Not subtle. But they were way past subtle.
She made a little sound – surprise? How could she be surprised? She couldn’t be. Could. Not. Possibly. Be.
His tongue met hers. She hesitated, but she didn’t shy away. More like asking are you sure? than pulling back.
Was he sure? Was she kidding?
What the hell had those people – the pair who raised her — done to her that she didn’t have the confidence to know he’d wanted her all this time?
But what about her? Was she sure?
He wrenched his mouth away. “Katie—?”
Now she took his face between her hands. “Yes.” And she slid her tongue into his mouth.
Combustion. Instant and total.
He brought one leg forward, between hers, unsettling her balance. She put his arms around his neck to steady herself. Even then one hand fluttered a bit, almost apologetically.
She made that sound. Deeper now.
Speaking of not subtle and of wanting her… He slid one hand down her back, using his forearm to draw her in tighter. Then, slower, in to the small of her back, spreading his hand across the outward curve below. Pressing, tight and firm, bringing her against him. So she couldn’t possibly not know.
Oh, yeah, I’m sure.
She shifted, not pulling away exactly, so what was she—? Then she shifted back, her legs apart and he fit even tighter against her. He bent his knees, then straightened, rubbing higher and harder against her, even through their clothing. Their tongues were rubbing against each other in imitation of what their bodies wanted to do.
And if the imitation was this good, the real might kill him.
One of her arms left his neck and reached behind her. He knew that because he was totally tuned in to her body and where it moved.
But apparently he’d disconnected from everything else, because they were suddenly tumbling to the bed, him on top of her, and he hadn’t known they were anywhere near it. She must have known. That’s why she’d reached back — to cushion the fall. He rolled, bringing her on top so he didn’t crush her.
The hem of her dress had come up. She straddled him, so he pressed close and hard against where he most wanted to be.
“Katie? The champagne—?”
“No.” Her eyes were wide, but clear and focused directly on him.
“Are you sure about…?”
She slid her knees wider, deepening the contact.
“Yes.”
****
Movies and TV showed lovemaking in lyrical, sweeping strokes. Perfect vignettes of tenderness and passion. Impediments melting away in dissolves that cut out all the moments of awkward fumbling, of clothes crammed into the wrong place, of unfastenings that went awry.
They missed all the fun.
Not that she’d thought it had been fun with those boyfriends she’d told him about. Both of them. The actual sex had been quite nice. Certainly nice enough for her to want more of it in her life … though, she had realized with reluctance at the time, not with them. But the getting ready for it had been uncomfortable physically and emotionally.
Not with Brad.
He approached this the way he approached basketball. With exuberance, joy, regard for the proceedings, and respect for his opponent.
In this case, their clothes.
She sighed against his shoulder as he slid her panties off.
Victory.
But now he was putting on one last item.
Done.
His wonderful hands came back to her. She mmm’d with the sensation.
And heard an echo of it from him.
She shifted, hooking a leg over his hip, the rolled to her back, trying to draw him with her.
He stalemated her with them on their sides. “I’m too heavy—”
He bowed over her, putting his mouth over the tip of her breast and drawing.
“Brad.” She skimmed her hand lightly over his back. “Brad.”
His resistance crumbled. He rolled with her, settling into where she most wanted him.
He slid inside her.
And then he went still.
No, no, no. No stillness.
“Do you feel that?” he asked.
“Oh, yes.”
He expelled a breath, part snort, part chuckle, part pained pleasure. “That … vibration.”
She tightened her muscles. “This?”
“Ah. That’s... That’s …”
She spread her hands on his butt cheeks, curving her fingers into him, urging him, at the same time she bent her knees, then crossed her ankles over him.
“Katie, Katie. Please. Wait. Slow. Good. For. You.”
He was panting. Words. But they made no sense. Nothing made sense except this need.
“Now.” That was her voice. That was really her voice.
She raised her head, and kissed his exposed throat, then sucked on it.
“Ahh.”
“Now,” she repeated. “Move now.”
She was already moving, rocking.
He moved.
They were together.
****
“You owe it to yourself to go to Bariavak, Katie.”
He’d done a lousy job of keeping his hands off her. Twice. Even now one hand curved over her hip, holding her against him.
Her leg slid between his in micromovements, stirring the sheet that covered them.
Vibration.
That frequency.
It was something in her. It communicated to him like a tuning fork being struck. Amplified ten thousand times.
But he would still look out for her. He would still try to help her to the life she deserved.
“But what about the basketball office?” she asked
His smile felt forced. “Katie, Katie. Run Ashton’s basketball office? Or be princess of Bariavak? Get your priorities straight.”
“You said…” It died away.
“Said what?” he nudged.
Her head came up and she met his eyes. “You said you – all of you, the basketball office – couldn’t function without me.”
He looked away. “Maybe Bariavak can’t either.”
“It’s going to have to. At least I think … I don’t know.” Her voice had wound down, but now she said quickly, “I’m not sure I even believe in princesses. And to actually run a country…”
“What does your grandfather think of that?”
“I haven’t talked to him about much of anything. You know that. I want to be sure before I …”
“Break his heart?”
She was silent.
He shifted around, resting his cheek on the top of her head. “You’re going to go, Katie. It’s your birthright. It’s your family. It’s your future.”
She reached up, cupped her palm to his cheek. The sheet slid lower. “I’m here now, Brad.”
His heart turned over, along with an earthier reaction well south of his heart.
“Yes, you are. Yes, we are.”
He pushed the sheet down.
****
“Carolyn? I’m sorry to call so early on a Sunday—”
“Katie? I wish you’d tell my children it’s too early to be up and demanding breakfast on a Sunday. But—are you okay?”
Her bags were packed. She had these few minutes to let her friend know what had happened – some of what had happened.“Yes. I — I want to let you know, you and C.J., the DNA test result came in. It, uh, it said I’m…”
“You found your grandfather,” the older woman supplied quietly.
“Yes.”
“How do you feel about that? All of that?”
“I don’t know. I just found out yesterday and…” Images from last night pinwheeled through her mind. “Uh, the other thing I wanted to let you know – I’m going to Bariavak with King Jozef. We leave in a few minutes, so—”
“Did something happen with you and Brad?”
Everything.
Right up until she woke in Brad’s arms, knowing that
he would protect her from ever having to leave – Ashton or the marriage – if he thought that’s what she wanted. Desire stronger than anything she had experienced had flooded through her.
But even as the desire remained, she’d known she couldn’t do that to him. To take advantage of him. To let him shelter her.
“What? Why would you think that? He doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Really? How you’ve felt about him all these years doesn’t have anything to do with it?”
“How I …” She dropped her head. “How did you know?”
“I know something about women who close themselves off, Katie, because I was one. I saw that in you and I hoped our friendship might help.”
“It has Carolyn. It has. And if I haven’t said how grateful I am for your friendship—”
“Oh, honey, there’s no need for that. But I’m afraid it hasn’t been enough to help you open up to Brad.”
She tried a laugh. If a frog tried to laugh, that was the sound it might make.
She’d married a man she’d fallen in love with. And now she’d made love with him and had fallen even deeper.
“Carolyn,” she said with calm and reason she didn’t know she had left in her, “he’s been very supportive and I appreciate that, but he never showed the least interest in me before—”
“You were never in trouble before.” The words came so quickly it was as if the other woman had been waiting to say them.
Or perhaps she heard them that way because it’s what she’d been fearing. Brad saw her as an underdog he was going to help no matter what.
“You being in trouble is the one thing,” Carolyn went on, “that would let Brad get past the stiff-arm you always presented—”
“Stiff-arm? I never—”
“—to him. You did. A stiff-arm that held him safely at a distance. I knew it was because you were scared, but he didn’t. He wouldn’t push past your defenses when it was solely because he wanted to get closer to you. He’d only do it when he thought it was necessary to protect you. Because he has defenses, too, you know. He—”
A knock came at her hotel room door. “I have to go, Carolyn.”
“Will you think about what I’ve said?”
“Yes. But I’m going and he… It’s not possible.” Was she telling Carolyn that? Or herself.
“Promise you’ll think about it. And you’ll stay in touch.”
“I promise.”
****
He knew she was gone before he was fully awake. Knew it without reaching across to the emptiness beside him.
He pulled himself up, cramming pillows behind his back.
Of course her clothes were gone, too. Last thing on earth he could imagine was Katie sauntering down the hall to her room without her clothes.
But there was something else.
Something that gave the room an air of dusty desertion.
Or maybe that air of dusty desertion was inside him.
Because he knew – no idea how, but he knew – she’d gone. Not just to her room, but out of the hotel. Out of the city. Out of—
He reached around and punched the pillow pressing against his back. Because that had to be where the pain came from.
She’d gone to Bariavak. Where she belonged. Finding her future as a princess.
Out of his life.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Even though she had it memorized, Katie tipped the paper to catch light from the window in the gallery and looked over the detailed schedule issued today by King Jozef’s staff for next week’s three-day visit by the Ashton University men’s basketball team.
Without Brad.
The first time she and C.J. had talked, days after her arrival in Bariavak and the day before the official announcement, he’d told her Brad had withdrawn from the trip.
Though Carolyn was coming, taking Katie’s spot, while C.J.’s mother stayed with the kids in Ashton
The team arrived in eight days. After a welcoming reception, they would play against the Bariavak national team at the university. Saturday would start with morning clinics put on by the coaches for local children at a gym built into the mountain as part of the royal complex. There would be a second game with the national team in the afternoon, followed by a gala for both teams, their families, dignitaries, and other guests. Sunday morning was free. More clinics in the afternoon, this time led by players from Ashton and Bariavak. Then an evening in which each national player took an Ashton player and two youth participants to his home for dinner.
Monday morning, the team would leave.
It hadn’t been easy to watch from a distance as King Jozef’s staff finalized the plans she’d started from Ashton. But he had tactfully conveyed that she could be seen as intruding.
As reluctant as she was to relinquish involvement, how could she argue when she knew nothing about how things worked here. About how things worked in what was now her life.
Views from the windows still caught her breath, but anyone who became so accustomed to these mountains that they didn’t catch their breath at the sight had to be mostly dead. It seemed impossible that any structure could adhere to the abrupt inclines, yet here she was, living in a palace – no, Madame had told her more than once it was a castle — that proved they could.
That was among the aspects she hadn’t grown accustomed to. She lived in a castle, with a suite of rooms as her “apartments.”
The castle held the highest occupied ground in the capital city, digging its fingernails into the rock sides of the mountain and clinging so ferociously that it was impossible to imagine the mountain without the castle.
One night at dinner, King Jozef had remarked that if the castle were built on flat ground it would be a simple structure. She had laughed, because that was like saying if Neil Armstrong’s moon walk had taken place on earth it would have been a simple stroll.
The king had smiled, though she’d heard a tinge of sadness when he said, “That is the first time I have heard you laugh. Your laugh is very much like your mother’s.”
Comparisons to Princess Sofia were also something she had not adapted to.
And then there’d been the episode with the Magda tiara.
King Jozef had cajoled her into wearing the diamond tiara for a reception with government officials a week after her arrival.
It was dramatic and history-laden – the king’s own mother’s official portrait showed her wearing it. It also was heavy and awkward. At least it was awkward when she wore it. It hadn’t looked awkward on the queen.
She’d nearly lost the damned thing when she bent slightly to pick up the floor-length skirt of her formal dress – thank heavens for Maurice — so she could walk up a stairway.
“Princess Katrina?” a woman stopped before her, waiting patiently for an acknowledgment of her presence.
Katie was even starting to respond when people called her Princess Katrina. Officially she was called Princess Josephine-Augusta. But inside the castle – and in some of the media – she was now known as Princess Katrina. Losing her name was not something she expected to ever become accustomed to.
Elisabeta, the same middle-aged woman here now, had taken her into a private room and applied emergency bobby pins to hold the tiara. The woman hadn’t laughed and she’d fixed the problem, so she’d won a spot in Katie’s heart. By the end of that evening, though, the bobby pins felt like they’d weighed as much as the tiara.
“Hello, Elisabeta. How are you today?”
“Very well, ma’am. Madame asks that you come to her office.”
There was only one Madame in the castle. Perhaps in all of Bariavak.
Madame directed Katie’s daily lessons on life as a princess. Katie clung to as much free time as she could, wandering the castle, the grounds, the library, and the town. Between that and an hour daily with the king, she was learning pieces of Bariavak’s long, complex history bit by bit.
King Jozef’s insistence that she have an escort outside the castle r
ubbed against her nerves, but she’d acquiesced before the expression in his eyes.
She smiled at the woman. “Will you lead the way, please? I’m not sure I know the most direct route from here and I would not like to keep Madame waiting.”
Yes, there was much she didn’t know.
What she did know, despite her best efforts to not know it, was an aching soreness under her skin from missing Brad.
She would not think about him. About that last night. About the months before it. She would not.
If there was one thing Bob and Anna Davis had taught her it was how to ignore.
****
“Good day, Princess Katrina,” Madame said. “There is a visitor His Majesty would like you to entertain.”
“Me? Alone?”
“Most certainly you. He is awaiting you now in the Brocade Room. You shall have lunch in the ladies’ dining room, then entertain him this afternoon. A tour of the castle would be appropriate. The Royal Librarian is prepared to guide you both. Return to the Brocade Room by five o’clock so you can prepare for this evening’s small dinner.”
Katie’s heart sank.
She enjoyed the occasional times when she and King Jozef dined together. Or even when she and Madame had trays here in her office. But the “small” dinners – or lunches, or brunches, or breakfasts – usually included two dozen or more and were a trial.
Not at all like the gatherings in Angelo's back room or when Brad had cooked for her and Andy and— No, she wasn’t going to think about that.
“Who is this visitor?”
“Posture.” Only after Katie straightened did Madame add, “Your cousin.”
“Prince Vatche?” She’d met King Jozef’s nephew the first week and hadn’t liked him. At all.
He’d been smooth and charming, with smiles and bows abounding, and she hadn’t trusted him for a second. She was certain he liked her even less than she liked him.
That hadn’t kept him from showing up a lot.
Madame’s eyes went frosty, and Katie realized she’d let her feelings about the prince show through.
“Not Prince Vatche. However, if it were—”
“I know. I would be expected to entertain him or anyone with grace and dignity.”
The Surprise Princess Page 20
