A Throne for the Taking (11 page)

‘And why is that, my dear duchess? Did you think that a commoner like me would not be able to cope with a formal ball?’

‘I never...’ She had been thinking of his wild past, the stories in the papers of long sessions in nightclubs, the images of him emerging, bleary-eyed and dishevelled, in the early hours of the morning. That terrible photo of him battered and bruised, his face bloody. ‘I didn’t think it would be your sort of thing.’

‘I can dance. My father insisted that I had lessons—it’s not something I’m likely to forget.’

There was such a wealth of memory in that statement that it woke echoes in Ria’s mind.

‘Madame Herone?’ she questioned, recalling the hours she had spent being drilled in ballroom dancing by the stern disciplinarian.

Alexei nodded, that gleam deepening in the darkness of his eyes.

‘I’m surprised we didn’t end up having lessons together.’

No, she’d overstepped some mark there, she realised, feeling a painful twist of regret as the warmth faded like an ebbing tide.

‘Your father was determined that we should never spend time together.’

She hadn’t known that. Had simply believed that the dance lessons, like so many other things, were something that Alexei had rebelled against. How many other stories had she been told that had been just that—lies told to prevent her getting too close to him, getting to know him properly?

‘It might have made everything so much more bearable. Do you remember that cane she had?’

Ria shuddered as she remembered how the dance teacher had wielded the cane like a weapon, rapping it sharply and painfully against her pupils’ ankles if they made a mistake.

‘I used to come out of lessons with my legs a mass of bruises.’

‘No Huh-Honoria...’ Alexei’s tone mimicked the teacher’s delivery perfectly, with a strange half-breath before her name. ‘On your toes, if you please... And one, two, three—one, two, three...’

He was holding out his arms to Ria as he spoke and she found herself moving into them, picking up the rhythm.

‘
One,
two, three...’

The speed was building. She was being swung around, whirled about the room, faster and faster. And she was being held so close, his arm at her back, clamped against the base of her spine, crushing her against him so that she could feel the heat of his body through the fine silk of her nightdress. Not just the heat; crushed this close, she couldn’t be unaware of the hardness and power of his erection that spoke of a deeper, more primitive need than the light-hearted dance he had lead her into. Her feet barely seemed to touch the floor, her toes lifting from the carpet as she was steered across the room.

But it wasn’t just the speed of the dance or the whirling turns that made her head spin. It was the sensation of being held in his arms, their strength supporting her, the burn of his palm at her back where the nightgown dipped low over her spine. His heartbeat, heavy, powerful, strong just under her cheek, seemed to take her pulse and lift it, make it throb in an unconscious echo of his, her breathing quickening, become shallow.

‘One, two, three...’

She would never know if it was an accident or deliberate but at that moment it seemed that his foot caught on the edge of a rug, throwing them off-balance, stumbling, falling. Somehow Alexei twisted so that she landed safely on to the huge soft bed, crushed a heartbeat later by the heavy weight of Alexei’s long body.

‘Alex!’ His name escaped on a rush of air, gasping in a mix of complicated reactions.

With her face buried against the strong column of his neck, nose against the warm satin of his skin, she could inhale the personal scent of his body, feel the effect of it slide through her like warm smoke. If she just pushed her lips forward a centimetre or less she would taste him, be able to press her tongue against the lean muscles, the heavy pulse.

Above her Alexei went totally still, freezing into an immobility that caught the breath in her throat and held it there, tightly knotted.

‘Ria,’ he said, rough and raw as if dragged from a painfully sore throat. ‘Ria, look at me...’

Half-fearful, half-excited, she made herself look up at him, meeting the gleaming onyx blaze of his eyes and feeling it burning up inside her. His face was set and raw, skin stretched tight across his broad cheekbones where a flash of red stained them darkly. She knew what that meant, knew her own face must bear a similar mark. Her blood was molten in her veins, her heartbeat thundering at her temples so that she couldn’t think straight.

‘
This
is why I never came to you before now. I knew that if I came to you it would be like this.’

He moved slightly, stroking a warm palm over her exposed skin, shifting against her so that she felt the heated swell of his erection. The heady mix of excitement and hunger drove her to make a soft mewling sound that had him drawing in a raw, unsteady breath.

‘I knew that I would never get away again.’

He shook his dark head roughly, closing his eyes against the admission that had been dragged from him. Pushing both hands into the drift of her hair across the pillows, he held her head just so, dark eyes fixing hers, his mouth just a few centimetres of temptation away from her own.

‘I didn’t want to want you so much—never did. But there is little point in denying it any more. So now, my duchess, it is decision time. If you are going to say no then say it now—while I can still act on it.’

Bending his head, he took her lips in a kiss that was pure temptation, sliding into a hungry pressure that told its own story. It was barely there then gone again and the moan of disappointment that rose in her throat, the way that her own mouth followed his, trying to snatch back the caress, made it plain that she wanted more. The hands that had been in her hair now slid down the length of her body, one cupping her bottom and pressing her closer against him, the other slipping under the lace-trimmed edge of the blue silk gown, sliding it from her shoulder, baring the creamy skin to his mouth.

The heat of his kiss made her writhe on the dark green covers, and when his teeth grazed her skin in a tender pain another soft cry of response escaped her.

Six restless nights had brought her to his door. Six nights of wakefulness and frustration, six nights of longing and growing need. And every one of those nights was behind her action now. She was hungry, needy, her hands shaking as she pulled at his clothes, wrenching his shirt from the waistband of his trousers, tugging it up so that she had access to the smooth warmth of the skin of his back. With the other hand, she reached up, catching the dangling ends of his unfastened bow tie and holding them together, pulling down on them to draw his head towards her, his mouth imprisoned against her own, his groan escaping from between their joined lips.

She was lost in those kisses, abandoned to his touch. His hands were even more impatient than her own, dispensing with the fine blue silk that covered her with a roughness and a lack of finesse that had the fine material ripping as he tore it away from her. And then his mouth was on her breast, hot and hungry, kissing, nipping, suckling in a way that brought a moaning response from her own throat.

‘Lexei...’ she sobbed, daring at last to use again the affectionate nickname he had once let her call him. ‘Lexei...’

A sudden thought seemed to catch him, making him pause, lift his head.

‘You’re not...?’

‘What? A virgin?’ Ria finished for him, the fight she was having to cope with this abrupt change making her tone sharp, the words shake on her tongue. ‘What—do you think I spent all these years just waiting, saving myself for you? Don’t be silly.’

She might just as well have done, she added in the privacy of her own thoughts. She had believed herself in love with Alexei, had had fantasies, dreams in which he had been the one—her first. So when he had left and had made it plain that he had never spared a thought for the former friend he had left behind, when he had been seen everywhere with the beautiful, glamorous Mariette, when he had had a baby with the other woman, she had later flung herself into a relationship at the age of twenty that she’d known within days had been a major mistake. And if she had needed any further proof then it was right here, right now in the storm of feelings breaking over her. The sort of tempest that no other person had ever been able to arouse in her.

The nightdress was gone, ripped away and discarded on the floor, and somehow he had managed to shed his own clothes, the heat and hair-roughened texture of his skin a torment of delight against her own sensitised flesh. And when he combined it with the stinging delight of his hot mouth closing over one pouting nipple she could only throw back her head against the pillows and choke his name out loud.

When he threw a leg over hers, pushing her thighs apart, opening her to him, she went with him willingly, arching up to meet him, to encourage him, to welcome him. With her face muffled against his throat she slid her hands down to his buttocks and pressed hard, urging him on.

‘Ria...’ Her name was rough and thick on his tongue, revealing that if she was on the brink of losing control then he was right there with her all the way. His mouth was at one breast, his hands teasing the other, tugging at her nipple, drawing it tighter, and she thought that she might lose the little that was left of her consciousness as she felt her head swim with the sensual pleasure that was burning up inside her.

The moment that he eased himself inside her had her holding her breath, abandoning herself, yielding herself up to him. The slow slide of his body into hers was like that teenage dream come true but harder, hotter, so much more than she had ever been able to imagine in her fantasies. It went beyond any experience that she could have ever thought was possible.

She was so close to the edge already that there was barely time to breathe between this moment of intense connection and the pulse of something new, something hot and hungry and demanding as he moved within her, and she lifted herself to meet his thrusts, gasping her delight as they took her higher, higher...soaring into the heavens, it seemed.

A moment later she was lost. Sensations stormed every inch of her body, assaulting every nerve, her mind whirling in the delirium of ecstasy. She froze with her body arched up to his, her internal muscles clamping around him so that she caught his choking cry of release as he too let go and abandoned himself to the tidal wave of pleasure, losing himself in the oblivion of fulfilment.

The storm of sensual ecstasy that had exploded inside Alexei’s head took a long time to recede. Even then, it was impossible to move, impossible to think. His heart thundered against his ribs and it seemed his breathing would never get back under control. But at long last the red-hot tide receded, his blood cooled, his mind was his own again. With Ria’s soft warmth curled up close beside him, her face buried against his chest, her hair spilling across his arms, he knew a powerful sense of satisfaction, of the closest thing to contentment he had known in a long time.

A contentment that was shattered in the moment that the first rational thought invaded his mind like a shaft of ice.

What the hell had he done?

He had known that he had kept away from Ria for a reason. The reason being that he didn’t trust his own control when he was with her. He wanted her but, after the bitter lesson he had learned in the past, he had vowed that never again would he risk sleeping with any woman without contraception. But the moment Ria had been in his arms, the heat of the hunger he had felt as she lay underneath him, open to him, giving to him, had taken all his ability to think and shattered it. He hadn’t even had a brain cell working that had thought of protection or consequences or the future. Only here and now and what was happening between them.

In a lifetime of wild, reckless, foolish mistakes, he might just have made the worst possible one ever.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

R
IA
STARED
AT
her reflection in the mirror and
tried to recognise herself in the woman she saw there. The change wasn’t just
physical, though the groomed, elegant person who looked back at her was so far
from any previous image of herself she had ever seen. There was so much more to
it than that. And that meant that she found it hard to look herself in the eye,
harder to admit to what she was seeing there.

Her dress was perfection, the sort of dress she might have
imagined in her dreams. A narrow, strapless column of white silk, it had tiny
crystals stitched into the material so that the effect when she moved was like a
fall of stars. Her hair was swept into an elegant half-up, half-down style with
the rich glowing strands falling over the creamy skin of her shoulders and
partway down her back.

Growing up, she had always dreamed about one day being able to
attend the black and white masked ball. She had also dreamed of falling in love,
of marrying and living her own happy ever after. And the biggest part of that
dream had been loving just one man.

Loving Alexei Sarova.

Well, she had done just that. She’d given him her heart as a
child, but now she’d fallen in love with him for real, as an adult woman, and
there was no going back. But the dream she had longed for had turned into a
total, bitter nightmare as more and more of it came true. Because there was no
happy ever after. Now here she was, about to attend the ball that people were
calling the event of the decade. She would be expected to put on her public
face, stand at Alexei’s side, dance with him, smile—always smile!—and never let
anyone see just how bruised and crushed her heart actually was.

Least of all Alexei himself.

Alexei, who had made it so plain that he desired her—in a
physical sense at least. Who had acknowledged that he wanted her at his side, as
his queen, his consort, but only in a dynastic marriage. She would be deceiving
herself if she even allowed the hope of anything more to creep into her mind.
Nothing had changed since the night she had gone to Alexei’s room.

Well, yes, one thing had changed. And that was that she no
longer lay awake, alone in her bed, in an agony of sexual hunger and
frustration. She shared Alexei’s room, Alexei’s bed, every night and the
passionate fire that had burned through them both that first time showed no
signs of dimming. If anything, it had grown wilder, fiercer, stronger, with
every night that passed. Though after that one heated coming together Alexei had
always been meticulous, even dogmatic, about using the contraception they had
both forgotten in the heat of the moment the first time.

But there was more to life than their searing sexual
connection. There were the days to get through as well. The rest of the time it
was business as usual, the demands of the throne taking so much time, so much
energy. She woke every morning to find that the space beside her where Alexei
had lain was cold and empty, revealing how he had been up so much earlier and
how long he had been gone. Spending time with those ‘new mistresses’, the
affairs of state that absorbed him so completely.

He had nothing else to offer her. No emotion, no caring,
no...

Choking up inside on the last word, Ria swung away from the
mirror, unable to meet her own eyes.

I can’t love you. I loved once—adored
her... Lost her.

No love. That was the word she was avoiding. The word she was
running away from. The one that had no place in Alexei’s life but that had taken
over her existence completely.

The acid of unshed tears burned at the back of her eyes as she
remembered that morning, when Alexei had been up early and dressing as usual
while she still dozed. She had tried to lie still, not speaking a word, but in
the end it had proved impossible. He had been heading towards the door when she
had been unable to hold back any longer.

‘When will you be back?’

She knew the words were a mistake as soon as she let them pass
her lips, digging her teeth down painfully into her tongue as if she could hold
them back. But too late. The stiffness of that long, straight spine, the set of
his shoulders under the impeccably tailored steel-grey silk suit, told its own
story without words.

‘I have a full day.’ It was flat, unemotional. ‘But we will be
together this evening. For the ball.’

Tonight the Black and White Ball would mark the culmination of
all the ceremonial that led up to Alexei’s accession to the throne. After
tonight there would be the coronation itself.

And then their wedding.

On their wedding day he had said he would release her father.
That move would mean that the balance of her mother’s mind would be restored,
possibly even her life would be saved when she had her husband back at her side.
But wouldn’t the dark hand of the past still reach out and touch the present,
overshadowing it?

‘Alexei. Are you sure you should release my father?’

He had started to move away again but that brought him up
short, stilling totally.

‘I thought that was what you wanted.’

‘For my mother, yes. I’d give anything to see her happy and
healthy again. And no matter what he is, she loves my father. But won’t Gregor
still be a threat? To Mecjoria. To you.’

To us,
she wanted to add but it was
a step too far.

‘Why do you think I haven’t let your father out already?’

When had he turned, swinging round to face her? She didn’t
think she had actually seen him move, but suddenly she was looking into his
face, drawn into sculpted lines, hard and carved as a marble statue.

‘Do you really think I would want him to have any more chances
to bully you?’

Bully
her?
It was the last thing
she had been expecting. She had thought that Alexei had left her father in
prison out of revenge. That he had wanted to show he had control over the other
man as Gregor had once had control over his future. She had never dreamed that
he might actually be doing this to protect her.

‘I’d like to see him try. I came to you because you are the
king Mecjoria needs and everything I’ve seen just proves I was right in that. If
he saw you now—saw how you’ve handled things—even my father would have to think
again.’

‘He’d have hated the walkabout.’

He was thinking of the events of the day before, when she and
Alexei had opened a brand-new children’s hospital here in the capital. The
official part of the ceremony had been over in less than an hour, but the crush
of people waiting to see them had shouted and called their names until Alexei
had totally discarded the protocol and planning that had set the timetable for
the day and launched into a spontaneous walkabout, shaking hands, talking,
smiling. She doubted if she had ever seen him smile so much. He’d even...

A sudden memory of the day came back to haunt her.

A little boy had been pushed to the front of the crowd, a
slightly bent and dented bunch of flowers in his hand. He’d tugged on Alexei’s
trousers, drawing the response he’d needed. And Alexei had turned, crouching
down beside him, his attention totally focussed on the one small person. Totally
at ease, he had lifted the child up, balancing him against his hip as he’d
turned to face Ria.

‘You have an admirer,’ he’d said. ‘And he wants to give his
flowers to the princess.’

‘Not protocol...’ Her voice broke the last word into two
disjointed syllables as she struggled with the memory. ‘Not at all what I was
trained for.’ Her smile said how little she cared. ‘But it was the right thing
for the day.’

‘And the future.’

Alexei wished he could express just what that reception had
meant to him. Those smiling faces, the cheers, the flowers, the hands thrust
forward to take his, the women wanting to press kisses on his cheek. His mouth
had ached with smiling, his fingers raw from clasping so many other hands. So
many times he had been told he was the image of his father; so many people had
said ‘welcome back’. If he turned or glanced out of the corner of his eyes, Ria
had been at his side as she had been so many times and with her support he had
actually felt free...

‘It felt like coming home.’

‘You are home. This is where you belong.’

But where did she belong? The question hit him like a blow in
the face. She had been at his side but had that been from choice? What would she
do if she was left free to follow her own destiny, without being trapped into
linking it with his? The thought of how he had ensnared her, how he had
manipulated her into his life, into his bed, was like the sting of a whip on his
soul.

No—he hadn’t manipulated her into his bed. She had come to him.
When they had reached the palace he had tried to keep his distance from her,
wanting to give her time to consider her position, but she had broken through
the walls he had built around himself and just appeared at his door. Walking
into his room as if she belonged there.

And that was how he wanted it. Wanted her warm and willing as
she had been all night and every night since then. So much so that his body
still pulsed at the memory, the burn of hunger not subdued even by the ache of
appeasement.

But surely something that burned so white hot inevitably risked
burning itself out? How long would this last and when it did end what did they
have to put in its place? He had told himself that this was the only way to keep
her safe. To marry her for now and then later—when it no longer mattered—he
would let her go.

When it no longer mattered? How could it no longer matter? He
had come alive, had lived in a new degree of intensity in the past weeks. How
could something that felt this way ever fade into nothingness?

But would he ever be justified in keeping her here with him
like this? He might call her father a bully but wasn’t he trapping her into
marriage just as much as Gregor had wanted to do? She had never wanted to be
queen, just as he had never wanted to be king. Together they had built a way to
take Mecjoria into a peaceful and prosperous future. But would that be enough to
create their own futures?

If it wasn’t then he’d have to set her free. But not yet. He
couldn’t let her go yet.

‘We make a good team. But I’m not a monster—I won’t force you
to stay in this marriage for ever.’

The abrupt change of subject caught Ria unaware. One moment she
had felt that they had moved to a new understanding, then this had come out of
nowhere. Just as she had thought they had been celebrating a new beginning, it
seemed that Alexei had already been thinking of the prospect of an end. She
supposed she should have expected it. But the real horror was in the way he said
it, as if he was offering her something worthwhile. Something that he believed
she wanted.

‘We could set a limit on the time it has to last,’ Alexei
stated flatly. ‘Two years—three.’

Not a life sentence, then. She should feel relieved. Three
weeks ago that was what she would have felt. It would have been a relief to her
then to know that she hadn’t signed her life away in this heartless marriage of
convenience. But relief was not the emotion flooding through her now at the
thought of a very limited future with this man. The terrible, tearing sense of
loss threatened to rip her heart to pieces. She felt the blood drain down from
her cheeks and she was sure that she must look as if she had seen a ghost. The
ghost of her hopes and dreams. Dreams she had barely yet acknowledged to herself
existed.

‘I would give you a generous divorce settlement, of
course.’

‘Of course,’ Ria echoed cynically. ‘Once you have been king for
a decent amount of time.’

‘For which I will have you to thank.’

Again there was the sting of knowing that he meant it as a
compliment. Because really he hadn’t needed her in the end.

‘You’ve won your own place in the hearts of the country. Surely
you could see that yesterday?’

‘Your help has been invaluable.’ He was addressing her like he
was at a public meeting. As if she was one of the ministers of state he had been
spending so much time with of late. ‘I knew you would make a perfect queen.’

‘But only for a strictly limited time.’ It was impossible to
keep the bitterness from her voice. ‘So perhaps we’d better really discuss the
precise terms of this arrangement before we go any further? I’m to—what...?’

Sitting up in bed pulling the covers up around her because she
felt too vulnerable otherwise, she checked off the points on the fingers of one
hand.

‘To be your fiancée, create the image of that fairy-tale
romance, appear at your side in public, warm your bed in private. Marry
you—provide you with an heir... No?’

His reaction had startled her. Shocked her. It was as if a
sheet of ice had come down into the room, cutting them off from each other and
freezing all the air in the room.

An heir.
Of course she had known
that was a touchy subject. But that had been when she had been concentrating on
the future of Mecjoria. Now she had let herself think about his past, about the
way he had fathered a child already, only to neglect the tiny girl who had died
so tragically. He hadn’t even tried to deny it when she had raised the
accusation.

Why should I deny the facts when the world
and his wife know what happened? And no one would believe a word that’s
different.
The memory of the bitter words made her flinch inside, her
stomach lurching nauseously.

An heir.
Alexei felt as if someone
had reached inside his heart and ripped away the dressing he had thought he had
slapped on there to protect it, revealing a wound that hadn’t really healed but
was still raw and vulnerable. A wound that he had been trying to ignore ever
since that night that Ria had come to his room. The night that he had
thoughtlessly made love to her without using a condom, breaking the number-one
rule by which he’d lived his life since Belle had died.