My Ruthless Prince (28 page)

Drake ended the kiss, but as leaned his forehead against hers, she could feel the heat in his touch and knew he wanted her. "You know what the poet said, darling. Better to reign in Hell." He stroked her cheeks with his thumbs. "You need to trust me. I'll keep us alive."

She shut her eyes, trembling. "I want to go home," she said in a small voice.

"Do you know what I want?" he breathed as his fingertips glided sensuously down the sides of her neck. He leaned closer and kissed the corner of her mouth. His lips skimmed her cheek, her brow, her eyelids. "It's you, Emily. You're all I really need."

"Drake--"

"Shh, it's all right." He lowered his head and kissed her neck. Emily's toes curled in her light kid slippers.

She hated herself for being completely unable to protest. Better to reign in Hell, indeed. Better to serve as Drake's harlot than anyone else's wife. As his warm, luxurious kiss descended to the crook of her shoulder, she knew that she had made her choice years ago. The only way she could stop loving him would be for her to die.

In spite of everything, she felt herself melting under his expert ministrations. He moved closer, drawing her to his chest. His arms wrapped around her. He enfolded her in his seduction, kissing away her fears as his deft fingers plucked the pins out of her hair, bringing it tumbling down around her shoulders. He raked his fingers through it as he nibbled on her lower lip with a soft, heady groan.

He left her swaying on her feet, enthralled, when he went to lock the door. In a haze of need, she turned absently, her chest heaving, and watched him with a glazed stare.

Twisting the key in the study door, he turned around again with flames in his eyes. He took off his black jacket and cast it aside as he came to her, lifting off his shirt.

Her hands alighted on the hot, hard wall of his chest as his lips swooped down to claim hers. The next thing she knew, she was locked in his arms, overwhelmed by the ardent incursion of his tongue in her mouth.

Her hands tingled as she clung to his broad shoulders. His bare chest heaved against her bosom, maddening her with the desire to be free of her chafing clothes. He drove her back almost roughly a few steps, kissing her all the while until her senses were inflamed. When she felt the solid oak desk behind her, she leaned her hips against it.

But he pressed her down to lie on it, licking her lips and sucking lightly on her tongue while his practiced hands untied the ribbons of her bodice, parting her gown.

His lips moved lower, down her neck to her chest as though irresistibly drawn; Emily tilted her head back as he lay atop her. A delicious tremor raced through her entire body a moment later as her nipples received the benefit of his full attention. Nothing else mattered anymore.

Doom might be irrevocably closing in on them, but in that moment, they were lovers, bent on enjoying each other to the utmost in whatever time they still had left.

Raking her fingers through the ebony silk of his hair, she thrilled to the feel of his fingertips skimming past her knee, lifting her skirts.

Flushed and panting, he tore himself away from her breasts to apply his kisses lower. Emily gasped in shocked delight as his mouth boldly claimed her throbbing center.

He was absorbed in the task of pleasuring her, and he was not a man who did anything by half measures. Her senses flew, wild and crazed, like a Congreve rocket, out of control. He left her, cruelly, writhing with his kisses and hovering on the brink of release, when he stopped and rose, his sculpted lips shining with her dew. He dried his chin with a rough pass of his forearm, staring at her like he would never get enough though he had already devoured her.

His creature entirely, she stared at him in near-mindless lust as he freed his towering erection and leaned down, planting his hands on the desk on either side of her.

She grasped his taut, muscled hips as he stood between her legs at the edge of the desk. He took her, guiding his pulsating member into her core. Her body received him with ease, still dripping with arousal from his kisses.

The fierce glide of his fevered rhythm soon put her in a trance. He drove into her with total male dominance.

She was all-yielding, all-quivering acquiescence, putty in his hands. Every heaving breath that left her lips bore a wanton echo of her wild desire for this man. His unbridled passion stoked her hunger to a state of sheer wantonness.

She arched beneath him with each silken thrust, his iron length buried deep inside her. He, too, was in the flow of rapturous instinct, having his way with her completely.

"You are too delicious," he uttered drunkenly, fondling her thighs. He lifted her heel to his shoulder to deepen his penetration and kissed her ankle in dreamy sensuality as he made love to her.

Time ceased to have any meaning. Emily was absorbed in him. She watched him flinch with pleasure and thrilled to the groans of heated ecstasy on his lips. He held her stare; she read the raw emotion in his night black eyes as he brought her to the brink of surrender. Indeed, she was in his thrall, eager for his every walloping stroke as he clutched her waist and whispered harshly in her ear for her to come. She could do nothing but obey, letting out a light, breathless scream. He growled, he grunted, slamming into her, exhausting her with the hurtling collision of his lovemaking, freed of all restraint. She bit her lip against a small whimper of pleasure-pain as the inferno of his ravishment swept over her in delicious, fevered violence.

His fingers gripped the soft flesh of her buttocks as Drake surrendered all control. He bit her shoulder hard enough to leave a lover's mark. Her heart was still pounding after his big, heavy body had gone still, leaden atop her. She could feel his heart pounding against her chest.

Panting, he shifted his weight to keep from crushing her, then he ran his hands down her sides gently, lovingly, caressing her. He wrapped his arms around her waist. "I needed that," he breathed.

"Me, too."

He was silent for a moment, holding her. "If I had to choose between your threats, Em, I'd rather have you kill me than ever leave me."

Leave you? I'd sell my soul for you,
she thought as she lifted her hand weakly to curl her fingers into his hair.

"Hell, I'd load the gun for you myself," he murmured, his lips nuzzling her ear. "Just . . . never go away."

She hugged him. "I'm sorry, darling. I shouldn't have said those things," she whispered, closing her eyes and pressing a reverent kiss to his sweat-dampened brow. "You know I'd never hurt you. I was just scared."

"I know."

"Don't talk like that anymore," she chided in a whisper, but the reminder had brought back the grim reality of their situation.

"Whatever happens, you must know I'll keep you safe," he murmured, slipping his arm around her.

"But they're evil, Drake." She winced as he pulled out of her body with a soul-deep sigh.

"Well, we're all a bit evil, aren't we?" he answered, straightening up and fastening his trousers.

She sat up and studied him warily as she began righting her clothes, as well. "Some more than others," she said, wondering if he had just done all that to her in part to gain her compliance.

He was, after all, a trained spy. Among other things.

"Let me do this my way. I can rein them in. Trust me," he ordered in a velvet whisper, leaning down to capture her face between his hands, and giving her a frank kiss on the mouth.

Like a seal of ownership.

She did not protest.

Just then, a knock at the door diverted their attention from each other.

"Who's there?" Drake demanded with a glance over his shoulder.

"It's Galtur, my lord."

"Just a moment!" Drake called back.

Emily sent him a curious glance.

"Count Galtur, of Austria," he whispered. "One of the Hundred." Then he offered her his hand with a smile.

His coal black eyes, heavy-lidded with sated pleasure, could have seduced her all over again. But she warded off the fresh surge of temptation and accepted his assistance, hopping down off the desk. He steadied her with a possessive half embrace. "Ready?"

She made sure her dress was buttoned though the mirror above the fireplace revealed her general state of dishevelment. She let out a rueful sigh. "I suppose."

He sent her a roguish wink, then went and unlocked the door.

Emily saw their visitor--an obese Continental nobleman in a flamboyant purple full-dress coat, with a high, starched neckcloth in the dandyish style.

"Pardon the intrusion, Lord Westwood, but I've brought someone very special to meet you," Count Galtur said. Because of his high, restrictive cravat, he had to bend from his massive waist to see the small child by his side. "Come along, lad." He gave the child a nudge into the room.

Emily was just about to sit down, but when she saw the boy, she stopped.

Drake had also gone very still. "What's this?"

"This is our special guest. His name is Stefan."

The Bavarian shepherd boy wore traditional peasant garb, a short neat jacket providing a glimpse of the brightly embroidered suspenders holding up his brown
lederhosen
. He had eyes of Alpine blue and tousled golden curls like a cherub.

About six years old, he literally looked like an angel that had fallen out of the sky. All he lacked was harp and wings.

As Count Galtur shooed him in, Stefan looked all around him at the room, wide-eyed, and clearly rather scared, as though even he could sense something wrong in this place, that maybe he shouldn't have come here or trusted these strangers.

"What is he doing here?" Drake inquired, folding his arms across his chest.

"He has come to see the castle. He is to visit with us for the next few days and learn how to be a knight, then he will be our special guest on the night of the, er, feast."

Emily felt the blood drain her face.

She had forgotten about the Prometheans' need for a sacrificial innocent ever since Falkirk had declared
her
no longer suitable for that hideous role.

Staring at the little boy, apparently her replacement, she felt sick. It took everything in her not to run over, grab the child, and put herself between them and him.

"We found him well outside the nearest village," Galtur said meaningfully, while he dabbed the greasy sweat off his bloated face with a handkerchief. "He told us he was watching his family's flock when one of the lambs strayed. He followed it, but a wolf came, and he says he is very ashamed, but he ran away to escape the beast. The wolf took the lamb, alas, and now our poor Stefan is afraid to go home because his parents will be angry."

Emily was repulsed by the fat man's cloying tone.

"So, I asked him if he would like to come with us and see the castle," Galtur said, smiling brightly at the lad. "I told him he could learn to be a knight, or even pretend to be a prince."

"Indeed," Drake murmured. She knew him well enough to sense his rage in that one word though he hid it from the others.

She watched with her heart in her throat as he bent down slowly to the boy's eye level. "What do you think of the castle so far, Stefan?"

He repeated the question in German since the boy did not understand.

"
Sehr gross.
"
Very big.

Drake smiled at the boy in calming reassurance, then Emily's own progress in the language carried her through the rest of their exchange.

"Don't you worry about that wolf. I will personally hunt it down and kill it. I will give your father money for the lamb and tell him that this was not your fault."

"You will?"

"
Ja.
"

"Thank you, sir." Stefan tilted his head, studying Drake. "Are you the king of this castle?"

He laughed quietly. "No. I'm just Drake."

Emily realized at his answer that he had just made up his mind in regard to his earlier temptation.

Stefan's arrival had done more than she ever could to remind him and persuade him that Promethean evil was not to be trifled with. It had to be destroyed.

He offered the boy his hand, and Stefan shook it. Then he straightened up to his full height once more. "Now, if you need anything, you let me know," he instructed his new little friend.

"Thank you, Herr Drake."

"Come along, Stefan. We have a fine chamber set aside just for you." Count Galtur gave Drake a questioning look; he accepted their new sacrifice with a grim, subtle nod.

The fat man nodded to him, then grinned down at their oblivious victim. "Come along, my lad! Let us see if we can't find something to eat to restore us after all that walking. Our cook has just made pastries. Are you hungry?"

"Oh, yes, sir!"

Galtur pulled the door shut, leading the boy off to get a snack and continue their tour of the castle.

As soon as they had gone, Emily turned to Drake, speechless--her horrified demand needed no words.