His audience roared with laughter, gentlemen and ladies both. “You are very naughty, Prince Damien,” Lady Trask said, covering her mouth. Michael Tavistock even smiled, appeased by Damien’s capitulation to the wedding ceremony.
Yes, all were happy with Prince Damien this night. And yet, the person he most wanted to be happy with him, Penelope, sat quietly at his side, smiling a little, but saying nothing. He sensed a few sparks kindling behind her eyes. They were not sparks of love. She wanted to argue about something.
But Penelope knew how to behave in front of a crowd. She rose with him and went around the room, saying her good-byes to those who had traveled to see her. The Regent even kissed her hand, giving her a lecherous look over it.
She would part with her family tomorrow, but they would not see the guests formally again. It took a long time before Damien could extract himself and Penelope from the room, but finally, he led her out the door to more applause. Sasha swept among the guests then, Rufus and Miles and Titus following with heaping baskets, to bestow gifts and give each guest a speech. That should keep them occupied for a while.
At the foot of the stairs, Damien gathered Penelope to him and kissed her, not giving her time to begin whatever argument brewed in her head. She wanted him, that was plain, the tips of her breasts pressing sharply against the bodice of her yellow silk bridal gown.
He wanted to slowly tear the dress from her body in long, leisurely rips, watching each piece fall to the floor in a yellow puddle. He wanted to be inside her, buried deep, wanted it with mindless brutality. My woman, my princess, my wife.
Rituals first. He broke the kiss. “Ready yourself,” he said in a low voice. “I will come to you.”
Penelope looked up at him, startled. She nodded once and turned away, apparently forgetting what she wanted to argue about.
As she hastened to the stairs, he gave her a little push on her backside. That earned him a glare, but he saw the need building in her eyes. This ritual would be sweet.
Hot water slid down Penelope’s back where Meagan poured it from the pitcher. The pitcher slipped and a cascade hit the floor, splashing all over Penelope, Meagan, and Penelope’s mother. Penelope expected Lady Trask to shriek about her ruined dress, but she’d had plenty of champagne, and like Meagan, she dissolved into giggles.
All very well for them, Penelope thought. They were not standing stark naked in the middle of the antechamber on a piece of oilcloth, shivering while soapsuds and sloshes of water dripped from her body. The bath that Sasha had commanded to be built steamed gently nearby. Not long from now, Damien would come in and the ritual would commence.
“Do hurry,” she said.
“Penny, dear, this is no time for maidenly vapors,” Lady Trask said. “You have already been in his bed, why are you suddenly shy?”
“It is different, somehow. It is more…”
“Official?” Meagan suggested. “Whereas a few days ago, you were only being naughty.”
Penelope’s face heated. “Everyone knows what we are going to do. I feel them waiting out there. The other day it was private. Now I am on display.”
“At least Damien did away with having a crowd watch you bathe each other,” Meagan pointed out. “Good heavens, Sasha wanted to invite twenty people, and seemed most puzzled when Damien objected.”
“Sasha is a strange man,” Lady Trask agreed. She absently squished a sponge against Penelope’s shoulder. “He does love his rituals.”
“He’s harmless,” Meagan proclaimed. “Damien says he went a bit crazy being in a dungeon so long. Goodness, I would too.” She suddenly looked mournful. “After tomorrow, I’ll never see you again, Penny.”
“Do not say that,” Penelope said, her jaw hardening. “You will come to Nvengaria. I will visit England. I’ve said so.”
“It is such a long way away,” Lady Trask said sadly.
“Mama, you are getting water all over your frock. Now do not start crying, because I will, and we do not have time. Sasha said Damien would enter at nine o’clock precisely.”
For some reason, she did not want to be standing upright, nude and wet, when Damien walked in the doors. She wanted to be in the bath, seated, the water up to her neck. She felt somehow that she could face him like that, not exposed, shivering, and vulnerable.
Lady Trask nodded, letting tears flow. “You are my daughter, Penelope. Of course I must grieve you leaving me behind, even though I am so happy you have made such a match. I never would have thought you’d catch a prince.”
“Mama.”
Lady Trask threw her arms around Penelope, soap and water and all. “Oh, my darling, I do love you so. I am so happy.”
“So am I,” Meagan said. She burst into tears and flung her arms around Penelope from the other side.
They cried and hugged each other, until all three ended up as wet as could be.
Out in the hall, the tall case clock struck nine, echoing and sonorous. They broke apart, panic taking over.
“Wait, you’re still soapy,” Meagan cried. She threw water from an ewer at Penelope as she ran for the bath. The water arced through the air, half of it splashing Penelope, the other half soaking the blue silk wall covering.
Penelope stared in dismay, but Lady Trask burst into giggles. “Excellent, Meagan. I always hated that wallpaper. Penelope’s father picked it out.”
Penelope climbed the two stairs to the platform and lowered herself to the marble bench inside the bathtub, water sloshing.
Just in time. At the same moment, the door pushed open, and Damien, clad from neck to ankles in a sumptuous dressing gown, crossed the threshold. Sasha stood behind him, his hand over his eyes.
Damien’s dark blue gaze took in the two dripping, smiling women, then moved to Penelope waiting in the bath, her arms crossed modestly over her breasts. She sensed his body tighten, though he made no perceptible move.
He slowly approached the bath and stepped up to the platform. Penelope fastened her attention on the brocade slippers covering his feet. His strong ankles showed below the hem of the dressing gown, just touched with dark, wiry hair.
“Lady Trask, Miss Tavistock,” he said in his deep voice. “You may go.”
Meagan and Penelope’s mother clung to each other, giggling. “Au revoir, Penelope,” Meagan said, then the two of them hastened from the room, holding each other as they went. Their high-pitched laughter echoed through the hall.
Damien kept his gaze on Penelope, but his eyes were amused. “I can do this alone, Sasha,” he said in Nvengarian.
Sasha peeked through his fingers. “But the ritual must be followed precisely, Your Highness. I must ensure—”
“Penelope understands it. She will make sure I do it correctly.”
Sasha glanced quickly at Penelope, head and neck alone visible above the lip of the bath, and nodded in relief. “That is so. Yes, the princess will know how to do it.”
He bowed low and marched smartly out of the room, banging the door behind him. After a moment came the sound of a key in the lock.
“You see,” Damien said, “already they have decided who is the stronger in this marriage. The fair Penelope, not the Imperial Prince.”
“I am certain he did not mean that,” Penelope said.
“I am certain he did.”
He let his gaze rove her, from her pinned-up hair to her bare throat to her body under the steaming water. “Penelope, you are the most beautiful woman I have ever beheld in my life.”
Penelope did not answer. She could not believe the truth of this, and concluded the prophecy must be working through him.
His eyes darkened. “I have been going mad with wanting you.”
She pointed with a dripping finger at the side of the tub. A huge bath sponge sat on a tray next to a dark bottle of Nvengarian wine and two goblets. “We must do the ritual. With the sponges and the wine and everything.”
“Have no fear, I will do Sasha’s ritual.” The glint in his eyes turned wicked. “But I imag
ine it will be much more pleasant without anyone watching.”
She shivered. “Does the betrothed couple truly have to bathe in front of their families and friends? Sasha seemed surprised you did not want to follow the tradition.”
Damien loosened the first fastening from his dressing gown, baring his column of throat. “The bathing ritual is ancient, not always observed these days. But ours is a royal wedding, and so we must do the most arcane, bizarre rituals historians like Sasha can find. We are special, and we must suffer for it.”
She let her gaze linger on the hollow of his throat, which was damp with perspiration and the steam of the bath. “It must seem strange to you, as well,” she said. “You grew up in the courts of Europe, not Nvengaria.”
He unhooked the next fastening, baring the line of his collarbone and the hollow between his pectorals. “The courts of Europe have strange rituals all their own, which I am happy to abandon.”
“What sorts of rituals?” Penelope asked, more to keep her mouth moving than because of interest. Watching Damien slowly bare himself was far more intriguing than explanations about odd customs.
He pulled the next fastening apart to reveal his taut abdomen and the line of hair that pointed downward from it. She saw no waistline of breeches or linen band of underbreeches under the dressing gown, nothing but sundarkened skin that paled a little below his navel.
“None very interesting,” he answered.
He unfastened two more silken ties, and the dressing gown fell all the way open. His legs were strong and straight and long, and his erection, dark and rampant, stood out from a circle of curled black hair between his legs.
Strange that simply seeing him erect for her brought such a flush of heat. She suddenly wanted to grasp the organ in her hand, to feel it warm and rigid against her palm.
She dragged her gaze away as Damien slid the dressing gown from his shoulders, letting it fall down the steps in a velvet wave.
“I do not mind that you like to look,” he said. He carefully slid out of his slippers, his bare feet sinewy and strong. “Stand up.”
Penelope lowered her arms from her breasts and rose on shaking legs, water cascading from her body in hot rivulets. When she stood upright, the water came to her hips, baring her navel and waist. She felt horribly exposed, and yet her skin prickled with excitement.
Damien took one step down to stand on the marble bench that a stonemason had constructed very quickly for a very high fee, which put Damien’s lovely male organ more or less on Penelope’s eye level.
She gazed at it in fascination. The tip was dark, the flange taut and flared, his entire length swollen as tight as could be. A bead of moisture rested in the tiny slit in the tip and she imagined his seed spilling inside her, as it had days before, when they had made love in the heat of the afternoon.
For some reason, she wanted to let his staff fill her mouth, to feel the rigid tip pressing the inside of her cheek. She wanted so much to understand what he was, even if she never understood why he fascinated her.
She ran dripping fingers lightly along his length, leaving a streak of water behind. He sucked in his breath, and she looked up at him. “I am not schooled,” she murmured.
His eyes were heavy. “Do whatever you like.”
Whatever she liked. Her mind filled with wicked imaginings, and she blushed.
She was happy that he’d showed her he was no stranger to wickedness, and liked wickedness in her. She remembered how he’d dipped the tip of his tongue between her buttocks, so briefly, and yet the feeling had sent her to heights she’d never imagined.
He would not be a conventional lover, and he would not expect her to be. Perhaps he did not know how to be. If the whispers she’d heard from the ladies at the fete, about Nvengarians and their lovemaking practices, were true, Damien would not expect propriety in their bedroom. Or their bathroom. She could be as daring as she wanted.
Her heart beating in strange, quick beats, she traced the flange of his arousal with one finger, then she leaned forward and kissed the tip.
“Taste me,” he whispered, his voice husky. He touched her cheek, his fingers warm.
She wanted to, by all means. Quickly, before she could sway herself from it, she grasped him lightly with her fingers and pulled him gently into her mouth.
Chapter Seventeen
Heaven existed after all. It existed in the form of this exquisite woman taking him and teasing him with her hesitant, inexperienced tongue.
He let his head drop back, his eyes closing, hands curling to fists. Love, love, I treasure you more than kingdoms.
Her tongue moved, rubbing all over the sensitive place under his tip. He made himself hold still and let her play, even though he wanted to have her, have her. This was her first time; she did not need him to press into her mouth, much as he longed to.
Sweet woman, she opened her mouth wider and inched her lips down his length. His hand moved to her hair, curling in the silken strands, loosening the bindings that held it in its knot.
Damien knew the touch of women. He knew what they liked and what they wanted from him, and it varied little from country to country. Easy to remain in control of himself with a woman who knew exactly where and how long to stroke, how to press her fingers behind his scrotum to both arouse him and keep him from finishing too soon, how to know where he was least and most sensitive.
Penelope knew nothing. Her questing fingers brushed the stretched skin at the base of him, the tight hotness of his balls, the sensitive length of the underside of his shaft. Her tongue moved around the tip, exploring it, dipping behind the flange and back over the top. The occasional scrape of her sharp teeth was incredibly erotic.
He felt his seed start to build, wanting to spring out and flow into her mouth. Or, better, between the exquisite softness of her breasts.
Control, control. The charming Prince Damien is ever in control.
His body was not listening. It wanted the beautiful woman whose fingers and mouth quested, curious, his blushing bride learning what it was to be with a man. This daring woman he’d enticed into sin was catching on to what sin was very quickly.
“Penelope,” he gasped, his voice hoarse. “Stop.”
He spoke in Nvengarian, because he’d descended to a basic level where he could not think over words and what they meant. “Stop.”
She drew back, removing the glorious touch of her lips, and turned pink. “I am sorry,” she said in halting Nvengarian. “I do not know to make—pleasure to you.”
The garbled grammar and her oh-so-sweet accent snapped the last of his control. He dropped from the marble seat, sending a wave of displaced water over the edges of the bath and down the steps to soak his dressing gown. He lifted her, the water giving her buoyancy, parting her legs so that her opening was pressed directly against his erection.
“Wrap your legs around me,” he said.
Their hips were underwater. Holding her firmly, he guided her legs around his hips, then reached between them and opened her wide enough to slide his thick arousal inside. He took his fingers out of the way, clasped her buttocks, and pushed all the way in.
Her eyes widened. Water was not the best of lubricants; it dried delicate skin, and he had the sudden insane wish to be in a vat of scented oil with her. They’d slide together without friction, and he’d be in her tight and hard with no impediment. The lovemaking would be slippery and wild and they’d no doubt drown for their pains.
“Damien.” Her chest pressed tight against his, droplets trapped between them, the tips of her breasts pebbling against his skin.
Inside her, God, tight and warm and pulling him into her. He was surrounded with her, skin and breath and scent. She pressed her cheek to his and wrapped her arms around his back, holding on.
He said breathlessly, “You are only allowed to speak Nvengarian when we make love.”
She looked at him, perplexed. “I must have more lessons,” she answered in that language.
He presse
d deep inside her, fingers digging into the soft mounds of her buttocks. “Yes. Many, many lessons.”
“You are…” She fumbled for the phrase. “You fill me.”
He made a raw noise, unable to think anymore. He turned with her, setting her back against the lip of the bath. Her legs wound firmly about his hips, small feet pressed into his thighs. He wanted to stay inside her forever, to let this moment go on and on and on. But his body had other ideas.
Prince Damien’s legendary control vanished. He kissed and bit her and thrust his tongue into her mouth, impatiently tasting, digging hard into mouth and between hips at the same time. The noises that came from his throat were animallike, and he could not stop them. Perhaps Nvengarians and logosh weren’t so far removed from each other.
She made no noises at all, only silently rocked under him, her frantic fingers in his back letting him know that she felt the madness too.
“Ah, damn,” he shouted as the first spurt of his seed shot into her. He clenched his muscles, trying to stop it, trying to stay locked with her longer. But his hips rocked in uncontrolled rhythm, his body doing what it was meant to do, pushing his seed from himself into her.
Blood roared in his ears, dimming the sounds of the sloshing water, her needy cries, his own hoarse moans. Want you, want you, love you, love, love, love. The words marked his thrusts. He wasn’t certain if they came from his mouth or only whirled in his brain. Love. You.
One final, savage push, and suddenly everything finished. He held her as long as he could, his breathing hollow, his legs shaking. His cock was still rigid, still needy, but the fever had dwindled the slightest bit. His face was covered in sweat, droplets of sweat and steam rolling from his skin.
One by one, he released his fingers from her buttocks, smoothing the skin he’d likely bruised. Her legs still wrapped around him, his arousal firmly inside her, as though she couldn’t let go.
He raised his head to kiss her and found her face wet with tears. They tumbled from her eyes, her lashes wet, her mouth twisted with weeping.
The sight smote him. “Penelope, God, did I hurt you?”