Royal Protocol (18 page)

There was so much about this powerful, complicated male that she never would have suspected, so much about him that drew her closer. In so many ways he’d touched her heart. As he nuzzled the slick fabric of her camisole with his cheek, all she considered was how he was touching her body.

Slick fabric slid against her as his lips edged to the curve of her breast, his mouth seeking bare skin. He found it just above scalloped lace. The feel of his lips and his warm breath on her flesh sent delicious little shivers racing through her in the moments before he tugged the silky fabric from the waistband of her skirt. A uneven heartbeat later, his hands were under that fabric and he pushed it up to trace a trail of heat over her stomach to the filmy barrier of her bra.

The pads of his fingers tightened against her as he sought her through the sheer fabric. Hot and moist, his breath penetrated the thin piece of lingerie, sapping the strength from her knees. He threatened to buckle them completely when he found her nipple.

Her fingers slipped from the back of his head. With both hands, she gripped his solid shoulders to keep herself from sinking to the floor.

Stark need sculpted his features when he finally looked up.

For a moment he remained silent, his hands still holding her hips. His touch was measuring, as if he might be imagining how she would fit against him.

“You know what I want, Gwen.”

Her heart already felt as if it were bruising her breastbone with each beat. His husky statement threatened to pound it right out of her chest.

She definitely knew what he wanted. He’d told her. In explicit detail.

Heaven help her, she wanted it, too.

“I believe you made it fairly clear,” she whispered, her stomach muscles quivering inches from his thumbs.

“Only fairly?”

A heady glint of challenge flashed in his eyes. Sliding one hand to the bare skin on her back, he tapped a small pad by his telephone and rose up over her. Behind him the lock of his door tumbled into place. Behind her the tall curtain of navy-blue drapes rode across the wall to cover the window.

The electric hum of the curtain mechanism gave way to the pounding of her pulse in her ears as he slipped the clip from her hair and lowered his head.

“Then, let’s see what I can do to make you completely certain.”

Anticipation shot through her as he captured her mouth and pulled her against him, fitting her the way she imagined he’d considered only moments before. His erection pressed her stomach. His tongue felt as hot as his hands.

She clung to him, melting inside at the feel of his hard, honed body seeking hers. With each passing day he had awakened feelings she’d forgotten, sensations that had lain dormant and dying.

Those feelings rushed back with a vengeance, compounding themselves when he slowly slipped off her jacket and eased the thin straps of her camisole and bra over her shoulders. A quick flick of his fingers, and the bra was on the floor, the satin at her waist. The coolness of air against her skin had barely registered when he sank back with her to the desk, his mouth still devouring hers.

She was wrong. It was more than reawakening she experienced beneath his touch. He electrified nerves she didn’t know she possessed when he cupped the aching fullness of her breast and trailed his lips down her throat. Teasing, taunting, he overwhelmed her with sensation when he found her turgid peak once more. Then he soothed her, caressed her, molding his hands to her sides, tasting the flesh of her stomach, her ribs.

Her eyes drifted shut, her head falling back at the exquisite weakness coursing through her. With her throat exposed, he carried his exploration there, and caught her behind the neck to bring her mouth back to his.

He’d said he wanted to taste all of her body. When he tugged down the zipper on the side of her skirt, the thought that he actually intended to do just that drew a faint moan of longing. He drank that sound like a man dying of thirst, a groan of his own rumbling from deep in his chest.

He’d robbed her of sensibility the moment he’d rested his head against her. Now, he was crumbling barriers, destroying any possible defense and shredding any hope of sanity.

Her skirt had been tossed to the chair when he moved her hand from his shoulder to his tie.

“You wanted to help.” His husky words vibrated against her lips. “How are you at untying knots?”

Feeling tied in knots herself, she murmured back, “I think I can manage.”

“Then, please,” he growled, before he closed that negligible distance “don’t let me stop you.”

She wasn’t sure how she accomplished the small task with his hands busily stripping away her slip and pantyhose. But the knot came undone, along with the buttons on his shirt. As he had with her, she slipped her hands between the sides of the fabric to push them apart. Unlike him, her touch was less certain as she explored the sculpted muscles of his beautiful chest, the corded strength of his biceps.

She couldn’t believe that she was free to caress him, that she could make him tremble as easily as he did her. He was a man of such control, such discipline. Yet she made his breath snag with the light brush of her fingers over his flat nipple, caused it to hitch again when she leaned forward to touch it with her tongue. She loved that she could do that to him. She loved the way his eyes stayed closed when she kissed the silvering hair at his temple, the lobe of his ear. She loved the low, guttural way he growled her name when her hand ventured low over the washboard ripples of his abdomen. Mostly, she realized, she loved him.

It wasn’t wise. It wasn’t rational. It wasn’t even sensible, considering all that she knew about him. But the knowledge was there, as sure and as certain as anything she’d ever felt in her entire life.

His heart was thundering beneath her palm when his arm slipped behind her thighs. His other locked around her back an instant before he rose and swept her off her feet.

Like a primitive warrior claiming his mate, he carried her to the leather sofa and lowered her to stand beside it
in the buttery glow of the room’s only light. Her feet had barely hit the ground when he bent to her neck, kissing the sensitive flesh behind her ear while he propped his foot on the sofa to untie his shoe, then toed off that one to do the same with the other. The faint clink of metal as he unbuckled his belt joined the intimate sounds of their breathing and the warning rasp of his zipper.

“I want you,” he murmured, peeling off his shirt, ridding himself of his pants. “I want you now.”

She was like a drug in his body, each taste of her making him crave her more. And the more he craved, the more he needed to touch, to explore, to learn every inch of her.

His flesh felt on fire as he caught her to him, lowering her to the soft cushions, covering her with his body. The passion he’d suspected in her was definitely there. But even now, naked in his arms, she wasn’t letting that passion completely go. He wanted her to feel the same urgency clawing at him, the same need that had him damning restraint because he’d never needed any woman the way he needed her at that moment.

Daring her to hold back, he kissed his way down her stomach, stroking her thighs, teasing the very heart of her femininity.

“Harrison.”

His name was a thin, ragged whisper on her lips.

“Say it again,” he murmured, his voice a dark rasp as she jerked beneath him. “My name. Say it again.”

She did, the pleading sound of it inflaming him as much as the feel of her clinging hands.

He’d intended to wait. To drive her mad with the same desire he felt before caving in to it himself. The way she reached for him, her fingers digging into his flesh to pull
him closer, her mouth seeking his, destroyed the thought completely.

Leather squeaked as he pulled her under him. She urged him closer, wrapping her legs around him, making it impossible for him to remember why it had been so important that he retain that last bit of control. All that mattered was that he get inside her.

Then, he was, and he wasn’t sure he was thinking at all. His existence narrowed to nothing but sensation. The feel of her welcoming him. The rightness of being exactly where he was as he thrust forward wanting to get as close as he humanly could. Then he was aware only of the need to take her with him before his mind blanked and he spilled himself inside her.

Awareness returned by degrees.

His labored breathing began to slow. His thundering heart worked down to a steadier beat. The thin sheen of perspiration on his body cooled the heated skin of his back. But his first awareness was of the warm, sweetly shaped woman in his arms.

Her supple muscles had been utterly relaxed, as spent and limp as his own. With her body curled around his, he could feel a fine tension beginning to thread its way through her limbs.

Still holding her, he angled his weight to the side as much as he could on the narrow sofa and slipped his fingers through her hair. He had the feeling reality was trying to tug her back, too. But the way she’d tucked her head against his shoulder made him think that she wasn’t quite ready to emerge from the protective little island of intimacy they’d created.

That was fine with him. He wasn’t ready to let go of it himself. She felt too good in his arms. Later he could
deal with all the reasons why he shouldn’t have caved in to his need for her. Right now he just wanted to absorb the strangely peaceful feeling of her lying against him, and hold off the world for as long as he could.

The thought had barely registered when the electronic ring of the telephone mercilessly tore through the intimate silence. Reality jerked hard. In the space of a heartbeat he felt her limbs tense, and all the reasons he should never have reached for her lined up in his mind like a battalion of good little soldiers.

“I need to answer that.”

She blinked up at his chin, caution shadowing her lovely face as she shoved her hair from her eyes.

His jaw tightened as the electronic summons sounded again. Pulling his body from hers, he groped for the telephone on the table at the end of the big sofa.

“Do you want my shirt?”

“Please.”

The awkwardness Gwen felt was undeniable as he sat up, answered the phone with a flat “Monteque” and snatched his shirt from the floor. He didn’t seem the least self-conscious about his nakedness as he handed the garment to her. He didn’t even seem particularly conscious of hers when he picked up his pants and pulled them on while holding the receiver to his ear with his shoulder.

“Sure,” he said, shoving his fingers through his hair on his way to his desk. “I can be at the palace in ten minutes. Where do we meet?”

Quickly stuffing her arms into his sleeves, Gwen looked from Harrison’s magnificent back to the clothes draped over the arm of the wing chair and scattered over the carpet. She couldn’t believe how completely she’d abandoned herself to him. Or how uncertain she was feeling now that she was no longer in his arms.

The vulnerability she’d sensed in him was nowhere in evidence. The need for her was gone. He was once again completely in control, and she had no idea where that left her.

She picked up her underwear, slipped them on and looked around for her bra. Spotting it puddled by the nearest wing chair, she headed there, snaring her stockings on the way.

She’d just picked up the filmy lace along with his tie when he hung up and turned to face her.

Before he could say a word, she skimmed a glance up his powerful chest and held out the long strip of black fabric. “Can I get a ride with you?”

Holding out the camisole he’d picked up himself, he traded lace for gabardine. “Of course you can.”

Frowning, he caught her by the chin when she started to turn away.

He regretted the interruption that had pulled him so rudely from her. He wasn’t terribly proud of the fact that he was grateful for it, too. It gave him no time to consider why he should have kept his hands to himself.

Having blown it already, he threaded his fingers through her thoroughly tousled hair. She looked like a lovely fallen angel, he thought, and brushed his lips over her lush mouth.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

No, she wasn’t. Not with him looking so anxious to leave. “I’m fine,” she lied, and gave him a faint little smile to prove it.

“Good.” Seeming perfectly willing to believe her, he pulled back and handed her her slip. “We need to go. Gage found something.”

T
he ride to the palace in the back of the black sedan took all of five minutes. Harrison spent most of that time on the cell phone asking Carson Logan to meet him and Pierce outside Prince Owen’s room and taking a call from Sir Selwyn who was apparently already there.

Gwen spent it nursing the knot of nerves in her stomach.

She had pulled herself together as best she could in the small private bathroom in Harrison’s office, then hurried with him down to meet the car. Despite the fact that she’d combed her hair into its sleek, low ponytail after she’d found her clip and had smoothed most of the wrinkles from her suit, she felt totally thrown together.

She was missing an earring.

It was a stupid thing to obsess about. The small gold-colored ball that matched the one she’d taken off and put in her handbag wasn’t even a good piece of jewelry. But
thinking about it was preferable to beating herself up over falling in love with a man whose idea of commitment probably meant sticking around for the weekend.

She didn’t fault him for the hurried departure. Whatever Gage Weston had found had to be important for the entire RET to be converging on the prince’s apartment. She didn’t even have a problem understanding that Harrison was a man consumed by duty and dedication, and that duty had been and always would be his first priority. It was all he’d really ever had.

She understood the circumstances. She’d just had no practice having an affair. Beyond absolute discretion, she had no idea what the protocol was. There were no manuals or rules that she was aware of, and it wasn’t the sort of thing she could ask her friends about without raising questions that canceled the discretion part.

She wasn’t even sure what Harrison wanted from her now. He’d threaded his fingers through hers and curled them together between them in the seat, but he hadn’t said a word to her since they’d entered the car.

Even his glance told her nothing. His focus remained mostly on the back of their driver’s head.

“We’re past the main gate,” she heard him say to Sir Selwyn, his thumb absently rubbing hers. “I’ll be upstairs in about three minutes.”

The reassuring warmth of his palm seeped into her. She couldn’t believe how grateful she was for the small contact. Or how relieved she was that he wanted it himself. Hating how vulnerable she felt, determined not to let him know it, she glanced toward the side portico that led to the private residence. As they approached it, she could see Colonel Prescott pacing between two of the large columns waiting for the admiral to arrive. Whatever news he had was apparently too significant to wait.

The cell phone closed with a quiet click. In the dusky light from the lampposts they passed, Harrison’s rugged features looked carved of granite.

“You’ll tell me what they found?” she asked, knowing it was more necessary at the moment to focus on what they were doing now, rather than what they had done.

“I imagine we’ll hear together. Prescott looks like he’s ready to pace out of his skin.”

“He does seem rather anxious.”

His eyes glittered on hers as the car came to a stop, his expression unreadable in the shadows. But he said nothing else in the few seconds that passed before he gave her hand a little squeeze and pulled his away.

His driver had already climbed out and was opening his door.

Her door swung open an instant later.

“My lady,” came the greeting from her side.

Harrison was already at the back of the car. Colonel Prescott stood with his hand extended, waiting to help her.

“Lady Corbin,” he greeted, polite as always. “I didn’t realize you would be joining us.”

Smile, she coached herself, and managed a commendable one as she rose to stand beside him.

“I’d gone to see if there was anything to report to Her Majesty about Prince Owen,” she told him, enormously grateful for the preoccupation that had him barely smiling back. “The admiral kindly allowed me to ride with him when you called.”

She should have felt more awkward. She was sure she would have, too, if Harrison hadn’t come up her behind just then and flattened his hand against the small of her back.

“I think she should come with us.” He guided her
forward, the gesture appearing more courteous than personal to anyone watching. “It will save having to repeat what she needs to relay to the queen.”

The colonel seemed to appreciate the logic in that. Falling into step beside her, he also seemed as aware as Harrison was of the others around them. Both men fell silent as they headed past the sentries flanking the French doors under the portico. Another set of guards stood post inside at the arched entry to the long colonnade.

Gwen was aware of those other ears, too. But she was far more conscious of the proprietary feel of Harrison’s hand as he guided her into the marble-pillared walkway, and a vague sense of loss when he no longer had an excuse to touch her and that reassuring weight fell away.

“So what did Gage find?” he asked, his voice low.

Under the echo of their footsteps, Pierce spoke just as quietly. “A handmade weapon. It was wedged between the leg and headboard of the prince’s bed. It’s a five-sided throwing device. We’ve already had it finger-printed.”

“A throwing device,” Harrison repeated, his brow furrowing. “Like a ninja star?”

“Exactly.”

Gwen frowned in incomprehension.

Harrison must have noticed.

“It’s basically a couple of inches of metal disc with points or blades that give it a star shape,” he told her. “It’s small, convenient and silent. A master can throw one into the neck of his target from a hundred feet away and you’ll barely see his hand move.”

Gwen gave a small shudder. Charming, she thought.

“I’ve only known one man who could do that.” His tone turned forbidding. “He was Royal Guard until he disappeared a couple of years ago.”

“Gunther Westbury.” Pierce gave a grim nod. “The device had the same inverted
W
on the end of each spike that was Westbury’s trademark. It also had his prints on it.”

His name had actually once been Sir Gunther Westbury. Gwen remembered him because his departure had been such a scandal. No one knew why the good and powerful knight had suddenly resigned his commission, returned the sword of his knighthood and deserted his country, but King Morgan had been wounded to the core by his defection, and absolutely furious.

The thought of such a traitorous action clearly did not please Harrison, either. But finally having a solid lead definitely did. “Given the time he spent in the corps, he would certainly know the layout of the grounds and the routines of the guards. Once it was out that the king was ill, he would have known security would be lighter around the king’s apartments because he wasn’t there. With Prince Dylan gone, that left only Owen in that wing.”

Pierce had reached the same conclusion. “We figure he didn’t go after him right away, though. We know Westbury had no problem entering the king’s apartments. Since he used the king’s stationery and computer for the ransom note, he would have gone there first, then headed off to get Owen.”

“Who put up a fight,” Harrison said, continuing the scenario. “That would explain why the weapon was in such an odd place. It isn’t something Westbury would have used at close range, so it must have come off him during the struggle and been kicked under the bed.”

The golden threads in Harrison’s beret medallion caught the light from the wall sconces as he drew to a halt. On his shoulders the stars of his rank gleamed
against navy blue. “Back up to the stationery,” he muttered, suddenly looking troubled. “He would have gone into the king’s apartment and used that to show how vulnerable the royal family is. Do we have any idea how long he was in there?”

“The man trained for covert ops. He can move like a shadow. It could have been anywhere from minutes to an hour.” Pierce’s voice went flat as he concluded. “I take it you’re thinking the same thing we are.”

“So what’s being done about it?”

“The dogs are in there now.”

“Where are the royals?”

Pierce’s first thought was obviously for his fiancée. “Meredith is at my flat with her bodyguard. Princess Megan is being guarded at her home with her husband. Princess Ana is with the queen in the queen’s apartment. We ran the dogs through their wing first.”

Gwen clutched her handbag a little tighter. They had come to a stop not far from the foyer with its wide stairway separating the two wings. The usual red-jacketed soldiers flanked it. As she had listened with growing trepidation to the men’s exchange, she had been vaguely aware of the guards. Only now did she notice two men in army uniforms conversing with each other at the top of the stairway. One leaned over to check the underside of the stairway banister.

She wasn’t totally sure what was happening. But she was growing more apprehensive than she cared to let on. “Excuse me, Colonel. The dogs you’re speaking of. What exactly are they looking for?”

The young commander’s glance cut to the man beside her. “Any sort of incendiary device,” Pierce replied at Harrison’s faint nod. “Or anything that might harm a person when he opened a door or drawer or that sort of
thing. But the queen’s wing is clear,” he hurried to remind her. “A special team went in right after the dogs.”

“My room was searched, too?”

“Yes, ma’am. You weren’t available, so we had to go in without you. I assure you, we disturbed as little as possible.”

She understood the necessity. She was glad they’d done what they had. Still, the thought of booby traps, and strange men going through her private space left her feeling vulnerable in ways far different than she had only minutes ago.

There were advantages to focusing on obligations. Wondering if that might not be why Harrison devoted his life to the responsibilities he’d chosen to accept, she forced her attention to the queen. If bomb-sniffing canines had been through the royal apartments, there was no doubt in her mind that the queen was wide awake and pacing the nap off the antique carpets in her rooms.

“Did you speak with Her Majesty?”

“Sir Selwyn did. About half an hour ago.” The steady beat of footsteps drew Pierce’s glance behind him. After noting the approach of one of the men from the stairs, he turned back to her. “All she’s been told is that we needed to search the wing as a precaution. She and Princess Ana were sitting with the king at the time. They were safe in the tunnel, so we kept them there until the search was completed.”

And while all that had been going on, Gwen thought, she had been safe in the arms of the man beside her.

It didn’t occur to her to question that she had felt completely secure when Harrison held her. Something about him had made her feel protected from the moment he’d thrown his jacket over her shoulders and pushed her in from the rain. In his position and in his soul, he was a
man of principle. A noble man. A defender to the core of his being. She could trust him with her very life.

She just couldn’t trust him with her heart.

“Then, she doesn’t know of the weapon Duke Weston found?” she asked, suddenly aware that she’d actually inched closer to Harrison as Pierce had spoken. “Or, what made you conduct the search?”

“No, my lady.” Apology entered the younger man’s tone. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment?”

The captain who’d approached stopped a discreet distance behind him. Turning on his heal, Pierce took a step to see what the problem was, only to turn right back with a frown carved into his face.

“There’s one more thing,” he said to Harrison. “The weapon has a black sword etched into it. It looks as if Westbury might have joined the Black Knights.” Looking as matter-of-fact as he sounded, he nodded to her, then glanced back at his colleague’s equally impassive expression. “I’ll see you upstairs.”

To Gwen, Harrison’s implacable features gave away nothing as Pierce and the other officer headed for the wide marble stairway. Like the other morning when he and the others had been informed of the call from the kidnappers, Harrison’s thoughts seemed to remain solely on what needed to be dealt with at that moment.

What he needed to deal with at that particular moment was her.

“What should I tell Her Majesty?” she asked, certain from the way he glanced after the men that he was anxious to go. “I’m not sure I understand what’s going on.”

He wasn’t, either. The information about Westbury was huge. He just needed time to digest it. “Tell her we have reason to believe the prince’s kidnapper was in the palace long enough to have sabotaged certain areas. The
princes’ rooms and the king’s apartments in particular. That’s why the dogs were brought in.”

“She’s going to want to know why that wasn’t done before.”

“Not if you don’t bring it up.”

The look she gave him was remarkably level.

“So why wasn’t it?”

“Because it first appeared that the kidnapper’s goal was only to take the prince hostage. Since nothing looked disturbed anywhere other than the prince’s room, no one had reason to suspect any other motive.”

“Except to prove how vulnerable the royal family is by using the king’s personal stationery,” she reminded him. “And maybe,” she speculated, easily accepting his touch when he took her elbow to walk her to the queen’s drawing room, “to prove how good he is himself.”

“I don’t doubt that.” Letting his thoughts follow her lead, distracted by it, he unconsciously started to slide his hand to her back. Catching himself because there were guards ahead of them, he dropped his hand completely. He hadn’t even realized what he was doing until he was doing it, and he was standing too close to her to make the gesture look casual. “He was known to master everything he took on.”

Seeing his considering frown, Gwen hesitated.

“What are you thinking?” she asked, a moment later.

“That the Knights apparently always dress in black.”

Her expression mirrored his. “It would be a practical color. Pierce just said he moves like a shadow. Black would just make him less visible.”

“It’s also the color of the ninja.”

The information seemed significant enough to Harrison to deepen his concentration. It meant nothing to Gwen. All she knew about ninja was that she’d once bought
pajamas with ninja turtles on them for Mrs. Ferth’s grandson’s birthday. The child had apparently been crazy about the militant-looking little reptiles. “And the weapon he uses is theirs, too?”