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“Juliet,” he breathes into the silence, my name a prayer on his lips.
Slowly he lies me down in front of his throne. Closing his eyes, he leans in so his mouth hovers over mine, not touching, just taking. It’s so intimate, but I want to kiss him.
“James,” I whisper, and the word breaks the spell.
When his eyes open, a devilish gleam replaces the adoration. Our eyes lock, the intensity staggering. I place my hands on either side of his face, cradling him tenderly. My mouth hovers under his, not touching, just taking. Taking him into me every way I know how. His breath, his body, we become one, and I begin to make love with James Kensington—sweet, beautiful, passionate love. I feel it all. I feel all of him. Our breath mingles together, held tight against us as our bodies join, again and again, over and over.
The joy in this moment, in us, is achingly sweet.
“James,” I whisper as our eyes meet, a sky blue, mine bewildered by the staggering emotion I feel toward this man. My thoughts scatter, frayed with unbridled tension, and I dissolve around him, mind and body surrendering to the mystifying connection.
I cry out as he pushes me higher, rocketing with him, trusting in wherever he takes me. I erupt around him, vaguely hearing his cry as he joins me. We are one; we are us. My breath shatters, I fall, and he moves so that I’m splayed out on his chest. His hands wrap into my hair, holding me tight as our bodies calm. Eventually he pulls my lips to his, kissing me gently.
* * *
We breathe into each other,sated. I don’t know how long we lie wrapped together. My limbs are like jelly. Incapable of holding myself upright, I stay snuggled into his side. James rubs my back, his fingers soft on my bare skin. Finally, I look up, gauging his reaction to make sure he’s still with me, that he’s not regretting what just happened after the angry words that he said before. But all he looks is satisfied, satisfied and happy.
The candles in the room have almost burnt out, their small flames cast flickering shadows across the ancient stone walls.
"I never thought I'd see you again," he whispers. “I used to dream about you every night. You haunted my thoughts during the day, just as you did my nights. I could never escape from you.”
He brings my head up so that I can look him in the eyes, eyes that are scattered with emotion.
“And I never want to.”
I smile at him, feeling like more like a lovestruck, obsessed teenager than a grown woman at the moment.
His gaze falters for a moment. “Where did you go?”
“I just got lost,” I whisper. More figuratively than literally, but I don’t know what else to say. It’s the closest statement to the truth and I’m not going to bring up again just how far I drifted . . .not when we are so happy.
Chapter 9
“We are on the precipice of war,” James says as he strokes my hair. We’re still laying on the stone floor, wrapped in a blanket James had found. The cold is seeping into my back, but I don’t care. I want to stay here forever.
“War with whom?” I ask as I trace along James’s perfect jaw.
“Spain,” says James seriously.
“But isn’t Francesca from Spain?" I ask. "It that not why such alliances are made? To keep peace between the countries?”
“Spain planted her here as a spy. We've known it from the beginning. When they approached me about the marriage, we had already had a spy in their Court for a year. He had gained some information, enough to have us on alert, but nothing concrete. He had told us that Francesca was used by her Father to unearth state secrets. She worms her way into the beds of powerful men, many of them foolishly tell her everything. They think they’re in love, they don’t realize that they've actually invited a viper into their bed until it’s too late.”
I tried to think of Francesca charming royals. As beautiful as she was, I hadn’t seen a sign that she was anything but an unpleasant bitch. She must have some really good acting skills to hide that.
"Knowing that, you decided to marry her? Couldn't you have just had her as your mistress?” I ask. I try to keep the words calm even though they do something dark to my insides.
He laughs amusedly, my tone obviously not coming off as unaffected as I would have liked. “She tried to play the long game with me. It was very hard from the beginning to pretend that I could stomach her. After the first time her King sent her to my Court, she was suspicious of me. Unfortunately, some of the servants were less than tight lipped about my mourning of you. It was hard to get her to buy the fact that I was falling for her when the evidence suggested I wasn’t over you. So, Richard and I concocted a plan.” James voice lowered as he continued.
“She thinks she’s the Queen of England, but she’s not,” he says, an impish twinkle all of a sudden in his eye.
“What do you mean?” I ask, still feeling confused albeit better now that he admitted marrying her was a ruse to uncover her secrets.
“We had a man who owed the Crown a life debt perform the ceremony dressed in the robes of a clergyman. He had no authority from God, nor from me to perform the ceremony and the documents were all false. We’re not even married,” he says happily. “We also planted ladies in her Court that are loyal to me. Combine that with her affair with Richard, and we’ve uncovered a multitude of secrets.”
I gave a small gasp at everything he was saying. Even the Richard thing was fake evidently. He gives me an understanding grin. “Ahh, yes. Richard. He told me what you stumbled across the other day. He was worried you were going to ruin the fact that I’m supposed to be unsuspecting of that by confronting me about it in front of Francesca.”
I sit up, my mind whirling with what he was saying. I had never heard of such a feat being performed in all of history and it gave me an uneasy feeling. This was already in play prior to me arriving. Why hadn’t this been in any of the books I had found when it came to James.
