The Letter (34 page)

“
I am not leaving,” she stated, knowing he would understand the meaning of her statement.

He paused, momentarily stunned by her words.

“
Victoria. Darling . . .” he started to say as he closed the distance between them.

“
I have a proposition for you,” she said in a husky voice, echoing his first proposition. “I want you, more than I have ever wanted any man in my life. If you let me make love to you, I will take care of you, you will not have to worry about anything again.”

“
Oh God Victoria!” Pulling her into him, William wrapped his arms around her and crushed her to him. Neither of them was aware nor cared that smiling faces followed the drama that was being quietly played out in the middle of the ballroom.

“
I will give you anything you want,” he whispered against her hair, continuing the words from the day he had asked her to become his mistress. Only now, the words held so much that was dear. He would give her anything, including all of himself.

“
Come with me and I will show you what I want,” she said, her voice low and inviting.

Pulling away from him, she took his hand.

Ignoring the stares that followed them, she pulled him through the crowd. Her whole body was shaking with need and anticipation, but most of all, love.

She kept walking and pulling him behind her until they reached the double doors that led outside, and then she turned to him as the butler opened the door to let them out.

“
Don’t be afraid, I will not hurt you,” she whispered his own seductive words of long ago back to him, smiling the smile of a temptress.

Outside, she led him down the path of the large, private garden. She knew exactly where she would take him. She had dreamed of it many times in the last two months.

The hidden gazebo by the fountain.

The instant they were secluded they came together in furious impatience — surrounded by their whispered words of love, spoken between feverish kisses.

Soon they found paradise, first hot and consuming, then again slow and moving. She cried out in ecstasy more than once in the quiet of the garden. And he held her tight. When it was over, they lay in silence on the floor of the gazebo. Touching her face and hair, William spoke to her quietly.

“
Victoria?”

“
Yes?” she answered as she touched his chest, marveling once again that a man could be so beautiful.

“
Promise me you will stay here with me forever. I am not going to force you. I want you to stay with me because it is what you want to do.” She could feel the tension in his body as he spoke.

“
I will stay with you always, William — because I want to.”

“
I love you Victoria, I didn’t marry you because of the shares. I didn’t marry you because of the babies. I married you because I couldn’t live without you.”

“
I know,” she said. “I heard you talking about it that day in your study,” she confirmed, while tracing a gentle pattern on his chest with her finger.

“
I left the engagement party to come and tell you that I couldn’t marry Faith – that you were the only woman I would ever love. The fool I was, I didn’t even know it myself until it was too late,” he said.

“
It doesn’t matter now,” she answered.

“
None of it matters. The only thing that matters to me is that we are together,” he murmured softly as he traced his finger along her jaw up to her ear.

“
I am scared, William,” she confessed.

“
Why? I will take care of you, darling,” he promised, pulling her closer to him.

“
Your world is so different, the people — the everything.”

“
It doesn’t matter. My world is your world, because where I am, you belong. I don’t care about the people or — the everything. I make my own rules.” His voice was firm and commanding.

“
Yes, you certainly do,” she smiled then added, “One condition though. You can’t have any mistresses.

“
I think that is a condition that can be easily met,” he said, smiling back into her eyes. “I already have one in my wife.”

Victoria giggled.

“
Tell me you love me,” he demanded, gripping her body tighter against him.

“
I love you, William.”

“
Victoria, I love you more than anything and vow, I will spend my life trying to make you happy.”

THE END

See excerpts from THE CHOSEN ONE and

IRON HORSE KING (Book Two of the American Royalty Series)

THE CHOSEN ONE:

By: Rebecca Bernadette Mance

Sarah glimpsed the man staring at her fixedly from the shadows. She was poised in her final backward arch, her costume shimmering under the lights when she saw him.

Maybe it was his profile, or his height – or perhaps it was the glimmer of his eyes the musky-skinned man in the shadows struck her breathless.

It was Dark Eyes
–
the man from her dreams.

But no, it could not be. It was totally impossible, because
he
didn’t really exist. He was just a figment of her grief-stricken mind – someone who haunted her in slumber.

He was not real.

He better not be real.

The audience broke into a boisterous applause jolting her to her frazzled senses. Only moments before Sarah was performing the middle-eastern dance for a small private audience consisting of a Saudi Royal and his bodyguards and guests at “The Harem”.

Easing up from her arched pose with a graceful sweep, Sarah turned to her thundering audience her eyes chasing to dark eyes in the shadows. Another shock shudder raced through her jarring her to the bone and belying the smile fixed on her face for the benefit of her cheering audience.

Slowly, the man in flowing robes – primitive, ruthless and barbaric – turned fully toward her and stepped out of the shadow. Her gaze clashed with familiar simmering eyes that were as dark and fathomless as the finest polished onyx and beautifully framed with thick spiky lashes. His penetrating gaze traveled over her face searching her eyes thoroughly before slowly and seductively sliding downward, singing her flesh along its path.

She gasped while a new piece of music began and continued without her only to die off abruptly leaving the room in cricket silence.

“
Come to me, Chosen One.” The sound of his deeply accented voice that vibrated through her being and penetrated her soul was as familiar as her own name. The man from her dreams was a devastating reality elegantly towering in his ancient garb and the staggering moment that carried him had arrived unbidden and abruptly.

Damn him. A dream could not contain this man. He was everything sexy. Of course he would be. If only he wasn’t. Her confounded luck … he would have to be tall and dark with high cheekbones and a straight arrogant nose, a manly-solid jaw and chin topped by firm seductive lips — yes, of course he would be all that.
And so much more
.

The silent, spellbound audience waited as if this scene that unfolded before them had been long anticipated.

“
Come to me.” His accented voice dropped to a husky whisper and he slowly stretched his hand out to beckon her.

Without ever breaking her gaze with him, Sarah slowly shook her head and said, “no.”

Disappointment beyond the obvious flickered in his eyes. Letting his arm drop, he continued to look deeply into her eyes.

“
You would not even speak to me?” he asked quietly.

“
No, I want nothing to do with you. I have no idea what you want, or why you are here, but I want you to stay away from me.”

“
I cannot do that, and you know I cannot.”

“
What are you talking about?” Sarah shuddered from the power of his words, trying to grab on to one of her racing thoughts. “Start with who are you and what you want?”

“
I will one day be King Vassar Abdual Aziz ibn Saud. Today, I am only the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia,” He stepped forward smiling. “As to what I want, I have come for you.”

IRON HORSE KING

By: Rebecca Bernadette Mance

She had been recuperating in his car for a better part of two weeks and in her usual resilient form, she had healed quicker than anyone thought she would. “I am better now and it is unseemly that I sleep in here with you.”

Meanwhile they had penetrated the Summit without her. Perhaps that was the most vexing thing of all to Mary Rose. And Jacob didn’t even allow her outside to see it or be part of the small celebration. When she had asked him how he had gotten through the rock, he said it was because of Nobel’s visit and suggestion to use the new dynamite he had invented. Mary Rose would have liked to see the instrument of her pain and witness its awesome power from a distance.

Jacob grinned but maintained his stubborn expression. “Well, you slept in here with me on the trip here, sneaking little peaks and making me feel mighty queer thinking you were a young boy with odd designs.”

Prickly heat crossed her cheeks. She had not been able to resist the temptation to watch Jacob undress to his underpants and admire his broad shoulders and brawny chest.

How humiliating he noticed! Was that why he had sent her to the tents with the Chinamen?

“I most certainly did not look at you! It is your utterly arrogant and active imagination.”

He smiled slow sporting his perfect teeth in a leering grin. “I said you peeked. You peeked a whole lot. Don’t be lying to me girl. Now you can do all the peeking you want to and I might have a mind to do some peeking myself I think.”

“How dare you!”

Jacob smiled a lethal smile. “How dare you stow away on my train sweetheart, cause me a whole pack of trouble and then believe you are going to tell me what you will and will not do.” He moved forward, his hulking body filling the space between them and emanating heat that gently licked her skin. “Furthermore, you are in a lot more danger out there now that everyone knows you are a woman than you will ever be in here. What you don’t understand you little ninny-girl is that in the eyes of most of those men you have already been compromised by sleeping in here with me first on the ride over and now while recuperating…so you are now fair game. Not that the notion of you being a virgin would have protected you much out there anyway.”

Mary Rose stood on her tiptoes to attempt to glare him down. “You are disgusting.” She dropped back on the balls of her feet. “Besides, I was hurt, surly even those louts wouldn’t think we were doing anything with my injuries.

He laughed deep and husky. “Darl’in, you have no idea just how disgusting I can get or what men think at all. If you had, you would never have come on this foolish adventure.”

Mary Rose squared her shoulders so that she could add at least another couple of inches to match his towering body. “You have no idea just how stubborn I can get. I am not some weak woman to be ruled by a man, not even one as big in his pants as you.”

Jacob laughed softly. “I think you are as stubborn as an unbroken filly. But I have always had my way with wild things.” His voice dropped to a silky spider web instantly tangling her with invisible threads. He reached out his bulky hand to caress her cheek. The calluses sent chills between her shoulder blades and left an airy gasp on her lips. “You like that don’t you? How about a bit more little filly?”

His thick lazy fingers moved from her cheek to silhouette her neck and reach under her shirt and continue to her shoulder.

“Don’t.” She said with a crushed whisper.

He laughed softly holding her witless with his fire and ice eyes. “You are saying don’t while you quiver like a leaf under my hand.”

Mary Rose wanted to move away from him, she really did, but she was lost in his icy blue eyes and near purring under his gentle hulking hand.

He took both of her shoulders and pulled her into him. Mary Rose leaned forward into his massive chest toward the heavy heartbeat within. Cupping her face with both hands he pulled her face up and leaned down to press his warm lips to hers with the gentleness of a butterfly wing. Then his lips danced over hers softly nipping her mouth.

Mary Rose inhaled his scent of starched shirt, cigar smoke and musky man and opened her mouth to his pressing tongue. Lost in the largeness that was him, she floated along in sharp longing.

She heard his groan, long and deep in his wide chest before he stole his lips from hers and stepped back pinning her with his darkened gaze.

Mary Rose felt the heat suffuse her face like a prairie wildfire. She closed her eyes against what she had just allowed him to do. “I think this is a perfect example of exactly why I should not stay in here with you!”

“That is a perfect example of why you have to stay in here with me.”

“Really? How is that?”

“Because I have the power to stop. Those rough and ready men out there are not going to rain a few kisses on you and pull back. Somewhere in a dark corner of this camp somebody is going to force himself on you and then I am going to have to deal with a raping scoundrel and a violated woman.”

Mary Rose stomped her foot. “Ooooh.”

Jacob laughed and picked up his hat for his last round in the camp before nightfall. “Little filly, I am going to leave. You are going to change your clothing and get under the blanket in your bed and cover yourself so I can only see your closed eyelids. I’ll not hear another argument from you or I might just finish what almost happened here and it would be really a very wrong thing to take a filly before she is a mare.”