AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Outside his stint in the Petrogorian army or those heart-knotting times after his mother had deserted him, it had been the longest night of his life—not helped by the thought of Zabrina lying in bed only a few metres away. At the beginning of his long shift, thinking about her and what they had done together had been a welcome distraction—until it had become a self-induced form of torture. He had found himself wondering whether she slept naked. He had begun picturing her tiny frame and the slender curves which had wrapped themselves around him so accommodatingly, and his body had stiffened with such a hard jerk of desire that a passing guard had looked at him with concern and asked if he was okay.
Of course he hadn’t been okay! He had been frustrated in more ways than one—furious at having been wrong-footed by the foxy Princess. A part of him still was...
‘And do you still think it was a good idea?’ she questioned suddenly, her soft voice breaking into the muddle of his thoughts. ‘To pretend to be someone you weren’t, just to find out what I was really like?’
He looked at her. It would have been easy to say no, that he regretted all the subterfuge and deceit, and surely that would dissolve some of the strain which had tightened her features. But a defining—and possibly redeeming—feature of their relationship had emerged during the short time they had known one another. She had said so herself. They had no illusions of love. No foolish dreams to shatter. Couldn’t total honesty elevate this arranged marriage into something which didn’t need hollow and placatory words to survive?
‘Perhaps the manner of execution wasn’t ideal,’ he mused. ‘But if you’re asking whether I regret having got to know you in that way, then the answer would have to be no. If we had been introduced in the traditional way, then all kinds of barriers would have been erected. We would have made polite small talk and been forced to endure a stilted courtship. And yes, it is going to be something of a farce and frustration to deny ourselves physical satisfaction in the run-up to the wedding, but it will certainly hone our mutual desire.’ He turned and slanted her a complicit smile. ‘Which is presumably why you kicked me out of the carriage last night.’
‘I did that because I didn’t trust myself not to kick you literally!’
He could feel the flicker of a smile tugging at the edges of his lips. ‘If you want me to be perfectly frank, it was something of a relief to discover you were sexually experienced.’
‘It was?’ she verified, her voice growing a little faint.
‘Undoubtedly.’ He turned and waved to someone in the crowd who was calling out his name. ‘To be honest, virgins are hard work.’
‘Hard work?’ she echoed dully. ‘In what way?’
He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Oh, I think it does.’
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong, Roman. I do. I thought we were going to be frank with one another. I don’t want you to spare my feelings.’
He shrugged. ‘If you want the truth, virgins need constant reassurance. They don’t seem to realise that if you’re constantly asking a man whether or not he likes it and whether or not you’re doing it properly, it’s a bit of a turn-off.’
‘I see.’ She pressed her lips together in what he was now coming to recognise was one of her determined smiles. ‘Well, I’m glad we’ve got that out of the way! Thanks very much for the enlightenment.’
Roman’s eyes narrowed. In many ways she surprised him as well as amused him, but there was something about her which was... He shook his head, unable to define what it was he was feeling and that did not sit comfortably with him. And surely it was simpler to push such feelings aside... He cleared his throat. ‘If you look straight ahead,’ he said unevenly, ‘you’ll get your first view of the palace, with the Liliachiun mountains behind.’
The iconic towers of the Petrogorian palace soared into view, but Zabrina could barely focus on the pale-hued magnificence of the ancient building ahead, so great was her anger towards the man by her side. He was...unbearable. He was the most unspeakably arrogant man it had ever been her misfortune to meet and if she was now committed to spending the rest of her life with him, she had only herself to blame.
So how come she still fancied him like crazy, even though some of the things he came out with made her want to scream with rage?
His damning assessment of virgins and their constant need for reassurance had been unbelievable! Was that how he regarded everyone who came into his orbit? In terms of how they impacted on him? Why, he’d made it sound as if he found some women boring even while he was actually having sex with them! Her heart missed a beat as an annoying flash of jealousy shot through her like a dark flame at the thought of him being intimate with another woman, but, once it had passed, her overriding emotion was one of relief. Thank heavens she hadn’t asked him if she was pleasing him! Or if she was ‘doing it right’.
But it hadn’t been like that, she remembered. There had been no sense of inequality when they had both lain naked on that sofa. It hadn’t felt as if he was the super-experienced one—which he clearly was—while she didn’t have a clue, because she had never done it before. Because everything which had happened seemed to have happened so naturally. As if, on a physical level at least, they knew one another.
She shook her head a little because thoughts like that were dangerous. Fanciful. If she wasn’t careful, she would start believing her own stupid fairy-tale version of what had happened. And Roman had tacitly warned her not to do that. He’d said that reality was just a personal interpretation of facts. So she’d better be careful not to misinterpret them.
Surreptitiously, she wiped her palms over the skirt of her silk dress and looked ahead. She could see even more crowds gathered outside the gilded gates of the palace and a huge cheer went up as the open-topped car began to make its stately progress up the wide, tree-lined boulevard.
‘Do you like it?’ Roman was saying. ‘Your new home?’
Zabrina’s eyes narrowed as they grew closer. She had seen pictures of the palace, of course she had, for it was widely acknowledged to be one of the finest examples of imperial architecture to be found anywhere in the world. The walls were the colour of rich cream, the conical towers rose-gold. Arched windows were edged with pale stone and a pair of intricately carved columns stood on either side of the vast main doors. In the distance she could see a glimpse of the famous gardens and parkland and, beyond that, the soaring splendour of the Liliachiun mountains.
‘It’s...beautiful,’ she said truthfully, but then almost regretted the sincerity of her words because they had caused Roman to smile with genuine pleasure, and she was ill prepared for the impact of that smile. Did he realise it was like the sun com
ing out from behind a thunder-dark cloud? He must do. Someone in the past must have told him that when he smiled like that it was like discovering something you’d never realised existed. As if you’d just looked up into the sky and noticed that a second sun had suddenly made an unexpected appearance.
And then he went and spoiled it.
‘So you think you will be able to tolerate your position here?’ he questioned coolly. ‘As the wealthiest consort on the planet, with untold riches at your disposal.’
‘How greedy you make me sound,’ she reflected, but the stupid thing was that it hurt. She didn’t want it to be all about money. She wanted it to be about feelings.
