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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.
