Princess Annie (22 page)

She wondered, as she had been ever since their conversation in the garden, whether or not Rafael had changed his mind about taking her to his room that night. If he didn’t come to claim her as he’d promised, she decided, she would go to him.

In her own chamber, with the help of Kathleen, Annie got out of her ballgown and then her corset. Wearing only her petticoats and a camisole, she sat wiggling her toes in front of the fire while Kathleen poured hot chocolate into one of the chipped cups.

“You must have near danced your feet off, miss,” Kathleen commented, with amusement.

Annie nodded, frowning at the cup. “What a queer mixture of luxury and poverty this place is,” she mused, meaning the palace itself. “Here’s this china, cracked and chipped, and there’s no art on the walls. The floors are bare and I haven’t seen a single ornament of any kind. And yet we drank from crystal Champagne flutes at the ball—they might have been sculpted from giant diamonds, the way they shone in the candlelight—”

“They’ve always kept the ballroom nice, the St. Jameses have,” Kathleen interrupted, in a fond tone of voice. “It’s the only place they ever entertain anymore, you see. We get dukes and duchesses visiting from England, and even kings and queens from lesser places sometimes. We’ve got to put them someplace, now don’t we?”

Annie smiled. “Yes,” she said. “I suppose you do.”

Kathleen sighed and moved to the other side of the room to turn down Annie’s bed. “Cook says we’ve seen the last great ball, this very night,” she said. “It’s crumbling into dust, this way of life.”

“That’s for the best, I suppose,” Annie agreed, setting aside her cup. “No one could doubt that after what happened in the marketplace, and yet it makes me sad. Without princes and princesses, kings and queens, without palaces and castles, how can there be fairy tales?”

Kathleen stared at her, pausing in the midst of fluffing Annie’s feather pillow. “Why, miss,” she said, “there aren’t any fairy tales now, are there, except in storybooks?”

Annie felt a strong desire to break down and weep again, but she didn’t give in to her tears. She’d done enough sniveling for one night and besides, she still had high hopes of spending a wonderful evening with Rafael.

“I like to think there’s still a little magic in the world,” she said.

Kathleen looked upon her with a moment’s pitying affection, then excused herself and left the room.

Annie sat by the fire for a long time, reviewing the evening in her mind. It had begun so badly, with Lieutenant Covington’s arrest and Felicia’s outburst, but the dancing had been wonderful and Rafael had kissed her in the garden….

She settled back in her chair, sighed and closed her eyes, reliving the interlude, tucking it away with the other memories like a delicate flower pressed between the pages of a book. She dozed and dreamed pleasant dreams full of music and champagne and candlelight. When Annie awakened, however, it was with a start.

The fire had gone out, and the room was dark, except for a wash of moonlight flowing in through the terrace doors. Rafael had not come for her—or, if he had, there had been no answer when he knocked.

Annie rose from her chair, her muscles cramped, her motions awkward. Earlier, she’d boasted to herself that she’d go to Rafael if he did not come to collect her, but now it seemed that her courage was faltering. On the other hand, she’d seen the state of the country for herself, not only in the marketplace but on the day they’d arrived at the palace in a storm of curses and stones. The situation was grave, and Rafael was the target of much hatred. Perhaps that night was the only one they would ever have to share.

She climbed resolutely into bed, stretched out, and wrenched the covers into place, then bolted right out again. She was afraid Rafael would knock at the door, and even more terrified that he would not. Where that man was concerned, Annie had to admit, her behavior was downright irrational.

The majority of young women from good families guarded their virtue assiduously, surrendering what the nuns at St. Aspasia’s had called their “Precious Purity” only when the man in question was or would soon be their husband. Annie had no doubt whatsoever that she was a fine person, kind and fair-minded and energetic, but when it came to Rafael, she seemed to have no sense.

While she was pondering the unfortunate ramifications of this conclusion, a gentle knock sounded at the door of her chamber.

Annie stopped moving, stopped thinking, stopped breathing.

There was another rap, this one even softer than the first, and then, incredibly, the door opened and Rafael was there. He had shed his coat and tie, but still wore the fitted trousers and pleated white shirt he’d had on at the ball. The shirt was unbuttoned to the middle of his chest, and Annie was mesmerized by the swirls of dark hair she saw there.

The prince had the good grace—or perhaps it was just the opposite—to step over the threshold and close the door behind him.

He watched her for a long moment, his eyes glittering like fine sterling, one corner of his mouth turned upward in the merest suggestion of a smile. “Have you changed your mind, Annie Trevarren?” he asked quietly. “Or will you share my bed tonight, as you promised?”

CHAPTER 11
 

H
ave you changed your mind, Annie Trevarren? Or will you share my bed tonight, as you promised?

Annie could only stare at Rafael in joyous shock. The room was dark, except for the muted glow of a small lamp on the bedside table and the soft and silvery shimmer of the moon, and she was profoundly aware of the warm and rumpled bed looming behind her.

Rafael merely folded his arms and waited; the decision, Annie knew, was hers to make. Rash as it seemed, given the far-reaching effects a night of illicit passion might have upon both their lives, she knew this singular communion with Rafael was as much a part of her destiny as her next heartbeat. And for all that, there was nothing involuntary about the choice.

“I haven’t changed my mind,” she said, once she’d found her voice.

Rafael held out one hand to Annie then, and she went to him, her fingers interlocking with his, her face upturned and trusting.

Rafael lifted Annie’s hand to his lips and kissed it gently. He closed his eyes and said her name.

Annie rested her forehead against his shoulder, drinking in the scent and feel of him, filled with an overwhelming sweetness, a profound awareness that every moment was precious. “My dearest love,” she murmured, her soft voice muffled further by the cloth of his shirt and the solid warmth of the flesh beneath.

Rafael traced her lips with the tip of his index finger, and even that simple touch sent fire surging through her veins. He bent his head and lightly kissed her, then lifted her into his arms, his eyes smiling into hers.

“What a delectable creature you are,” he marveled. “It grieves me to know that you’ll come to despise me for what is about to happen between us.”

Annie stiffened in his embrace, about to say that she could never despise him, but he silenced her with another light, soul-searing kiss.

“Yes, love,” he insisted, afterward. “One day—perhaps as soon as tomorrow—you’ll curse my name. And you’ll be right to do so.”

Tears brimmed in Annie’s eyes. “Never,” she vowed.

Rafael sighed and touched his lips to her forehead. Then he carried her to the bed and laid her gently upon the linen sheet. He stood over her in silence for a few moments, admiring her as though she were the work of some master painter, come to life, then crossed the room to lock the door. That done, he returned to Annie’s bedside and turned down the lamp wick, extinguishing the light.

His features were in shadow—she could not see his eyes—and yet Annie felt her flesh turning molten under his gaze. She raised her arms to him in silent invitation.

Rafael muttered something, caught her wrists in his hands and gently pressed them back to her sides. “Not yet,” he said, his voice a tattered whisper. He released her and began unbuttoning his shirt.

Annie barely kept herself from reaching for him again, and she was too stricken by the beauty of this man cloaked in darkness and moonlight to speak.

He pulled the tails of his shirt from the waistband of his trousers, shrugged out of the garment and tossed it aside. Then, with the utmost grace and tenderness, he grasped the hem of Annie’s nightgown and smoothed it upward, over her knees and thighs.

She gasped softly as the gown reached her waist and her femininity was revealed. “Hurry, Rafael,” she whispered.

The prince chuckled, and the sound itself was a caress. “Oh, no,” he said, pausing to stroke the thatch of moist, silky curls he’d uncovered, “there will be no hurrying tonight. Lovemaking is a very slow process, when it’s done properly. It might well be morning before I have you.”

Annie moaned and moved her legs a little farther apart as Rafael brushed the sensitive skin on her inner thighs with the tips of his fingers. “M-morning?” she whimpered. “What if someone—hears us?”

Rafael bent, slowly, and kissed the bare, quivering skin of her belly. “You’ll make plenty of noise before the night’s over,” he said, before making a wet, fiery circle around her navel with the tip of his tongue. “But rest assured, my darling, the walls of this old palace are thick. No one will hear.”

He tormented her a little longer, with feather-light kisses that made Annie arch her back and groan in frustration, before pushing the nightgown up far enough to reveal her full breasts. Her nipples felt hard, and they ached to be taken, teased and suckled.

Rafael gave a long, sensual sigh as he admired her bounty and curved his skilled fingers around one breast, weighing it in his hand, stroking the peak with the pad of his thumb. “Annie, Annie. What a beautiful creature you are.”

As he fondled her, Annie raised both arms above her head in an unconscious gesture of surrender. Rafael immediately caught her wrists together and held them.

A delicious tremor moved through Annie’s supple body like an intangible wave. “Rafael,” she said, and the name was at once a vow and a plea.

“Like fruit,” Rafael murmured, his breath warm on the breast he’d chosen, and soft as a tropical breeze, making the already-taut nipple ache with readiness and wanting. “Sweet and warm and ready—so ready.”

Annie
was
ready; in fact, she was frantic. “Oh, God, Rafael—please—
please!”

He deigned to appease her, at least a little, by taking her straining nipple into his mouth, lashing it lightly with the tip of his tongue while beginning a slow suckling motion.

The pleasure seemed to consume Annie like fire. She writhed, her wrists still pleasantly manacled by Rafael’s fingers, and a sheen of perspiration broke out on her stomach and her upper lip, between her shoulder blades and behind her knees.

Rafael drew greedily on one breast, and then the other. “Only the beginning, Annie my love,” he warned, before returning to the first nipple and starting the whole process all over again.

Annie began to sob, ever so softly, but her weeping was from joy, and not sorrow. Nothing existed beyond Rafael, and the lovely things he was doing to her.

“Please,” she said again, while he feasted at her breast.

Still holding her a willing prisoner, still suckling with a ferocious hunger that inflamed Annie’s soul, Rafael slid one hand down over her abdomen and burrowed through the silken curls to find, with two fingers, the small swell of flesh hidden there. Slowly, and so lightly that it seemed he was barely touching her, Rafael began to roll the nubbin back and forth, up and down—gently. So gently.

Annie’s plea for satisfaction was answered with the creation of a need so deep, so violent and primitive, that she feared her very being would dissolve in its heat. She remembered what Rafael had done to appease her that day in the cottage behind St. James Keep and wanted that again.

Rafael pushed her further and further, plunging his fingers deep inside her while continuing to stroke her with his thumb. Each time she neared the peak of ecstasy, however, he somehow sensed that she was approaching the summit, and slowed his pace, easing a sweat-soaked, whimpering Annie back down into a hellish heaven of wanting.

She hardly noticed when he finally removed her nightgown and tossed it aside, and she was like a wild creature when he stripped off the rest of his clothes and stretched out on the bed beside her.

Now,
she thought, in glorious despair,
now at last—at last
.

But once again, Annie was made to wait. Rafael took her into his arms, holding her close against his hardness and his heat, and his lips brushed her ear as he whispered to her.

“Be patient, little one,” he said. “It takes time.”

She was hardly coherent, and being held that way only increased her desire and heightened her desperation. “You want to make me suffer,” she accused.

Rafael smiled against her temple. “No,” he told her. “I want to please you, my love—please you so thoroughly that you’ll forgive me, someday.”

Annie remembered the most scandalous of the pictures in the book of erotic drawings she and her schoolmates had exclaimed over back at St. Aspasia’s. Boldly, she reached down and took Rafael’s manhood in a firm grasp.