Penelope and Prince Charming (Nvengaria #1)(28)

If Damien took Penelope to Nvengaria, hordes of men would swarm about her, admiring her, wanting her. Something primal welled inside him. If Damien had been an ordinary gentleman, he could count on fighting many duels for her. But he was now the Imperial Prince, and Penelope would be Imperial Princess. Touching her without permission would be punishable by death.

So sorry, gentlemen. The lady is mine.

Damien wrapped his tongue around Penelope’s middle finger and suckled it. His self-control had gone to hell, he who’d always prided himself on being able to distance himself in any situation. He gave a woman pleasure and took pleasure for himself, but always it was controlled. He never engaged his heart, and neither did they.

His feelings for Penelope made a mockery of all that.

Penelope’s gaze riveted to his lips around her finger, her eyes warm with desire. Knowing he could have her but not yet made Damien’s blood boil. She tasted good. She was warm and he wanted to taste her forever.

He deliberately removed her finger from his mouth. He couldn’t resist licking her fingertip, though, imbibing all the spice of her he could.

“I need to leave you and walk to the passage back to my room,” he said.

Penelope nodded. “That is probably best.”

“The passage will be dark.” Damien remained on his knees, fixed in place. “After a year in a dungeon, I dislike dark, closed-in places.”

Penelope gave him a look of shock. “A dungeon? How horrible. I did not know dungeons still existed.”

“They do in Nvengaria. My father threw me into one when I was a boy, beneath the castle at Narato. It was cold, damp, and nasty. His lackeys ripped me from bed in the middle of the night, half suffocating me to subdue me. The next thing I knew, I was in a cell with my wrists in chains and the door closing. It was dark.” Damien halted, age-old demons swooping at him from the past. “Love, I’ve never been anywhere so dark.”

Her eyes were round. “How old were you?”

“Twelve.”

“Why would he do such a thing?” she asked, rage flashing.

Her anger on his behalf warmed him. “My father?” Damien tried to sound offhand. “I am surprised it took him twelve years to act against me.”

“But he was your father,” Penelope said, her outrage tinged with bewilderment. Gentle, protected Penelope could not understand the evil that had surrounded Damien most of his life.

Damien toyed with Penelope’s fingers while he explained. “A faction had gathered to overthrow my father and put me on the throne. With the faction’s leader as regent, of course, and me to do what I was told. My father caught those men and had them executed, in a gruesome manner. He could not prove I had any intention of going along with it, but to be safe, he locked me away. It took his Council of Dukes a year to convince him to let me out again. The people’s opinion was turning against him, and the Council feared an uprising. So my father set me free in a public ceremony—the prodigal son forgiven—then, in the middle of the night once more, his men came for me, dragged me into the mountains, and abandoned me.

Damien drew a quick breath. “My father spun a yarn of sending me away to school in France, then later claimed I’d run away on my own because I hated Nvengaria. The truth was, he forbade me to come back. If I returned, it would be to face secret execution. Only the fact that the people of Nvengaria liked me and would never forgive my father if he killed me openly kept him from giving the order to have me shot outright.”

Damien finished abruptly, snapping his mouth closed, wondering where the flow of words had come from. He’d never told any living soul the truth of what had happened. Either they, like Petri, already knew, or he had no wish to speak of it.

Penelope had done the same with her story of Rueben White’s betrayal. Was the prophecy making them bare their souls to each other? Did it want them stripped naked before each other, and not only in the enjoyable way?

Penelope laid a hand on his arm. “I am sorry.”

Candlelight gleamed on her tawny hair. Damien wrapped one glistening curl around his finger. “I survived. Petri found me, and together, we swarmed across Europe and conquered it. To a boy, it was an adventure. Do not feel too sorry for me.”

“Was it?” she asked, eyes soft.

Truth snaked out of his mouth again. “No. I was terrified. I knew my father would send assassins after me, and he did. Petri and I lived hand to mouth, laboring in fields for food or a bed for the night, or we unashamedly begged if we could not find work. I, the spoiled prince, was kicked in the face by burghers with nothing better to do.”

Damien omitted their encounters with the few who had wanted them for a different sort of labor, two handsome Nvengarian boys, and how they’d had to fight to get away.

Penelope slid her hand across his lawn-clad forearm. “That is horrible.”

Compassion rang in her voice. She cared. Penelope was imagining the scared youth Damien had been and wanting to comfort him. He’d left that boy behind years ago, but the tiny part of him who was still that child reached for her comfort.

Oh, no, no, no, he growled at the prophecy. You tried to snare me with desire; now you are trying to snare me with her shining compassion.

And I’m talking back to a stubborn, lust-driven prophecy, Damien thought in disgust.

“Penelope,” he said. “I will take your candle and return to my room.”