She’d done what she needed to do. The prince was back in the arms of his family. She could move on with her life…would move on. Tomorrow. First thing.
“It worries me when you’re too quiet,” Ari murmured as he climbed another flight of stairs. “I always suspect you’re thinking too much.”
The teasing note in his voice drew a smile to her face despite herself. “No one has ever accused me of that.”
“In that, I suspect you’re wrong. Here we are.”
The stairway emptied out to a hallway as well-appointed as the ones a few floors down, the long corridor carpeted with a rich golden rug, and the walls lined with mirrors and artwork, even in such an out-of-the-way corner of the palace. Ari stopped before a door outfitted with an unusual keypad—a slender black screen instead of the standard hole for a metal key or a numerical pin. With a rueful chuckle, he pressed three fingers to the pad, and the lock snicked open.
“They told me it would still work,” he said, his voice wistful. “I made that keypad when I was a teenager in a fit of rebellion, and ordered all the keys to the room destroyed. I always knew my parents had some way of overriding it, but they didn’t take it down.” He shook his head. “They should have, after a year.”
He pushed the door open and Fran was instantly struck by the size of the room—it was small. Probably the smallest guest chamber she’d seen in the castle, the size of her own room master suite back home in her Georgetown apartment. But the far wall was comprised almost entirely of glass, with a view that swept down the city and out to the distant sea.
“When the sun rises, it’s like the entire world lights up,” Ari said, staring out the window.
“It’s beautiful now.” Fran couldn’t help but stare too. In an instant, she knew this wasn’t simply a random guest room, but Ari’s own bedroom, set off from the rest of the royal apartments, a tiny cramped space by comparison, but one that was uniquely him. This is where he’d brought her, and she understood the significance of that too. They’d have their final idyll together, whatever she wanted to make of it.
She found she wanted to make a great deal.
Ari tensedas Francesca moved away from him, toward the enormous window that dominated the room. It’d been a risk, coming here. He’d told his parents he would see to it Francesca didn’t spend the night in the gallery, and they hadn’t asked him where he would deposit her. By that time in the evening, he’d proven his understanding of the royal palace layout had survived in his memories, regardless of anything else.
And the room was exactly like he’d left it, he realized. Apparently his parentshadhad an override code, as he’d often wondered. Someone had come in to dust, anyway. But he suspected that his clothes remained in the drawers and closet, his watches still in their tray on the dresser. He expected—hoped—that everything inside the dressers remained intact as well. The only thing that seemed different was the stack of journals on the table by the bed. There was a new bin beside the table—a year’s worth of magazines neatly lined up.
But right now all he was interested in reading was Francesca’s mood…and he couldn’t. As usual she played her cards close, putting on the face that people expected to see. But he didn’t want a mask. He wanted the woman beneath.
She turned and lifted a hand to him. “Show me?” she asked, and though he didn’t quite understand her question, he readily moved down to join her at the window. When he reached her he paused a moment, taking in her profile. Francesca was beautiful, lit by the distant glow of the city, the murky blue of the far off sea giving an otherworld cast to her skin.
“How long have you used this as your bedroom?” she asked as he settled in behind her. She shifted back, her shoulders to his chest, and he understood the meaning of that small gesture, her willingness to touch him—be touched by him. His heart shifted in his chest and his arms naturally went around her, the feel of Francesca in his arms as right as the crashing of the far-off waves.
“Since I was ten,” he said, brushing his lips over her hair. “I found the room while exploring the palace. Back then it was used as dusty, forgotten study, somewhere for my grandfather to tuck himself away, reading his endless books. When he passed, I declared it my own sanctuary.” He chuckled, recalling the work that went into the room. “I took down the shelves and replaced them with cabinets to store my equipment out of sight, I removed all the curtains. My mother was horrified, but—they let me do it. I think they were glad for anything that kept me quiet for long hours at a time.”
“It’s perfect,” she murmured, her voice a soft murmur in the near darkness.
“It is,” he agreed. Far more so because she was there.
As if she could read his mind Francesca looked up at him, her body wrapped in his embrace. “Thank you for bringing me here,” she whispered. And when she lifted herself up on her toes, it was the most natural thing in the world for him to meet her halfway. Their lips touched, and suddenly it was as if there was not enough time in the world, not enough oxygen for them both to breathe. His arms tightened and he felt her knot her fingers in his shirt, her intensity flaring as hot as his. He wanted her—and she wanted him back, the relief of that revelation almost making his knees buckle…
Almost.
Instead Ari growled and turned Francesca back toward the bed, happier than he had any right to be that the room was so small, the furniture so scant that there was nothing blocking their progress. They tumbled to the bed in a rush of urgency, and he wasn’t sure who was moving faster to remove the other’s clothes and throw them on the floor. But Francesca laughed, her eyes bright with excitement, her warmth radiating out despite the coolness of that room, and he wanted to capture that warmth, to hold it against his heart against any pain and darkness that might come his way.
There would be no darkness anymore, not as long as Francesca was in his arms. He rolled over to reach for the nightstand drawer but she took advantage of him stretching out on his back and moved sinuously on top of him, her legs straddling his hips. Batting away his hands, she reached over to the stand, her precarious position wobbling to the point where, to be a gentleman, he needed to plant his hands on either side of her hips.
It was a hardship, his life.
He drank in the sight of her as she opened the drawer and rooted inside—the long extension of her arms, the flowing curves her waist, belly, hips and breasts. He’d seen her naked in the sunlight but this—with the glow of the moon setting her alight, her hair once more spilling out of its pins to tumble halfway down her back—this was the Francesca that would fuel a thousand fevered dreams. This was how he would always remember her…and he more than most knew the power of memory.
She giggled, finally sitting upright and triumphantly holding up a glinting foil wrapped package. “You make a habit out of bringing girls back to the palace?”
“No, but I had to keep protection somewhere.”
“Uh-huh. Well I cannotbelieve your parents left your room this intact.” She surveyed the package critically. “Assuming this isn’t ten years old.” Her mock-serious gaze transferred to his face. “Because that would be bad.”
“It’s definitely not ten years old,” he assured her, but he kept his tone light, easy. There was no reason to betray the first thought he’d had in his head at her teasing words, but the truth of that thought burned through him, removing all others that came before or after it.
It wouldnotbe bad to have a reason to keep Francesca by his side for a lifetime. It wouldn’t.
Even that realization fled his mind a moment later when Francesca’s fingers drifted up his shaft, galvanizing his attention. “I think, first,” she murmured. “There’s something else I’d like to try.”
