The Reluctant Princess Read online

  A man might, however briefly, hold in his arms his greatest desire.

  In the morning, there would be time for wisdom, for acceptance.

  For regret and for anger.

  And for shame, as well.

  She whispered, “Are you going to send me away?”

  It was the moment to tell her, to make her understand that her wild, bright American dreams would not change what was. If her father did have plans for her to marry a Gullandrian, it wouldn’t be his low-jarl bastard warrior he intended for her. It would be the man King Osrik thought most likely to be king himself someday. That way the Thorson bloodline would continue to hold the throne. That way, even if His Majesty had lost his sons, the day might come when his grandson would rule.

  “Oh, Hauk…” Those eyes of hers begged him to see what she saw—the two of them, united, His Majesty, her father, blessing the match.

  He knew he should make the truth clear, that he should tell her what would really happen if they shared this stormy night and His Majesty found out.

  At the very least, Hauk would lose his position, be stripped of all honors. He could be banished or even sent to Tarngalla, the tower prison where murderers and those who committed crimes against the state were kept. It was highly unlikely that what they were doing might cost him his life—not in this modern day and age. But anything could happen when the most trusted of soldiers dared to betray his king.

  He knew if he told her all that, she would scoff. She would call it impossible, barbaric, medieval. She would say it was wrong and unfair and an outrage.

  And then she’d return to her own room. Even if she didn’t want to believe him, she wouldn’t let him take the risk.

  Hauk cared nothing for the risk. She was here. She wished to stay. And he was through battling. The war inside him was over—at least for this night. For the brief, lightning-struck hours to come, he would hold this woman in his arms.

  She sat there, on her knees, her fine face flushed and hopeful—those slender hands clasped. “Hauk, I…”

  “Yes? Tell me.”

  “If you let me stay…”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, if you do, then I confess…”

  She seemed to need more urging. He gave it. “You confess…”

  “Since this morning, when you kissed me and then sent me to my room to pack, I have…thought of this. Hoped for this. Prepared for this.”

  “Prepared?”

  The blush on her cheeks flooded outward, suffusing her entire sweet face with color. “You said you’d never have children until you had a wife.”

  By the breath of the dragon, he’d said exactly that—and meant it. He’d also taken a blood oath to give undying loyalty to his king. But look at him now.

  “I’m a responsible woman.” She was earnest now, enchantingly so. “I’d never ask you to go against your beliefs. I have contraception.”

  Contraception. Of course. American to the core.

  She looked so very sincere about this. And so beautiful.

  He told her simply, “That’s wise.” There were other things he might have said. But anything else would have brought questions he saw no need to answer right then.

  He wasn’t a total thief. He’d only take the taste of her, her deep, warm sighs, the touch of her skin to his. There’d be no risk he’d put a bastard in her belly. She’d understand that, soon enough. They didn’t need to talk it over now.

  She slid up his chest again and pressed her sweet mouth to his—quickly, this time. And firmly. “I’ll go then. I’ll…get them.” She pretended to glare. “You stay right here.”

  “Your wish is my command.”

  She jumped from the bed and hurried to the door, pausing there briefly to send him a tender look. Then she was gone. He lay back, thinking that he loved the lightning. It had always pleased him. And it seemed all the brighter the dimmer the room. He switched off the lamp.

  A moment later, she returned, a small box in her hand.

  She set the box by the bed.

  He whispered, “You don’t need that big pink shirt. Not now. Not for the rest of the night.”

  She hesitated, hovering there beside the bed, the wedge of light from the open door behind her casting her face into shadow, making a halo around her golden hair.

  Lightning flared. He saw her face clearly—uncertain and sweetly shy. The light went out. Thunder boomed.

  She took the bottom of the shirt, whipped it up and over her head. And tossed it away.

  Chapter Twelve

  Hauk held back the blanket. Elli slid in beside him. He wrapped the blanket around her and he looked down at her, a look so tender—and yet also somehow infinitely sad.

  Apprehension rose within her. “What? What’s the matter?” She brushed two fingers along his brow, wishing her touch could soothe away his frown. “Hauk?”

  Instead of giving her an answer, he lowered his mouth to hers. His lips touched her lips and her apprehension vanished as if it had never been. And his sadness? Surely, he couldn’t be sad now. There was no such thing as sadness—not when he was kissing her, not when they held each other close.

  He clasped her waist with his big hand and he kissed his way over her chin and down her throat. Pushing back the blanket, he raised up over her, resting on an elbow. He looked down at her—at all of her. She gloried in that, in having him look at her. She felt no shyness, no embarrassment. It seemed right that he should see her. She wanted him to see her.

  It seemed that she could actually feel his gaze, that where he looked, he touched. She shivered in blissful response.

  Slowly he lowered his head to her left breast. His hair trailed on her skin. She felt the touch of his tongue—one long, wet swipe, deliciously abrasive, against the yearning flesh of her nipple. And then he blew where he’d licked.

  Elli moaned in delight.

  He lifted his head again. She looked at him from under lowered lashes and saw his white teeth flash in the darkness—a rare smile.

  She smiled back, her mouth trembling a little. “Oh, Hauk…”

  And then he dipped his head once more and took her nipple in his mouth.

  Elli gasped and bowed her body up for him, offering herself, offering all she had to give as he caressed the aching bud, drawing on it, suckling her. She tossed her head against the pillow.

  His hand strayed over her belly—and lower. He dipped a finger into the curls where her thighs joined. She cried out in excitement. Anticipation shimmered through her.

  He raised his head from her breast and moved up a little, so his face loomed above hers. A blaze of lightning cut the night and she saw the feral gleam in his pale-blue eyes.

  Thunder rolled and the room was dim again. Still, his eyes shone at her through the shadows. “I want to bring you pleasure, Elli.”

  “Oh, Hauk. You do. You are.”

  He brushed a kiss on her brow.

  And below, very gently, he eased the curls aside, finding the slick groove of her sex. She gripped his big shoulders and whispered his name.

  His finger moved. One long, shockingly intimate stroke and no more—right then. He took his touch elsewhere, sliding his rough and tender palm down the vulnerable inner surfaces of each of her thighs.

  She sighed and let her legs ease open.

  He was kissing her again. Kissing his way down the center of her. Elli lay beneath him, awash in pleasure, a willing victim of his mouth and his seeking tongue that dipped into her navel and played there. She gasped as she felt his teeth, lightly nipping. She moaned with the wonder of it—moaned and then moaned again.

  Lower and lower, down over the tender skin below her navel. He put his lips there, against her mound, not delving in, just pressing his mouth, open, upon her.

  And he let out a long, warm, focused breath of air.

  Several bolts of lightning struck in quick succession, each followed by that rolling, booming sound. Elli was tossing her head on the pillow, muttering words she hardly knew the meanin
g of.

  “Yes” and “Oh” and “Please” and “There…”

  Gently, he moved her thighs wide apart and positioned himself between them. She dared to open her eyes, to gaze dreamily down the length of her own yearning body. His mouth was on her, now. And his tongue was…

  His tongue was…

  Elli groaned and the room lit up with wild stormy light. There was the thunder. And the hollow pounding, like a continuous sigh, of driving rain.

  She clutched his golden head and she moved beneath his mouth and the soft explosion of fulfillment lifted her up, above the world, into the dark wet storm-shattered sky.

  The only word she had was his name. And she said it. Over and over and over again.

  For a while, they held each other and whispered and gently touched. It was a lovely time, a time for learning all the curves and hollows, all the tender places.

  Each caress was a whisper. A question that found its answer in a sigh.

  She traced the path of the lightning bolts—the one on his chest, the smaller, hidden one, in his palm. And the shape of the biggest dragon, the way its naughty tail curled down and down.

  He said, “A wise woman never toys with the dragon….”

  She closed her hand around him, so large and thick and wanting her. And she looked up into his eyes as she held him and the lightning blazed in the room.

  He made a long, surrendering sound, a sound that rolled low beneath the rumble of distant thunder. And he said her name, “Elli…”

  And then she did for him what he’d done for her, first with long, slow strokes of her tongue and her hand and then more fully, her hair brushing his hard thighs, her mouth around him, drawing him into her, urging him on.

  The hours went by in bursts of bright heat and shimmers of slow pleasure. More than once, she reached for the box on the bedside table.

  Each time he caught her hand before her fingers could close on it. He took those empty fingers to his lips and he kissed them, one by one, drawing them slowly into his mouth, caressing them with his teeth and his tongue, then turning her hand over, laying his lips in the heart of her palm.

  The third time he stopped her from reaching for the box, she took his hand and she kissed it chastely, then held it to her heart. “Why, Hauk? Why won’t you let me—”

  “Shh.” He pulled her close.

  He caressed her in long, slow strokes, running his hand down her back, over the twin curves of her hips and inward to find her wet and ready. Within minutes she was clutching him frantically, mindless with pleasure.

  She didn’t reach for the box again. She thought, as his wonderful hands and his talented mouth worked their magic on her hungry flesh, that it didn’t matter, that maybe it was better this way—that she didn’t have to be so greedy for everything all at once.

  There would be time for them, together, for his body within hers. It seemed impossible to think it now—in some ways she felt she knew him better, even, than she knew her sisters—but she had to remember…

  Four days ago, she hadn’t even known he existed. Three days ago she’d found him, a total stranger, waiting in her apartment—to kidnap her—when she got home.

  And here she was in a bed in a Boston hotel room, climbing all over him, thinking of words like forever and I do. Thinking of having his babies, of making a life with him.

  Was that crazy or what?

  He saw her dreamy smile and he asked her what had caused it.

  She thought, I think I love you, but she didn’t say it.

  Like the box on the bedside table, the words of love could wait.

  Some time after two, exhausted and deliciously satisfied, Elli dropped off to sleep in Hauk’s arms.

  When she woke, it was daylight. The storm had passed. The sky beyond the window across the room was cloudless. And she was alone in the bed.

  She pushed back the covers, grabbed her pink shirt from where she’d thrown it on the floor and pulled it on over her head. Then, smiling the smile of a happy woman, she went to find him.

  He hadn’t gone far. She pushed open the door to the other room and there he was, fully dressed, sitting in a chair near the big window that took up half of one wall.

  Out there beyond the glass, the harbor waters lay calm, the boats gently bobbing, a few of them, small pleasure craft, with sails as white as new snow. The orange ball of the rising sun lit up the clear blue sky.

  Elli looked in his face and her happy smile faded. She knew that expression—that distant, composed look. She couldn’t believe she was seeing it. She refused to believe she was seeing it.

  “Hauk?” She ran to him—and then she drew herself up short. She wanted to reach for him. But somehow, she didn’t quite dare. “Oh, Hauk, what’s wrong? What’s happened?”

  His expression didn’t change. “I have contacted the pilot. The plane is refueled and ready. Shower if you’d like, and get dressed. We need to be on our way.”

  Four days—going on five now—that she’d known him. Yet it felt like forever. It felt as if there had never been a time when Hauk FitzWyborn wasn’t in her life. She knew him well enough to know that when he got that look, that tone to his voice, there was no reaching him, no hope that he might tell her what was going on inside him.

  Still, she couldn’t stop herself from trying. “I don’t understand this.” She spoke quietly. She wanted to be reasonable. She didn’t want to start crying and begging and throwing herself on him, though that was exactly what she felt like doing. “What can have changed so much? Why are you so…far away? Last night, I thought that the two of us were—”

  He put up a hand. She stared at the lightning bolt. Only hours ago, that hand had touched her in all her most secret places, giving her the kind of pleasure she’d never known before. And now he was using it to keep her at bay. “Last night was last night. It’s over and done with.”

  “But I don’t—”

  “Enough.” He stood. “Dress. Gather your belongings. I will take you to His Majesty, your father, where you belong.”

  She could feel anger rising, prickling the back of her neck, making her blood rush faster through her veins. “What are you saying, ‘Where I belong’? I don’t belong with my father. I don’t even know my father. I’m going to visit him, and that’s all. If I belong with anyone, I belong with—”

  He put up his hand again. “Don’t say it.”

  A furious shout rose in her throat. Somehow, she swallowed it and asked very quietly, “What have I done, for you to treat me like this?”

  Something flashed in those pale eyes. It might have been pain. But he hid it quickly. Again, his face was stern and impassive. “Nothing. You have done nothing. Last night I was weak. And you were a beautiful, impossible dream I had—a dream that’s over now. We won’t speak of it again.”

  She whirled from him—she had to, to keep from flinging herself against him. She took two steps and then realized she had no idea where she was going. So she hovered there, with her back to him, not sure what to do next.

  From where she stood she could see through the open doorway to the tangled sheets of the bed where they’d spent last night. She could also see the night table, and the box that still waited, unopened, upon it. It all became pitifully clear to her, when she looked at that box.

  She spun back to face him. “You knew.” It was an accusation. “You knew last night that you’d do this in the morning. That’s why you stopped me every time I tried to…” Her voice trailed off. There was no need to finish. The bleak look in his eyes said it all.

  He confessed, so softly, “Yes. You understand. You have it right.”

  Oh, she saw it all so clearly. She did know him. They were worlds apart. He lived by codes and rules she couldn’t begin to comprehend. Still, she knew him, knew how his mind worked, had seen down into his secret heart.

  She whispered, “Because contraceptive devices are fallible.”

  “Yes.”

  “Because the only way to be certain conceptio
n won’t happen is never to do what makes babies in the first place.”

  “That is correct.”

  “You are…saving yourself, aren’t you? For the woman who will one day be your wife?”

  “I wouldn’t call it that.”

  “Then what would you call it?”

  He gave a tiny shrug of those huge shoulders. “Protecting the rights of my children, making certain that when they’re born, they’re born legitimate. And protecting you, as well—protecting your children, who have the right to a father who’s able to claim them.”

  “So you’ll only make love all the way with your wife.” An absurd thought popped into her head—and she let it right out her mouth. “Why, Hauk. You’re a charter member of the NATWC.”

  His brows drew together.

  “NATWC,” she said again, as if it was going to mean anything to him. “The Never All the Way Club.”

  Now, he looked completely confused. “This is an American institution?”

  She let out a wild laugh. “Hardly.”

  “Ah,” he said uncomfortably. “A joke. It’s a joke.”

  “Sort of. I guess.” She felt foolish, to have even brought it up. “It’s just…something my sisters and I used to say to each other.”

  “It makes no sense to me.”

  “I know. Never mind. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that there’s no chance the woman you marry will ever be me. You won’t let her be me. You won’t let yourself even imagine the idea of a marriage to the daughter of your king.”

  His mouth moved. She knew with absolute certainty he was about to say her name. But he didn’t. He closed his lips over the word before it escaped him. And he started again. “This is not about what I might imagine.”

  “Then what is it about?”

  “There can never be more between us. Accept it. You are a princess and I am far beneath you. That’s how it is. That’s how it will always be.”

  “But why? Why does it have to be that way? Why do you have to…limit yourself that way?”

  “Questions,” he muttered. “With you, the questions never end.” He sounded weary. And strangely tender, too.