“What pleases you?” she asked, suddenly desperately curious, even though she knew that she shouldn’t be.
That she had no right.
His smile faded, his dark gaze burning into hers. “A gray-eyed lady-in-waiting with a sharp tongue I’d like to put to better uses than flaying me alive.”
Her breath caught. “What uses?”
She shouldn’t have asked. Shouldn’t want to know.
“Kissing,” he said simply. “And other uses I shouldn’t describe to a maiden, even if she delights in reading filthy books.”
Molten heat pooled between her thighs. Understanding struck her like a bolt of lightning arcing from a stormy sky to claim her. It was wrong. It was wicked. She was ashamed of herself.
But she wanted King Maximilian of Varros. Wanted his stern, forbidding mouth on hers. Wanted to know if his kisses would beas bold and unforgiving as he was or if they would be tender and seductive.
And she couldn’t lie—it nettled her that he was treating her as if she were too innocent to know his other intentions beyond mere kissing.
“What if I’m not a maiden?” she asked brazenly, spurred on by the whisky and the sudden, uncontrollable desire blossoming inside her.
He stood abruptly, rising to his full, tremendous height. For a moment, she feared she had gone too far and he was intending to leave. Until he held out his hand to her in offering.
She stared at his hand, so big, so powerful. The hand of a king. The healed scars on his rugged palm suggested it was also the hand of a warrior. Tansy shouldn’t take it. To do so was inviting ruin. But the whisky and the way he made her feel were potent and heady, and her body took on a will all its own, her hand settling neatly in his. Long, callused fingers wrapped around hers, and with one swift tug, he hauled her from her seat.
She landed against the hard, muscled wall of his chest. And it felt good, his heat burning into her. It felt right, his spicy scent curling around her. It felt like everything she had ever wanted without knowing, and it felt like everything she could never have.
He cupped her cheek, such gentleness in his touch. “Then you should kiss me, spitfire. Learn what other uses I have for that barbed tongue.”
Tansy shouldn’t kiss him.
She knew it.
Kissing him would be a traitorous act. A betrayal of Princess Anastasia from which she could never return.
But he was staring down at her, so fiercely magnificent, the silver at his temples lending him a dignified air that filled her with longing.
“Only if you dare,” he added.
And for the first time since going to stay at the August Palace as a girl, Tansy did what she shouldn’t. She reached up, setting a tentative hand on the king’s cheek, feeling the prickle of the whiskers shading his angular jaw. Warmth swept up her arm, a jolt of connection so deep that she trembled beneath the force of it. Different from the mere linking of hands, and so very far removed from the casual game of cat and mouse he had played with her the day before.
He was so beautifully stark and austere, and yet as awareness of him seeped into her, she was no longer thinking of him as a king. Rather, her body was attuned to his, woman to man. Everything else was stripped away at the feeling of his face beneath her palm—such raw intimacy that was forbidden between king and commoner. It didn’t matter that she was a lady born and gently raised within the confines of the August Palace. He was still a king—her king, soon—and incredibly powerful. No one had the right, the privilege, to touch King Maximilian as Tansy was touching him now.
And yet she couldn’t stop. Didn’t want to. Her thumb traveled the high ridge of his cheekbone, finding a scar she hadn’t noticed, small yet deep, almost hidden in the faint grooves at the corner of his right eye.
“You’ve a scar here,” she said.
“A glancing blow from a saber.”
“So close to your eye.” The observation fled her, worry for the danger King Maximilian had faced in his past making her stomach tighten.
The king held her stare, unrelenting. “My enemy intended to run his saber through my eye.”
A shudder passed over her, knees going weak at the notion.
The king released his hold on her cheek and idly traced the outline of her lips with the lightest, most tantalizing graze of hisforefinger, dark eyes glittering as they followed the path of the lone digit. “You needn’t worry, my lady. I stopped him before he could, else I wouldn’t be here today.”
Tansy had heard the many stories of his battlefield prowess. And yet, it had been easy to see him in his London finery, surrounded by the trappings of the English aristocracy, as king rather than warrior. Yet here was undeniable proof that he was both. That he had not just defended himself in battle but emerged the victor.
“I am glad,” she told him, meaning those words to her core.
