by Romancing the Crown Series (13-in-1 bundle) (v1. 0) (lit)
That was all she'd accomplished.
The plane's interior was divided into three sections, in addition to the cockpit, the kitchen and the bathroom. Drew wasn't in the middle section, where they'd eaten coq au vin on gold-rimmed china several hours ago. The teak table had long since been cleared. She continued to the first section, walking on carpet so thick she could have curled up on it for her nap if she hadn't been afraid of shocking the stewardess.
Drew wasn't working now. He sat in one of the oversize armchairs with his seat belt fastened. He was sound asleep.
Rose stopped. He'd taken off his suit jacket. His tie hung loose and the top two buttons of his shirt were unfastened. His head tilted back, exposed the strong line of his throat. She could see the pulse beat in the tender pocket beneath his jaw.
Her heartbeat picked up at the sight of him. This, too, had driven her from his presence. She'd been too aware of his every movement, like a cat tracking a robin on a branch. The more time she spent with him, the more sensitized she seemed to grow to his physical being.
He'd watched her, too. But only when he thought she wasn't looking.
She looked at his hands now, lying open and lax in sleep, one on his thigh, one on the arm of the chair. Clean, strong, masculine hands. His fingers were long, the nails neatly tended but not professionally manicured. He wore no rings.
When she looked back at his face, his eyes were open, regarding her steadily. He looked tired. The creases beneath his eyes were flat, mere lines now.
She said the first thing she thought of. "You never wear any jewelry."
His mouth crooked up. "Does that offend you professionally?"
"You'd look good in an earring.
"A pearl, perhaps," he murmured. Amusement touched those green eyes, then faded, leaving them bleak.
The reminder of their flirtation at her shop didn't make him happy. What did? she wondered. And all at once said, "You never asked me why I'm still a virgin."
His eyes rounded.
The plane dropped. She staggered.
He had his seat belt off and was steadying her before she quite got her feet back under her.
"It's nothing to worry about," he said soothingly. "We've apparently hit some bad weather and the ride may get a little bumpy. But you'd better sit down."
For an instant she actually considered pretending to be frightened so he would go on soothing her. Touching her. Annoyed with herself, she said, "A little turbulence doesn't worry me." She glanced at the windows as she spoke. It was dead black out there. Suddenly lightning flashed somewhere in the clouds they were flying through. She flinched.
He slid one arm around her shoulders. The comfort he offered may have been meant impersonally, but she sighed and relaxed against him. At last, she thought. At last. His arm around her felt more right than anything ever had.
If he felt what she did, it didn't show. "I'm glad you're not a nervous flier, since we do seem to be in for some turbulence."
"Jet fuel makes big fire. I'm sure there's no big fire in my near future, so the plane isn't going to crash." She paused. The plane pitched, dropped and steadied. Drew shifted with the motion easily, still holding her with one arm.
"If it's possible for planes to crash without burning," she added, "I don't want to hear about it."
He chuckled. "Your Gift provides some assurances, but no guarantees?"
"No. No guarantees." She met his eyes. She couldn't read anything there...but his hand, the one on her shoulder, was toying idly with her hair as if he wasn't aware he was doing it.
The heck with trying to find a smooth way to bring the subject up. She'd go for the direct approach. "I'm considering getting rid of my hymen.
He choked. Since he wasn't drinking anything, his sudden coughing fit was rather satisfying. Then he looked at her and her grin faded. "Don't expect me to believe you're going to pick up some man in a bar.
Now he was easier to read. Fury was hard to hide. "No, I was thinking a trip to the doctor would be the best way to take care of it. That's sensible, isn't it? No pain that way, the first time."
"Rose." He looked away, but the view outside the small, rounded windows didn't please him, either. "Don't trivialize something that obviously means a great deal to you."
"Don't make assumptions. You never gave me a chance to talk about this—you've been too busy avoiding me. I'm not a virgin because I want to be."
"You've undoubtedly had plenty of opportunities to change your state if you'd wanted to. You're beautiful."
It was said so flatly, as if referring to a long-established fact, and not one that especially pleased him. She still liked hearing it. "I'm picky. Very picky. Not exactly by choice." She hesitated. He seemed to have accepted the reality of her Gift, but the very ease of his acceptance bothered her. It seemed a social construct, like his charm. "For some of the Gifted, sex can be difficult. Especially for those tied to water and fire."
"Fire and water don't mix, I suppose." Absently those long fingers continued to sift through her hair.
She shook her head impatiently. "Don't joke. Please. This is.. .harder than talking about hymens. More personal."
His eyebrows lifted. "More personal?"
They'd turned more fully into each other, their bodies acting on a quiet, mutual gravity without their conscious notice. She laid a hand on his chest. "It's..." She smiled suddenly. "Trying to explain is like talking about sex to a virgin. A truly inexperienced virgin, that is, not one who is only technically intact."
"I'm beginning to find the word 'technically' quite erotic." He rested one hand on her shoulder. With the other he scooped up her hair, brushing the back of her neck with his fingers and raising shivers. Carefully he brought the mass of hair forward, over her shoulder. "Are you talking about your Gift again?"
"Yes." There was a faint line between his eyebrows. She couldn't tell if it indicated concentration as his fingers drifted slowly through the length of her hair...or discomfort with the subject. "In sex, you see, not just bodies join. The esseri mingle, too." Her quick upward glance was half shy, half pure mischief. "A little mingling here and there can be fun, but there's a terrible dissonance if bodies join, but the èsseri don't fit well.
His fingers continued to tease her hair. They didn't brush her breast. They didn't touch her body at all. She wondered, with an odd little ache, if he felt the need, too—the need to touch. It wasn't sexual. Not purely sexual, at least. She was aroused. But her need to touch him went beyond the giddy delight of desire.
There was bemusement in his voice, a quiet, absorbed pleasure in his face. "Are you saying our, ah, essences fit?"
"Yes, but.. .to be honest, the first thing I liked about you was that you're completely blocked. I can't feel your essere at all right now.
His hand stilled. "You said something along those lines before."
"You're Water-Gifted, Drew. An empath."
His head moved in a quick, definite negative. And the plane moved in a sudden drop and shudder, ending with the nose pointed steeply down. He put both hands on her shoulders. "We need to sit and fasten our seat belts. This is foolishness."
She had a feeling he referred to more than the stupidity of standing up in a plane that was jolting its way through a storm. As the captain's voice came over the speakers just then, advising them that they would be landing shortly at Heathrow, she couldn't argue. But her skin felt cold when he took his hands away.
Rose sat in one of the cushy armchairs and clicked the seat belt into place. Drew sat in the one beside hers, close enough to touch had she stretched out a hand. But she didn't. His face was closed again, all signs of that quiet pleasure erased.
The landing gear had been let down when he spoke again. His voice was tight. He wasn't looking at her. "I shouldn't have led you to think... I meant to keep my hands to myself on this trip. I will from now on."
"And I mean to change your mind."
* * *
He met her eyes. His were grave and weary. "
I'm asking you not to. I can't afford you, Rose."
Heathrow was as familiar to Drew, in its way, as the Copse or the Old Knoll at Harrow. Crowded, cavernous, smelling of hot grease and chips as they passed a fast-food section, it was no more unpleasant than most airports.
He hadn't cared much for Harrow, either, as he recalled.
Passengers clogged the waiting areas around the gates, spilling out into the breezeways. Summer storms seldom disrupted air traffic for long, but two storm cells had collided over London with unusually violent results, and planes were stacked up over the airport. Some incoming flights had been diverted, many were delayed and a few had been canceled.
No one was happy. Drew found the airport more than usually oppressive.
"It's strange not to have to do anything," Rose said. "No luggage to worry about, no check-in... Are you sure we don't have to check in personally?"
"Quite sure," he said, amused. She'd been fretting over that ever since they landed. "The jet's crew are quite accustomed to handling this sort of thing. Everything will be taken care of. We have a bit of a wait, though." They'd made unusually good time, pushed along by one of the storm fronts on the last part of their flight.
"Three hours." She sighed. "Not enough time to leave the airport and do anything. Not that I could see much, anyway, I suppose, with the way it's pouring rain out there. It's selfish of me to even think about sightseeing, considering why I'm here."
"You've never seen London?"
She shook her head. "Athens, Istanbul, Cyprus, Venice —I've traveled in my own little corner of the world on buying trips for the shop. But I've never been this far north."
"We can get a drink in the lounge, if you like. Or gasp at the prices they charge in the airport shops. Women and shopping. He had a feeling he knew which activity she'd choose.
Drew reached behind him to rub his neck, where the muscles were tense. He felt tired and jittery all at once, as if he'd drunk gallons of coffee to stay awake. That, he thought, was probably the result of sexual frustration. He was worried about Lucas, and he kept having to remind himself not to grab Rose's hand. Yet he wasn't unhappy.
"We'll have to come back through security if we visit the shops.
Got it in one. He grinned in spite of his weariness. "We've got time."
* * *
She wouldn't let him buy her anything. It would have frustrated Drew if he'd been a gentleman, since a gentleman wouldn't force an unwanted gift on a woman. Since he was happily free of such scruples, he merely arranged things without her knowledge. His gift would be waiting for her when she returned to Montebello. It was a small satisfaction, considering he wouldn't be around to learn whether the gift pleased her in spite of her scruples, but he enjoyed the planning of it.
Perhaps some sly part of him was hoping she'd be angry enough or pleased enough to contact him, even after he'd walked away. He wasn't proud of that. Walking away clean was best for both of them.
After last night there seemed little doubt that she somehow triggered his spells.
Absently he rubbed his neck again as they stood on line at the security check. Slightly ahead of them, a tired toddler was whining at her mother. The man directly behind him kept crowding him, as if he could speed things up by stepping on Drew's heels. At the moment he was complaining loudly to his wife about the delay, blaming the long line on Labour immigration policies, incompetent personnel and his wife's brother.
Drew's head was beginning to throb. He kneaded the tense muscles and wished the man would shut up.
"Headache?" Rose asked.
He glanced at her. Her tone was light, but her eyes were worried. Lucas, he realized, must have said something to her about his "migraines." Why couldn't people keep things to themselves? "I must have slept crooked on the plane. My neck is stiff.
"You have that same white look around your eyes you did last night.
"I'm all right. I'm not a bloody invalid."
"You're not too bloody polite, either."
He grimaced. "Sorry. I've been told I'm the world's worst patient. I truly don't have a headache, though —just tense muscles and a crick in the neck." Not to mention that the idiot behind him was getting on his nerves.
"Common wisdom says that men are always bad patients, illness being such a shock to the machismo."
It occurred to him that she wouldn't know, from personal experience, if that was true. She'd grown up without brothers or a father. All sorts of normal male rituals, from shaving to arguing with the sports announcer when one's team was losing, had been left out of her childhood. "But how can we trust common wisdom? It insists on cliches. Like the one about women loving to shop.
"And we all know how false that is," she replied seriously, shifting the bag with her purchases from one hand to the other.
"Obviously. Then there's the one about—" The loudmouth behind him stepped closer, so close his shoulder brushed Drew's back. The muscles along Drew's neck and shoulders tightened like a dog with hackles raised. "The cliché about men not asking for directions," he said, trying to ignore the idiot and his own rising irritation.
The man bumped him again. Harder.
Clamping down on the urge to snarl, Drew turned to the loudmouth. "I will cede these few inches of floor to you as soon as I am able, but I really don't believe we can occupy them at the same time.
The man glared up at him—bloodshot eyes, a pug nose, bad breath and a belly that hid his belt entirely. "Look wot we got 'ere, Muriel—a pretty lord standing on line the same as us 'umble folk. Don't like being around yer inferiors, yer lordship?"
"Dear God," Drew said, his eyebrows lifting. "Yet another cliché. This one speaks."
Ahead of them, the whining toddler started to cry. Or scream, rather. The loudmouth's wife made ineffectual hushing noises at her husband. The loudmouth himself planted his feet well apart and sneered, "Did I get 'is lordship's pretty suit all dirty? Let me clean it up for you." He swiped one hand down Drew's shoulder.
Drew felt as if he couldn't breathe—no surprise, since with every breath, he inhaled the fermented gases from the bastard's last few meals. "Get your hand off me."
The loudmouth buffeted Drew's shoulder this time.
The wife bleated. Rose said Drew's name firmly. Drew's lip drew back. "Flattered as I am by these delicate little advances, old chap, it really isn't at all the thing, with your wife standing right here."
The man's face turned purple. "Why, you—"
The pain hit without warning, blinding, white-hot. Drew staggered as if he'd been struck.
Voices—loud, converging, melding into a senseless cacophony —I didn 't do it! I didn 't... oh, my God... can't see, Mama.. .he dying?.. .get back, everyone get.. .poor man.. .miss my flight for sure now.
Too close. Too loud. He closed his eyes, both hands clasping his head, trying to squeeze a thought through past the agony. Then an arm, steady and familiar around his waist, urged him forward and he heard one voice, quieter than the others. "You'll sit down now. Just a few steps this way...come on, Drew, you can make it."
Rose. His legs were rubber, all the strength drained out by the agony in his head. "Get me..." He had to stop and breathe. Something touched the back of his knees—a chair. He collapsed into it. "Get me away from here," he said through clenched teeth. "Alone. Need to be alone."
"I'll take care of it."
He heard her tossing off instructions to someone—migraines, she said, and something about his medicine and their luggage. The fictitious medicine wasn't going to do him much good. How long did he have? God, for it to hit like this—all these people around, everyone close, too close... "I need to be alone," he gritted out.
"Soon." She squeezed his hand. "The paramedics should be here soon. They can give you a shot at the hospital, Drew, to take the pain away."
"No." He forced his eyes open so he could see her, make her know how important this was. "This will pass. No paramedics. No hospital."
Her eyebrows were drawn down
in a sharp, worried frown. She studied his face a moment. "All right. No hospital. But—"
It hit. As he'd known it would, reality jarred itself loose. Sound was the first of his senses to go this time, mutating into texture instead of noise. Voices became sandpaper scraping his skin. "No," he said, or thought 1 he did. But it was too late. It was happening.
Vision went next, shapes sliding into shapes, normal geometry corkscrewing into impossibilities. He tried to close his eyes, but it was already too late. Too late...
But one sense hadn't gone. He felt Rose's hand smoothing his hair, front to back, smoothing his head over and over.. .it didn't hurt. For some reason it didn't hurt at all. And words. He heard words...
"Be still, be calm...that's it, you're safe now, no one can get in, Drew. I've got you."
The words were nonsense, but that he could hear them at all soothed him. Miraculously his eyes did close.
The next half hour was hell. He kept sliding partway into a spell, but Rose—her touch, her voice—would somehow pull him out again. Only he couldn't get all the way out. At the edge of madness, the pain waited to seize him. Bits of reality filtered in between bouts of pain and madness—the pilot's voice, men in uniforms, Rose telling them what to do... She wanted him to walk, so he did, or thought he did. Bend down, climb in.. .a limo, he was sitting in a limo. But he wasn't alone, not yet—God, he needed to be alone. Rose was there, and others—he felt them beating at his mind, pressing in on him, and the pain trebled impossibly, like a giant crushing his skull in two huge fists.
This time when the madness rose, he didn't resist. Time passed in the prison of his mind as he counted. And counted. He counted very high this time...
Cool air along his left side. Warmth on his right, and warmth on his face... Rose's breath on his face. Her lips brushing his, then nibbling. The damp touch of her tongue. Her hand sliding over his chest, pausing to tease one nipple.
His breath drew in sharply. He inhaled roses and musk and woman.
What came over him then wasn't the deadly fatigue that always followed a spell. It wasn't anything he could have predicted or fought against. As if it were a beast that had been crouched, waiting, all his life, it came roaring up out of his belly.
