talking about? What do you mean?”
“I mean do we justify our abstinence over the years by continuing to cling to it until the spring? Or do we make love now and face the wrath of whatever aspect of God you believe in?”
Ilona gulped in air. “I don’t believe He cares about such things.”
“Nor do I. So we come down to our own choices. Your choice.”
She stared at him, trying to read the expression in his strange, green eyes and made a discovery. “You think I’ll choose abstinence and that will strengthen your own resolve.”
A smile flashed across his face, brief and blinding. “You know me well, too well. Before you decide, let me just say two things. I can love you without giving you a child to shock the world. It would be our own, private matter involving no one else. And if you choose to wait, as the world and your family expects, then I will respect that completely. My erratic behaviour is largely due to uncertainty. Make me certain, Ilona, one way or the other. And one way or another, I will be good.”
She believed him. But there was never really any choice to make. If there was, she had made it years ago, long before there had been a possibility of carrying it through.
For the first time, she relaxed under his constricting hands.
“Kiss me,” she whispered, as he had done last night, and slowly, he lowered his mouth to hers, gentle, tender, holding everything in check. Even when she urged him on with her tongue and teeth and devouring lips, he kept it controllable. He held her hands, held her pinned, so that she couldn’t move.
A choke of laughter that was half sob broke from her throat. He raised his head, and she gasped, “You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” he agreed. “I’m going to make you say it.” But his eyes were already blazing with a victory he’d never thought to win.
“Then love me,” she pleaded. “Love me now.”
“I do,” he whispered and lowered his body until it fitted perfectly to hers, making every nerve ending and every pulse leap in response. At the same time, he brought his mouth down on hers, and this time kissed her in earnest.
It was a curious bridal bed, but Ilona could have hoped for none better. Instead of the forbidding formality and even more terrifying licence of wedding guests, their only companions were the birds and animals, who ignored them. He released her hands at last to remove her clothes one by one, and worshipped her virginally shrinking body with words and hands and lips, coaxing and arousing her passion with caresses that grew increasingly intimate.
When he slid his hand between her thighs, she accepted it with wonder and delight, pushing herself onto it. More daring now, she burrowed under his tunic and shirt, searching for his warm skin. He helped her, tugging off his clothes and letting her explore his muscled shoulders and chest with awed fingers.
She splayed her hand across his heart, feeling its strong, violent tattoo.
“Your heart beats so fast,” she whispered.
He pressed his lips over hers. “So does yours.”
He moved, and she cried out at the loss of his magical hand between her legs. But then she felt what replaced it, and was silent. He lifted his head, his eyes wide open to watch her every expression as he entered her body.
Her breath caught with the unexpected discomfort, but he held his body still, continuing to arouse her with the long, slow caresses of his hands and lips, all the time gazing into her eyes, until she relaxed back into the sensual pleasure once more. Only then, his body trembling with the mighty effort of self-control, did he begin to move, with slow, rocking motions that thrilled her anew. And so, blending care and passion, he took her as his wife before God and showed her how to reach the joy locked in her own body.
***
Withdrawing from the body of Ilona Szilágyi at the instant of climax was the hardest thing Vlad Dracula had ever done. But because he’d promised, he did it, and having done it, felt even more triumphant.
There had never been anything sweeter than reviving from lovemaking with her in his arms, pliant and still trembling from the pleasure he’d given her. Unless it was giving her that pleasure in the first place. She was such an intoxicating mixture of instinctive sensuality and wonder, as desperate to give as to receive, that there had been many times he’d almost lost his self-imposed, rigid control.
In fact, looking back, he was sure there had been several times when his mischievous love had deliberately provoked him to do just that. Well, there would be time for those wilder encounters too.
Shifting his weight, he turned with her still in his arms to lie on his side and stroked her hair. She smiled, tracing the outline of his moustache with one finger.
“Thank you,” she whispered, taking him by surprise yet again.
“The gift was all yours.”
She shook her head and pressed her cheek against his, her arms tightening around him. He said in her ear, “You understand about last night? I wanted you so badly, but I couldn’t take you like that, a quick fumble in the dark. Not the first time.”
He felt her smile against his skin. “Then there’s still hope?”
Laughter shook him. “Minx.” He sat up, reaching for the end of the blanket to wrap around them both. But as he gripped it, he felt her hands on his back. He paused, shivering at the butterfly caresses, unexpectedly sensual. It took him a moment to realise that she was tracing the lines of his scars.
His fast-returning lust dissolved into the old shame, the old memories that never really went away. Perhaps she felt his rigidity. At any rate, her mouth
kissed his shoulder, and her arms wound around him from behind.
“Whoever did this to a child must have been a monster.”
Vlad swallowed. “I was a difficult child. But yes, he was a monster. I used to lie awake at nights inventing more and more gory ways to kill him.”
“And did you?” she asked.
“No.” He gave a deprecating smile. “Not yet. I still, occasionally, fantasise about meeting him on a battlefield, but men like him don’t fight in battle.”
“Who was he?”
“My jailer for the first two years, when we were held in close captivity. Beyond keeping us alive, he had no instructions for our welfare.”
Her lips glided up his shoulder to the back of his neck, and desire began to twinge. She said, “Stephen told me you protected Radu in those years. Was this the price?”
“No. Well, partly, maybe. But beating a tearful child is less fun than lashing an angry adolescent. And when Radu really needed protection, he didn’t want it. Why do you make me talk about this now?”
“Because you don’t like me to touch you there.” Her fingers skimmed across the scars and left them.
He turned into her arms, pushing her back under him and rejoicing fiercely in the excitement that sprang into her melting dark eyes. He said, “I like you to touch me anywhere and everywhere. Even there. But especially here, and here…”
***
For the rest of their time at Poenari, Ilona’s heart sang. Her love for Vlad, already intensified by his close companionship, seemed to grow wildly out of control. Sometimes, her own feelings actually frightened her, but she couldn’t and wouldn’t draw back from the physical relationship they’d begun.
Their early morning rides became a fixture, accepted even by her mother who may or may not have suspected that Vlad took her into the woods to make love to her. Either way, she didn’t object, and Ilona was free to enjoy her life at last. It really did seem that the waiting was over, that even if Matthias postponed the wedding for another year, it didn’t matter, because she and Vlad were already husband and wife in every way that mattered. Fully awakened and alive as never before, Ilona was lost in love.
A Prince to be Feared: The love story of Vlad Dracula Page 24