Truth about Leo (7 page)

She ran a finger down the nonflaccid part of him, marveling that something so silly-looking could be so very velvety. “I try very hard never to lie,” she said, dragging her gaze from his interesting parts. Leo, for his part, moaned when she wrapped her fingers around him. “I'm not very good at it, and Mama always said that princesses should never lie because what's the point in being a princess if you can't say exactly what you think?”

“Your mother—to the left a bit, darling—your mother sounds like she was quite the woman.”

“She was. I miss her and Papa greatly. You are becoming even stiffer, Leo. You would tell me if something was amiss with your male parts, would you not?”

He groaned again and panted just a little as she let her fingers explore the length and breadth of him. “I would. Answer my question.”

“Which one? There've been so many.”

“Are you really a virgin, or did you just say you were so that I wouldn't annul the marriage on the spot?” He leaned down as he spoke and brought his mouth to her breasts, which somehow he'd managed to get out of her stays and bodice. His breath was hot on her flesh, and she squirmed against his thighs, wanting more, so much more, but unable to put that need into words. His mouth closing on one of her nipples had her releasing his parts in order to grasp his shoulders. She managed to stop grabbing his bad shoulder just in time, clasping his hip on that side instead and shifting so that he would pay his attentions to her other breast.

“I am a virgin. Would you mind sucking on my other breast? It is out of sorts because you've paid so much attention to the right one.”

Leo obliged, but before Dagmar could really throw herself into some quality moaning, he stopped and gently pushed her off his legs. What was even sadder, he tucked himself into his breeches again.

“I was afraid of that. I suppose it's for the best, really, since we shouldn't do anything we might later regret.”

Dagmar was having some regrets at that moment, but they had everything to do with the fact that he ceased teasing her nipples with his tongue and nothing to do with thoughts of the future. “You don't wish to consummate me?” she asked forlornly.

“Of course I want to consummate you.” He gestured toward his crotch, which was quite bulgy behind the yellow material of the trousers. “I want to consummate you as you've never been consummated, and then continue consummating you until one or possibly both of us expire from sheer, unadulterated pleasure, but that, my fine temptress, is not going to happen until I have made a few decisions. And to that end, let us continue the discussion we were having when you attempted to seduce me by means of your delicious breasts.”

Dagmar finished squishing her bosom back into their stays and tugged up the bodice of her gown. She was pleased by the thought that she, the most inexperienced of women, had almost successfully seduced Leo. What might she accomplish when she had all the information at hand about the exact proceedings of the bedding?

“All right,” she said, getting to her feet when he rose to his. “But you have to kiss me first.”

He looked like he was going to protest, then his expression changed to one of curiosity. “Not that I am opposed to such a thing, but why do you wish for me to kiss you?”

“Because my breasts are hot, and those parts of me that my mother said would someday become very useful are in fact appearing to head in that direction because they are tingling greatly, and also because I've never been kissed.”

He stared at her as if she was a giant, tingly female part. “What, never?”

“Oh, I've been kissed. Mama and Papa were very affectionate, and men have kissed my hand, of course. But there is a difference between a man like Frederick slobbering on my knuckles, and a man like you, with all your muscles and your warm flesh, and your hair that I want to touch now that it's clean again, kissing me. That I would very much like to experience, and I see no reason why you couldn't do that now, since it involves your lips and not your shoulder or arm.”

His eyes glinted with an amused light. “Darling, you're not doing it right if you believe that.”

“That's just the point. I'm not doing it at all.”

“Far be it from me to deny a lady a simple request,” he said, looking somewhat noble. Dagmar wanted to giggle. “But immediately following the kiss, we are going to have the talk that I've been trying to have for two days now. What are you doing?”

“Giggling,” she said, making an effort to stop. “You look like a brave knight about to face a dragon.”

“Well, stop it. No man wishes to kiss someone who giggles. And I assure you, madam,” he said, putting his good arm around her, easing her forward until she leaned on one side of his chest, “I find the princess a much more daunting foe than the dragon. Tilt your head slightly. Other way. No, there's no need to open your mouth up wide. I'm not going to extract a tooth. There, just like that, with your lips slightly parted.”

Dagmar's eyes crossed as she tried to keep him in focus when his mouth descended upon hers. At first, she wasn't overly impressed with the experience, and she told Leo so.

“For one,” he said, pulling away enough that she could see him again. “You're not supposed to speak while I'm kissing you. And for another, we hadn't really started. That was just a little preliminary peck, if you will.”

“It was just your lips touching mine in no real exciting manner. To be honest, I found it very underwhelming,” she said, frowning slightly at him. What if all the romantic tales she'd read of heroines who swooned upon kissing the hero were fabrications of deranged minds? What if this kissing business was a warning that the bedding was going to be just as disappointing? What if—

At that moment Leo swooped in again, and this time, it was as if an entirely different person was kissing her. Leo didn't just kiss her; he took possession of her mouth, his lips apparently taking charge of hers while his tongue swooped and swirled and teased with wet little touches that by rights should have been disgusting—she hadn't imagined a tongue ever entering into the situation—but in reality, seemed to start a fire deep inside her that quickly spread outward. She clutched his good shoulder, wordlessly urging him on as his tongue swept into her mouth and started doing things there that made her wild with desire.

He was right about one thing: he needed his arms and shoulder to kiss properly. He pulled her tighter against his side, his arms urging her to move against him in a way that seemed both sinful and extremely exciting. And when he finally managed to pry her off him, it was with a real sense of regret that she allowed him to move away a step.

“I take it back,” she said some moments later, when she could remember how to speak again. She stared at his mouth, wanting to kiss him again.

“What?” he asked, looking confused.

“It wasn't underwhelming. I want very much to kiss you again, Leo.”

“No,” he said sternly even as he reached for her and pulled her against him. “Absolutely not. We have things to discuss. Open your mouth just a tiny bit wider, darling.”

And he kissed her again, and again after that, and once more after that even though by that point Dagmar was light-headed from lack of oxygen, and Leo's bad arm was trembling from the strain of use.

“I'm going to swoon if you continue,” Dagmar told him when his lips reluctantly parted from hers. “Or vomit.”

“That is the singularly most unromantic thing I've ever heard,” he said, helping her to the bed where she immediately bent over to put her head between her knees in the approved manner of nearly swooning or vomiting women.

“I'm sorry. I just thought you'd like to know that I no longer was unimpressed by your ability to kiss,” she said, her voice somewhat muffled. “It's actually a compliment, because no other man has made my insides knot up the way you did.”

“I will wear your nausea as a badge of pride,” he reassured her, collapsing onto the three-legged stool opposite, “and hope that in the future, your insides will be pleasantly stirred rather than knotted. Now, my dear, you've done your best to hide from me, insist to the captain that I am too ill to speak, and seduce me away from the subject, but there will be no more of that. I want answers, and I have selected you as the person to provide them. I believe the last question I asked was how we met in your garden. Had you invited me there? Were you having some sort of a party?”

“No,” she said, drawing out the word. She didn't really want to tell him the truth but couldn't, despite some rapid and desperate thinking, come up with a viable reason why she shouldn't do so.

Except, of course, for the fact that he would in no way like the circumstances.

“No you didn't invite me there, or no you weren't having a party?”

“Neither. Both.” She sat up, her head feeling much clearer, and bit her lower lip as she tried to gauge his response to the truth. Unfortunately, she kept getting distracted by his thighs and mouth and all sorts of wicked thoughts, and in the end, she just decided to cast her worry aside. “You were wounded when Julia found you. We dragged you back to the house and tended to you there. And since I needed an English officer to marry, and you said you weren't married—you didn't lie, did you?”

He shook his head, his eyes losing that hazy, smoky look of passion that she had just decided she really enjoyed. A hard light came into them, instead, one that she felt boded ill for any further action of the kissing nature.

“I don't suppose you'd like to kiss me again? I feel much better now.”

He just looked at her.

She sighed loudly, took hold of her courage, and continued with such speed that the words tumbled around each other. “You said you weren't married, so then the bishop came around to marry us, and after that, I went to Colonel Stewart, but an admiral named Nelson was there in his place, and he—the admiral—said that even though you weren't with the navy, you were an officer and thus they'd take you home to England. So Julia and I packed the few things we had, and had you taken to the ship that Admiral Nelson said was leaving the next day. And that was almost two weeks ago, and we should be in England soon. Julia and I were thinking of opening a shop.”

A parade of expressions passed across Leo's face: disbelief was followed by confusion, which was sadly chased by horror. He shook his head, wincing when his shoulder inadvertently twitched. “I don't know that I'd ever in my wildest delusions have come up with a scenario such as that. We were married
after
I had been struck down? After?”

Oh, how she wished she wasn't there, but her sainted mother had an extremely annoying saying about making one's bed and then sleeping in it. “Yes, after.”

His expression hardened. His jaw tightened. The tight fall of his trousers deflated. “Was I even conscious for the wedding?”

“Yes, of course you were.” Dagmar hoped that fib wouldn't matter much. He had been somewhat conscious, after all. “You gave your responses when the bishop read the marriage ceremony.”

He passed a hand over his face, shaking his head again. “I don't remember any of it.”

“The surgeon said the brain fever can sometimes do that, and you shouldn't try too hard to remember things, or they'll slip away forever.” She tried to offer that advice as helpfully as possible, but he shot her a suspicious look before standing and moving over to the porthole, opened just enough to let a little salty air into the close confines of the cabin.

“Let me see if I have this straight in my mind: we met and were married on the same day.”

“Of course not.”

He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Oh?”

“As it happens, we were married the following day.” She brushed the wrinkles in her gown, wishing once again that she could be anywhere on earth but that exact spot.

“That makes all the difference.”

“I thought so.”

“I was being sarcastic, Princess.”

Dagmar had never been afraid of a challenge, so despite her desire to run, she deliberately got up and went to his side in order to examine his face as he looked out the porthole. “I know you were. I chose to ignore it. Mama always said one shouldn't acknowledge sarcasm unless it was one's own. And you needn't make it sound as though our wedding was an extraordinary circumstance. It was perfectly normal, if a bit small, but I've never really wanted a state wedding, so it worked out well.”

“Not extraordinary?” He turned to her, a flash of anger momentarily visible in his eyes. “You don't call a gentlewoman preying on a wounded, most likely insensible, man an extraordinary circumstance?”

Dagmar stepped back, stung by the unfair accusation. “I did not prey on you.”

“Oh no? Tell me, then, why did you marry me, Princess?”

She hesitated, guilt at the selfishness of her plan pushing its way up from where she'd buried it. She tried desperately to think of an altruistic bend she could put on the facts, and failed. “You were wounded,” she finally said, wincing at the lameness of the statement.

“And that forced you to marry me?” One of his eyebrows rose. She resented its sardonic tilt.

“You spent the night in my bed. I am, as I believe I've had cause to tell you, a gentle and innocent maiden, and to be closeted alone in my bedchamber with an unmarried man is shocking, quite, quite shocking. If I hadn't married you, my cousin Frederick might have challenged you to a duel.”

Now, that was a bald-faced lie, but her pride prompted her to come out with it.

The second of his eyebrows rose to join its brother-in-arms. “I will admit that I am not as
au
courant
with the situation in Denmark as I might be, but I had always been under the impression that the crown prince was a reasonable man, much given to thought before action. A duel over an insensible, wounded man in a cousin's bed doesn't strike me as particularly characteristic of such a person.”