A campsite. In the city of San Francisco. Riiiiight.
This couldn’t be real. There had to be another explanation.
She could be some kind of in-character private detective, trying to track down this Rupie guy for a jealous boyfriend.
Or maybe she was from some the-joke’s-on-you TV show. Though, to be honest, he doubted she’d be lying in the next room, naked—oh, God, that body—if she’d planted a camera in his place.
That left crazy. Just his luck.
“Mmm.”
He heard a noise from the next room. Pausing, Rafe waited to see if she was getting up. The sound came again, soft, like a sigh. Then, again, nothing but silence.
“Come on, lady, don’t make me walk out there and wake you up,” he muttered.
He got no response, and decided to give her a few more minutes while he checked out the other part of her story: her missing prince.
Finding him proved a whole lot easier. Within a few minutes of searching, he found a small article on a Web site devoted to the San Francisco club scene. In it was a mention of a hot new amateur, going by the name of Prince Rupie, who appeared at a popular gay bar every Sunday during open-mic night.
“Gotcha, Your Majesty,” he whispered.
The timing couldn’t be better. Today was Sunday. They’d go to the bar tonight, find the guy, and he could determine once and for all who the naked woman sleeping on his sofa really was.
He suddenly heard another noise coming from the other room. This time there was no mistaking it for a sigh.
“Yes!” she said, her voice thick with sleep.
Rafe pushed his laptop away and rose, approaching the screen. Peering around it, he saw her lying on the couch, still asleep, but now flat on her back. One leg was bent, upraised, and she looked like an artist’s model posing for a tasteful nude.
The pose wasn’t sexual. But it was incredibly sensual.
But then the woman began to move one hand. Sliding it down her body in a long, slow caress, she touched her breast, then her flat stomach. Farther.
And things got sexual in a hurry.
When her hand reached her hip, and dipped lower until her fingers disappeared on the inside of that upraised thigh, he flinched so hard he knocked the damn screen over. Though he tried to grab it, the thing fell, clattering to the floor.
Naked warrior woman leapt up off the couch, her hair flying, her fists curling, everything else jiggling in all the right places. “Halt!”
“It’s okay,” he insisted, throwing a hand over his eyes, even though the image of her had already been burned onto his retinas. “Sorry I startled you, I knocked over the screen.”
“Oh,” she said.
She didn’t make any further sound, he heard no brush of fabric that said she was yanking anything on. Still, he waited a minute, figuring she would at least grab the blanket or a sheet.
When he lowered his hand, he saw she hadn’t. She had instead crossed to the front of the loft, staring out the window. The bright morning sent buckets full of sunshine cascading over her pale hair and her warm, golden body and all he could do for a minute was stare.
Olivia Vanderbrook looked as though she’d been made to wear nothing but sunlight. Such a perfect creation should never be covered, not even by hot, sexy black leather. If there had been a Garden of Eden, surely this woman’s twin had once resided in it.
Twins. Back to business, remember where yours is residing!
He cleared his throat, stared up at his ceiling—it really was nice—then down at his floor, which could use some touching up. Anywhere but at her. “I guess we should get busy trying to find your prince.”
“Yes. I can’t believe I slept so long,” she said, looking over her shoulder at him, completely at ease with her nakedness.
Okay, he could be cool about this, too. After all, his ass wasn’t uncovered, and she was definitely easy to look at. Like a perfect work of art, impersonal, untouchable.
Problem was, he wanted to touch. A lot.
But he wouldn’t. Not until he knew she wasn’t fresh-from-the-Planters-jar nuts. For a minute last night, after he’d kissed her, he’d also feared he needed to stay away from her because she was sexually innocent. Her kisses—the first so stiff, the second clumsy but passionate—hinted that she hadn’t had much experience.
She’d killed that worry. I’ve been with many men.
Yeah, and he’d been with many women over the years. Still, it wasn’t something he wanted to think about, not when he’d set eyes on her across a crowded club and decided she was his.
So much for that. His woman was standing ten feet away, gloriously naked, and he could only think about how much he wished she’d put some damn clothes on.
“I actually checked online,” he told her, “looking for your friend Ruprecht.”
“He isn’t my friend, he’s my future king.”
“Well, your future king sings at a gay bar on Sunday nights. We should be able to go over there this evening and find him.”
“Excellent!” she said, finally leaving the window and heading back toward the sofa.
Rafe couldn’t help it, he took a step back, not willing to stand there and let her get too close. If she came within inches, he’d be helpless not to touch. If she actually touched him, he’d have her back on that couch before she could say “I’m on top.”
Which she probably would.
Which was just fine with him.
Distance. He took another step back.
She came within a few feet, and that was close enough to catch the warm, womanly scent of her body. Rafe held his breath, feeling his heart pound in his chest, and his cock throb against the seam of his jeans. He’d been a walking erection since the minute he’d spotted her last night. It didn’t matter how much distance he put between them, he still wanted the woman like a poker player wanted a royal flush.
Unable to help himself, he asked, “What were you dreaming about right before you woke up?”
Her green eyes widened, and she sucked in a quick breath of her own. She might be totally comfortable walking around without a stitch on, but when it came to baring her thoughts, the woman was more circumspect.
“Olivia?”
“I don’t remember,” she said, her voice soft. She reached for her clothes, pulling on a simple pair of black underwear made of some soft, gauzy fabric.
“Are you sure?” he prodded.
Hesitating for a moment, she reached for her halter top and donned it, as well. She didn’t rush—it was as if she didn’t realize he was standing here trying not to drool on the floor at the sight of her. “All right,” she finally admitted, “I was dreaming about you.”
“Me?”
“Yes. I watched you last night, before you went to sleep. I couldn’t help but see you moving behind the screen.”
Oh, hell. “Then you saw what you did to me,” he said, his words coming out in a throaty, hungry whisper.
“I did that?”
He nodded, wondering how this brazen woman could seem so innocent.
“I felt it when we kissed, of course,” she said, “but I didn’t realize it would, um, stay.”
He shrugged, knowing if she glanced down she’d realize it was still staying. “Exactly how long has it been since you’ve been up close and personal with that part of a guy?”
She didn’t have to think about it. “Over eight years.”
Rafe grabbed the back of the couch. The woman hadn’t had sex in eight years? “Are you joking?”
“No. I haven’t been penetrated by a man since the week of my twentieth birthday.”
Been penetrated by. Not made love with. Not even had sex with. There was something seriously wrong with this picture.
“Okay,” he said, remembering what she’d said last night about having many men, “you were twenty when you stopped. How old were you when you started?”
“Twenty.”
Rafe simply stared at her.
“It was during m
y bacchanalia, my first and my last. All young women wishing to enter the Amazonian Royal Guard must have knowledge of that which they are choosing to give up.”
“I’m not following you.”
Looking down as she fastened her low-slung belt, she explained. “I mean, sexual contact. An Amazon is not permitted to give up future relations with a man until she has experienced them, preferably more than once. Hence the bacchanalia.”
Rafe gaped. “Are you saying you had an orgy?”
“What’s an orgy?”
“It’s a party where a bunch of people have random sex, with no feelings, no emotions. Just intercourse.”
“Oh,” she said, sounding relieved as she tucked a tiny knife into her belt. “Then yes, that sounds about right.”
He didn’t grab the couch this time, he actually sat on the back of it as he mumbled, “I got dinner at Olive Garden for my twentieth birthday. You got an orgy.”
He had to think for a minute, focus on the whole picture, not just the salacious ones that filled his head. “So these many men you said you have been with, they were all…”
She interrupted him. “I’m with men all the time, though they aren’t in the Guard, they are constantly underfoot in the villages and the castles.”
Oh, jeez. She’d meant been around. Not been with—not sexually, anyway. He needed to keep reminding himself she took things very literally.
“Okay, let me rephrase that. Your big party, the one that made you give up sex, how many men came…er, I mean, attended?”
“Oh, hundreds.”
He slid down from the back of the couch onto the seat.
She sat down, too, earnest and forthright. “Of course, they weren’t all for me.”
“Well, that’s a relief.”
“Each initiate chooses a dozen men.”
“A dozen,” he whispered.
“Is this a lot? More than women from around here?”
“I guess not. But they don’t usually have them all at once.”
Her brow scrunched in confusion. “All at once? Is that possible? Do women here have that many orifices?”
Rafe started to cough on a mouthful of air, looking around for the camera he felt sure had to be hidden somewhere. But just as he doubted a woman would lie naked in front of one, he also had to wonder if she’d admit attending an orgy and banging a dozen guys for her twentieth birthday.
“In any case, women in Elatyria do not. I used one man at a time.”
Some relief, he supposed, though he found the word used jarring. “Twelve of them.”
She looked away, fiddling with her flask, mumbling, “Not exactly.” As if confessing she’d done something wrong, she said, “There were two. Well, a little more than two. Closer to three.”
“Excuse me?”
“The law doesn’t say an initiate must lie with all twelve men. I did my duty, tried one and didn’t like it much. So I thought I’d try once more. It was equally…uninspiring.”
“I get the picture. So, was one too big, one too small—” hence a little more than two? “—and the third just right?”
“Actually, they were all about the same size,” she murmured, staring into his eyes. “And none much resembled you.” He sensed by the quick way she flicked her tongue over her lips that she thought that was a good thing.
The woman was killing him here, every word stabbing him in his two most vulnerable places—his heart and his groin.
She kept talking, obviously not noticing that he wanted to push her back and show her all the ways two people could give each other pleasure without the word penetration ever entering into it.
Olivia might think she wasn’t a virgin, but he would argue it. She’d had a man inside her body, but she’d never really experienced sex. As for lovemaking? Not even close.
How cold her life must have been, never experiencing intimacy? Not real intimacy, anyway. All his protective instincts reared up and he wanted to show her all the things she’d been missing.
“By the way, the third one was most definitely not just right. In fact, I fear he was rather intimidated by me as he couldn’t manage the job and I eventually fell asleep waiting for him to.” With a small shrug, she added, “So, you see, more than two, less than three.”
“Two and a half men,” he mused. “I somehow doubt CBS would like that interpretation of their Monday night hit.”
She didn’t respond, not that he’d expected her to. He’d been making under-the-breath comments so he could try to pull his brain cells together to deal with what she’d revealed.
It could all be bullshit. Some country where women had a special militia and had to give up sex for life? A place where princes ran off to sing in gay clubs?
But her stare never wavered, and her tone said she, at least, believed every word she’d said. Besides, she kissed like she’d never known what a real kiss should be like. And her blunt reaction to his physical interest in her made it hard to believe she’d lie about much else.
If he believed some of it, he had to believe it all. Which included her sad description of her sex life.
He only wondered, if she was as interested in him as she seemed to be, was she still sticking to her Amazon vow of celibacy? Because if that hadn’t been lust flashing in her eyes a time or two—or twenty—since they’d met, he’d give up his entire classic LP collection.
He also wondered something else. If she was so determined to stay celibate, what would he have to do to get her to change her mind?
THOUGH SHE TOLD HIM repeatedly that she’d been making her way around this great city for a few days in the clothes she had on, for some reason, Rafe insisted that she wear something else when they went to find Prince Ruprecht. They’d argued about it over a delicious breakfast—something he’d made involving eggs, cheese and an unusual spice he called chili powder. Adamant about it, he’d left her here, in his home, while he went to the market to fetch her some other clothing.
“Ridiculous,” she mumbled, hoping he didn’t come back bearing some sort of silly feminine dress or gaudy fripperies. They’d talked a good bit this morning, and she suspected he already knew her well enough not to do such a thing. But men were ever so thick at times.
Alone, she’d nosed around his chambers for a while, curious, as always, about the things people over here took for granted. This wasn’t her first trip to this world. Since the Amazons had originally come from Earth, every initiate had to make the trek back. She hadn’t found much to like before.
Now, though, it was growing on her.
One thing she really liked was the books, especially the ones she found in a box marked Amazon. They must surely be special, and she wondered about the warriors who had written them—Stephen King and James Patterson. Such manly names, perhaps unique to whatever tribe had survived here on Earth after her own ancestors had found the borderlands and chosen to make their home in Elatyria.
She liked a lot more, too. The enormous city seemed to energize her spirit. Everything moved faster here. The people, the language, certainly the modes of conveyance. Life itself.
She liked the color of the sky from the window. And she liked the way the city looked so sprawling from inside the top of the tall building where Rafe lived.
The thing she liked best?
Indoor plumbing.
Which was why, shortly after he’d departed, she’d done as he invited and made full use of his bathing suite. Everyone over here took things like hot showers or steamy baths-on-demand for granted. They weren’t so common in Elatyria, and certainly weren’t standard in the barracks where she spent her time.
“Mmm,” she purred, letting the clear water cascade from the showerhead and spill over her body in hot, gushing streams. Her skin was reddened from the heat, her wet hair plastered to her face, but she savored every bit of it.
She reached for the soft-but-scratchy sponge, called a body pouf, per the package. Soaking it with perfumed soap from a bottle, she slid it all over herself. It smelled like
him—Rafe. Not flowery, like a woman’s soap, but warm and spicy. When she closed her eyes and let the scent blend with the steam rising off the water, she could almost imagine he was here with her, just a touch away.
She’d come to accept the fact that she wanted that touch. She wanted his hands on her, wanted more of those kisses. And she’d been wondering what it might feel like to be filled by someone whose touches she enjoyed, rather than enduring the act of intercourse in order to fulfill the requirements of her job.
She’d dreamt about it. About him, and her, and wondered what it might be like to part her legs and take him into herself.
Despite all her training, all her vows, she wondered.
Even now, lingering in the shower, she continued to think about it. The images filled her mind, and she kept her eyes closed as she bathed, enjoying a chore she usually did quickly and expediently. Now, she savored it. Her breasts tingled when she soaped them, her nipples pebbling. And between her legs, there was a strange ache. When she washed there, she found the area slick and hot, and her own fingertips brought the most interesting waves of sensation.
“Olivia?” a voice said.
Rafe. He’d returned from his errand. She glanced through the opaque, steam-covered wall of the shower, seeing his big, shadowy form standing a few feet away. “Hello.”
“There is a door here, you know,” he said, sounding like he was choking on every word. “You can close it for privacy.”
She shrugged. “I have privacy.”
“No, you don’t.” His voice shook as he added, “That shower is about as private as the screen was for me last night. And the show you’ve been putting on is a whole lot more interesting.”
“The show? You mean…”
“I think you’re clean,” he snapped, sounding at the limits of his own control.
Fascinating. He’d obviously been standing there watching for a few moments before announcing his presence. And he’d liked seeing her touch herself. Intimately.
Leslie Kelly, Jennifer LaBrecque Page 5