Penelope and Prince Charming (Nvengaria #1)(29)

“I think you ought,” she answered.

He remained on one knee before her, his fingers tangled in her hair, his gaze searching hers. “I cannot seem to move. Perhaps you should stand up and walk away from me.”

“I will try,” Penelope said.

She drew her fingers down the inside of his arm and played there, exploring muscle and sinew.

Damien said, “’Tis not working.”

“No,” Penelope answered, worried.

“You could shout for Mr. Tavistock. I am certain he would haul me away and possibly shoot me.”

Penelope smiled, her full lips curving. “I cannot. I would be compromised.”

Damien shared her smile. “I can think of far more entertaining ways to compromise you than being shot by your almost-step-papa.”

“You should not think of them then.”

“True. These breeches are already extremely tight.”

Penelope’s gaze dropped to the buttons at his waist in a gratifying manner. Damien had a vision of her sliding her delicate hands to his waistband and popping open each fastening, releasing his cock from its prison. It would tumble out, stiff and hard, and she would, with wonderment, trace it with her fingers. Damien would teach her, after a time, to lean forward and take it into her mouth.

“God and all his saints help a sinner,” he said hoarsely.

Penelope raised her head. In her eyes he read that she’d been envisioning much the same thing. “What do we do?”

“I want you,” Damien said. “I want to lay you down and come into you until you cry out for me. Then I want you to beg me for more. I want it so much I will say these crude things to a gently-born lady and not care.”

Penelope gazed at him with startled eyes and did not answer.

“I have offended you,” he said. “Thank the gods. You will slap me and tell me I am a rake and a libertine and call for your servants to drag me away.”

“No,” she said softly. “I want you with me.”

Damien cupped her face. “Not good. “

“I ache for you.” Penelope slid her fingers down her body to where her dressing gown folded in her lap. “I want you to touch me here …”

Damien caught her hand. “Do not show me. Else I’ll never leave before tupping you in this chair.”

Penelope gave him a hot smile. “Tupping? A word I have never used.”

“It masks another word I long to use. A good English word that is short and effective.”

A mischievous gleam entered her eye. “I believe I know what the word is. Meagan told me. It is—”

Damien thrust his fingers across her lips. “Do not say it. Do not, for pity’s sake, Penelope.” Or he’d ravish her. He knew it. Damien would rip Penelope’s flimsy night clothes from her body and thrust himself straight into her.

A madness had entered him, making him feverish and barbaric. He’d descended from mountain tribes who barely contained their violence to build a kingdom, and that savagery lurked close to the surface.

During his exile, Damien had literally dodged assassins’ bullets that missed him by hairsbreadths. Such attempts made him wilder than ever, and he’d celebrate in feral joy that he’d cheated death once again.

He’d once made love to a duchess on the parapet of a castle in Bohemia, while a river raged at the bottom of a seventy-foot drop, and her husband slept in the bedroom not ten feet away. An hour before that, he’d thwarted another assassination attempt, this one a man waiting in his bedchamber with a loaded pistol. Damien had heard the click of the flint striking the pan just in time.

The assassin had been taken by Damien’s bodyguards and Petri. In his rush of heightened elation and fear, Damien had gone to the duchess and dragged her out on the parapet, balancing between life and death while he drove into her.

The duchess had made certain all her friends knew, of course, and after that, Damien’s reputation among women had soared. There was nothing, they said, nothing Prince Damien would not do.

The same raw desires rose in him now. If Penelope said naughty words in his ear, the madman would fling aside the veneer of the cultured prince and take her. And not feel guilty at all.

All humor fled him. Damien’s fingers still rested over her lips. With a crazed light in her eyes, Penelope touched her tongue to them.

“No,” Damien growled. “We must stop. Do you understand me? Something is trying to break the prophecy.”

“I thought you said the prophecy made us want each other,” Penelope said against his fingers.

Damien lowered his hand. “So I thought when I first entered this room. But my prophecy wants everything to happen at the correct time. Sasha knows the prophecy inside and out. If he says we wait—we wait. Something is trying to make us move too soon.”

“What is? More magic?”

“I do not know. Magic, from what Nedrak told me, works close to the bone. It stirs what is basic in us, beneath our reason.”

Penelope shivered. “I do not like it.”

“There is joy in it,” Damien said. “A release, rather like what we will feel when I finally take you.” He broke off, watching her eager, uncomprehending gaze. “Never mind. I am dying to give in, which means we must fight it.”

Penelope’s hands went to his chest. “How?”