The Prince Kidnaps a Bride (14 page)

“Should, um, do things out here that I... ” She caught her breath as he slid inside her a bare inch.

“That you what?”

“What? Oh. That I did in the deepest, darkest... ” He made her feel so weak, so liquid with desire, she couldn’t get enough air.

“Deepest, darkest... ?”

With great effort, she finished, “Deepest, darkest moments of the night.” Then she concentrated on breathing. Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Dipping his head, he used his tongue to caress her.

She whimpered. Nothing she’d ever done for herself equaled a single touch of his mouth. His heat, the dampness, his tongue, so rough and practiced... .

His lips moved against her as he said, “Tell me what you did at the convent.”

She could no longer hold herself up on her elbows. She slid flat onto the grass. “I... ah... I touched myself where you have your tongue.”

“Did you press?” He demonstrated. “Or pluck?” He wrapped his lips around her and used a gentle suction.

Instantly, blood thundered in her ears. Desire clouded her vision. She arched up, supporting herself on her shoulders and her bottom.

He eased the ache with a gentle lapping motion. “Tell me,” he murmured, his warm, deep voice inviting confidences she’d never told another soul. “Tell me.”

“I was alone. The nuns... they prayed and served God, but I... I wasn’t one of them. I wasn’t even their religion. But I wasn’t... in the world, either.” She could scarcely articulate the words, but she needed to explain herself to him. Arnou would understand. “During the winter it was dark so much. No one spoke and I... oh, I would imagine a man... .”

“A prince?”

“No.” She half laughed, focused on the escalating sensation between her legs and barely aware of what she was revealing. “Just a man... who touched me and told me I was beautiful... .”

“You are beautiful.” His voice was enticement itself.

“And who lived with me my whole life and talked to me, and who did things to me... oh, Arnou, please!” Her fingers curled into the grass. The tiny stalks broke under her tension. “Please, Arnou. You have to... just a little more and I can... ”

“In the deepest, darkest moment of night, did you make yourself shudder and come?”

“Yes!”

“Like this?” With his lips and his tongue, he suckled on her. He seemed to know how much pressure to use, what pace to maintain, how to spin bliss from chastity.

Great tremors swept her. She cried aloud, spasming, the whole of her being concentrated on that center he had found so easily and ravished so skillfully. He nourished her climax, teasing her along until she thought she would die of joy.

Finally he let her subside.

She lay gasping on the ground, and all the stress of long lonely years evaporated in the heat of the fairy ring.

But he didn’t take his fingers away. Instead one circled the entrance to her body, over and over again, and little by little she found the demands within her building again.

His voice sounded as smooth and intoxicating as whiskey itself. “Did you put your finger inside?”

He was going to... going to... and she couldn’t bear it. It was too much: the sapphire sky, the jade grass, the frisking breeze, the forceful man... her startling nudity, her shocking admissions, her insatiable lustiness. “Arnou, please, don’t—”

He didn’t listen. She knew he wouldn’t.

His finger pierced her body.

She was damp, swollen, and ready, and as her passage closed around him, sensation, only just subsided, roared to life again. He set a rhythm her body somehow recognized—the rhythm of the ocean waves, the changing seasons, the passing stars. At his direction, her body surged and moved, rising and falling as his finger slid in and out. She shuddered in a completion that built and built... and paused... she hovered between disappointment and pleased exhaustion... .

His finger remained inside, caressing her, but her perception of fullness increased. Increased to the point of discomfort. Even to... pain.

She squirmed, trying to find her way back to delight.

“Two fingers, that’s all. Sweetheart, let me... ”

“No!” She tried to scoot away.

He held her in place with one arm around her hips—and once again, he put his mouth between her legs.

At that moment she realized—everything he’d done before had been nothing but an hors d’oeuvre. He thrust his fingers in and out, in and out, and at the same time he sucked on her, creating heat and desperation. He was hurting her, yet at the same time, he fed her pleasure with his lips and tongue. She struggled against him, strove with him, wanting to be free, wanting to submit. Passion—inappropriate, marvelous passion—had vanquished the self-contained princess and Sorcha both fought the change and reveled in it.

Best of all, Arnou offered her no choice. He controlled the moment and she had to surrender.

When she did, the anguish and the glory exceeded everything that had gone before. She came in a magnificent rush, whimpering and moaning, coiling and fighting, spasming again and again until exhaustion brought her to quiescence.

When she reclined panting on the ground, unable to move, covered with perspiration and so exhausted she could no longer think, Arnou rose up and covered her with his body.

He weighed her down. The fastenings on his clothing dug into her skin. He held her in his arms and kissed her forehead, her eyelids, her cheeks, and her lips. “Shhh. Sweetheart, you’re splendid. You’re beautiful. All I want is you.”

She appreciated his praise, yet all she wanted was him, and she had not had him. She wasn’t so far gone that she didn’t realize
that
.

She wrapped her legs around his hips and pushed herself up to him.

He answered, but the pressure of his clothed loins only drove her a little wilder. And it seemed he moved reluctantly.

Teetering on the edge of humiliation, she whispered, “Don’t you want me?”

The arm under her head trembled. Against her chest, his chest heaved. “Not want you?” That marvelously attractive voice rasped with need. “I’m dying for you.”

“Then take off your clothes and—”

“No.” Lifting his head, he gazed down at her. “No!”

“But I want—”

“One of us has to show some responsibility, and apparently that person has to be me.” He laughed harshly. “I should be stricken by a bolt of lightning for calling what I just did responsible, but we’ve got to stop, Sorcha. We’ve got to.”

“I felt that bolt of lightning.” She undulated her body against his.

“Dear girl, you were barely close enough to be singed.”

“Then show me.”

He stared at her as if stricken by a revelation, and not a pleasant one.

She didn’t like being viewed as if she were the first ant at the picnic. “You’re worried that I’m a princess and you’re a common man, but there are precedents. Catherine of Russia took lovers—”

He placed his hand over her mouth, and if anything, his gaze grew more horrified. “We aren’t going to make it all the way without... ”

What was the man talking about? “Without... ?”

His lips moved silently, as if he couldn’t quite say what he meant. Then he heaved a huge sigh. Wetting his lips, he said, “We’re going to have to make a little detour. You need to spend a night in an inn.”

“A detour?” She lay naked in the grass with a man on top of her. The echoes of passion had barely subsided. And he was talking about their
route
. Urgently she tried to bring the conversation back to the
now
. “There was an English queen of French origins, Isabelle by name, and she took lovers, too.”

“A detour will take precious time, which we don’t have, but I can’t fight this.”

If he’d reacted with anger or interest or with any great emotion, she’d have continued to argue. But he sounded absentminded.

Mortifying.

She shoved at him, rolling him off her. With the painful care of a woman who’d recently suffered—and enjoyed—an initiation of madness, she donned the first of her shirts. “What about the man who attacked me? You’ve been worried he had compatriots, and I’m sure he does. If we take a detour, we give the assassins more time to catch us.”

“We also throw them off the track.” Arnou handed her shirts to her as if he wanted her to get dressed, yet watched with such brooding attention she knew he hated every moment. “I know just the inn. It’s run by a fellow I think you’ll like.”

“I’m sure I will.”

“Who don’t you like?” He shook his head as if exasperated by the fact she enjoyed meeting people after so many years hidden in the convent. “You have to stop trusting everyone.”

“Madam said that, too. But it’s so uncomfortable to look at everyone as a possible enemy.” And Sorcha knew what it was to be uncomfortable. The touch of her tight breeches against her swollen tissues made her break into an unappealing sweat. Frustration made her malicious, and she said, “Besides, if I have to distrust everyone, shouldn’t I distrust you, too?”

He stood, leaned down, and brushed off his knees.

Feeling vaguely ashamed of herself and sure she’d hurt his feelings, she whispered, “Arnou?”

He straightened. “Of course you should trust me. Don’t you trust me?”

Relief rushed through her. He wasn’t angry about her misgivings. “You know I do. I trust you more than anyone I’ve ever met!” Standing, she gestured widely, flinging her arms out to embrace the world. “You may be a simple sailor, but you’re my noble cavalier.”

As if he couldn’t resist, he pulled her toward him.

She melted into his arms.

Then he thrust her away as if he didn’t dare hold her. “Very well. You trust me. I say we go to this inn. So we’ll go.”

She surrendered. “All right, Arnou. We’ll go.”

“I
s your
cock
unusually large?” Sorcha asked in a chipper voice.

“What?” With every step his horse took, Rainger suffered a jolt that went right through his aching balls. They were blue. And swollen. And painful.

Worse, beside him rode Princess Cheerful Cherry, carrying on a jolly commentary and asking questions about his less-than-stellar behavior back at the stone circle.

What in hell had happened back there in the stone ring? He’d planned a kiss. A simple kiss. The kind of innocent lip-play that would soften Sorcha toward the foolish Arnou. He had thought that if she responded, he would move toward more intimacy... tomorrow.

Instead he’d kissed and tasted her like a starving man. He’d barely been able to pull back.

Now, obviously, his greatest fear had come true and he’d lost his mind, because... “What did you say?” he asked.

“Is your
cock
unusually large?” Sorcha seemed to take joy in emphasizing the word. “That’s what Eveleen called it. A
cock
.”

He cursed that horse trader MacMurtrae for sending Sorcha to a bawdyhouse. He cursed Sorcha’s charm, her open-mindedness, her inquisitiveness, and most of all his own body, which demanded release and demanded it now. “That’s not what princesses call it.”

“There’s always a separate rule for princesses,” she said sarcastically. “I am sick of having to endure separate princess rules. When I am queen, I shall make a law that says:
Princesses may call a cock a cock and no one shall stop them.
”

“Fine. Then you can call it a—” He stopped barely in time. “You can call it anything you want. Until then, let us not discuss my—” He stopped himself again.

“
Hornpipe
seems unnecessarily colloquial.” Sorcha’s lips were puffy from the pressure of his. Her eyelids had a sexy, drooping slant.

Her boyish costume made no difference to his libido. To him, she looked like a well-loved woman, and he wanted to love her some more. “Princesses don’t call it that, either,” he said.

“What do they call
it
?” She sounded exasperated.

Staring doggedly at the road, he said, “Princesses don’t talk about it at all.”

“That’s silly. How will I ask you questions?”

“You don’t.”

“But I have to ask
you
. Once I get to Beaumontagne, no one will ever tell me anything. As princess, I’m supposed to be pure and ignorant and sacrosanct.” In a disgusted tone, she said, “When I get married, my husband will probably make love to me through a hole in the sheet.”

“No, he won’t.”

“You can’t promise that.”

Actually, he could.

He risked a glance at her.

“So come on, Arnou.” She was smiling at him, dimpling, coaxing. “I won’t call it a
cock
if you don’t want me to. But you have to tell me what I want to know. Is your
thing
unusually large?”

“My thing... ” If he had a wall, he would pound his head against it. He’d be just as likely to win. “Please, Your Highness, call it a cock.”

“All right.” She seemed not at all surprised. “So is it? Because as we were leaving, Eveleen took me aside and whispered she thought you were particularly well endowed, and when I asked what that meant, she said—”

“Yes. It’s huge.” He would say anything to halt this discussion before he found himself compelled to show her his size. And shape. And the correct use for his... cock. “If all the men in Europe put their cocks on a table, mine would be the biggest.”

“Really?”

Dear heavens. She believed him. “No.”

“Maybe not, but I’d sure like to see the cast of performers.”

Stunned by her comment, he stopped his horse.

She stopped her horse.

He stared at her, straight and strong and sober.

She stared at him and she saw... heaven only knows what she saw.

See the cast of performers. She wanted to see every man in Europe slap his dick on a table so she could see the cast of performers.

He had the strangest feeling in his gut. It seemed vaguely familiar, a feeling he’d experienced a long time ago. He didn’t recognize it, but he couldn’t contain it, either. A noise rose from his belly like an artesian fountain, a noise that was stunted, broken, uncertain. But as he continued, the sound grew in volume.

It was laughter. Whole-hearted, full-bodied laughter that shook the saddle and made his horse prance sideways in alarm. Laughter! He hadn’t laughed like that since... he didn’t remember when he had laughed like that.

She giggled, a festive sound that brought birds winging overhead and made rabbits poke their heads out of their holes in the ground.

He stopped, met her amused gaze, and whooped with merriment again. Only by an effort of will did he manage to stammer out, “If I ever get... all the men in Europe... together, I’ll let you... buy the table.”

“I’ll hold you to that promise.”

When he’d calmed enough to wipe the tears off his cheek, he said, “I haven’t laughed like that for years.”

“It’s a surprise to me to discover you have a sense of humor.”

It was a surprise to him, too. It was a bigger surprise to know she’d deliberately set out to make him laugh. She wasn’t the same Sorcha he’d known as a boy. So who was she?

“Look at this road, Arnou! It’s wide enough to ride two abreast.” She gestured around them. “Look at the terrain! The mountains are falling behind and we’re coming back to civilization. Once we reach Edinburgh, we’ll not have another chance to be together.”

Oh, no. Not again. Please God, she wasn’t trying to seduce him again.

But she was.

His briefly revived humor failed him. “Once you get an idea in your head, you won’t let it go.” He urged his horse forward once more.

She rode with him, astride in the saddle as if she’d been born to it, the horse moving between her thighs as smoothly as Rainger would if he... Damn. If he couldn’t stop his thoughts, he was going to explode. He had to stop thinking about having her in bed and undressing her. About her figure, so much more curvaceous than her boyish clothing had suggested, about her pale breasts with the freckles that reached almost to the pale peach nipples, about the flared hips and the fiery brush that begged a man to touch it and be burned to a cinder.

If the pain he suffered now was any indication, he
had
been burned. He’d touched her and the two of them had gone up in flames. Certainly her bewildered, amazed, passion-pouty expression had driven him on to greater heights of ardency—and folly.

Only that silver cross she wore around her neck had stopped him. It had seared his palm, and when he stared at it, he remembered seeing its glow in the darkest moment of his life.

“Grandmamma always told me I had to seize my opportunities.” Sorcha made a fist as if she were seizing... something.

Seizing it lustily enough that he winced. “I very much doubt your grandmother was talking about
me
.”

“No, she was talking about
me
, and I know we’re facing a lost opportunity. If you had let me blow your hornpipe—”

“Would you stop jabbering about that?” he snapped.

Sorcha jerked back. First her lower lip stuck out. Then her eyes filled with tears.

And because she made him feel like a cad, he found himself explaining something he never wanted to tell any woman as long as he lived. “What I mean is—when you talk about that, my personal parts grow rigid—”

Craning her head, she looked at the bulge in his lap. “More rigid?”

“Yes. More rigid.” He could scarcely stand to look at Sorcha for fear he’d launch himself out of the saddle and into her body.

She, of course, sounded thoughtful and curious.

“Frustration puts me in pain,” he said.

She sniffed. “You don’t have to be in pain. If I had—”

He lifted his hand in a stop gesture.

“But if I
had
,” she insisted, “you’d be riding comfortably now.”

“No, because I’m not going to stop wanting you because you satisfy me once.”

“Really?” She sounded charmed by the concept. “You’ll want me more than once?”

Because confessing would cause no harm and please her, he said, “Morning,
noon
, and night, my dear. Morning,
noon
, and night.”

“Then I’m glad we’re going to an inn. We’ll spend the night together.”

With minor modifications, that was Rainger’s plan. But he ground his teeth at her perky suggestion.

“We should take the opportunity to enjoy each other.” Sorcha seemed unconcerned with propriety. She seemed willing to give herself to a man she called honorable and kind. Apparently she had suffered no grief at Rainger’s death.

And why not? True, before he hadn’t cared what she thought of him. Now her indifference irritated him. “But what about your prince?” At her startled glance, he realized he had almost bitten off her head. Being the foolish Arnou was taking more and more effort, but he managed to sound sheepish. “I mean... you must care about your prince.”

“What prince? The one I have to marry?” She shrugged with weary lack of interest. “I don’t even know who that is, and I don’t care. There’s a good chance he’ll make me miserable one way or the other.”

“I meant the prince to whom you were betrothed.”
What about Rainger? Tell me how you felt about Rainger.

“Oh. Him. I never cherished girlish dreams about Rainger.”

Prying information out of her in such an underhanded manner almost assured he would hear himself described in unflattering tones, but curiosity drove him. “You grew up with him. When he died, didn’t you weep?”

She urged her horse to ride ahead. She held her spine and neck poker-stiff, and rode so long without answering that he thought she refused to let the lowly Arnou snoop so intimately into her life.

Finally, she fell back. In a voice so low and calm he had to strain to hear her, she said, “There was so much grief for a while. I was sent into exile alone. My sisters went to a separate location. My father was killed in battle. Grandmamma almost lost control of the country and all of my links to Beaumontagne were severed. The loss of Rainger was... I was sorry, of course. But all my affection for him was old affection, the affection I felt for a playmate. I didn’t admire him as a young man and he barely tolerated me. So losing Rainger was just one more blow in a year fraught with agony.”

She sounded so composed he scarcely believed any of it. Her father, her country, her isolation seemed nothing more than a test to be endured. Did Sorcha not feel pain?

Then she wiped a tear off her cheek.

Ah, now he remembered. In Beaumontagne, there had been Grandmamma and her interminable rules. She’d strictly trained Sorcha.
A princess does not wail and weep. A princess always maintains her decorum, for a princess never knows who watches her for guidance in proper behavior.
Sorcha might flout some of Grandmamma’s strictures, but not all of them. “How did you survive that year?”

“I maintained my dignity, of course, but sometimes I wanted to... to express myself in a... a... a... ” She couldn’t say it.

So he did. “Loud scream?”

She glanced at him, her eyes wide and almost shocked. “Yes. I suppose I would have liked to... to scream.”

An hour ago she was naked in his arms, making demands without a care to her position or to propriety. Now she could scarcely express her desire to show sorrow.

She seemed so open and uncomplicated, but beneath that placid façade, she hid a character forged from the fires of grief and loneliness.

Sorcha fascinated him.

And that could be dangerous, for the last woman who had fascinated him almost killed him.

He was doing the right thing. He was learning all Sorcha’s secrets. He was going to take her to his bed. Before long, she’d be nothing but another woman. And, of course, his queen.

“Why don’t you scream now?” he suggested.

“Here?” Sorcha looked around as if engaged by the changing scenery. “On the road?”

“Why not? There’s no one to hear except me and I won’t tell anyone.”

“No.” She shook her head firmly. “The moment is past.”

“Should the moment of bereavement go past without marking it with sorrow?”

She blinked at him as if astonished. “Arnou, that is very wise.”

Wise? Yes. Because he knew about despair. He knew about mourning. “Give a loud, long scream of rage and anguish. You’ll feel better.”

“I feel fine.”

Ah. There was Grandmamma’s girl! “The ghosts of your departed will rest easier. At least I know
Rainger
will rest easier.” He should be ashamed of manipulating her like this, but he wanted—no, needed—to think she had mourned him.

“All right. I could try it.” She filled her lungs with air. Tilted her head back. Sat there for a long moment. Then exhaled in a gust. “I can’t. I feel foolish. I’ll wait for the proper opportunity. Life being what it is, grief will present itself soon enough.”