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“I don’t dance,” she informed him coolly as he stopped and turned to face her. He dropped her arm but stood a little too close to her, so the swishing skirt of her long dress brushed against his legs. It made her have to tip her head back to meet his gaze. And he was well aware it created the look of an intimacy between them. It suggested all kinds of closeness, just as he wanted it to do.
As much to tantalize the crowd as to tempt her.
“Are you certain?” he asked idly.
“Of course I’m certain.”
Other guests waltzed around them, pretending not to stare as they stood still in the center of the dance floor as if they were having an intense discussion. Possibly an argument. Inviting gossip and rumor with every moment they failed to move. But Rodolfo forgot about all the eyes trained on them in the next breath. He gazed down at his princess, watching as the strangest expression moved over her face. Had she been anyone else, he would have called it panic.
“Then I fear I must remind you that you have been dancing since almost before you could walk,” he replied, trying to keep his voice mild and a little bit lazy, as if that could hide the intensity of his need to touch her. As if every moment he did not was killing him. He felt as if it was.
He reached over and took her hands in his, almost losing his cool when he felt that simple touch everywhere—from his fingers to his feet and deep in his aching sex—far more potent than whole weekends he could hardly recall with women he wouldn’t remember if they walked up and introduced themselves right now. What the hell was she doing to him? But he ordered himself to pull it together.
“There is that iconic portrait of you dancing with your father at some or other royal affair. It was the darling of the fawning press for years. You are standing on his shoes while the King of Murin dances for the both of you.” Rodolfo made himself smile, as if the odd intensity that gripped him was nothing but a passing thing. The work of a moment, here and then gone in the swirl of the stately dance all around them. “I believe you were six.”
“Six,” she repeated. He thought she said it oddly, but then she seemed to recollect herself. He saw her blink, then focus on him again. “You misunderstand me. I meant that I don’t dance withyou.By which I mean, I won’t.”
“It pains me to tell you that, sadly, you are wrong yet again.” He smiled at her, then indulged himself—and infuriated her—by reaching out to tug on one of the artful pieces of hair that had been left free of the complicated chignon she wore tonight. He tucked it behind her ear, marveling that so small a touch should echo inside of him the way it did then, sensation chasing sensation, as if all these months of not quite seeing her in front of him had been an exercise in restraint instead of an oddity he couldn’t explain to his satisfaction. And this was his reward. “You will dance with me at our wedding, in front of the entire world. And no doubt at a great many affairs of state thereafter. It is unavoidable, I am afraid.”
She started to frown, then caught herself. He saw the way she fought it back, and he still couldn’t understand why it delighted him on a deep, visceral level. His glass princess, turned flesh and blood and brought to life right there before him. He could see the way her lips trembled, very slightly, and he knew somehow that it was the same mad fire that blazed in him, brighter by the moment.
It made him want nothing more than to taste her here and now, the crowd and royal protocol be damned.
“You should know that I make it a policy to step on the feet of all the men I dance with, as homage to that iconic photograph.” Her smile was razor sharp and her eyes had gone cool again, but he could still see that soft little tremor that made her mouth too soft. Too vulnerable. He could still see the truth she clearly wanted to hide, and no matter that he couldn’t name it. “Prepare yourself.”
“All you need to do is follow my lead, princess,” Rodolfo said then, low and perhaps a bit too dark, and he didn’t entirely mean the words to take on an added resonance as he said them. But he smiled when she pulled in a sharp little breath, as if she was imagining all the places he could lead her, just as he was. In vivid detail. “It will be easy and natural. There will be no trodding upon feet. Simply surrender—” and his voice dipped a bit at that, getting rough in direct correlation to that dark, needy thing in her gaze “—and I will take care of you. I promise.”
Rodolfo wasn’t talking about dancing—or he wasn’t only talking about a very public waltz—but that would do. He studied Princess Valentina as she stood there before him, taut and very nearly quivering with the same dark need that made him want to behave like a caveman instead of a prince. He wanted to throw her over his shoulder and carry her off into the night. He wanted to throw her down on the floor where they stood and get his mouth on every part of her, as if he could taste what it was that had changed in her, cracking her open to let the fascinating creature inside come out and making her irresistible seemingly overnight.
He settled for extending his hand, very formally and in full view of half of Europe, even throwing in a polite bow that, as someone more or less equal in rank to her, could only be construed as a magnanimous, even romantic gesture. Then he stood still in the center of the dance floor and waited for her to take it.
Her green eyes looked a little bit too wide and still far too dark with all the same simmering need and deep hunger he knew burned bright in him. She looked more beautiful than he’d ever seen her before, but then, he was closer than he’d ever been. He couldn’t count those hot, desperate moments in the palace reception room where he’d tasted her with all the finesse of an untried adolescent, because he’d been too out of control—and out of his mind—to enjoy it.
This was different. This—tonight—he had every intention of savoring.
But he wasn’t sure he would ever savor anything more than when she lifted that chin of hers, faintly pointed and filled with a defiance her vulnerable mouth contradicted, and placed her hand in his.
Rodolfo felt that everywhere, as potent as if she’d knelt down before him and declared him victor of this dark and delicious little war of theirs.
He pulled her a step closer with his right hand, then slid his left around to firmly clasp the back she’d left bared in the lovely dress she wore that poured over her slender figure like rain, and he heard her hiss in a breath. He could feel the heat of her like a furnace beneath his palm. He wanted to bend close and get his mouth on her more than he could remember wanting anything.
But he refrained. Somehow, he held himself in check, when he was a man who usually did the exact opposite. For fun.
“Put your hand on my shoulder,” he told her, and he didn’t sound urbane or witty or anything like lazy. Not anymore. “Have you truly forgotten how to perform a simple waltz, princess? I am delighted to discover how deeply I affect you.”
He felt the hard breath she took, as if she was bracing herself. And he realized with a little shock that he had no idea what she would do. It was as likely that she’d yank herself out of his arms and storm away as it was that she’d melt into him. He had no idea—and he couldn’t deny he felt that like a long, slow lick against the hardest part of him.
She was as unpredictable as one of his many adventures. He had the odd thought that he could spend a lifetime trying to unravel her mysteries, one after the next, and who knew if he’d ever manage it? It astonished him that he wanted to try. That for the first time since their engagement last fall, he wanted their wedding day to hurry up and arrive. And better than that, their wedding night. And all the nights thereafter, all those adventures lined up and waiting for him, packed into her lush form and those fathomless green eyes.
He could hardly wait.
And it felt as if ten years had passed when, with her wary gaze trained on him as if he couldn’t be trusted not to harm her somehow, Valentina put her hand where it belonged.
“Thank you, princess.” He curled his fingers around hers a little tighter than necessary for the sheer pleasure of it and smiled when the hand she’d finally placed on his shoulder dug into him, as if in reaction. “You made that into quite a little bit of theater. When stories emerge tomorrow about the great row we had in the middle of a dance floor, you will have no one to blame but yourself.”
“I never do,” she replied coolly, but that wariness receded from her green gaze. Her chin tipped up higher and Rodolfo counted it as a win. “It’s called taking responsibility for myself, which is another way of acknowledging that I’m an adult. You should try it sometime.”
“Impossible,” he said, gripping her hand tighter in his and smiling for all those watching eyes. And because her defiance made him want to smile, which was far more dangerous. And exciting. “I am far too busy leaping out of planes in a vain attempt to cheat death. Or court death. Which is it again? I can’t recall which accusation you leveled at me, much less when.”
