by Princess
“Very good,” he murmured. “Would you like to bite it?”
She opened her mouth.
He pulled the strawberry back, a gleam in his dark eyes as he looked from it to her. “Ah-ah, you may not have it. Not until I say.” He laid the strawberry against her mouth, caressing her lips with the tip of it, back and forth, until she parted them slightly, staring at him.
She closed her eyes and tasted it with the tip of her tongue, then parted her lips wider and took it halfway into her mouth.
“No biting.” he chided gently.
Eyes closed, she made a sound of impatience, sucking it.
“I don’t think I have ever been so jealous of a piece of fruit before in my life,” he mused as he pulled the strawberry back just a bit, leaving part of it still in her mouth.
She started laughing again. “Is this what they mean by forbidden fruit?”
“You’re dying to eat it, aren’t you?” he whispered.
She nodded slightly, her heart racing with the thrill.
“Serafina, I must confess,” he said, “I am having the most ungentlemanly thoughts.”
She opened her eyes with a teasing gaze and licked her lips richly. “I couldn’t tell.”
“Brat,” he said, as he conceded the strawberry. “You win.”
“As usual.” She claimed her prize, nibbling the strawberry out of his fingers.
Just as she lightly bit his finger, the door opened. The headwaiter’s eyes shot open in shock to find the Princess Royal on her hands and knees on the dining table, eating a strawberry out of her protector’s hand.
She froze, nearly choking as she swallowed her mouthful of strawberry.
There was dead silence.
Not knowing what else to do, she burst out laughing. “Oops!” Wide-eyed, she pushed up into a kneeling position and sat back on her haunches, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. Meanwhile, Darius pinned the hapless fellow in a stare only a fool would challenge.
The servant paled as if he had just unwittingly walked into a wolf’s lair.
“Dismissed,” Darius said in deadly tranquility.
The man fled.
“You got us in trouble now!” she whispered as she crept back to her seat.
He sat back in his chair and idly lifted his wine, but the expression in his eyes was shuttered, as if he were making a mental note to take care of something unpleasant.
After dinner, Darius loosened his cravat and wandered outside to smoke.
Serafina went in search of his guitar. She removed it from its black leather case and carried it outside, presenting it to him in shy, wordless request. She knew he hated to play for anyone.
He regarded her skeptically for a moment, shoved his cheroot between his lips, and accepted the instrument. Moving with his customary loose grace, he sat down on the stoop and tuned the strings, head bowed.
Serafina brushed past him, trailing her hand over his good shoulder as she passed. She left the porch and walked out onto the cool, lush grass, to stand gazing up at the half-moon and the million stars.
Around her on the ground, the cicadas’ song was a vibrating resonance. Fireflies pierced the darkness, drifting, vanishing. Above her, now and then, bats flew by, winging their wild paths between clusters of pines. The breeze blew and stilled, however the whim struck it.
She felt strange and light, as if she could float up away into the stars from sheer happiness. The first soft, intimate notes rose behind her from his guitar. She knew better than to turn and watch him play.
His guitar spoke for him. It always had, and tonight the simple melody was sweet and pensive, sometimes shimmering softly like the flight of a hummingbird before a flower, at other times lifting into airy, flowing weightlessness with a rhythm that made her feel as if she were riding a horse made of the galloping wind.
On some absurd caprice, she lifted her arms at her sides and began to turn in circles, her head flung back, watching the stars, a kind of artless, childlike dancing. He saw what she was doing and decided to have some fun with her, playing faster and faster. He launched into one of the deliciously dizzying flamenco tunes she had always found very wicked indeed, and she twirled like a gypsy, as if he controlled her very body with his music. By the time he ended the song, she collapsed on the grass, giddy with laughter, her head reeling.
She could feel him gazing at her, but the world spun too much for her to look at him. She groaned, a trifle nauseous for a moment from spinning just after eating, then laughed at her own foolishness.
“What an imp you are,” he murmured. He finished smoking his cheroot, which he had set aside, and gradually the world steadied again for her.
“Where did you learn to play?” she asked.
“From an old man who raised bulls on the next farm over from my father’s alcazar.”
“What was his name?”
“Don Pedro. He had been a great matador. When I was a small boy, I went there often to see the bulls,” he said. “I wanted to be a matador,” he added a moment later, laughing sadly.
She rolled onto her side on the grass and propped her head under her hand, looking at him in delight. “Did you? Why?”
“Ah, they are so grand. Standing there proudly, never flinching as they stare down two thousand pounds of fury charging at them. Do you realize the control it takes, the courage? You should see a bullfight one day, if you ever can. Of course, loving animals as you do, you would probably hate it.”
She was charmed. “Why didn’t you become a bullfighter, Darius?”
He shrugged, looking away with another soft, almost shy laugh. “Why kill animals when there are so many wicked men in the world? Quiet, now. I have a song for you.”
She rolled onto her back again and stared up at the stars while he began a different melody, mournful and strange. She had never heard anything like it before. It might have been a medieval troubadour’s ballad of love in vain, or an ancient Moorish lament. It was slow and intricate, with occasional trills on the highest string over the low strings’ dirgelike minor chord, keeping time. The song was both dignified and exotic, full of carefully restrained passion, as if it had been carved from some profound heartbreak, and as she lay on the grass, so near the man she had loved all her life, it seduced her completely.
She closed her eyes, her arms sprawled on the grass above her head. She lost all track of time, swept up in the dark, mysterious music that seemed to embody him, pouring forth invisibly from his very soul.
It ended, she wasn’t sure when, she only knew something inside of her ached when the silence returned.
When she finally dragged open her eyes, Darius was standing above her, a black silhouette against the trillion stars. She didn’t move, but her breath caught in her chest, for she could feel his desire, his gaze taking in every inch of her body, spread out before him like an offering to her dark god.
“Princesa,” he whispered, offering his hand to help her up.
She made no move to take it, only staring into his eyes with unmasked need. Make love to me, she thought. Finish it. She closed her eyes briefly, aching for him deep in the core of her body, her bosom lifting and falling quickly with sudden breathlessness.
“Hey. Princess.”
She opened her eyes, wretched with longing.
“On your feet, soldier,” he whispered with a smile.
Suddenly she was profoundly depressed.
“Come with me.” He waited, hand outstretched.
“Where?”
“You know where, Serafina.”
She held her breath, searching his mysterious eyes, as her weariness fell away. Moving like a girl in a dream, she took his proffered hand and climbed slowly to her feet.
Neither spoke, nor broke the stare as they walked toward the house.
This is a grave mistake, she thought, heart pounding, as he opened the door for her.
Yet in she went.
He watched her in hungry approval, his eyes afire. He followed her into the dar
kened, narrow hall. The door banged behind them. They were barely over the threshold when he thrust her firmly against the wall and began kissing her. She moaned, quivering to feel the hard length of his body pinning her against the cool wall. He ran his hands down her sides, holding her by her hips.
He had secrets to teach her tonight, she knew, and his mouth tasted of wine.
Darius Santiago, her demon, her love, was going to give her what she had longed for forever, but on the brink of having her wish granted, she was afraid.
If she went upstairs with him now, how would she keep her sanity when he stood by and watched her marry Anatole, with naught in his black eyes but the gleam of an intimate memory, the arrogance of yet another conquest? She couldn’t bear it.
Ah, but his hands were warm, and his mouth was sweet.
When at last he ended the kiss, his breathing was deep and hot. He lifted her chin with his fingertips and looked into her eyes. “I don’t want you to be afraid of anything tonight,” he whispered. “I won’t take your innocence. I swear this on my honor. I won’t do anything you don’t want me to.”
He released her and stepped back, waiting for her.
But she didn’t follow. Leaning against the wall, she covered her face in both hands.
“Princesa?”
She dropped her hands heavily to her sides and looked up at him in pure misery. Understanding slowly flooded his dark eyes as he narrowed them, stricken.
“Oh, this is wrong,” he whispered. “I’m sorry. I thought—I don’t know what I thought.”
Abruptly he pulled away from her, raked one trembling hand through his hair, then pivoted and took a stiff, soldierly stride away from her.
She stopped him with a hand on his arm.
He turned back to her, his chin high, his proud profile etched in shadows and pain. He stared at her with a burning, tortured look.
She reached out, grasped a handful of his shirt, and pulled. Then he was in her arms, driving her back against the door, kissing her madly, his lips like fire. She clung to him, touching him everywhere. Stroking her face, he parted her lips with his fingertip and ducked his head to devour her, filling her mouth with his ravishing kiss. She fed from it, swept away by the intensity of his desperate passion.
Her surrender was total as he lifted her in his arms and carried her up the staircase and down the hall to her bedroom.
CHAPTER NINE
Darius set her on her feet but never stopped kissing her as he produced a set of keys, his hand shaking as he fumbled to unlock the door. He turned the knob, shoved the door open, and swept her inside.
He shut it behind him and pulled her down onto the floor.
She heard the keys drop, their fall softened by the dusty Persian rug, then his nimble, thief’s fingers smoothed up her back, plucking her buttons free. They were on their knees in each other’s arms, unable to wait a second longer, even to make it to the bed. He kissed her all the while, stroking his tongue coaxingly, dizzyingly over hers.
He slid her sleeve down over her right shoulder and bent his head, kissing her shoulder, her neck, her chest, while his fingers tangled almost roughly in her hair. She closed her eyes, cradling him in her arms as her wild pulse raced. She threaded her fingers through his silky hair while he kissed her throat, sucked her flesh, and bit her lightly. She moaned when he took her earlobe between his teeth, kissed her ear, nibbled it hungrily, filling her head with the sound of his hot, predatory panting.
Then he laid her down.
He was atop her, kissing her mouth again, kissing her senseless as she basked in the glory of his muscular body covering hers. The closeness was so sweet she could have wept.
After a few moments, he straddled her body and straightened up onto his knees.
“Why are you stopping?” she asked anxiously, curling upward to clutch at his shirt.
“I’m not stopping.” He smiled darkly in the slanting moonlight. It haloed his ebony hair and limned his broad shoulders in blue. “Lie back.”
She obeyed, watching his every move. He stared down at her body as he petted her arms and chest.
“Show yourself to me, beauty,” he whispered.
She obeyed. Slowly, she slipped her left sleeve down over her shoulder, freed her arm from it, then freed her right arm. Shyly, she pushed the bodice of her violet silk down to her midriff and stared up at him, her eyes pleading for gentleness.
He gazed into her eyes, then took off his coat, his cravat and waistcoat, then slipped his shirt off over his head. He bent down and held her gently, showing her the ecstasy of warm, bare skin on skin. He kissed her lips for a long moment with exquisite tenderness, his scarred mouth chaste and warm over hers.
He kissed her cheeks, her brow, her eyelids while she basked in the bliss of his body against hers. After a final kiss on her lips, he straightened up gracefully again, straddling her body as before.
Transfixed, she gazed up at his dark, exotic beauty and thought him like a magnificent rebel angel who had slipped into her dreams by sorcery to seduce her. Reaching down, his hands traced her collarbones lightly, skimmed her sides, her waist. His fingers glided up and down the valley between her breasts with a velvety caress.
“Tell me I am the first to touch you,” he whispered.
“Of course you are. I have waited for you all this time,” she said dreamily. “I knew you would come back to me.”
He gave her a sulky smile from under his forelock. “How could you know? It was never my intention.”
She smiled with drifting pleasure. “I knew.”
He leaned down and kissed her. “Tell me I am the first to kiss you. Really kiss you.”
“You know that you are. I am yours completely.”
He whispered her name as he caressed her hair, then he claimed her mouth. Arms wrapped around each other, they drowned together in endless kisses full of a love that would brook no more denial. She yielded as he parted her lips and plunged his tongue deep into her mouth, and then she did the same to him, back and forth until they were both shaking with desire.
He stopped, panting, and looked over his shoulder in a quick survey of the room. Then he scooped her up in his arms again and stood, carrying her over to her bed, where he laid her down.
“That’s better,” he purred. Lying beside her, he lowered his head and kissed her nipple wetly, then sucked hungrily upon her.
She cried out with wrenching pleasure, corkscrews of fire twisting through her body from the hot, wet, insistent tug of his mouth. Panting, he quickly captured the left breast and did the same. He could not seem to make up his mind which one he wanted, or if he wanted both at once.
He made her frantic with passion. Mindful of his wound, she caressed his silky skin, his strong back and powerful arms, his smooth sides. She could not stop touching him, caressing his powerful arms and back, running her fingers through his glossy black hair as he devoured her breast with his reckless, fiery, suckling kiss.
She heard high, breathless groans of abandon in the room and realized distantly that they were coming from her lips. Darius didn’t seem to notice. Feverishly, he kissed his way back up her neck, and when he took her mouth again, he was rough, hot, needy, his heavy, muscled body trembling above her.
Dragging a slow, deliberate caress down her belly, he began touching her hips and legs through her silken gown. He cupped his hand around her thigh and softly coaxed her legs apart, then rested his hand between her parted thighs. She drew in her breath and closed her eyes as the heat of his hand permeated the silk of her dress.
“Scared?” he whispered, letting her get accustomed to his touch.
“N-no.”
He smiled tenderly. “Good.”
At first he merely petted her very gently down there with his open hand, watching her face. She shivered. He bent his head to kiss her breast again and reached low, almost to her ankle. Smoothly he ran his hand up along the inside of her calf and up her thigh.
She bit down sharply on her lower lip
in anticipation as he slid her dress higher.
“Is this all right?” he murmured.
“Yes, yes,” she gasped, her pulse racing under his lips when he bent his head to kiss her throat. She began trembling with excitement, and then his fingers caressed her wet, pulsating flesh, gently stroking her secret place.
She groaned aloud.
“So ready for me,” he breathed. “But I want you soaked, dripping. Withhold nothing from me, Serafina. Give me all of your pleasure, every drop.” He kissed her lips chastely while, under her skirts, he stroked her.
He kissed the corner of her lips, teasing her, maddening her as he flicked her lips with the tip of his tongue until she opened her mouth and turned her face to meet his kiss fully.
She sank into the mattress in sheer ecstasy, her hands clutching the coverlet.
Her head thrown back, she moaned loudly as he found the precise way she longed to be touched.
“Shh,” he whispered, smiling a little against her mouth. “No one must hear us.”
“I can’t help it, it feels so good,” she said, her voice a scratchy, wanton purr.
“Ah, but we’re just getting started.” She curled her hands around his shoulders as he slowly penetrated her with two fingers.
When she groaned aloud again, he gently covered her mouth with his left hand while with his right he continued to pleasure her. “Shh, angel. Quiet, or we’re going to get caught.”
Eyes closed, she kissed the fingers of the hand he’d pressed to her mouth. She licked between them, melting his attempt to silence her. Panting with lust, he pressed the tip of his middle finger into her mouth. She kissed and sucked it hungrily, her whole body beginning to undulate.
“Yes,” he whispered, rock-hard against her thigh. “Very good, Serafina.”
With his every, gently thrusting caress between her legs, in and out, her hips lifted to meet his deep caresses. She moved with his hand, becoming wild and barbaric, demanding an ever-faster rhythm.
He lowered his head and began licking her nipple in delicate circles as his clever, coaxing fingers worked a slow, sensuous magic. He made her wanton. She couldn’t help it. She spread her legs wider for him, arching helplessly against his slick, perfect touch. He took her breast in his mouth and suckled her. She could feel her wetness ooze lusciously between her thighs, and knew only Darius could have made her body respond this way.
