How in the world had he fallen in love with a teetotaler?
“So, you’re saying you don’t want the gender of our first child being predicted by a bunch of lushes? Have you no respect for tradition?” He slammed his fist into the balcony balustrade to act out his faux outrage.
His antics were rewarded with a tiny smile.
“I’ll believe that when you show the science behind it.” She straightened his tie, his shoulders, then tugged on his tails to be certain he was ordered. “We should go down; the day’s almost done and I’d like to get seated before the crowds reach to the pavilion.”
She was not at all looking forward to the party. Even with the cheerful, spritely folk music dancing up from the valley below. He wouldn’t even mention the toasts—drunken and sober—that had become part of the tradition. She’d stopped indicating her displeasure at the idea of staying married, but he didn’t want to risk upsetting it more than tonight’s spectacle would.
“Are you looking forward to the dancing? I know you’ve been practicing, and your dress keeps your feet visible so every drunken reprobate can marvel at your fancy stomping.”
She snorted then but took his hand and tugged him back through the palace and into the carriage waiting for them.
In the light of the late afternoon, the ring on her finger shone blue-green—the perfect color, the color that had informed his decision to badger every jeweler in Europe until he’d gotten the stone he wanted of sufficient size for a proper engagement ring, but small enough she’d actually wear it.
She took his hand as she settled into the cushioned seat and the carriage started down towards the large tents.
Things had been calm between them since that day at Almsford and, as long as they got through tonight smoothly, everything would be all right. He could see the finish line; they just had to keep it together until they got there.
Hoofbeats on cobblestones announced them and the crowds parted, opening a path to the rear pavilion. She waved, as was expected, and he did as well though he kept an arm around her shoulders.
If he had any chance of giving her any ease tonight, it would be through contact. He shouldn’t stop touching her. The connection helped them both, and even if he’d sworn off using distraction to soothe her, this wasn’t using sex as a distraction. It didn’t count.
Only when they were inside the white pavilion did Quinn’s good mood falter. It was the throne that did it, the one that would stay empty tonight because the King was too ill to attend.
“What’s wrong?” Anais asked from beside him at the high table. When he turned toward her, the grim and worried shadow had returned to her lovely eyes.
Don’t trouble her with it yet.
Later.
“Philip’s not here yet. But it’s fine—he’ll be in time for the toasts.”
While the King wouldn’t be attending at all. People would wonder why. She’d wonder why, might even take it personally—her relationship with Philip had always been good enough, but the King had kept her at a formal distance.
Telling her the truth now would just give her one more thing to be concerned about, when she should be looking like a happy bride.
“Should we have waited for him and the King to ride with us?”
The King…
He was saved from another lie by the sudden cacophony of Philip’s arrival and a small army of guests behind him. “He came down earlier to try the meads and cast his vote. He’s campaigning for the sweetest mead available. Although no one really believes it. Sweet meads never win the vote; everyone always thinks it should be a son born first and votes dry regardless.”
“Wants a niece, does he?”
“That’s what he said. What he actually said was: I’m so good at breaking traditions, I should have a girl to break the streak. Give the country a born princess to fuss over again.”
There had been no daughters in the family at all since the late eighteenth century, helped by the custom of keeping families small to avoid a sprawling royal line and possible inheritance issues.
She accepted it with a little shake of her head, still untalkative. Where Philip was, order soon followed. As soon as he’d greeted them both, he took to the dais and began the formal festivities.
Toasts came—as much as they could be called toasts when it was far more like his cousins and extended family roasted him instead. By the time a lull came, the band at the far end began to play.
Anais’s pointed looks toward the empty throne said more about her attention than words could have. He definitely had to tell her after the party. Truthfully, he couldn’t think of why he hadn’t told her before—sitting with his terminally ill grandfather had been part of his daily life since returning home.
Philip hand-delivered two tankards of the sweetest mead to them. Anais took a literal sip and went to cast her vote for the sweetest mead available.
When she returned, it was with a pallor so stark that when he saw her crossing back to him he was compelled to meet her and lead her back to her seat.
“It affected you that strongly?”
The confused look she gave him answered that question.
“That tiny sip?”
She swallowed visibly and shook her head, her gaze skating over the crowd to land on a lanky, dark-haired man.
Not again.
He’d taken care of Ratliffe. The man was out of the country and would be arrested if he returned without royal decree.
Her fear, which he’d once tried to ignore, was now like a foghorn to him. It made keeping quiet a massive undertaking.
Another drink of the mead held his tongue, but he struggled to mask his frustration while watching her go from visibly stricken to breathing more evenly, and finally to where some color returned to her cheeks.
Pale and terrified to quasi-normal.
She’d reasoned through without his help. That had to be an improvement. Public appearances must be triggering them; this was the third time it had happened.
With no other weapons in his publicly acceptable arsenal, he offered her his hand and stood. When she slowly mirrored his action, he led her onto the dance floor. Distraction was all he had right now.
* * *
Only one sighting of the specter of Wayne Ratliffe tonight. Anais still didn’t know if that was because afterward she’d purposely avoided looking at many people, or because the jubilant mood of the people celebrating their engagement had washed those probable hallucinations away.
She’d like to think the latter, then she could tell herself that she was getting over it. She’d like to pretend that since Ben’s surgery she hadn’t seen Wayne everywhere.
Well, everywhere but the American Embassy. She couldn’t make any more sense of that than she could the scores of waking nightmare visions clogging her days.
They plagued her so effectively she couldn’t help jumping to that conclusion about the random daily calls and hang-ups happening since Quinn had removed Wayne from the country. Even though her numbers were unlisted and she couldn’t conceive how he’d get them.
Anais took Quinn’s hand as he helped her down from the carriage which had brought them back to the palace.
He was the only good part of her evening. Nothing terrible had happened at the party, but he had been a bubble of peace in the chaos.
She wanted to stay in the bubble with him tonight. Pretend this was going to work out as much as she could no longer deny she ached for it to.
As soon as her feet settled firmly on the ground, she stepped against him and reached for him, rising on tiptoe as her arms crept around his shoulders and urged his mouth to hers. Not an ounce of resistance held him from her, his wonderful mouth pressed to hers, and soon he had his arms tight around her waist, his head tilting to deepen the kiss that had become her unspoken plea to stay
.
Late in the evening, late in their relationship, and late with admissions she’d known the truth of for weeks, Anais leaned her head back just enough to give it words. She whispered against his lips, “I believe you.”
The sharp intake of his breath made her open her eyes, and the intensity of the emotion she saw made her throat constrict. He nodded, accepting her words, and then immediately swept her into motion with him. One arm released her, but the other stayed around her waist as he hurried her up the long stairs through the public entrance of the palace and across the brilliantly ornate and decorated foyer to the private wing.
Practically running, his feet didn’t slow until he had her alone in his suite and the door closed. With a twirl, her back touched the door and his mouth fell on hers again, the hunger of his kiss sparking over every inch of her. She even felt it in the arches of her feet.
She had questions and fears, and darkness hovered on the horizon. The country might accept her now, but once Wayne returned for real—and he would—it would come undone. But that wasn’t tonight, and she needed to be close to Quinn, to soothe away the worry she’d seen on his too handsome face every time he had looked toward the empty throne. She needed to see the rest of him, the body she’d known and which was at once strange and familiar to her wandering hands.
Finding the front of his collar, she fumbled with the black bow tie until the feat of continuing to be kissed senseless while trying to untie anything became too much and she broke the kiss, tilting her head to see his tie enough to get it open, and the buttons beneath it.
Quinn shrugged out of the formal tails, tossed them onto a couch and then pulled her back into his arms.
He’d never been in bad shape, but now the man’s shoulders could’ve been used to model anatomy for biology classes. She felt his hands wrestling with the numerous buttons up the back of her bodice, and her hands were pulled from their appreciative exploration as he spun her to face the door so he could attack the fastenings from the back.
A button or two, and he’d kiss the back of her neck, nip, bite and suck at the skin he could get at, then struggle to unwrap more of her.
Sometimes he brushed his lips so lightly over her skin goosebumps rose over her entire body.
In seven years he hadn’t forgotten one thing about touching her. Even during the frenzied sex on her office floor, he couldn’t help himself angling his thrusts just the right way, assaulting the most tender parts of her neck and shoulders with kisses that defined every type of kiss possible, leaving light marks on her chest for days after.
The emotion flowing off him now echoed that fervor, but was as far from that dark need as she’d been from home and from him for so many years.
When her dress finally came open and he could tug it down and off, he gave a triumphant laugh and within seconds the long-line bra she’d worn popped off too.
Only then did he let her turn back to him to resume her quest to get him out of his clothes.
“Bed this time,” he croaked and she nodded, so starved for the feel of his chest she had to stop with his shirt half undone when she caught the gentle whorls of dark hair and pressed her lips to the center, then nibbled and licked her way up to his collarbone. His stuttering breaths and gasps sounded like music.
Her dress was abandoned several steps back. Panties and shoes weren’t much of a barrier, so Quinn joined her fumbling efforts to tear through his clothes, and soon the shirt was gone. Her eyes went to those scars again, but this time her mouth followed—kissing each puckered ridge.
Every brush of her lips had him twisting, his breaths coming in stuttering gasps.
At the bed, he tossed her back and kicked off the rest of his clothes in mere heartbeats.
His body felt strong enough to put her faith in. Tempted her to compare that strength to his loyalty and love. But that put him out of reach; she couldn’t have anything that beautiful.
He looked like a man who’d earned his strength through labor and toil, through hardship. But hardship didn’t always build emotional character the way it could knit muscle.
“Any mystery left?” he asked, a flirting light in his eyes, his breathless smile brightening the need that had been roaring between them both.
Too much.
Thinking about it would ruin everything.
“Unraveling,” she said instead, then laughed as he grabbed her feet and chucked her shoes over his shoulders.
By the time he’d stripped her bare patience had long been abandoned by them both, and she couldn’t tell which of them was shaking hardest as he sank into her. All she knew was an exquisite ache in her chest, and the certainty that no one could ever replace him.
Fiery passion, pleasure so acute it was almost pain and raw sweetness she couldn’t remember ever fully appreciating, but which she knew she didn’t deserve.
At the height of it, when she’d shattered and he’d put her fragments back together again, she tugged his head onto her breast and smoothed back the damp, curling brown hair, stubbornly refusing to let those thoughts reform that had only amplified since he’d slid that beautiful ring onto her finger.
“I know you’re not ready to say it,” he murmured when his breaths had stopped coming in gulps, and lifted over her to look into her eyes. “But I need to say it.”
Chewing her upper lip in an effort to hold back the tide building behind her eyes, she nodded and held his gaze as he said the words to her again, words she’d admitted she now believed. She still didn’t deserve them, but she wanted them. Oh, how she wanted him.
A nod was the answer she could give and when he gently thumbed tears from her lashes and laid his head back down, she returned to petting his hair, knowing clearly this time that the shaking was hers.
The sweeter he was, the more certain she became he’d be snatched away from her and that she should run now, as fast and hard as her feet would carry her. The sweeter he was, the more she came to suspect she’d just had sex without barriers again because she wanted pregnancy to blame for being stupid this time. Pregnancy would make it understandable, maybe even forgivable, to stay until she was so consumed by him that his turning from her would destroy her.
But betrayal always came when least expected. He should know that almost as well as she did.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“WAKE UP, SLEEPY.”
His voice, warm and happy, broke through Anais’s lazy morning sleep like a blast from the past, announcing Quinn’s intention to get her up by any means necessary.
She had to work to keep the instinctive smile off her face.
“Nope.”
Even as she said the word and tried to calm her cheeks, Anais felt her body tensing, readying for his attack.
It was an old game. She couldn’t remember a day he hadn’t woken up in a good mood—something she’d have sworn she hated before Quinn. But somehow, even when she wasn’t legitimately reluctant to rise, she found herself playing along, which always improved her natural morning crankiness. Quinn’s improvised wake-up techniques were more effective than coffee, both for her alertness level and her mood.
Sweet kisses.
Ear-nibbling.
Forehead-licking…
He’d even bitten her toes a time or two.
Once, he’d bitten her bum and turned his wake-up call into the best morning sex in history.
“Get up. Get up,” he chanted, bouncing the bed a couple of times so that she jiggled in the covers. Then stopped.
Was that it?
She squeezed her eyes tighter shut, conscious now of the distinct possibility that, good mood or not, he just didn’t do that anymore. In which case…yeah, she’d just be lying there, looking like a childish, lazy moron.
He’d stopped talking. She didn’t hear moving either… Had he gone? Had he gone and she’d m
issed it?
The instant she opened her eyes to check he pounced, ripping the bedclothes back until she was bared to the hips. Then he loosed a battle cry, hands lifting with fingers curled in a classic Gotcha! position.
He. Was. Going. To. Tickle. Her.
Tickling. Morning tickling?
Before she could process it, he took a breath deep enough to puff his cheeks and launched himself at her belly.
One arm clamped over her thighs, the other wrapped over her chest to lock her arm down. Secured, he pressed his mouth to her belly and blew hard, unleashing the loudest, rudest noises into the room and sending those deep tissue vibrations through her.
Anais yelped, tried not to laugh, and did the only thing she could: squirm hard to get free.
But it didn’t matter how hard she tried not to laugh or get away, she soon shook with the kind of crippling, uncontainable laughter that rendered her body useless.
When every breath sounded like a tortured asthmatic’s he’d stop and let her get a lungful. Or maybe he just stopped to refill his own lungs, needing the air to continue his onslaught.
One of her wild bucks managed to free an arm, and she shoved at his head while helplessly laughing, yelling, “Stop!” and turning it into a seventeen-syllable word.
He did. Just backed right off, as if he’d marked a task off his morning to-do list. “Morning,” he greeted, as if none of that had just happened, and leaned down to kiss her while brushing her thoroughly messy hair from her face.
Gentle. Tender. Loving. Addictive. Especially to someone like her who’d never belonged anywhere. But she felt as if she belonged with him. When they were alone, she felt as if she belonged with him, even to him in a primitive way that offended her feminist sensibilities. It was just the rest of his world she couldn’t even imagine fitting into.
“The sunlight gave it away.” Her voice came out far huskier than she could’ve done on purpose. She cleared her throat and asked, “How many cups of coffee have you had?”
Even if her role required her to be the reasonable one, she couldn’t keep herself from petting him while she reasserted some reason into the morning. She loved raking her fingers through his messy curling hair.
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