Innocent in the Prince's Bed Read online

  Most of all, she wanted to tell Illarion. She wanted him to go with her. It would be glorious; the two of them bashing around Europe with his poetry and her pencils. There could be more picnics, more pleasure. That was the dream now...

  ‘Italy?’ Her mother sounded dismayed. ‘I don’t think Percivale would let you go as far as that. Perhaps you could suggest a honeymoon in France, though? He would likely give you that. He is eager to please you, dear. Everything will come out right, you’ll see.’

  ‘How do you know that? How do you know you can spend the rest of your life with someone?’ If she had the answer to that, she might just have the direction she needed to make her decision.

  Her mother’s brow knit. She shook her head. ‘You just know. You feel it, right here.’ Her mother’s hand went to her heart. ‘Society helps, your parents help, they know who will suit best. But ultimately, you know. You feel a certain way when they’re near like nothing can harm you, that you’re safe. More than that, you feel invincible, that nothing can stand against you as long as that person stands with you.’

  It was at once the right answer and the wrong answer. Dove recognised the feeling her mother described. Now she knew for sure. It was not merely girlish infatuation she felt for Illarion. She was falling in love with him, the most unsuitable of men. And she had to see him at once.

  * * *

  A knock on his chamber door brought a growl from Illarion. He was in the middle of refining ‘Snegurochka’ and didn’t wish to be disturbed. To that extent he’d rejected every invitation in the salver downstairs and opted to stay in tonight. He was completely ‘in’, too—he hadn’t left his chambers nearly all day. A quick glance at the clock suggested it was nearing midnight, an odd time for a call especially when no one was expected. Or wanted.

  ‘Your Highness, you have a guest. Are you receiving?’ a footman enquired with all the bland aplomb an excellent English servant might exhibit in the middle of day; there was no blinking of sleep-blurred eyes although the ‘guest’ most likely had woken the fellow from a light doze in the foyer as he waited for Stepan and Ruslan to come home. Illarion had to give the footman credit for composure. It wasn’t every day a footman had to deliver midnight messages to a prince who worked in the nude. Even his work ‘attire’, or lack of it, had failed to knock the bland neutrality from the footman’s face.

  ‘No.’ Illarion waved an impatient hand. ‘I’m working. I am not to be disturbed.’

  The footman bowed deferentially. ‘Very good, your Highness. I will just tell her...’

  ‘Her? There’s a woman here at midnight?’ Illarion rose, coming around the work table in a rush of surprise and concern. ‘Is it Klara?’ His first thought was for Nikolay, that his wife had come because Nikolay was in trouble or hurt.

  ‘No, your Highness, it is not Prince Baklanov’s wife.’

  Illarion halted in relief and ran through the list of women who would be bold enough to come to his home at night. Who could it be? The Countess? The thought was met with dismay. If she was here, he knew what she’d come for. He was about to instruct the footman to send the woman away when the rapid clip of low-heeled slippers sounded on the stairs, the white fabric of ballgown skirts shimmered in the darkness of the corridor. Those skirts pushed past the footman into the room, revealing unmistakable platinum hair coiffed in pearls and flashing silver eyes. Not in a thousand chances would he have guessed the caller downstairs was Dove Sanford-Wallis.

  ‘Lady Dove, what are you doing here?’ Illarion’s words were beyond inadequate to express his shock. What could have possibly happened to bring her here of all places—the home of not one, but three unwed men? She knew the rules better than anyone. She had no excuse, which meant she had a reason.

  A kaleidoscope of questions swirled through his mind. Why was she here? What had happened to bring her? Who knew she’d come? There were other thoughts, too; practical thoughts like how quickly he needed to get her out of here and how stealthily that needed to happen if she was to be protected. But beneath that instinctive reaction to protect her, to send her away, there was a part of him that wasn’t obsessed with the danger of her being here. That part of him was glad she was here. She looked beautiful in her signature white, and troubled; troubled enough to run to him in his lair. For all his poet’s vocabulary and intuition, Illarion could only manage the most basic of thoughts, the most basic of questions. ‘Do you know how scandalous this is?’

  She answered him with a slow nod, silver-grey eyes saucer-wide, indicating she was fully cognisant of what she’d done. Two simultaneous thoughts struck Illarion. She was in trouble and he was naked. A hot rose-red flush crept up her pale cheeks as she recognised it too, her teeth biting into the fullness of her bottom lip. Her emotions being so thoroughly on display was a telltale sign of just how upset she was. Dove usually kept herself in perfect, emotional check. But not tonight. Tonight, whatever was bothering her had bothered her enough to risk scandal by coming to a man’s rooms, enough to risk ruination.

  Illarion strode casually across the room to retrieve his banyan. There was no reason to rush and feign a modesty or embarrassment he didn’t feel. He liked being naked and most women liked him naked, too. Besides, it was too late to change the fact that he was probably Dove’s first naked man. She might as well look her fill. Who knew when she’d get another chance? Illarion shrugged into the banyan, unhurried. ‘I like to work naked. I think better. Clothes are so confining,’ he explained.

  ‘I must apologise for barging in on you like this.’ Dove’s recovery was laudable. She tried to look as if nothing unusual had happened; that she visited men at home after midnight, men in their altogether, all the time. But he knew better. She’d slapped him over a kiss. Protocol was everything to her. Except when she was with him. She’d slipped out to a garden with him. She’d come here... Yes, and look where that had led: to standing in a naked man’s bedroom.

  ‘I trust you have a good reason.’ Illarion trusted she’d also have the good sense to hold on to the reason until he dismissed the footman. The servants at Kuban House were trustworthy in the extreme, but Illarion felt that trustworthiness had been tempted enough for one evening. ‘Perhaps we should go downstairs.’

  ‘I’d rather stay here, if we could.’

  ‘All right,’ Illarion acceded. Why not? The damage was already done. She was here, where she shouldn’t be. It hardly mattered if they were in the rose salon or his bedroom at this point. Scandal was scandal, the degrees of it stopped being relevant after a point.

  Illarion studied Dove as the footman busied himself around the room, stirring up the fire and trying to tidy. She was determined and desperate. It was there in her eyes, in the set of her jaw, as if nothing mattered any longer except moving forward. It gave her face a frantic strength, a reckless courage. The footman continued to putter around the room unnecessarily. There was very little anyone needed in a sitting room this late at night, except brandy, and Illarion noted, the decanters were full. Illarion finally dismissed him outright. ‘Please, return to your post and wait for the others to return.’ Which would hopefully be hours from now. By then he would have Dove’s problems resolved and Dove safely escorted back home where she belonged. Illarion didn’t relish having to explain this to Stepan.

  ‘Now...’ Illarion sat beside her on the sofa and reached for her hands, finding them cold ‘...tell me everything. Why are you here?’

  ‘Percivale proposed today.’

  Now he felt cold. He could lose her in truth. ‘It was not unexpected.’ He said it as much for himself. ‘How soon?’ How much time did he have left with her? Damn the ailing uncle. He might have been able to manage a year if it hadn’t been for the uncle.

  Dove shook her head. ‘No date has been set. I told him I needed time, that everything was happening so fast.’ Illarion gave a dry chuckle at that. He saw some dark humour in imagining the upstanding Percivale thinking
he’d overwhelmed Lady Dove with his ardour in a whirlwind romance.

  ‘It’s not funny,’ Dove scolded. ‘There is no time, as you well know.’ Desperation took her features. ‘I don’t know what to tell him.’

  That was the real surprise. ‘Yes, you do.’ Wasn’t it obvious to her?

  She leaned forward. ‘No, I don’t. Do I say yes and simply accept him? Put all of this drama behind me and embrace what I was meant to be? Or do I refuse him?’ She didn’t bother to list the consequences of that. The look on her face said those consequences were too dire to mention. Beneath those words was lay a question: If I say no to Percivale, will you be there for me? He wanted her, but it was not fair to mislead her, to make her think that he’d be enough if she walked away from Percivale.

  ‘Choose for yourself, Dove. Don’t let a man or a title become more important.’ It killed him to say it. He wanted to shout that he would protect her. But how could he do that? He had a chamber in a house on loan from Dimitri Petrovich. It was a far cry from what he could have offered her in Kuban. Never mind that in Kuban, she would have been beneath his marital notice. How ironic that the roles were reversed here, where he was the one of questionable note?

  What did he have to offer a woman like Dove? He’d never thought of it before. In Kuban he’d never had to. He had palaces and jewels and summer homes. Fine horses and carriages, clothes for every season that filled wardrobes. Here, he had only himself; a man plagued by nightmares of a dead woman, a woman he might have driven to suicide; a man who could barely write drivel, who had a spark of inspiration only because of her.

  Dove was restless in her anger. She rose from the sofa and paced the room. ‘I don’t want to choose. Not yet.’ She stopped and picked up a paper with a few lines written on it. ‘This is your fault. You should not have published that poem about us. He knows it’s about him even if London doesn’t.’

  ‘His uncle would still be dying. His uncle was failing before the poem came out,’ he answered coolly, but it stung that she accused him.

  ‘You called me out, too, when you attacked him,’ Dove continued. ‘You put me in a position where I have to decide! I’m not ready.’ That was the true source of her anger. She had to decide. She wanted him to decide for her.

  ‘I can’t give you what you want, Dove,’ he said slowly. ‘I won’t decide for you. You would hate me for it some day.’ Especially if he chose wrong and how could he not? All three of her options might turn out disastrous in the end. ‘This has to be your responsibility. I can’t give you reassurance that it will turn out all right no matter what you choose.’ There was, in fact, damn little he could give her, his shimmering white Princess, his Snegurochka. His heart did a sad little flop at the realisation. He had never felt so helpless before, so powerless. Yet to assert his power would be to decide for her. He could, however, offer her comfort.

  He went to her, taking her in his arms as he had in the Hamptons’ gardens. This was as much for him as it was for her. He needed to hold her, to touch her, to breath in the lavender scent of her hair, the light rose fragrance of her soap. ‘Whatever you choose, Dove, you will not be alone. I won’t allow it.’ Even if she chose Percivale. He would be like the French troubadours of old, following the courts of married women if it came to that. He had the power to make sure it didn’t.

  You could change her mind. You could make her choose you. Temptation rode him hard. It would be so easy, and so delicious, to kiss her throat, to suck at her earlobe and hear her gasp, to feel her body start to rouse.

  If you want her, will you not fight for her? Will you cede the field so easily? Time was, you never backed down. Don’t stand aside. You stood aside in Kuban. You know how that ended.

  Illarion pressed his lips to the column of her neck. ‘You smell like the very best of English gardens,’ he whispered, feeling her pulse jump beneath his lips.

  She turned in his arms, her voice husky, her body pressed to his. ‘Then come pluck me, Illarion, while I am in full bloom.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  He kissed her hard and full, loving her with his mouth, with the press of his body, letting her know the extent of his desire, obvious beneath the thin fabric of his banyan. ‘Look at me, Dove.’ Illarion broke from her, stepping back and sliding the garment from his body. This was slow and deliberate, nothing at all like the hasty shock of catching him unawares. Now she could look on him in honest consideration and she did. He watched her eyes roam over his body. He revelled in her gasp, the appreciation in her eyes at the sight of his bare chest. This was an aphrodisiac all its own, to be worshiped by Dove. When had a woman last looked on him in such unhurried adoration? When had it meant so much?

  ‘I had not known a man could be so beautiful. I thought surely the Greeks were exaggerating.’ Dove’s voice was breathless. She reached out a finger and trailed it along a ridge of muscle downward to his hip. The proximity of her hand to his phallus made it restless. He guided Dove’s hand to the hardness of him, unable to wait any longer. A streak of silver curiosity gleamed in her eyes as she made contact, unafraid of his maleness. His Dove was a bold one, a woman made for passion. Her hand closed around him, sliding along his length, ascertaining his need, reconciling her awe with her curiosity.

  He let her stroke until he couldn’t allow the pleasure without ruining her own. ‘Now it’s my turn.’ His voice was gravelly with desire. ‘Give me your back, Dove.’ He worked the laces, slipping it from her to reveal the delicate slope of her shoulders, the feminine flare of hip, the sensual bell of rounded buttocks. ‘Oh, God,’ he murmured his reverence, dropping a kiss at the notch where neck met shoulder. ‘You’re beautiful, Dove. Far lovelier than I. Let me see you, all of you, as you saw me.’

  He turned her out from him, letting his eyes honour her. His gaze swept the small, high breasts, the tapered waist, the silver pelt between her thighs. She was beauty personified and his blood thrummed with the age-old call of possession. His. His. She was his—his to claim, his to protect. He reached for her, his hand slipping loose the pins from her hair, the last vestiges of bondage.

  ‘You, too,’ she whispered, her hands going to the leather strip holding his bun in place. ‘You look like an ancient warrior.’

  Illarion laughed. ‘Stepan thinks it’s girlish.’

  Dove moved into him, pressing to him skin to skin, her hand wrapped about his phallus once more. ‘Stepan has never seen you like this. He would never think such a thing.’ Sin wrapped in satin. He’d not been wrong. Illarion kissed her mouth. ‘My sweet, innocent, Dove, I do believe you are a temptress, after all.’

  She looked up at him with wondering eyes that belonged both to the innocent and the courtesan. ‘Do I tempt you, Illarion?’

  She drew her thumb over the tip of his phallus as if to test the assumption and he groaned. ‘In so many ways, Dove. You can’t even begin to know.’

  * * *

  She tempted him, this man who could have any woman. Those were heady words, nearly as heady as feeling the proof of his desire in her hand, against her lips, against her body as he moved her backwards to his bed and laid her down. The enormity of these moments swept her as she looked up at him from the pillows. Oh, sweet heavens, she was naked with the man she loved! And it was beautiful. ‘Like Adam and Eve in the garden,’ she murmured. With a few exceptions; mainly, Adam likely didn’t have the appearance of a Norse god and she had not come here tonight with the conscious intention of making love. Why had she come here? She could answer that only with abstract ideas; she’d been looking for escape, for reassurance, for hope. But now those ideas had taken on a more concrete aspect. How better to escape, to hope, to seek reassurance than in the arms of a man she trusted? A man who understood her? A man who knew the way to freedom, to pleasure? A subconscious part of her discerned the very real probability that only Illarion was uniquely positioned to give all of that to her, that this might be her only chance t
o experience true passion. Tonight, and tonight alone, there were no titles, no expectations, no social pressures, nothing between them but skin and desire. This might not have been the intended outcome of her visit, but that didn’t make it any less right.

  Dove trembled with anticipation as the bed took his weight and he came down beside her. She was not afraid, not with Illarion’s blue eyes holding hers, not with his warm touch on her body, his hand moving her breast, his thumb passing over the peak of her nipple until it was taut. She could feel the now-familiar ache pool low in her stomach as her desire gathered, just as it had that afternoon at the picnic, and her body quickened. Each touch, each caress played on her sensitive skin until her nerves were raw with wanting him, wanting more.

  He moved over her then, his knee between her thighs, urging them apart, his mouth moving down her body, her breasts, her navel, blowing soft puffs against her skin. Her body gave a delicious shiver, knowing the path his mouth would take, wanting the pleasure that would follow. Her legs opened in welcome. At the first stroke of his thumb, the first lick of his tongue, she sighed into the pleasure, falling into the soft heat of his touch against her skin, building the fire in her to a slow, steady burning. She arched into him, like a cat and he gave a playful growl. ‘You like that, my vixen.’

  ‘I could do this all night,’ Dove murmured, but it was her downfall. He was not content to let her. His tongue deepened its work. Her hands gripped the thick depths of his hair, irrationally torn between tearing him away from her and anchoring him there so that he could never leave. The soft fire became an inferno, swallowing her whole until all the world was reduced to the sounds of her cries, and afterwards the feel of his head on her belly, his breath coming fast as if the pleasure had been his as well.