One Night Before The Royal Wedding (Mills & Boon Modern)

by Sharon Kendrick

  Without taking his eyes from her face he began to unbutton his shirt, but still she said nothing. For hadn’t his soft words been a tacit order not to break the spell of what was about to happen—and wasn’t the truth that it really did feel like magic?

  Zabrina watched as he peeled off his clothes until his golden flesh was naked and rippling in the lamplight. Her mouth dried as he joined her on the bed and he pulled her against his powerful frame. He let out a long sigh as his fingers began to reacquaint themselves with her aching body but there seemed a different kind of urgency about him tonight as he kissed her. Her nerves were quickly dissolved by the sweetness of his mouth roving over her neck, her hair and her breasts and Zabrina was writhing with impatience when at last his hand moved beneath the delicate nightgown and began to ruck up the slippery fabric.

  ‘Was this for your honeymoon night?’ he murmured.

  ‘Y-yes,’ she whispered back, her skin prickling into goose-bumps.

  Did she imagine the brief darkening of his face before he peeled it off with such infinite care, so that in that moment she felt almost...treasured? Cherished. Zabrina’s heart clenched with something which felt unbearably poignant—as if she’d been given a glimpse of something which could never be hers. Something elusive and fragile and wonderful. Was this what love felt like? she found herself wondering wistfully. Until she reminded herself fiercely that love was irrelevant. Emotion was superficial and sensation was key to what was happening. So she turned her attention to the satin of his skin, and his deepening kisses indicated just how much she was pleasing him. The pace began to change and quicken. The air crackled with rising tension and musky desire. She felt him reach for protection, heard the rough tearing of foil before he stroked her thighs apart with beguiling fingers. And then he moved over her and she was lost.

  Roman groaned as he entered her. She felt so tight. Tighter even than she had done on the train—or was that because he was so unbelievably turned on tonight? He thrust deep inside her honeyed flesh, taking her to the brink again and again, until she cried out his name in a ragged plea and he gave her what she wanted. What she needed. What he needed, too. And didn’t a distinctly primeval satisfaction wash over him as he heard her shudder out his name, so that he was forced to silence her frantic cries with another kiss? She was still spasming around him when he started coming himself and never had so much seed spilled from his loins before.

  Afterwards, drained and empty, he felt the powerful beat of his heart as she lay slumped against his sweat-sheened shoulder, her own hair damp with exertion. He heard the sudden catch in her breathing and wondered if she was crying. And even though it was definitely not his style to probe a woman’s mood, he found himself doing it.

  ‘Zabrina?’

  She shook her head as if she didn’t want to engage. ‘Shh,’ she said, the sound mimicking the very one he’d made earlier.

  It was a get-out clause. An escape route. But surprisingly, Roman paid it no heed. He rolled on top of her again, smoothing the tousled tendrils of hair away from her flushed cheeks. Her eyes were closed as if she didn’t want to have this conversation, which would normally have suited him fine, but he found himself unable to ignore the sudden stab of his conscience.

  ‘Zabrina?’

  Her lashes fluttered open and he found himself staring into forest-dark eyes.

  ‘I know,’ he said softly and nodded his head resolutely. ‘I know I was the first man for you. The only man. And I’m sorry I accused you of all those things.’

  She drew back, her eyes wide. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘It’s hard for me to understand myself.’

  ‘Well, try.’

  He traced his forefinger along the tremble of her lips and resisted the urge to kiss them. ‘When I saw you waiting for me tonight, you looked so sweet and so nervous.’ He shrugged. ‘And so obviously out of your depth. You certainly weren’t behaving like an experienced woman of the world. Deep down, I realised that on the train, when you told me—only it was easier to think you weren’t. To paint you as someone who was wanton, and free.’

  ‘And why was that, Roman?’ she questioned softly.

  He shook his head, afraid of what he might say, what he might reveal in an unguarded and totally irrelevant post-orgasmic moment. But he had been the one who had started all this, hadn’t he?

  ‘Because it would be easier to keep me at a distance?’ she guessed, when still he said nothing.

  He furrowed his brow into a frown. He didn’t want her to be right, just as he didn’t want her to be this perceptive. But he wasn’t going to tell a lie. ‘Maybe,’ he admitted. ‘And maybe because it gave me permission to make love to you under the guise of another man. I should never have done that, Zabrina.’

  ‘Maybe you shouldn’t,’ she said slowly. ‘But I wanted you to. I wanted it more than I can ever remember wanting anything.’

  It was an unexpected display of candour, but to his surprise it didn’t repel him or make him want to run. The look in her eyes seemed to be beguiling him even more than before and Roman tensed. The atmosphere was getting claustrophobic and in danger of suffocating him if he wasn’t careful.

  He swallowed. So what was he going to do about it?

  He reached down to play with one of her nipples and felt himself grow hard as it puckered beneath his touch. He kissed her and guided her hand between his legs, biting back a moan of pleasure as she began to whisper featherlight fingertips up and down his aching shaft.

  ‘I want you to teach me,’ she said softly. ‘About the things you would like me to do.’

  Already, he felt as if he could explode. ‘You don’t seem to need any advice from me. You’re doing just fine,’ he growled.

  He had been about to show her how to pleasure him but it seemed that his princess was an instinctive expert where his body was concerned and a feeling of anticipation rippled over his body as he reached down and began to finger her in turn.

  He closed his eyes.

  Because this type of feeling he could cope with, but only this.

  Maybe that was the only lesson he needed to teach her.

  When Zabrina awoke, he had gone. She turned to look at the imprint of his head on the pillow and felt her heart give a wrench. Of course he had gone. That was the deal. He had crept from her bed under the velvety cloak of darkness, to slip back unnoticed through the palace corridors.

  Lying amid the warm and rumpled sheets, watching dawn as it filtered through the unshuttered window, she allowed herself a moment of erotic recall.

  It had been...

  She swallowed.

  It had been divine on every level, bar one. She had been nervous about having sex with the King, wondering if it would be the same as having sex with his alter-ego bodyguard. But it had been incredible. Perhaps because so many different layers of their characters had been peeled away, it had felt deeper than what had happened before. It had been intense. Powerful. Almost transforming. Every single time. Once, when he had been deep inside her pulsing out his seed, she had wanted to weep from pure joy. She had wanted to trace her fingertips over the shadowed graze of his jaw and thank him for making her feel this way. But instinct had warned her against such an over-the-top reaction and instinct had proved her right. Because just before Roman had returned to his own quarters, rising gloriously and boldly naked from the sheets, she had thought he seemed more...

  She frowned as she tried to think of a word to describe it. Remote, yes—that was it. Almost as if the intensity of their physical interaction had made him want to instinctively push her away. Maybe she was reading too much into it. After all, what did she know about how men behaved once they had shared a woman’s bed? And hadn’t his last words been a husky promise that he would come to her later that night? She smiled as she plumped up the pillows and afterwards fell asleep and when next she awoke, the sun was up and Silviana was b
usying herself in the suite, laying out all her clothes for the day.

  Leaving her hair loose, she put on a floaty dress the colour of apple blossoms, but she definitely felt nervous as she walked into the breakfast room, to find Roman already seated and looking at his phone. She wanted him to say something or do something. To send out some secret acknowledgement of what they had shared during the night by slanting her a complicit look. But when he glanced up from his phone and smiled, his face looked nothing except composed.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘Did you sleep well?’

  Maybe it was irrational but Zabrina was disappointed at the lack of unspoken communication passing between them. She wondered how he’d react if she blurted out the truth. No, not really. How could I possibly sleep when you were deep inside my body for most of the night? But, of course, she didn’t. She simply sat down while a servant shook out a napkin and placed it on her lap, and attempted to match her fiancé’s cool air of self-possession.

  ‘Very well, thank you,’ she answered. ‘You?’

  ‘Mmm,’ he said, non-committal as he put his phone face-down on the table, as if he were making a great sacrifice. ‘So, what are you doing today?’

  ‘I have a dress fitting, and I need to finalise the design for the top layer of the wedding cake.’ She lifted up her spoon to scoop up a cinnamon-dusted strawberry and shot him a look. ‘Would you like to give your input? Any favourite recipes from your childhood?’

  His expression suddenly grew stony and shuttered. ‘I’ve never been much of a cake-eater, Zabrina. So why don’t I leave that side of it to you?’

  She wanted to ask what had made his face darken like that, but she didn’t do that either. The mood in the room was too fragile for those sorts of questions. She was too fragile—like a piece of honeycomb which had been placed in the path of an approaching pair of feet. The brief insecurity which had washed over her in bed earlier that morning now grew heightened. In a flash it came to her that she wanted more than erotic intimacy. She wanted other intimacies, too. She wanted them to grow close and to be a real couple—not spend her life tiptoeing around his feelings. She looked at the proud jut of his aristocratic jaw.

  So make it happen.

  Don’t crowd him.

  In public at least, give him space.

  Zabrina dug her spoon into another strawberry and nibbled at the fruit delicately, even though she would have preferred to have picked it up with her fingers. But she knew how palace life worked. Beneath the careful scrutiny of the servants she would play the royal game which was expected of her. She would make small talk and discuss generalities about the day ahead and that would have to do for the time being. But there was nothing to stop her from breaking down Roman’s barriers whenever she got the opportunity. Surely that was essential if she wanted to discover more about this complex man she was soon to marry.

  And where better than when they were alone in bed?

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  ‘YOU NEVER REALLY talk about your past, do you, Roman?’

  Roman kept his eyes tightly shut, hoping his forbidding body language would stem the Princess’s infuriating line of questioning. Because this wasn’t the first time she’d tried to quiz him after one of his delicious midnight visits to her bedroom. Chipping away as she tried to get to know him better, as lovers inevitably did—no matter how many times he discouraged them. He guessed that with Zabrina he had been unusually indulgent—and at least their powerful sexual chemistry meant it had been easy to distract her. He’d been able to deflect her annoying queries with a foray into mutual bliss, but this time he heard the note of stubborn determination in her voice which made him suspect the subject wasn’t going away.

  It didn’t.

  ‘Roman?’ Soft fingertips began to stroke distracting little circles on his forearm. ‘I know you’re not asleep.’

  Reluctantly, Roman opened his eyes, his vision instantly captured by the sight of the naked woman lying in bed next to him. He felt the instant thunder of his heart as he drank in her slender curves. If this were anyone else he would simply leave but with Zabrina he couldn’t—and not just because he was due to marry her in ten days’ time. Because wasn’t the truth that he simply couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her bed? Not when there were still several hours available to them before daybreak, which he intended to put to the best possible use. Starting with the judicious use of his tongue, which he would trickle down over her belly until her nails were scrabbling against his scalp and she was moaning helplessly and bucking beneath him.

  But despite the hungry clamour in his groin, his desire was tinged with the flicker of resentment, because he knew that in many ways he had become unexpectedly addicted to her. Didn’t he sometimes despair of the way she effortlessly seemed to weave her spell around him? He gave an impatient sigh. Maybe his attempts at evading her questions were simply delaying the inevitable. Maybe his future wife had the right to ask him things which had been forbidden to other lovers.

  ‘Which particular part of my past particularly interests you, Princess?’ he questioned coolly.

  Her answer came straight back, as if she’d been rehearsing it.

  ‘Your parents.’

  ‘My parents,’ he repeated slowly.

  ‘Everyone has them at some point in their life, Roman. You know all about mine but I know nothing about yours. I mean, I know that your father died four years ago and that your parents got divorced, but I don’t know any more than that because you’ve never said.’

  ‘And don’t you think there’s a reason for that?’

  She wriggled up the bed a little, so that her dark hair shimmered down, rather disappointingly concealing the rosy nipple which had been on display.

  ‘So why don’t you tell me what that reason is?’ she said.

  The look in her eyes was compelling, the expression on her face serene as she calmly returned his gaze. And all at once it felt as if there was no hiding place. No place left to run—and the weirdest thing was that Roman didn’t want to run. He wanted to confide in her. To tell her things he’d never discussed with another soul. A pulse began to beat at his temple. Why was that? Why did he suddenly feel as if he had been carrying around an intolerable burden and this was his chance to put it down for a while?

  But it wasn’t easy to articulate words he’d spent a lifetime repressing, or to expand on them, and for a while he just listened to the sound of silence, broken only by the distant ticking of a clock.

  ‘My mother left when I was three,’ he said at last. ‘After that, it was just me and my father.’

  ‘What was she like?’

  It was a simple question but something he’d never been asked outright and, stupidly, he wasn’t expecting it. Forbidden images of a tall blonde woman with a worried face swam into his mind and Roman realised just how long it had been since he’d thought about her. Since he had allowed himself to think about her. ‘I don’t remember very much about her,’ he said. ‘Only that she used to read me bedtime stories in a low and drawling voice. She was American. She came from Missouri and she used to wear a necklace with a bluebird on it.’

  ‘What else?’

  She looked at him and he wondered if her inquisitiveness was inspired by curiosity or horrified fascination. Because a mother who deserted her child always excited people’s interest—particularly women’s. A mother who left her child was seen as a monster and the child as unloved and unwanted. His preference would have been to have shut the subject down but suddenly he realised that some day he and Zabrina were going to have to explain the lack of a paternal grandmother to their own children, so maybe she needed to know. ‘What kind of thing do you want to know?’

  ‘Like, how did they meet?’

  He raked back through the things he knew, which were surprisingly sketchy. ‘They met when my father was on a world tour. She was working as a waitress and I think he ju
st became obsessed by her and swept her off her feet. He proposed, she accepted and he brought her back here with almost indecent haste.’ His voice hardened into flint. ‘It’s why I became an advocate of arranged marriages, Zabrina. He should never have made her his wife.’

  She pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes and blinked at him. ‘Because she was a commoner?’ she said slowly.

  ‘Almost certainly. She couldn’t deal with royal life or all the restrictions which accompany it. Or so my father told me afterwards. She never settled into life here—not even when she had me. I remember that sometimes she seemed too scared to hold me and seemed to leave most of my care to my nurse, Olga.’ He flinched as the memories came faster now. A black spill of memories he couldn’t seem to hold back. ‘Even when she read to me at night, she would slip into my room under cover of darkness. I noticed she started being around less and less and sometimes I would spot her heading towards me in one of the corridors, only she would turn away and pretend she hadn’t seen me. Don’t look at me that way, Zabrina, because it’s true. And then one day, she left. She left,’ he repeated, angry at the hot twist of pain in his heart. Angry with himself because surely it shouldn’t still hurt like this. ‘She just walked away and never looked back.’

  She didn’t respond to that and he heaved a breath of thanks, thinking she’d taken the hint and would ask him no more. He was just about to pull her into his arms and lose himself in the sweetness of her body when she propped herself up on one elbow and screwed up her nose. ‘So what happened after that? I mean, how did you find out she’d gone?’

  ‘Is this really necessary?’ he demanded.

  ‘I think it’s important,’ she clarified quietly. ‘And I’d like to hear the rest of the story.’