No one turned their back upon the King of Varros.
No one except her, it would seem. His spitfire with the daring of a hundred men and the most outrageously stubborn streak he’d ever known in anyone.
“It doesn’t signify,” she said over her shoulder.
As if she gave herself to a man regularly without consequence. As if what had just transpired between them meant nothing to her, when it had meant every damned thing to him.
She was hastening to the door now, as if she intended to leave.
After she had just given him the most intense orgasm he could recall. After she had ridden him to within an inch of madness. He took longer strides, catching her before she could go with a hand on her elbow.
“Wait, Tansy.”
“I must return before my absence is noted,” she said, attempting to shrug free of his hold.
“You will turn and face me,” he ground out, his pride stinging.
“I don’t want to look at you just now.” She kept her face carefully averted. “Release me, if you please.”
“Turn and look at your king,” he ordered.
Because, damn it, that was who he was, lest she forget. Varros was a small, inconsequential island kingdom without the might and vast wealth of England. It wasn’t as large or as prosperous as Boritania had been in better days, before the reign of Gustavson had ruined the kingdom. But he would still be her king, and he wished to remind her of that fact if it would keep her where he wanted her.
Here. With him, where she belonged.
Her shoulders stiffened, and she hesitated. For a breath, he feared she would refuse to face him. But then she spun, her mouth swollen and dark from his kisses, her hair mussed, the pink rasp of his stubble on her creamy throat. And all he could think about, God help him, was the fact that he had been herfirst and he intended to be her only. That even now, his seed was inside her.
She curtsied.
It was a mocking curtsy, her expression serene, her eyes—where all her fire hid—burning into him. “As it pleases Your Majesty.”
He clenched his jaw. “Do you imagine that after you gave yourself to me, I’ll allow you to run off into the night alone?”
She rose, regal and elegant, the prim and proper Lady Tansy once more. “How else am I to return? I intend to go the way I came.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “I forbid it.”
Her chin went up. “I didn’t ask your permission.”
Vexing woman. He wanted to kiss her and to throw her over his shoulder and carry her to his bed and keep her there for the next decade at least.
But he couldn’t do that. Not yet.
“You are under my protection,” he told her with a calm he didn’t feel.
“As I’ve already informed you, I’ll not be your mistress.”
His patience snapped. “You are my woman,” he ground out. “Your mind may not accept it, but your body betrays you. In time, you’ll accustom yourself to the notion.”
“The kept woman of a king is still a kept woman,” she said quietly, sadly. “And the princess who will be your queen is like a sister to me. I could never take her husband to my bed after you’re wed. You can demand it of me, but I will sooner be locked away in a prison.”
Her cursed loyalty to Princess Anastasia was a thorn in his side. But he could see that she intended to fight him on the matter, despite everything that had just passed between them. Or perhaps because of it. Although she clung to her allegiance, when she had been in his arms, she had revealed to the both ofthem how very susceptible she was to him. Her desire for him had supplanted her constancy to the princess. It would do so again, of that he was certain. There was no mistaking the fire between them.
But he didn’t need to win her over this night. There was the matter of where the princess was being kept and the extent of her injuries, to say nothing of finding a means of getting Tansy safely back inside the town house. He had more important concerns, though he deplored the thought of anything other than taking Tansy to bed with him and making her forget her every concern with kisses that sought to soothe the roughness of their first coupling.
Next time, he vowed he would woo her. He would seduce her until she no longer had the capacity to think, let alone fret over her misplaced loyalties. Her fidelity would be to him instead of to Princess Anastasia.
He unfolded his arms with great reluctance, relaxing his posture.
