Chapter 28

Incursion

She watched him wordlessly as he sat at her bedside, running his gauntleted hand across the silken blanket. She flinched back when he began to trace the outline of her thigh, chuckling dryly at her unease.

"What's the matter? Does a mere change in setting make us strangers?" His voice was carelessly loud against the tense silence, and she looked wildly around for any sign of the aged tiger that should have noticed the intrusion before she had. As if reading her thoughts, he put a finger to his lips in self-reprimand, and spoke in an amused whisper. "No need to worry; we're alone."

"What do you want?" she hissed.

"I just thought I'd check in to see how you were, after you suddenly dropped out of sight." The layer of sympathy in his voice was laced with dark intent, as always. "It's been a while, Jasmine. I daresay I've begun to miss you."

"It's over. Get out--" Her words died at the feel of warm lips on the side of her neck, the caress of his hot breath on her skin.

"You disappointed me for the first time after that night," he murmured against her ear, his hands now smoothing down her sides to gather the thin folds of her nightgown between his knuckles. "You ran away and stopped fighting me." He pulled the fabric upward gently, and she found she could offer no resistance against the heat of his touch. The fabric slid over her head with a soft rustle, and he sighed against her cheek. "Why?"

There was no use to his questioning, as she lost the ability to answer in the dangerous thrill of seduction, here in the supposed sanctum of her private chambers where no man save her husband could enter. She held her breath as he slid over her, carelessly casting his own clothes to the floor, almost daring the guards outside her door to hear and suspect that their queen was not alone. The first gasp from her throat was cut short as his lips joined hers in a silencing kiss; she could feel his dark smile.

She writhed between the smooth warmth of his body and the silken sheets of her bed, a torturous alternative to bruising gravel and dirt. She would bear no scars this time, only the burn of memory where he had dared to cross the unspoken boundary of her private world, a world where she was queen, meant to be obeyed, not to yield to an enemy in helpless submission.

Their breathing slowed in tandem as they finished each other in a forbidden reunion, and she lay motionless in his warm embrace, closing her eyes as he stroked her hair. Perhaps he had planned it this way, where entrapment was inextricably entwined with the overpowering draw of desire.