heard her answer.
“Yes,” she finally said, pressing her face against his throat in sweet embarrassment.
A tenderness, so strong it was almost an ache, spread through him. “I’ll be gentle,” he promised, “if you’re willing. If this is what you want.”
An eternity passed between one heartbeat and another, then she lifted her head, met his eyes and nodded. She was brave, and she was his. His.
Golden stardust seemed to shower them in magic. They were surrounded by it, then suffused with it as they kissed again. He touched her hair, her face, then her breasts, feeling the hard points of passion there at the tips.
Without releasing her lips, he lifted her, then carried her to the bedroom. Although she was shy, there was no awkwardness between them as he undressed her, then himself.
Once nude, he clasped her slender body to his, letting the full tactile sensation of skin against skin flow over them as they touched, chest, belly, thighs. When he stripped back the covers, they fell onto the sheets as one, laughter bubbling between them in that mysterious sharing of feelings that had happened nearly from the first moment they met.
When he pressed lightly on her shoulder, she lay back and let him gaze his fill at her.
“Breathtaking,” he murmured.
“So are you,” she said with a little catch as her gaze ran over him.
He wondered if he frightened her with his blatant male desire that couldn’t be hidden as easily as hers could. With the gentlest touch, he stroked from her shoulder, over her breast, down her abdomen and to her thigh. Then he paid homage to her breasts with his hands and his mouth.
When he probed her belly button with his tongue, it made her laugh. He smiled at her, then went back to the exploration that tantalized them both to near madness. When he kissed along her thighs, first one, then the other, she gasped.
Her eyes grew big when he glanced up, then nudged her legs apart, asking entry to the secret treasure that was hers to give or withhold.
“Please,” he murmured, “I need to taste you.”
When he’d brought her to the peak once, then twice, he finally heeded her little cries that he come to her.
“At once,” she said. “Now. I want you. I want everything.”
The red heat of desire shimmered between them. He observed the flush that caused her skin to glow as it swept up her chest and into her cheeks, telling him of her growing hunger and feeding his own until his mind was hazy with it.
“I’ve never wanted a woman this way,” he whispered. “This much.”
“How much?” she asked with such innocence it seared his heart.
“With everything in me. As if the world would perish in one of your tender sighs if we didn’t share this. As if my life depended on this one moment. On you—”
Max crushed the rose in his fist, jolted out of the lovely remembrance by the knowledge that his life had depended on her at that exact moment. Their passion had literally saved him from the assassins. Would he ever get a chance to tell her?
“I must leave tomorrow,” she’d said when they had consummated the union and lay entwined in blissful contentment after he’d taken care of her with a warm washcloth and a towel tucked under her hips.
He smiled now, recalling the blushes and her embarrassed protests, which he’d ignored.
“No,” he’d said, the command of a king if she’d but known it.
“I have to. I have a job to do.” She’d sighed plaintively.
He’d tightened his arms around her. “I will follow you to the ends of the earth,” he’d vowed.
Releasing the crushed rose, he dropped it into the wastebasket. The conspiracy had taken all his time and attention during the next six weeks. His presence as king, in deed if not yet in name, had been required. Now that the trial and sentencing were finished, he could think of other things, like finding his rose.
Quickly dressing in jeans and a T-shirt, he grabbed the phone and punched in his security advisor’s private number.
Chuck answered on the first ring.
“Can you come to my quarters?” Max asked.
“Be right there.”
No sooner had he hung up, than a knock sounded on his door. “Come in.”
Bartlett entered with a serving cart. On it were a coffee urn, two cups, two plates and a platter of muffins, plus another with a variety of fruit. He didn’t know how the man knew exactly when to arrive, but it had been this way since Max’s earliest memories in the palace.
“Thanks, Bartlett. I’ll be going out for a hike in about an hour.”
“Very good, sir.” The man left as quietly as he’d entered, leaving the door ajar and speaking to someone in the hall.
Chuck Curland came inside and closed the door, then pulled the pocket doors from their hiding place and closed them, too. Two sets of doors had been built into all the king’s rooms when the palace was constructed to ensure privacy in conversation. Max, upon his father’s advice, used them.
“Coffee?” Max asked.
“Please.” The American glanced around the room the way he did each time he entered.
Once, Max had teased him about expecting a spy behind every curtain. Lately the idea didn’t seem funny.
Chuck’s eyes were light blue and seemed to see everything that might be the slightest suspicious. His hair was brown with blond streaks from their hours of jogging on the beach. His frame matched Max’s inch for inch, pound for pound. In college they’d shared a room the first semester, then, finding they got along superbly, an apartment after that until they graduated.
Chuck was five years older than Max and had been an Army Ranger before going to school on the G.I. bill. That the two had met at all was a demonstration of American democracy in action when they’d been randomly assigned to share a room.
Max’s father, the late king, had suggested Chuck come to Lantanya and advise them on security matters. Perhaps the king had known at that early stage of their friendship that Max would need a friend in the palace. Chuck, with his all-seeing gaze, had detected the conspiracy and warned Max, thus bringing him home early.
Max poured the coffee and filled a plate, then sat in his favorite chair. Chuck did the same.
“This reminds me of days with my father,” Max told his friend. “Except, the king sat where I am, in a big black leather chair, and I sat in this chair, which was located where you are.”
“What happened to the king’s chair?” Chuck asked, taking a muffin and several spoons of fruit.
“I had it placed in the royal museum along with his suit of armor and ceremonial outfits.”
Chuck
