The Perfect Prince (12 page)

 

“Tell me why you are so unhappy being my Princess?” he murmured against her throat. He licked her racing pulse firmly with his caressing tongue as he drank the sweetness from her skin. “What are you running from?”

 

“I am not running from anything,” Nadja lied, breathless. Olek froze.

 

Nadja was too mindless to notice at first. Her body kept moving against his, rubbing herself to his hand. A moan came from her lips. Slowly, as she realized Olek no longer kissed her, she opened her eyes to look at him. To her utter horror and disappointment, he deliberately pulled his body away.

 

“A-ah, no,” she gasped.

 

Setting his hand over her head once more, he leaned so that her leg slid off his hip, her foot splashing in the water. Staring deep into her troubled gaze, he frowned. Her chest was heaving. The scent of her desire was in his head, trying to fog his brain. “You said you would be honest and loyal.”

 

“Olek,” Nadja pleaded. “Come back. Don’t do this now. Please, just kiss me.”

 

“You said you would be honest,” he repeated, harder, fighting to gain his control.

 

It would be so easy to just finish his game. The fire in his denied body raged, making his words harsh, hollow.

 

Her body writhed in anguish. Nadja’s features snapped in anger. Wrinkling her face, she growled in warning, “Olek!”

 

“Honesty,” Olek yelled, knowing that his tactics weren’t fair. But, in battle and in desire, nothing was fair. Her unreasonable feelings about his station weren’t fair.

 

“You said you were a working man!” Nadja stated in return, her tone deadly in its softness. Her arms struggled to be free, though this time it was to punch him. She tried to kick her leg out to strike him. Her voice never rising to a yell, she proclaimed, “You lie, I lie. I think it’s only just.”

 

“I didn’t lie,” Olek growled in mounting frustration. His voice rose, daring her to do the same. He wanted to see her explode, to show anything but this frighteningly emotionless calm that was reclaiming her eyes. Even her passion was being swallowed up into her hardening gaze.

 

“Untie me, Royal Highness,” Nadja said evenly. Only the puffing breaths lifting her chest in rapid succession gave away that she still desired him. Her blue eyes shot daggers at him from the porcelain depths of her face. “I am through talking to you. I’m going back to work.”

 

“Untie yourself,” he growled, tossing his hand into the air at her. His body hurt too badly at the moment to stop and think. “You said you didn’t need my help.” Olek left her there, alone, afraid that if he touched her again, it would be to strangle her.

 

Nadja watched him storm off to the bathroom in amazement. The door slammed shut behind him. She waited a long moment for him to come back and say he was kidding. He didn’t. He really wasn’t going to help her down.

 

Nadja’s face hardened in outrage, but she kept silent, swallowing her angry words deep inside until they burned as hotly as her passion. Her body aching, she braced her feet on the wet rocks. Their coarse surface gave her hold as she inched up. Flinging her wrist several times, she managed to loosen one hand from the bonds. It came flying forward at  
the jerking movement. The second was much easier as she got herself down. She glared bitterly at the bathroom door as she crawled out of the fountain.

 

Nadja left her clothes behind as she stumbled naked to their bedroom. Her thoughts were black as she cursed him in every way she knew how. She even invented a few new curses when she ran out.

 

“That is the last time you will ever touch me, Prince,” she swore, using one of his best tunics as a towel and trampling it to the closet floor beneath her feet. All the time she wished it was his face she smashed. She dressed quickly, hissing and cursing in displeasure the entire time.

 

Eyeing the bed, she knew there was no way she could spend the night in it with him. So instead, she threw his pillow out the open doorway into the hall and slammed the door shut, locking it firmly behind her.

 

* * * *

 

Olek stormed the length of his bathroom in frustration. His little bride was more than he had ever bargained for. Oh, but she was a stubborn little vixen! The image of her wet, restrained body stayed with him, making his arousal painfully hard when he would have it lessen.

Bitter, he shrugged out of his clothes and climbed into the natural hot spring that was his tub. Closing his eyes, Nadja’s naked form danced before him, taunting him with what he couldn’t claim. His jaw hardened resentfully. Olek lessened his manly torment by stroking himself to a resentful release. When he was finished, the tension might have been gone from his hips, but the aching was still there in his body.

 

Drying off, he wrapped himself in a robe. His eyes sought the fountain. He hated to admit that part of him hoped she would still be there, trapped, needing him. She wasn’t. Olek decided it was a good thing, as he would more and likely not be able to control his actions.

 

Going to the bedroom, he stepped over his pillow lying in the hall with a suspicious frown marring his already furrowed brow. Testing the door, he realized she had locked him out of his own room. His nostrils flared in irritation.

 

Nadja listened to his angry footsteps. He banged on the door, but didn’t break through it. He growled out a bunch of multi-lingual curses, much more effective than her earlier efforts had been. She just shivered and kept quiet, her body trembling violently to hear his powerful voice. A traitorous part of her wanted him to break down the door and demand his husband rights from her more than willing body. Instead, she heard Olek stomp away.

 

* * * *

 

The next day Nadja awoke way before the dawn. She quickly dressed and snuck from the bedroom. Olek was sleeping on the couch. His robe was parted over his chest, mocking her with the deep folds of his muscles, which she couldn’t touch. Tilting her head, she curiously tried to see up his thigh, but the robe hid his more private area from view. Nadja didn’t wait around for him to wake up, but instead went into her laboratory, grabbed a book on herbs, her translator, paper, and a pencil. Crossing silently over the marble hall, she ignored the water fountain, her pants and shredded shirt still floating in its moving waters.

 

Silently, she slipped out the front door with a whispered command and left him.

 

* * * *

 

Olek’s eyes opened with a weary sigh. He blinked, looking automatically at the front door. It was closed. Thinking he must have been dreaming, he stretched his tight arms over his head as he stood. He needed to exercise. Zoran would undoubtedly get on him for missing practice for the last couple of days. His brother wouldn’t favor a new marriage as a reasonable excuse to slack.

More than likely, Zoran was out on the field every morning with the dawn, leaving his little bride abed while he went to drill the soldiers in battle exercises. From what his father said about the unlucky state of all the Princes’ marriages, Olek almost felt bad for the soldiers.

 

Zoran was a hard taskmaster on his good days. If he was angry, he would be a monster to be under the command of. He chuckled, remembering Ualan covered in swamp muck the other night as he passed him in the hall.

 

Seeing that Nadja wasn’t in the bedroom, he assumed she was in the sun room.

 

Quickly, he dressed, frowning to see his war council tunic damp and crumpled on the floor. Picking it up, he knew he would have to get it laundered immediately. The war council could meet at any time on the shortest of notice. Theirs was a land troubled by an uneasy peace. He should know. He had negotiated the peace.

 

Grabbing his sword, he strapped it over his shoulder to let it fall to his waist.

 

Maybe a sour Zoran was just what his body needed. A day of that man’s workouts was enough to purge the foul temper out of even the most dedicated of soldiers.

 

Slipping out of the house without alerting Nadja, he tossed the tunic to the first servant he saw on his way to the practice field. The man nodded and took it straightway to laundry without having to be asked.

 

Olek strode through the passageways and out the front gate. A courtyard surrounded the palace fortress, close to the surrounding valley, near where the breeding festival grounds were. In the valley sat a small village under the protection of the House of Draig. The roads were of the rocky earth, smoothed flat and even. The village was kept 
immaculately clean, built with almost a military perfection of angles.

 

Olek loved his people almost as much as he loved his family. It was his duty to protect them the best he could. It was hard work and he took his duty very seriously, as did all the Draig Princes. Sighing wearily, the burden seemed particularly heavy that morning.

 

The villagers’ homes were constructed of rock and wood, so that even the poorest of families looked to be prosperous. No one was left wanting for food or clothing and everyone was expected to pull their own weight the best they could. The Draig population wore light linen tunics during the day much like the royal family, but minus the dragon crest and finer embroidery. They were a happy people, hard working and honest.

 

From the ground, because of the carefully planned angle of the castle’s design, the mountain palace looked like a solid mountain with a gate in the side leading to a village.

 

In times of war, even the iron gate could be camouflaged with rock to hide its exact location from the enemy. It was impenetrable. At such a time, the castle could fit all of the villagers within it.

 

Olek found Zoran exactly where he thought he would be, standing, arms crossed, before the young soldiers, shouting commands. Olek nodded solemnly at his brother.

 

Zoran smiled a devilish older-brother grin, nodded back, and shouted the command for an attack. Olek blinked in surprise, but quickly swung his sword from his waist, as the whole of Zoran’s sparring battalion came to tackle him to the ground.

 

Nadja spent her afternoon in the forest, crawling around the ground, as she looked up plant roots in her book and taught herself their Qurilixian names and properties. By the time she headed back home, her hands and knees were covered with red dirt. Her hair was frizzed out of her bun and a small smile of accomplishment lined her lips.

 

When a few of the young boys had stumbled upon her while she gathered, she invited them to help her search for plants. They made a great game of it, instantly trying to outdo the other for her attention by bringing her the most. One boy even cut his arm on a branch trying to climb up to a high peak to fetch her a bit of moss for her collection. She used a piece of the moss along with other herbs to make him a salve. He wore the makeshift bandage she’d fashioned for him out of a leaf with pride--much to the envy of the others that had then tried to hurt themselves in similar ways.

 

As she walked, even married men stopped to look at her, instantly as enamored as the young boys had been. The men smiled to themselves, as the dignified beauty absently nodded her head at them. Not even her dirty clothing could detract from her charm.

 

The boys ran ahead of her an hour before, spreading their tales of the strange new Princess and displaying the war wounds they had bravely received in her service. So far, she was the only Princess they had seen out on the grounds and they were all curious about her and the others.

 

Her arms loaded with a bag full of plant roots, her book, and translator, Nadja made her way to Olek’s wing of the castle. The door opened on her command and she stepped in. She ordered it closed behind her, trying not to make any noise as she crept to the laboratory. Everything was as she left it that morning.

 

A half hour later, everything transplanted and labeled to her liking, she went to the kitchen. To her surprise, she saw Olek wasn’t in his office. Curious, she searched the house. He was gone.

 

She washed her hands in the kitchen sink. Not bothering to change, she grabbed a plateful of fruit. Seeing a red foil bag in the back of the refrigerator with her name on it, she opened it and grimaced. It was chocolate. It smelled temptingly sweet, but she remembered all too well what it had felt like coming up. She wouldn’t be trying that again any time soon. She pushed the bag back to its corner.

 

* * * *

 

That evening when Olek stumbled in, worn from fighting off wave after wave of attacks from Zoran's men, Nadja was still with her plants. A few of her books were spread 
out over the dining table next to the kitchen wall along with papers filled with her tight handwriting. He saw that she had been writing in his language and smiled to see a few misspelled words and grammatical errors.

 

Wearily, he dropped some food into his fish tanks. The blue fish came to watch him, blinked at him, and then followed the wave of his hand as if he was a friend. Almost too tired to move, Olek made his way to take a bath. Nadja was still inside her room when he finished, the door shut to him. The books were gone and the table was cleared off.

 

Olek was almost sorry he had allowed the door built on the sun room, since he could think of no excuse for going in there. It wasn’t likely she would want him anywhere near her after what happened the night before. He couldn’t rightly blame her.

 

To his everlasting shame, he remembered leaving her tied up and helpless on the fountain. He had been so angry, his body past the point of the most virtuous man’s tolerance. Her begging voice echoed in his head. His body’s suffering was his own fault.

 

She had asked him to fulfill their needs, had urged him to kiss her. But, Olek knew that if he wanted a happy marriage, she needed to accept him fully.

 

Grabbing a glass of wine and some of his papers, he sat on his couch before the fire. His pillow was still there from that morning and he knew that he would more than likely spend the night where he was.

 

He was scratching the back of his head, reading a particularly frustrating document from the Lithor Republic from across the star system--it took twelve pages of scrambled wording before he figured out they were merely requesting the exports of ore and wilddeor meat--when he heard an excited yell from within Nadja’s sanctuary.

 

Blinking, he looked up in surprise.

 

Nadja came rushing out. Her clothes were covered in dried, red mud and her hair was frizzed eccentrically around her dirt-smudge face. Her eyes found him instantly, as she proclaimed, “I need a guinea pig.”

 

“A what kind of pig?” Olek frowned. Boy, she was even lovely covered in dirt.

 

His body leapt with the need to kiss her smiling face.

 

“A test dummy,” she said in distraction, coming for him.

 

“A what?” he asked, growing weary at her determined look. He couldn’t so easily forget the green acid she made the day before because she mistranslated a word.

 

“Just hold still,” Nadja said coming to sit beside him. “This won’t hurt a bit. I’d use it on myself, but I couldn’t wake myself up.” Olek saw her hand reaching for him and jerked back in dismay. Glancing down, he saw she held a green plant with a yellow center. The plants were found in abundance on the forest floor around the village. One smell and he’d….

 

Olek reacted too late. Nadja rubbed the plant beneath his nose and he dropped instantly onto her lap. She jolted, feeling the weight of his head buried in-between her thighs, face down. His breath heated into her flesh as he slept.

 

“Huh,” she whispered in amazement. Her body jolted wickedly at his weight. The 
image of his dark hair against her was shooting vivid sparks of pleasure all over her limbs. Weakly, she sighed, “It really does work fast.” Pushing him up, she trembled at the rush in her veins. She had tried to keep herself busy to ignore her feelings for him. For a moment, in her excitement to try her discovery, she had forgotten she was mad at him. Now she looked at him, she studied his handsome, motionless face. According to her notes, the size of the flower would only knock a man of his size out for about ten minutes.

 

Olek’s lips were parted in silent breath and she couldn’t resist. Lightly, she kissed him, letting her mouth feel his. Her hand found hold on his sturdy neck, resting over his pulse. Her tongue hesitantly edged out to try and discover more of him. Slowly, she let her fingers trail down his chest only to stop nervously on his hip. He tasted like wine and she nearly swooned.

 

Shaking herself, she pulled her lips away. Her heart beat erratically in her chest. It wouldn’t do to get caught molesting him while he slept. Gingerly, she took the jar of antidote cream clutched in her fingers and smeared some beneath his nose.

 

Olek blinked, jerking as he became aware. Angrily, he glared at her. Feeling the cream under his nose, he swiped at it.

 

“What did you do?” he asked, furious. Instantly, he darted forward to grab her hand. Her pulse raced erratically beneath his curling fingers.

 

Nadja blinked in surprise at the suddenness of his movements. “What? You’re not hurt.” “What did you do to me?” Olek demanded, suspiciously tasting his lips.

 

“I just needed to try this cream,” Nadja began. His hard glare cut her off and he shook her.

 

“I am not your … guine-a pig,” Olek hissed, remembering her word for it. “You won’t experiment on me! What did you do?”

 

“It’s harmless,” she said, lifting up the small jar. “Look, it’s just an herbal cream.

 

You could practically eat it and be fine. It would taste bad, but it won’t kill you.” He eyed the cream and then her. Again, he tasted his lips. As his heart began to slow, he could definitely taste her on his mouth. Nadja colored slightly, but admitted to nothing.“Your books,” she began weakly. “It said that soldiers who fall in battle in a patch of this stuff often are rendered helpless. The enemy can … you know … get them in their sleep.” Olek’s brow rose on his face, but he was listening. In the past it had been a problem, but they had learned to get around it. Often, forest battles were avoided unless necessary.

 

Sounding very scientific, she stated, “To kill the plant off completely would be disastrous to the ecological stability of the … well, here, come see, I drew a chart.” Nadja tried to stand, but his grip tightened on her hands. Nadja blinked in surprise 
at the fury in him. She didn’t think he would be that mad. Her father used his new concoctions on her all the time ever since she was small and she'd never been hurt. All right, he had given her an annoying case of warts once, but he did fix it.

 

“First, I’ll have your promise you will never do anything like that again,” he growled.“Why?” she blinked, thoroughly confused. “Do you think that I would do anything that would hurt you?”

 

“Maybe not intentionally,” he shot, his voice dark. “But you don’t know what you are dabbling with. Remember the green acid? What if you had killed me?” Nadja gasped. The green acid had been an honest mistake and she had been testing for poisonous properties in one of the plants. He didn’t trust her at all. He thought her stupid. It was worse than a slap on the face.

 

A knock on the door stopped her heated reply. It was getting late in the evening and Olek frowned, going to answer it. Turning to her, he said, “This conversation isn’t finished.”

 

She paled, seeing that he was extremely irate.

 

Olek opened the door. A man stood there, hat in hand. Nadja came around the side of the fountain and smiled at their visitor. He nodded to the Prince, and acknowledged politely, “Draea Anwealda.”

 

Olek nodded back, wondering what the man wanted. He didn’t have to wait long.

 

The man limped forward and bowed at Nadja.

 

“Princess Nadja,” the man said, his English words strongly accented. She stood, smiling curiously at him.

 

“Hello, welcome,” she said, waving him forward. She purposefully ignored Olek.

 

The man smiled in relief, limping over to her.

 

Olek frowned, following slowly behind. He couldn’t hear what all the man said to his wife, but he heard the words ‘foot’ and ‘hurt’. Suddenly, Nadja glanced over to him and frowned. Leading the man back to the sun room, she shut the door firmly behind her.

 

Olek scowled, scratching the back of his head in confusion. If the man hadn’t been so old, he would have barged in after her. However, he didn’t want to start anymore rumors about his and his brothers’ married lives than already were circulating throughout the village.

 

Sitting on the couch, he waited. Not fifteen minutes later, Nadja led the man out of the sun room. He was no longer limping and he had a wide grin of appreciation on his face. He took her hand enthusiastically in his and shook it. Nadja leaned over and kissed his cheek. The man almost jumped out of his skin in embarrassment, looking to see what her husband would do to him for the breech.

 

Olek merely smiled at him, though it was a hard, tight smile.

 

The man bowed happily to Olek and murmured, “Many thanks, Draea Anwealda, many thanks.”

 

Olek stood, letting the man out. When he returned, he asked, “Mind telling me what that was all about?”

 

“Yes, I do mind,” she said. “It’s none of your business.”

 

“Nadja,” he warned.

 

“Weren’t you just yelling at me a minute ago? Something about you not trusting me? Or was it you thought that I’m too stupid and would kill you on accident?”

 

“What are you up to?” Olek asked, suddenly realizing that he may have intense feelings for his wife, but the crystal didn’t make him know her. There was a wealth of secrets behind her eyes that he needed to discover. The passion was there. The connection was shaky at best.

 

“Come sit on the couch and I’ll tell you,” she purred with mock sweetness.

 

Olek grew wary, seeing her expression. There was an impending scheme lurking within her. He moved to sit by her side.

 

Nadja purposefully licked her lips, coming closer to his mouth with hers. He tensed. Her hand slowly worked its way up his strong bicep. His body froze in anticipation. He could feel her light touch all over his body. His manhood lurched in excitement, becoming full.

 

“I was working,” she said, blinking innocently. “And I just earned five hafoe eggs for my breakfast.”

 

Nadja wasn’t sure what a hafoe was, but it didn’t really matter.

 

Olek blinked, confused. Her lips hovered closer, her hand working to the side of his face. He tensed, waiting.

 

“As for you and your distrust, I have two words,” she murmured softly. His eyes lit with anticipation. “Sweet dreams.”

 

“Sweet…?” Too late he saw the large plant in her hands as she crushed it before his nose. With a curse dying on his lips, he was out again. This time, Nadja pushed him over. Taking his papers out from underneath him, she stacked them neatly on the floor, grabbed his glass of wine for herself and went to bed, leaving him fast asleep on the couch.

 

* * * *

 

Nadja was missing when Olek awoke, but he was in too foul of a mood to go and look for her. He was dejected, confused. There was so much she wouldn’t tell him about herself and he didn’t know where exactly he had gone wrong with her. That night in the tent had held so much promise for their future and it had all just come spiraling down since. His body was sore from Zoran’s thorough workout and he decided to skip his exercise yet again. Let his brother take his foul temper out on someone else for awhile, Olek had his own demons to deal with.