by Nora Roberts
“I’m not asking you to lose, but to accept.”
“Accept what?” Torn, she turned away. “That I want you, that I’m nearly willing to give in to that, knowing it begins and ends there?”
He felt the tug, the fear. “What is it you want from me?”
She shut her eyes a moment, then drew a deep breath. “If you were ready to give it, you wouldn’t have to ask. Please don’t,” she said when he started to reach for her. “I need to be alone. I need to decide just how much I can take.”
She left him quickly, before she surrendered everything.
Chapter 8
It wasn’t a night for sleeping. The big, round moon shot its reflection in Eve’s windows, lending silvery edges to the blue-and-white curtains. She had drawn them back, far back, but still the breeze ruffled the hems and sent them dancing.
Work had already been tried and rejected. Papers and files brought from her office littered her sitting room. She could hardly concentrate on costumes or ticket sales or blown bulbs when Alexander was lodged so firmly in her mind.
He was exposed, vulnerable. With Deboque still in prison, Alexander was at a dinner party. The foolishness of it had her dragging a hand through her hair. Disheveled from an evening of pacing and worry, it tumbled onto the shoulders of her short blue robe.
He was exchanging small talk over coffee and brandy while she roamed her rooms after a futile attempt to eat at all.
He’d gone out, she thought, despite the consequences. Despite everything. Hadn’t that wild, groping kiss they had shared sent his system churning as it had hers? Perhaps she had been wrong, deeply and completely wrong, when she had thought the need had run rampant in him. If it had, how was it possible, even with his control, to block it out while he sat through a seven-course meal?
What was wrong with her? Weary of herself, Eve rubbed her fingers over her eyes. She’d been angry when she’d thought he had wanted her only to compete with Bennett, furious that he had wanted but held himself back because he’d believed she had slept with his brother. Then she’d been enraged because he no longer believed it and still wanted her. Now she was miserable because he might not want her as much as she’d thought.
What did she want? Eve demanded of herself. One minute she admitted it was Alexander, and the next she was drawing back, knowing there could be nothing lasting, nothing real between them. A man like Alexander would have to marry, and marry properly. He had to produce heirs. Royal heirs. Even if he desired her, even if he cared for her at all, he would have to look to the European aristocracy for a mate.
Amazed that her thoughts were drifting in that direction, she shook her head. When had she started thinking beyond the moment, an affair, and toward permanency?
She knew about men—when they were attracted, when they desired, when they wanted only a toy for an evening or two. And she knew how to deal with them. Why was it she knew so little of this man? All the evenings and hours she had spent trying to find the answers, some key to Alexander, had resulted only in finding a key to herself.
She was in love with him. Even the little jabs of fear and the constant twinges of doubt couldn’t diminish the scope of the emotion.
And she did fear. She was a woman who had been sheltered most of her life by an indulgent father, a pampering sister. The choice she had made only a handful of years before to strike out on her own had been made as much by whim as curiosity. There had been no real danger in it. If she had failed, there had always been the net of family and family money beneath her.
Even if Eve had squandered her personal inheritance, she would hardly have been left alone to flounder.
True, once she’d begun she hadn’t thought of using her family to soften whatever blows she’d encountered. Her troupe had become the focus of her life and the success or failure of it personal.
She had succeeded, made something of herself through her own skill and sweat. Even knowing that, being fully confident didn’t erase the knowledge that the risk had been slight.
With Alexander there would be no net to soften a tumble, and a fall with him would mean a nosedive, no blindfold, from a dangerous height. The risk was there, every bit as frightening as the temptation to take it.
If she stepped off the edge and counted on survival, she was a fool. But something told her that if she played it safe and kept her feet firmly planted, she was an even bigger fool.
Caught between common sense and feelings, she dropped to the window seat and let the sea air cool her skin.
* * *
He wasn’t sure he could survive another night. His rooms were quiet, in sound, in mood. They had been decorated in greens and ivories, cool against warmth, with paintings of the sea and shore dominating the walls. Calm seas in his bedroom where he came most often to be alone and think. The sitting room beyond had deeper colors, more vivid hues. It was there, rather than his office or the family rooms, that he most often entertained friends. It was large enough for an intimate dinner or a competitive game of cards.
Shirtless and shoeless, Alexander paced the bedroom now in an effort to rein in the emotions that had haunted him throughout the long, tedious dinner and entertainment. His fists strained against the soft linen of his trousers as he shoved them into his pockets.
No, he wasn’t sure he could make it through another night.
She was only a matter of rooms away, a dozen walls he’d already passed through countless times in his imagination. Sleeping. He thought she would be sleeping now as the clocks in the palace readied to strike twelve.
Nearly midnight and she slept. She slept and he wanted. He ached. No amount of training, no sacrifices, no studying had ever prepared him for the dull, constant ache this woman could bring to him.
Could she feel it? He prayed that she could so he wouldn’t suffer alone. He wanted her to feel the pain. He wanted to protect her from all hurts. But tonight, dear God, tonight he simply wanted.
It was a wanting that had grown with the years, heightened, turned edgy. There had been times when he’d told himself the need would dissipate. Times when he’d believed it. Months would pass when he wouldn’t see her—though he would still wake in the early hours alone, her face just at the tip of his consciousness. He could fight that back, smother the longing that seemed so nebulous in the face of obligations, responsibilities and a backbreaking schedule.
But whenever she was here, close enough to touch, the longing was no longer vague and was impossible to fight.
Now that he had touched her, tasted her, teased himself with fractions of his own fantasies, was he supposed to deny himself the rest?
How could he go to her when what he offered would be a lifetime of subterfuge or a lifetime of sacrifice? As his mistress he would never be able to recognize her publicly as more than a family friend. As his wife …
Alexander pressed his thumb and forefinger to his closed eyes. How could he ask marriage of her? He would always be tied to his country, his duty. So would whatever wife he chose. How could Eve, with her independence and strength, ever accept the restrictions that went with his title? He would have to ask her to give up country, privacy, career. He would have to ask her to subject herself to the fishbowl, the sometimes dangerous fishbowl, in which he had been born. How could he expect her to have the same pride, the same love for Cordina as he? How could he ask her for a lifetime at all?
But he could ask her for a night. One night.
If she would give him that, perhaps it would be enough.
Alexander stared out the window, the one that faced the same garden, the same sea, the same sky as Eve’s. He would have one night, and then, somehow, he would survive an eternity of others.
* * *
He didn’t knock. Such was his arrogance. The door opened without sound, but she sensed him before it clicked shut behind him. Such was his presence.
She didn’t jolt. Such was her pride. Eve remained on the window seat and turned her head slowly from the night to Alexander. She’d known some
time during her contemplation of the sky that he would come. What had been denied, struggled against, wished for, would be met tonight. Through her own vigil, she had made her peace with that. They stayed with the room between them, while the air hummed, then settled.
“I won’t rise and curtsy,” she said in a surprisingly strong voice.
His brow lifted, in amusement or surprise, she couldn’t be sure. “I won’t go to my knees.”
She felt a tremor dance up her spine, but her hands were steady when she folded them in her lap. “Equal ground?”
His stomach was knotted with tension, desire, but a strange and novel euphoria swam into his head. “Equal ground.”
She looked at her hands a moment, so calm and still in her lap, then lifted her gaze to his. His stance was straight, almost unbending, but his eyes were anything but distant. There was so much she knew, so much she’d yet to understand. “Once I believed you wanted me because you thought Bennett and I were lovers.”
“Once I despised myself for wanting you because I thought you and Bennett were lovers.”
The cool, matter-of-fact tone had her pressing her lips together. Yes, he would have hated himself. She’d been a fool not to understand that. He had suffered. She no longer had to ask how. “And now?”
“I could say I’m relieved to know it’s not so, but it would make no difference. Even honor suffers.”
Honor. With him it would be as vital as the blood in his veins. She had the power to make him compromise it. She had enough love to see that he didn’t. She rose then, but even with her hands still folded, looked anything but meek. “I can’t take that as flattery, Alexander.”
“It wasn’t meant to flatter. I could tell you that you’re beautiful.” His gaze roamed over her face. “More beautiful to me than any other woman. I could tell you that your face haunts my dreams and troubles my days, and that yearning for you empties me. None of it would be meant to flatter.”
At each word her heartbeat accelerated, until now it echoed in her ears. With an effort she stayed where she was, when her heart urged her to open her arms and offer everything. Equal ground, she reminded herself. Honor for both. There was no talk of love.
“Maybe it’s best if you said nothing.” She managed to smile, and even tilted her head. “Except to tell me why you’ve come.”
“I need you.”
The words rocked her no less than they rocked him. There was silence while the air seemed to absorb them. He saw it in her eyes, the astonishment, the softening, the acceptance. Moonlight shot through the glass at her back, so that she looked as though she might be a part of it—and still out of reach.
Then she held out her hand.
Their fingers met, steadied, then curled into one another. Contact was made, and the time for words was over.
Her eyes on his, she lifted his hand and touched her lips where their fingers joined. Silence.
His gaze remained locked on hers as he turned their joined hands over and pressed his lips to her palm. Still no words.
With her fingertips she traced the line of his jaw, touching now what she’d never felt she’d had the right to touch. His skin was warm, warmer than the breeze that stirred at the curtains. There was no need to speak.
He used his knuckles to trace the curve of her cheek to her temple, then his fingers spread to comb through her hair, lingering—lingering over it as he had once dreamed of doing. The clock struck the hour. It was midnight.
No words, but feelings nurtured in secret for so long bloomed at last in the first moments of the new day. Desires, refused, denied, were now accepted in the shadowed moonlight of a day just ended.
There were things he wouldn’t ask, and more she couldn’t admit. So they came together without questions, emotions only, as the bravest of lovers do.
Her arms opened. Her mouth lifted. His arms encircled. His mouth lowered. Body to body, they drew out and drew on the first kiss of the morning.
The tenderness remained somehow, though the excitement thrummed just beneath. There was more than just desire now—a breath of completion for something started long before. Tonight. At last.
The air sweetened with her sigh as she allowed herself the freedom of a wish. The kiss was deep, thorough, awash with the anticipation that poured from each. Then his lips brushed hers lightly, not teasing but promising of delights and demands yet to come. When she trembled as he’d once predicted she would, he felt not the thrill of victory but a gratitude that her need was as sharp as his own.
He ran his hands over the silk on her shoulders, her arms, her back, tormenting himself with visions of what was concealed beneath. So many times he had imagined her. When he drew the silk aside, letting it slither and whisper and pool at her feet, he discovered his imagination was no match for the reality of her, naked and close with moonlight cloaking her.
A poet would have had the words. A musician could have played the tune that streamed inside his head. But he was a prince who had never felt himself more of a mortal man than now, watching his woman shimmer in moonbeams before him.
She didn’t need poems or a song. What she saw in his eyes told her she more than pleased him. He would never give her beautiful, melodious words, but a look from him said so much more. With a smile, she stepped into his arms again and pressed her lips to his heart.
It beat so fast, so strong. For a moment she closed her eyes tightly, as if to capture the feeling inside her. His skin was bronze against her ivory. Fascinated with the contrast, she stroked her fingers over him, then spread her palm wide on the plane of his chest. His fingers closed over her wrist as her touch sent arrows of need through him. He felt the trip-hammer of her pulse before she drew her arm away to lock both hands behind his head.
Flesh heated against flesh; mouth hungered against mouth. Her tongue skimmed over his lips, then dipped inside for the darker, richer tastes.
More. Again the craving for more tore at her. But this time she would have it. She found the clasp of his slacks, delighting in the quiver of his stomach as her fingers brushed his skin. The moment hung, then raced by. And he was naked with her.
She, too, had dreamed of this, and now discovered that dreams would never be enough.
He gathered her up and held her in his arms, just held her as she pressed her face to his throat, wound her arms around his neck. The wind shivered at the windows as they lowered themselves to the bed.
The mattress gave beneath them with only a whisper. The sheets rustled. He buried his face in her hair and let her scent slice holes in his control. She flowed against him, not just pliant but willing.
A touch and a tremor. A taste and a sigh. Slowly, savoring, shivering, they discovered each other. She was so soft here, so firm there. The strength in someone so small never failed to astonish him. Fragrant. Her skin was a garden of delight to all his senses. If he ran his tongue over it, he could taste both passion and delicacy.
How was it she had never understood the compassion, the gentleness, the goodness in him? Yet she’d loved him, anyway. Discovering it all now, she was swamped by feelings deeper than she had believed herself capable of. Here was a patience she’d never seen. A sweetness she had never dreamed of. He gave it all to her, without her ever having to ask. He gave her touches of romance she thought herself too wise to need.
It wouldn’t always be like this. No, she knew that. There would be demands, greed, recklessness. That she could accept when the time came. But this time, this first time, he seemed to know she wanted gentleness. More, much more important, he seemed to want it, too.
So her hands caressed. Her lips lingered. She showed him she could cherish as well as be cherished. Even when their breath began to merge together in shudders, there was no rage to complete. Prolong. Only to prolong.
When he filled her, they moved together without the haste of first passions. This was a hunger that had waited seven years to be sated. Together they burrowed in a beauty that came as quietly and as inevitably as a sunrise.
/> The moonlight still glowed. The curtains still billowed. Apparently the world had decided to go on with routine though everything had changed. The sheets were rumpled at the base of the bed, untended and unneeded as the man and woman fed off each other’s warmth.
Eve lay with her head on Alexander’s shoulder, a place that seemed to have been reserved for her. A place she’d never thought she would claim. His heart beat, still far from steadily, under her hand. His arm was around her, holding her close, and though she knew he was as awake and aware as she, there was a peace between them that had never existed before.
Had love done it, or the act of love? She didn’t know, and wondered if it should matter. They were together.
“Seven years.” Her sigh was long and shimmered through the silence. “I’ve wanted this for seven years.”
He lay still a moment while her words were slowly absorbed. His fingers trailed over her face, then under her chin so that he could lift her face to his. His eyes were so dark, and this time the caution in them made her smile. “All along? From the beginning?”
“You were dressed like a soldier, an officer, and the room was filled with beautiful women, dashing men, just like a dream. But I kept seeing you.” She wasn’t ashamed of it, nor did she regret not telling him before. They had needed the years between. “There were flowers. The room smelled like springtime. And there were those dazzling lights from the chandeliers. Silver platters, wine in crystal, violins. You had a sword at your side. I wanted so badly for you to ask me to dance. For you to notice me.”
“I noticed you,” he murmured, and pressed a kiss to her brow.
“You did scowl at me once, now that you mention it.” She smiled and shifted so that she ranged just above him. “And you waltzed with that lovely blond woman with the English complexion. I’ve hated her ever since.”
He grinned and traced Eve’s smile with his fingertip. How incredible it was to be relaxed, to be alone, to be only a man. “I don’t even remember who she was.”
“I do. It was—”
