The look he shot her was pensive. ‘But you will gain a massive financial package as a result of the marriage,’ he observed. ‘Plus, you understand all the privileges of royal life as well as its constraints. And do not most princesses want to marry a king?’
‘It was a decision made for me by someone else.’
‘Alas, that is one of the drawbacks and also one of the strengths of an inherited monarchy. That the needs of the country are put ahead of personal need.’
‘And the King is perfectly happy with this arrangement?’ she questioned tentatively, thinking that satisfactory somehow sounded insulting.
‘The King is governed by facts, not emotion. He knows perfectly well that a marriage of blue blood is preferable,’ said Constantin, a sudden harshness entering his voice.
‘The King’s father married a commoner, didn’t he?’ probed Zabrina as she found herself remembering things she’d heard about him, and when he didn’t answer, she persisted a little more. ‘Was that one of the reasons why they had that terrible divorce? When he was so young? Didn’t she leave, or something?’
The bodyguard’s mouth twisted, as if he had just tasted something unspeakably sour. ‘Something like that,’ he agreed bitterly, before his face cleared and he looked at her with that oddly detached expression, as if it had been wiped clean of all emotion. ‘Such an experience inevitably scarred him, but some say that boyhood pain makes for a powerful man.’
It was an aspect of the King’s reputed character which Zabrina had never considered before, but there was another one which she had. One which naturally made her wary. ‘Is he cruel?’ she questioned suddenly.
He didn’t answer straight away. His dark brow knitted together and his eyes narrowed, as if he had seen something outside on the horizon he wasn’t sure he recognised. ‘No.’
‘You sound very sure.’
‘That’s because I am sure and, believe me, I know him better than anyone. It is true that some women have gone to the press and given interviews which imply cruelty,’ he said eventually. ‘But maybe that’s because he has been unable to provide them with what they most desire.’
‘And what do women most desire?’ she questioned, into the silence which followed, feeling suddenly out of her depth.
‘Can’t you guess?’
‘S-sex?’ she questioned, with more boldness than she had ever displayed in her entire life.
‘No, not sex,’ he said softly, with a short laugh. ‘Sex is easy.’
Zabrina blushed. ‘What, then?’
‘Love,’ he said, and when she made no comment, he carried on. ‘That nebulous concept which drives so much of the human race in hopeless pursuit and brings so much misery in its wake. I find that women are particularly susceptible to its allure. How about you?’ He arched his black eyebrows questioningly. ‘Do you rate love very highly, Your Royal Highness?’
‘How would I know how to rate it when I have no experience of it?’ she said quietly.
‘Then you should consider yourself fortunate, for some say it is nothing but a madness and others do not believe in its existence at all,’ he asserted, before giving his head a little shake. ‘But forgive me, for I digress. I don’t know how we got onto this subject. Were we not supposed to be talking about the King?’
‘Yes,’ she said, a little breathlessly. ‘I suppose we were.’
‘You will find Roman exacting and demanding at times, as most highly successful men are,’ he continued. ‘But he asks of people no more than he is prepared to give himself. He certainly drives himself too hard—his people often say that he defined the term workaholic before the word became widely used. But, at heart, he is a good man.’
Zabrina was aware that her lips had grown dry and that her heart had begun to skitter and suddenly her lack of desire to meet the King was growing. ‘That’s hardly the most glowing recommendation I’ve ever heard.’
‘I am trying to be honest with you, Princess. Did you wish for me to spin you a fairy tale—to make him into the kind of man you would wish him to be? You are not being promised rainbows and roses, no, but something far more solid. You will be embarking on the tried and tested situation of the arranged marriage, which offers the highest chance of success.’
‘And so, in order to guarantee this “highest chance”, I am to be immersed in your culture, without outside influence. I am being taken to Petrogoria, without family or servants to comfort or reassure me. I am being prepared for your ruler, as a chicken would be prepared for the pot.’
She had spoken without thinking but, surprisingly, the comment made him laugh and Zabrina was shocked by how much that sexy sound affected her. It whispered over her skin like rich velvet. It made her want to curl up her toes and sigh.
‘Ah, but an uncooked chicken is cold and lifeless,’ he said softly as he removed his gun from its holster and laid it on the low coffee table in front of the sofa. ‘While you are warm and very, very vibrant.’
The unexpected compliment shocked her and made her react in a way she hadn’t been expecting. It made her breasts tighten beneath her sloppy sweatshirt and her heart begin to pound. She knew that what was happening was inappropriate, but somehow Zabrina had absolutely no power over what her body was doing. She looked into the steely gleam of his pewter eyes and felt a clench of something low in her gut. She’d experienced something like this a bit earlier, but this felt different. It was more powerful. It seemed to be eating her up from the inside and suddenly she was overcome with an aching regret that she would never know what it was like to be held within the powerful circle of Constantin Izvor’s arms, or to be kissed by him.
She thought of all the photos she’d seen of her future husband. On horseback, wielding a sword. At an official function in New York with presidents and other dignitaries, or wearing a black tie and tuxedo at some glittering charity event. She’d seen images of him dressed in ceremonial robes and army uniform, and others of him working hard at his desk.
And not one of those images had provoked the faintest glimmer of desire in her.
‘He’s a grisly bear of a man,’ she found herself whispering, dimly aware that Constantin’s eyes were suddenly very bright and that he was actually sitting much closer to her than she’d thought. ‘With a beard. And...’
There was a pause. A heartbeat of a pause.
‘And?’ he prompted smokily.
Zabrina looked at him and knew it still wasn’t too late, even though she had already said far too much. She could send the bodyguard away and retire to her room and take whatever consequences came her way. But she couldn’t seem to move. Not only couldn’t, but didn’t want to, despite the undeniable thrum of danger in the air and the sense that something momentous was about to happen. She just wanted to sit there, drowning in the smoky grey light from his eyes and letting his velvety voice wash over her. ‘And I hate beards,’ she added, her voice suddenly fierce.
Roman nodded in response to her bitter words. He should have been angry. It was surely his right to be angry but that was the last thing he was feeling. Maybe because the defiant face which was turned to his was so irresistible. Maybe because he wasn’t used to such candour, not from anyone. He could see the urgent flicker of a pulse beating at the base of her neck and could sense all the latent resentment which had stiffened her slender frame. But there was something else he could see in her eyes and that something was desire—a sexual hunger which surely matched the one which was pulsing around his veins. It had been present from the moment they’d met and now it was plainer than ever.
She didn’t want the man she was promised to, he realised—and yet she wanted him.
He shook his head slightly, knowing what he should do. He should immediately absent himself from her company and address the disturbing aspects of her character this had raised in the cold, clear light of morning. But he knew he wasn’t going to. He was going to kiss her. He
had to kiss her because she was drawing him to her like a magnet. He was dazzled by the light which shone from her eyes. As he looked into her face his overriding sensation was one of intoxication. Or maybe he had just been celibate for too long and was woefully unprepared for any kind of temptation.
All he could see was the gleam of her lips. The rise and fall of her breasts and the whisper of her unsteady breath as she looked at him, those forest-green eyes soft and molten with hunger. The subtle scent of desire hung like a musky perfume in the air and he felt it wrapping him with silken bonds. He knew he should tell her the truth. Tell her who he really was. But how could he possibly explain his dilemma when right then he wasn’t sure who he was? No longer an ice-cold monarch or masquerading bodyguard, but a man whose senses had been invaded with a potency which had taken him by surprise, leaving his nerve-endings clamouring and urgent with need.
It felt visceral.
It felt all-consuming.
As if everything he’d ever known before that moment had been forgotten and was focussed in the hard, sweet throbbing at his groin.
He must have moved, for his shadow threw her slender body into shaded relief and his face hovered above her startled, yet hungry expression. And suddenly he was responding to the glint of invitation in her eyes. He was bending to brush his lips over hers, fired up by the groan of pleasure which passed from her mouth to his as he kissed her. He told himself that any moment now she would come to her senses and push him away, but that wasn’t happening. Her fingers were on his shoulders. They were digging into his flesh and she was pulling him closer, as if she wanted him to go deeper. And he did. God, he’d never kissed a woman as deeply as this before. The pressure of their seeking mouths was like lighting the touchpaper of a firework. He could feel her breasts pressing against his chest. His tongue laced with hers and she was moaning softly—moaning like someone in the middle of an erotic dream who was just about to come.
Was she?
Or was he?
Maybe.
Roman slipped his hand beneath her baggy top and a groan of pleasure escaped him as he cupped her breast in his palm, luxuriating in the lace-covered feel of it. He kneaded the soft flesh, thinking how much more luscious it was than it had appeared beneath her embellished dress of earlier. He grazed a negligent thumb over one pert nipple and heard her little moan of joy.
His lips on her neck, he ran the tip of his tongue over her skin and felt her shiver in response and, as he tasted her flesh, he felt utterly bewitched by her. His hand moved down towards the waistband of her sweatpants and she was circling her hips towards him, like a dancer on a podium inviting men to throw money at her. And all the questions he should have asked—not just of himself, but of her—suddenly seemed to evaporate.
Hadn’t he told her that everything which was said would remain between these four walls for ever—and didn’t that count for everything they did, as well?
‘Princess,’ he intoned huskily. But it was more than an undeniable purr of appreciation. It was also an unspoken question which they both understood as he stared deep into her eyes.
Zabrina stilled as she heard the use of her official title, but even that brief brush with reality wasn’t enough to dampen her desire for him, which was off the scale. He was tacitly asking if she wanted to continue and she knew only too well what she ought to say. Despite her inexperience, she could sense that things were getting rapidly out of control, yet she was doing nothing to stop him—and it was pretty obvious why. All during dinner she’d been fascinated by him. She had been deeply attracted to him on a physical level, yes, but there had been a huge element of trust, too.
He had told her she could confide in him and for some reason she had believed him—because the light shining from his grey eyes had looked genuine and honest. So she had. She’d told him more than she’d ever told anyone. But all those confidences now seemed like a double-edged sword. It had been good to get things off her chest and vocalise her doubts to someone outside her immediate family, yet the freedom of doing such an unroyal thing had made her feel strangely restless and...incomplete.
It had made her long for the freedom to do more of the same. It had made her wish she weren’t a princess who was being sold off to a man she didn’t know, but a woman who had the ability to make her own choices about things. Like, about who she would give her body to, when she chose to have sex for the first time. Constantin had tried to put her mind at rest by explaining that Roman was an exacting rather than a cruel king—but that didn’t cancel out the fact that she didn’t fancy him, did it?
But she fancied Constantin.
Her heart pounded almost painfully. She fancied him more than she could say. Especially as he was now peeling back her sweatshirt and bending his mouth to the mound of her breast. She tipped her head back and a helpless shudder ran through her as he sucked at the nipple through the flimsy barrier of her new bra. And now he was beginning to stroke her belly and she wanted more. Much more. She could feel the molten heat building between her thighs, along with a hungry pulse of need which had started flickering there. Her mouth dried to dust because he was igniting a yearning deep inside her and it felt so incredible that every cell of her body was screaming to let him carry on.
So she did.
She told herself it would only be for a minute. Certainly no longer than that.
His hand slipped further down and he pushed aside the centre panel of her panties, which were almost shockingly wet, and Zabrina gave a little cry as he made contact with her aching flesh. She swallowed. Was it so wrong for his finger to be skating urgently over that most intimate part of her? And for that same finger to alight on the exquisitely sensitised nub before beginning to move in delicate rhythm? How could it be wrong when it felt like nothing she’d ever experienced before? When it felt so good...
She closed her eyes as the light movement made her catch her breath, then blindly she lifted her face to his, and his responding kiss made her feel as if she were drowning in honey.
‘Princess?’ he groaned again against her lips.
Again she sensed that some new barrier was about to be crossed and he was seeking her permission. Maybe if he’d said her name then common sense might have prevailed, but his repetition of her title made her feel slightly disconnected and uncaring of the consequences. As if this were not happening to her but to someone else—someone she didn’t know very well. A wild stranger who was briefly inhabiting her body and demanding that this fierce sexual hunger be fed.
‘Yes,’ she said, in her own language, her next words muffled by the sweatshirt he was pulling over her head. ‘Yes, please.’
CHAPTER FIVE
HE WAS UNDRESSING. Or at least, he was freeing himself from his clothes. There was very little ceremony involved. Zabrina watched as Constantin Izvor impatiently removed his long leather boots and kicked them aside, before peeling off his dark trousers and sending them in the same direction, after first extracting a mysterious packet of foil.
His shirt followed, exposing the honed magnificence of his bare chest—but there wasn’t really time to appreciate it because the bodyguard was turning his attention to her once more. He splayed his palms over her hips, her slouchy pants were swiftly disposed of and it wasn’t until she felt the rush of cool air against her legs that it suddenly occurred to Zabrina that Constantin was completely naked, while she was still wearing her underwear.
His eyes narrowed as if he had suddenly tuned into her thoughts. ‘We don’t seem to be very equally matched,’ he murmured.
It was almost enough to destroy the mood, because Zabrina knew they would never be equally matched, because, no matter how vaulted his position, he was still a servant and she a royal. But by then she didn’t care, because he was deftly unclipping her bra and her reservations were dissolved by the delicious sensation of her breasts sliding free. She liked the way that made her feel, just as she liked the way h
is eyes had darkened in response.
His gaze roved to the only remaining barrier to her nakedness—a tiny triangle of pink lace panties, which matched the bra—and she saw his mouth harden with something she didn’t recognise. Something which looked faintly disapproving. Surely not—for hadn’t part of her pre-wedding sexual education reinforced the fact that men liked provocative lingerie and it was a wife’s duty to heed such desires?
Zabrina chewed on her lip. Perhaps he was perplexed by her extravagant underclothes, particularly when worn underneath such a deliberately unglamorous outer layer. She wondered what he’d say if he knew that the flimsy garment was completely unlike the sleek black briefs she normally favoured, which made horse-riding so much easier.
But now was not the time to start thinking about the trousseau which had been acquired by one of her mother’s stylists. Not when he was hooking the sides of her panties with his fingers while making a low, growling noise at the back of his throat. For one crazy moment she thought he was about to rip them off and wasn’t there an unknown and rather shocking side to her character which actually hoped he would? But she had been mistaken, because he was removing them conventionally enough, sliding them down over her knees—though with hands which were slightly unsteady.
His watchful eyes burned into her as he ran a questing finger over her thighs, lightly stroking the goose-pimpled flesh in inciting circles which made them tremble even more. And suddenly Zabrina found herself parting her legs for him, as if his pewter gaze was compelling her to do so—and he was...he was...
She gave a startled gasp as Constantin Izvor bent his head down between her thighs. His tongue began to dart over the exquisitely aroused flesh and he gently hushed her with a single, ‘Shh!’
It was an impossible order. How could she possibly stay silent when he was working such magic? When he was making her feel like this—as though she were rapidly soaring towards an unknown destination? Some place of unbelievable sweetness which was beckoning to her with honeyed fingers. It felt shockingly intimate. Decadent and delicious. It felt perfect.
One Night Before The Royal Wedding (Mills & Boon Modern) Page 5
