The Prince's Captive Virgin Page 13

  That promise was like granite, because he had failed to protect a wife and child once before. But how could he promise less to Belle now? Even knowing just how human he was. How likely he was to fail.

  Still, it sat like ice in his stomach, recriminations coming at him from every which way. How dare he make this promise when he had failed so badly before? How dare he put all this on a woman he had forced into his life, into his darkness?

  How dare he try to capture this light, when he had nothing to give in return?

  Still, in spite of all that, he opened up the box, revealing a large blue stone he had chosen because it reminded him of her eyes. He didn’t tell her that. He said nothing as he wordlessly took the piece of jewelry from the box and slid it onto the third finger of her left hand. “Be my wife,” he said, a command more than a question, “and I will be your husband.”

  “Yes,” she said simply, her tone steady, never wavering. “And next time I talk to my father, this is what I’ll tell him. That when you asked, I said yes. And that I never once wished I had given a different answer.”

  She might. Someday, inevitably, she would. But he said nothing about that either, and instead rose up onto his feet and claimed her mouth with a kiss. He deserved none of this. But it was being offered to him, and he could do nothing but grab hold of it.

  * * *

  Belle looked at the ring on her left hand for probably the millionth time since Adam had put it on her finger yesterday. It was...it was both surreal and perfectly real all at once. She could feel the weight of it. And not just of the gem, but all the words he had said when he had placed it on her finger.

  She felt...well, she supposed she didn’t feel the way a lot of women might about the proposal. She was glad that he had brought up his first proposal, his first marriage. She was glad that he was sharing those things with her, because in a great many ways he kept her separate from the deepest parts of himself. From his past.

  It was unspoken, but she still wasn’t allowed in his part of the palace. Sure, he spent less time there than he once had, opting to spend his nights in her room instead of in his quarters. But she wanted...she longed to share his bed. Not just hers. She didn’t know why it felt essential, only that it did.

  She rubbed her chest, trying to ease the ache of her heart. She knew why. She knew exactly why; she just didn’t want to dwell on it. It had to do with loving him. And when she had told him all the things, all the reasons why she was with him, she had left that out yet again.

  She felt like a hypocrite. Waxing rhapsodic about how brave she was with him, how free she was to be herself. When in reality she was hiding one of the biggest parts of herself. When she had first come to his palace she’d had nothing to lose by being herself with him. And, again, when she had imagined their association had a definite end date, it had been easy for her to throw herself into an affair with him, not worrying about the future. About what he might think of her. As long as he had wanted her in the moment, nothing else had mattered.

  But, it was more than that now. Now, it was forever. And so, she was back to behaving the way she always had. Hiding little bits and pieces of herself, holding back anything that felt a bit too raw, a bit too close to her heart.

  Suddenly, with the blinding moment of clarity—sitting there in the library that Adam had told her she could use as her own—with the sun sinking down behind the mountains, she realized that all this was about protecting herself, not anyone around her.

  She wasn’t afraid of passion because of what it might make her. No, she was afraid of passion because of how it might hurt when it was over. Because the rejection from her mother had wounded her so deeply, so profoundly, she had never wanted to be subjected to such a thing ever again.

  And so, when it had been only passion with Adam, it had been easy to show him. But now it was more than that. Now it was love. It was all of her, and she was so profoundly afraid that he would reject it that she had gone into hiding once more.

  She stood up, placing her book down on the side table by the chair, rubbing her eyes, which were growing fatigued in the dim light. Then she looked back at the ring on her hand. “Adam.” She whispered his name, brushing her fingertips over the jewel.

  Such a strange thing that this man had captured her so completely. Body and soul. That he made her want to risk things she had kept safe and locked tight for years.

  She wanted to give him everything. But, that meant being brave. That meant risking herself. Well, all that was what had gotten her here in the first place. That uncharacteristic showing of bravery that had carried her from California to Olympios in the first place.

  She took a deep breath and picked up her phone, scrolling until she found Adam’s number—the phone was particularly handy here in the palace, where simply wandering around and finding somebody was about as difficult as searching for someone in a small city—and sent a text.

  I’m in your room.

  It was a risk. But it was one she was willing to take. She wanted to join all the pieces of herself together, the little fragments she had kept separate, kept buried in order to best protect herself. And to do that, she was going to have to force Adam to do the same. They could no longer compartmentalize their existence. There could be no lines, no walls and no wings of palaces between them.

  She took a deep breath and walked out of the library, heading toward that forbidden, protected part of the palace.

  This would go one of two ways. Either Adam would send her back to her room. Or, he would open up those forbidden, protected places inside of himself.

  She truly hoped it was the latter. But she had no confidence in that.

  All she had was hope. So right now, it would have to be enough.

  * * *

  I’m in your room.

  When the text had appeared on Adam’s phone, he had been in his office seeing to some administrative work. He had not expected to hear from Belle, since she had informed him she was reading a book, and he knew that meant she wouldn’t be ready to go to bed for hours.

  But the timing of the text was less surprising than the contents. His room. She never went to his room, and he never invited her. She had not gone into that wing of the palace since she had discovered the photograph of him and Ianthe. That had been fine with him. In her room, there was no baggage, the ghosts of the past didn’t loom quite so large overhead and the darkness didn’t feel quite so impenetrable.

  But for some reason, she had now crossed that invisible line, and it was clear she expected him to come and drag her back over it.

  He gritted his teeth, standing from his desk and striding from his office. He moved down the hall quickly, his footsteps echoing in the empty corridors. His heart was thundering, hard, restless adrenaline pumping through his veins. Need, anger and a simple, driving force to see her standing there pushed him on. He had no idea what he was feeling because he felt everything. It made it impossible to zero in on one thing. To make sense of any of it.

  He made his way down to the end of the hall, passing the sitting area he had found her in last time, and going straight for his bedchamber. One thing had become abundantly clear on his journey from his office. He needed her. He couldn’t wait to have her. Even if it would be trespassing on sacred ground to do so, or, perhaps most especially because it would be. He felt sick. With longing, with anger, with a desire that had captured him and taken him over completely. Until he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.

  He pressed his palms against the double doors and pushed them open.

  Belle gasped, then turned to face him, her eyes wide, her expression that of a deer caught in the headlights of a car.

  She was standing in front of his bed. A bed he had shared with his wife. This room that he had shared with his wife. It was still so heavy with memory, with the past. With guilt.

  The fact he had allowed himself to sleep elsewhere over the past week had been something of a luxury. Normally, he forced himself to stay here. To linger in it. For his
sins, it was a small price to pay.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice deceptively soft.

  “I... I thought it was time,” she said simply. “Don’t you?”

  He began to pace the length of the room. “It will never be time. There is never a time for this.”

  “You have to let me in sometime,” she said, and he knew she didn’t mean just into the room. “Otherwise, I think our marriage is going to be a lonely one.”

  “This was our room,” he said.

  She nodded slowly, then swallowed hard, visibly. “I know. And I’m not... I know... I don’t want to replace her. Like you said, this isn’t the same. We are not the same, and I understand that. I respect it. Everything you’ve lost matters to me. I know you might not believe this, and I don’t know if you want to hear it, or if it even helps. But in a way I care for her too, even though I didn’t know her. Because you did. Because you do. Because losing her hurt you, because you loved her, and the destruction of that has made you the man you are.”

  She had no idea. She didn’t understand. And he didn’t want to help her. Because he simply couldn’t...he couldn’t share it. And more than that, he couldn’t stand changing the way she looked at him.

  “I just don’t want to be locked out,” she said. “I don’t want there to be vast spaces closed off to me because of the pain in them. You can share it with me. I will never tell you not to feel it.”

  He knew that she wasn’t just talking about rooms in a castle. “Why would you do that? It doesn’t make any sense. Why would you want to carry any of this?” He could feel the full weight of his grief just then, his guilt, oppressive, dark and destructive, and he didn’t want her to bear any of that. He couldn’t stand it if he knew she had been touched by this, tainted by it.

  “The usual reasons,” she said, her voice small. “I’m only asking you to do this, because I’m going to do it too. Because I’m going to open myself up to you, and I’m going to stop protecting myself. Protecting my pain. You don’t have to tell me the same thing. You don’t have to feel the same... I just want you. Whatever that may be. However much it may be. And I want that because I love you.”

  Those words seemed to reverberate in the relative silence of the room. Or maybe they weren’t echoing in the room, but inside of him. Loud and endless, and painful.

  And he had no response to them. So he did nothing at all, nothing but stand there looking at her as those words sank down inside him, like rain on dry, cracked earth. He had nothing to give back to her, but he let this wash over him, let it fill him, flood him.

  She approached him slowly, her hand outstretched. She pressed her palm lightly against his chest, her fingertips skimming over his skin, over his nipples, down his stomach. He took a sharp breath, arousal joining in with that insatiable thing that had absorbed her offer of love for all it was worth.

  He responded to her, to her words, to her touch, with every part of himself. His heart was thundering so hard he thought it might burst through his chest, his lungs burning, as though they were too full of air, and yet he could feel himself drowning here above water. And his body...he was so hard he hurt. With his need to press himself against her, join himself to her, in the tight, wet heat of her body. Where everything else was blocked out, all the pain, all the recriminations of the past. When he was inside Belle there was nothing else. He was lost in her, consumed by her, and he needed that badly.

  Right now he needed it more than air, and he did not possess the restraint to turn away from that need. She moved closer to him, her hand pressed firmly against his stomach as she leaned in and kissed him, gently at first. Even though it took all the control he possessed he allowed her to guide the kiss, allowed her to dictate how hard and soft it was, allowed her to be the one to instigate invasion.

  When her tongue slid along the seam of his mouth he felt a growl resonating inside his chest. He could not be civilized with her, and she had never professed to want it. So, he saw no point in pretending he was anything other than what he was.

  That was when his control snapped.

  He wrapped his arm around her waist, crushing her to him. He was so very aware of the fact that she was small, delicate and breakable, and that he was testing her limits. But he needed to. He needed to test her against him, against this despair that ravaged him, against the darkness that was always pressing in. Especially here. Never more than here.

  Ghosts and regret. Shame and doubt. They loomed large, they loomed dark, oppressive. They were omnipresent, but this was where they lived.

  And with Belle’s hands on his body, with her lips fused to his, he could feel light inside of him. Could feel a fire burning at the center of his chest, heat and need that blotted out those demons, that darkness, that cold.

  It was a small miracle, happening inside him, all around him. She was a miracle.

  And she loved him.

  A surge of violent emotion assaulted him and he kissed her harder, walking her back—not to the bed—but to the wall. He flattened his palms against it, on either side of her, his body flush with hers, the hard length of his arousal cradled between the softness of her thighs.

  He reached down, grabbed the neckline of that beautiful dress she was wearing and tugged hard. A sharp tearing sound filled the room as the fabric fell away, exposing her breasts. He gazed at her bare skin appreciatively. Hungrily.

  “Had I known you were sitting in the library naked beneath your dress I could never have left you alone,” he said, each word thick with desire.

  “Had I known that,” she said, reaching up and touching his face, “I would have made sure to announce it.”

  He grabbed hold of her wrist, drawing her hand up above her head, pinning it to the wall. Then he reached for her other hand, repeating the same motion, holding her fast with an iron grip.

  She arched against him, her breasts brushing against his chest, that soft flesh, the tightened buds of her nipples a sensual assault he had no desire to escape.

  With his free hand he reached down, grabbing what remained of her dress and tearing it away. It left her in nothing more than a pair of silk panties that rode low on her hips.

  He slipped his fingertip beneath the waistband. Teasing her. Teasing himself. “Did a member of my staff choose these for you?”

  “Yes,” she said, the word trembling, as her whole body trembled when he continued to slide his finger back and forth, not quite grazing her intimate flesh.

  “Somebody deserves an increase in pay. I want to see more.” Loosening his hold on her, he moved one hand to her hip and turned her so that she was facing away from him. Then he immediately returned his hold to her wrists, keeping her captive, but this time revealing the elegant line of her spine to his appreciative gaze.

  She was bent slightly at the waist, her back arched, her rear thrust out slightly. He curved his hand around to her stomach, sliding it down slowly, then around to her hip until he was cupping her ass.

  Her skin was bare, fully revealed by the thong cut of the underwear she had on.

  “Exactly what I had hoped for,” he said, leaning in slightly, adjusting his grip on her wrists and hip so that he was holding her fast. He arched himself forward, pressing his hardened length to the center of her supple flesh.

  She gasped, then made a low, keening sound as he rocked forward harder still, increasing the pressure each time. He slid his hand forward, this time delving completely beneath the silken fabric of her panties to where she was wet with her desire for him.

  He pressed the heel of his palm against that sensitized bundle of nerves at the apex of her thighs, then slowly rocked back toward the entrance of her body, sliding his finger slowly into her slick folds, teasing her with the promise of penetration.

  She wiggled against him, shuddering out his name, a prayer, a curse. He would take it as both, and happily.

  They stayed like that for a while, him pleasuring her with his hand, keeping her pinned against the wall and his body.
She rocked her hips in time with his rhythm, arching into his arousal each time she did.

  It was hell. And it was heaven. He needed to end it, needed to bury himself inside her, but also, something in him wanted to prolong it for as long as possible. To stay here like this, suspended in limbo, where neither of them was satisfied, where neither of them could ever get enough.

  Where the fire burned bright and hot, and he felt like he was standing in the light after so many years in utter darkness.

  “Adam,” she said, the word ragged. “Adam...please.”

  He stilled his movements, cupping her sex, keeping the pressure firm. “Please what?”

  “I need you. I need you inside me.”

  A jolt of desire washed through him, and he found himself completely powerless against that simple request. That simple expression of need. He had her pinned against a wall, had her caught between that uncompromising place and his body, rock hard with need for her, and yet, he was the one who had no power. He was the one who felt weak enough to drop to his knees in the face of this blinding need.

  With a shaking hand he worked his belt free, undid the closure on his slacks and pushed his pants and underwear midway down his hips. Then he hooked his finger around that insubstantial strip of fabric at the back of her panties and swept it aside.