The Queen's Tale Read Free Page B

repeated.
    “As you can see, I’m helpless to resist.” His words pleaded weakness, but his stance shifted as if he were readying for a fight.
    “I would like—” Philomena cleared her throat “—to stand closer. And to kiss you. Again.”
    He didn’t answer at first. His arms flexed, pulling against the rope and relaxing. “Come then.”
    She took one step. Another. Watching him carefully. She’d seen how he’d used his legs when he was fighting the other men.
    “A little closer, Your Highness.” He nodded toward the small padded footstool near her chaise. “Bring that—if you like.”
    Arms raised and tied, he could not bend to meet her kiss. The stool’s height lifted her to meet him eye to eye, lip to lip.
    The heat of his skin went right through her shift, with a shocking stillness.
    “What now?” he asked.
    “Now…I touch you,” Philomena replied before gently placing her hands low on his waist. She flexed her fingertips testing the muscle over hipbone. Everything in her that had been stiff and dry with nerves suddenly softened, dripping with desire.
    “And now, I will kiss—”
    “ We will kiss,” he contradicted her softly.
    She brought her mouth to his and tried to recreate the moment before she’d panicked, that rich swirl of lust and play and wonder and…
    The chains clinked as he moved to reach for her.
    “Remove the rope at least, my lady. Please. I only want to touch you.”
    When he spoke, Philomena felt him strain to remain still, forced to wait for her. Her heart beat faster.
    “Very prettily said, but no. I think…not.”
    Philomena skimmed her fingers down his chest. Young man’s skin…so different from the old king. Dante resembled the marble statues in the castle loggia, expect for the fine, pale hair that softened the curves of muscle.
    “You’re blushing.”
    “Am I?” She continued touching him, one fingertip, then another, curving down and around, watching his skin react to her touch. A perfume seemed to rise off his skin, a scent unlike anything she’d known. Spicy yet delicate. Her mouth watered, inspired by an unfamiliar appetite. “Have you seen the statue in the loggia, the one titled ‘Hero’?”
    Dante did not answer. His eyes had drifted shut; his weight thrust forward. Even his bare toes arched against the floor, his partially nude body strung into one long line of tension.
    Philomena’s fingers meandered down past his navel to the buckle of his leather belt.
    “It’s a lovely work of art,” she chattered away, distracting herself from the scandalous task of loosening his belt, then unbuttoning the top of his trousers. “Confidentially, the Lord Chamberlain has caught me observing that particular statue more than once.”
    “I’ve seen it. A statue to celebrate the human form, as I recall,” he sounded very calm for a man whose body was a bowstring of tension.
    Releasing the final button, his pants dropped with a thud. He’d certainly dressed for the occasion—he wore absolutely nothing under his uniform. Philomena celebrated his form with a gasp of appreciation.
    “Nude,” he went on gruffly and jerked against the rope. “Free of all restraints.”
    “Free of clothing alone, in your case,” she teased. “You bare a—I mean, you resemble the statue,” she stammered. “Rather disconcerting, to think how well the Lord Chamberlain knows me. The man’s old enough to be my grandpapa.” At hearing herself babble, her voice crept higher. “Perhaps you’ve not had the experience of being so continually, thoroughly observed…how very alarming it can be.”
    “Alarming?” Dante’s voice, by contrast, seemed even deeper. He shifted his legs, stepping free of his pants with obvious relief. His wider stance hollowed the muscle from buttock to thigh that she’d admired earlier. “Do you find it alarming?”
    “What?” She tried to focus on the conversation. “Well, when it’s the Lord Chamberlain and my privates—” she choked on