“It is … well, it… it is simply not proper!” he said with exasperation.
“Oh, I see,” she said. “And you, Aedan, are so very proper in all things. I suppose that is why you have been stealing glances at my bosom every time you look at me before you so quickly and properly avert your gaze.”
Aedan gasped and blushed deep crimson. “I never did any such thing!”
“Liar,” she said, meeting his gaze.
“I really should be going,” he said, and turned to leave, but she grasped him firmly by the arm.
“I did not dismiss you.”
He moistened his lips, took a deep breath, and turned back to face her. “Forgive me, Your Highness. Have I your leave to go?”
“No, you do not,” she said. She cocked her head and raised her eyebrows. “So, you wanted to look? Well, then … look.”
She stood back from him and spread her arms out slightly from her sides. The lightning flashed overhead and, an instant later, was followed by a sharp crack of thunder. The wind picked up, blowing in off the sea, and it blew her nightgown back, pressing it close against her skin and outlining her figure clearly. As she turned slowly for his benefit, the lightning flashed again, the thunder boomed, and it began to rain, pelting down hard and fast. In a moment, they were both drenched, and as Laera’s nightgown became soaked, it clung wetly to her skin, revealing everything. She might as well have been standing before him naked.
His breathing quickened. She stood there, facing him now, her long, dark hair plastered against her forehead and the sides of her face, and he could see the goose bumps on her flesh and the way her nipples stood out. He was unable to look away. She was breathing heavily, and her lips were parted slightly, glistening as the rain ran down her face, like tear tracks. She licked at the moisture, holding him immobile with her intense gaze.
“I shall be forced to marry a man I do not love,” she said as she approached him. “A man I do not want. That is my duty as a princess of the royal house. But is it so very wrong of me to have … just once … a man I can desire?”
She stood very close, looking up at him as the rain poured down upon them, and Aedan trembled, though it was not from the chill. She placed her hands against his chest. “I saw you coming up here,” she said, her voice low and husky. “I followed you. I knew that there might never be another chance….”
Her face came closer.
“I know you want me,” she said, trailing her fingers down his cheek.
He knew that this was wrong. He knew that he should push her away, gently but firmly, and flee back down the tower stairs, back to his room, where he could bolt the door and catch his breath and try to convince himself this never happened. But instead, as her lips moved to his, so close he could feel her hot breath against his face, he put his arms around her and pulled her close, crushing his lips to hers.
Her tongue slipped between his lips and found his and his head swam with the overwhelming, new, and utterly intoxicating sensation. She rubbed up against him as her fingers trailed down his cheeks and his hands seemed to move down of their own volition, pressing her still closer as they kissed, hungrily, sinking to their knees into the water pooling on the parapet. She helped him pull her soaked nightgown over her head, and as he removed his shirt, she fumbled with the wet laces on his breeches, loosening them just enough to pull them down and, without waiting for him to remove them, she pulled him down on top of her. They made love in the pouring rain as the wind whistled through the battlements, and thunder rolled and lightning split the sky.
3
Aedan’s concerns about the emperor’s health soon paled in the face of new anxieties. He was racked with guilt over his affair with Princess Laera and filled with dread of being discovered, for contrary to what she had said that night, it was not enough for her to have, “just once,” a man she could desire. She had to have him again. And then again, and again, and again.
Aedan felt helpless in the grip of conflicting new emotions. He knew it was madness to continue the affair, but at the same time, he just could not resist her. And he understood only too well that he was the one who had the most to lose. Laera was a princess of the royal house, and he doubted she would suffer very greatly if knowledge of their secret trysts came to light. The marriage with Lord Arwyn would surely be called off, but that would be just what she wanted. He, on the other hand, would take the full brunt of Lord Arwyn’s wrath, and under the circumstances, his father would be powerless to help him.
He could be thrown into the dungeons, or else challenged by Lord Arwyn, and he did not think much of his chances in such an event. The Archduke of Boeruine was one of the most powerful knights in the empire, whereas, Aedan reminded himself painfully, he hadn’t even been able to stop little Ariel’s assault. True, he had not really been fighting or paying very close attention for that matter, but he knew his skills as a swordsman were nothing compared to Arwyn’s. He had been training for only a few years, while Arwyn had won countless tournaments in addition to proving himself many times in actual combat. But for that very reason, Arwyn might decide he was not worth challenging. He could simply have him tried and executed. It would certainly be his right. What if, in a careless moment, Laera allowed something to slip? What if they were caught together? Or what if, anxious to escape the marriage, she were to reveal their affair on purpose?
Every possible scenario for disaster went through Aedan’s fevered mind, but when Laera’s eyes met his during dinner in the great hall, and she gazed at him with that conspiratorial, knowing look, his knees went weak, his heart pounded, and he wanted her all over again, despite the guilt and fear. Sexual awakening had come to Aedan with a vengeance, and one smoldering glance from Laera was enough to bring him to immediate, acute, and uncomfortable attention.
They met several more times on the tower parapet where they had begun their affair, and then Laera accosted him in a castle corridor one evening and pulled him into a niche behind a tapestry, where they made love while, several times, people passed by in the corridor. The fear of being caught had added a dangerous excitement to their lovemaking, but afterward, Aedan never wanted to go through anything that nerve-racking again. Laera, on the other hand, had enjoyed it so much that she became emboldened to take still greater chances.
The next time, she found him in the stables, putting up the horses after he and Michael had gone riding, and they coupled in an empty stall, with the grooms brushing down the horses only yards away. It had been necessary for Aedan to cover Laera’s mouth so that he could keep her cries of pleasure muffled, lest anyone should hear. She didn’t seem to care. The risks they took only seemed to excite her all the more. And she would not be put off. She seemed to delight in the control that she exerted over him, and kept finding new ways to tempt fate.
She would tell him to meet her in the castle courtyard after dark, and they would make love in the shadows while the guards stood posted at the gate, less than a stone’s throw away. When a tournament was held in the fields below the castle, she took him underneath the stands, and they made love beneath the royal box, where the empress sat with all of Laera’s sisters and with Prince Michael and Lord Tieran at her side.
It was as if Laera wanted to be caught, thought Aedan, and the worst part of it was that he seemed to have lost all sense of reason and self-control. It was as if she had some sort of strange power over him. Each time he resolved to end it, to insist that it was wrong and could not possibly go on, she would look at him or touch him or press her lips to his and his will would simply evaporate in the rush of hot blood through his veins.
And then she started coming to his room at night.