CHAPTER THIRTEEN
For one moment, I thought myself crazed with exhaustion, for this man sounded like Prince Escalus.
Reaching up, he untied his mask, removed it and revealed himself.
Yep. Prince Escalus. My betrothed.
In a flash, I knew what had happened. The inescapable man in a satyr mask?
Not one man. No, no.
Count Prospero, Prince Escalus and the prince’s personal bodyguards, Dion, Marcellus, and Holofernes. My sensation of being herded? I had been herded, right into this courtyard, to a confrontation with Escalus. As if I hadn’t been humiliated enough for one night!
I admit, I bellowed. “What did you think you were doing? You frightened me half to death!” Have I mentioned that Montagues are comfortable with bellowing?
Prince Escalus did not bellow. He did not react except—he reached for me. He grabbed me in a hard embrace, manhandling me in a way I didn’t anticipate and couldn’t counter. With one hand, he tossed up my tunic, bared my ass half covered by tights, and forcibly turned me over his knee. With the flat of his hand, he spanked me.
Three good hard slaps on my culo.
I could not comprehend such an indignity. Never in my life had anyone had the audacity...
And Prince Escalus? He was a stodgy, boring, uncommunicative man. Yet he showed temper here, and dominance. I wrestled my way free, struggled to my feet, faced him with fists clenched, ready to attack. I wanted to shout, but I’d lost my breath and my voice. “How dare...you...? Why would you...do...?”
In a tone as clear as winter ice, he told me. “I wanted to frighten you half to death! I meant to terrify you, to teach you a lesson! What were you doing in Verona, alone in the night, dressed as a fresh-faced youth waiting to be cheated, beaten, raped, murdered?”
As you know, I had good reason, but as I drew breath to shout the answer, I stopped myself. I couldn’t betray his sister Princess Isabella and my sister Katherina. Escalus had spent his adolescent years in the Acquasasso dungeon, and he wouldn’t understand youthful fecklessness. In addition, I had no desire to cause a rift between him and his only sibling, nor did I want him to know more of the adventurous streak that marked our family, nor did I want Katherina punished for her foolishness.
I throttled my words unborn. Yet my restraint, admirable though I considered it, meant nothing, for Escalus didn’t wait for an answer. In another one of those lightning-fast moves, he placed his palms on my butt cheeks, picked me up and thrust himself between my legs.
I gasped, because somewhere in our wrestling he’d removed my codpiece, and I was wide and bare against...against his codpiece. Which, I can assure you, was not stuffed with anything but himself. Not that I intimately know what I’m talking about, and not that I had time to contemplate, but...definitely him, definitely aroused, hard and hot.
He slung me around in a whirling half circle that made me clutch him with my legs. He rested me against the edge of the fountain’s marble basin. The icy stone underscored the blistering of my butt, and I squirmed in discomfort and...well, it had to be discomfort.
Escalus held me in place and thrust himself against me, again, and again, and the discomfort became more like...more intense. More like...sure, I was a virgin, but it wasn’t as if I’d never...
I know how to touch myself, okay?
I gasped and gripped his shoulders, and tried to contain myself and wanted unabashedly to give myself, and...I didn’t have a choice. I could see his eyes glinting in the darkness. He never let up the pressure. I was gripped by pain. I was panicked with desire. I needed to reach...I wanted that moment...I needed...something...
I tried to hide my face in his chest.
“No.” He took one hand away from my culo, and with his fingers under my chin, he pushed my face up so he could see me.
And I could see him. The single candle barely illuminated his unsmiling features, and for the first time I feared him, for he seemed carved of stone, a monument to mastery. With this demonstration he proved himself stronger, more resolved, more ruthless than me, and if I couldn’t hide my face, I could close my eyes and hide his.
A mistake, for without my sight, sensation stormed me. He used one final firm thrust to push and nudge, creating rich colors of life’s creation beneath my lids, and I rubbed myself against him, seeking more and more pleasure. When I moaned aloud, an untamed sound, I opened my eyes in horror and surprise.
Had I hoped he hadn’t heard, seen, noticed?
Foolish Rosie! He watched my face, followed my movements, listened to my whimpers with the faint smile of a satisfied man. Not his own satisfaction; he remained hard and hot against me. But the satisfaction of a man who’d succeeded in his intention. To teach me a lesson, he’d said.
Yes, he’d done that. I’d never in my life given up control to anyone. Not like this. Not to someone who could mock me, who could hurt me, who could make me a laughingstock in Verona. This was not me, not Lady Rosaline of the House of Montague, who trembled and cried out. Yet these emotions rose from a place beyond my control, a place where, apparently, Prince Escalus held reign.
Gradually he lowered my legs to the stones, yet still he leaned against me. “Can you stand?”
He knew my knees quivered, and that was another betrayal of my own body. He slid his arm around my waist to hold me and, when I would have pushed away, hugged me tightly against him.
I wanted to curse him, but among all the things I’d learned tonight, I knew another emotional outburst wouldn’t accomplish my objective to get away from him. In a stuffy tone and in a voice that had developed a tremolo, I said, “You’re not behaving with the propriety of a great lord toward a lady.”
“Then the lady shouldn’t have come out alone to entice the great lord.”
“I didn’t come out to entice...you.” I slid sideways out from underneath him.
He let me go and stood, tall and still, watching me retreat toward the gate. “To find Lysander, perhaps?”
“Sweet Mary, no!” I froze in place. I didn’t need or want my noble betrothed thinking I chased after another man. The punishment for betraying Verona’s prince would make a convent look like paradise.
He advanced on me, a dark shadow backlit by that single candle. “Lysander didn’t arrive at your assignation last night.”
“After your timely arrival to take his place, I suspect he was detained.” I spoke each word as if dipped in acid. “By someone.”
Prince Escalus neither acknowledged nor denied his culpability. “Perhaps you came out to find something someone had lost?”
That startled me. “What?” The ring? He knew about the ring?
So fast he was a blur, he reached out and grasped my arm. Taking my left hand, he pressed it against his codpiece. I felt his erection, still hale and hearty and, to my mortification, the material was damp. From me. My body had done that. I was still damp, and even worse, when he demonstrated what I would have ignored, I reacted yet again. If at that moment he’d freed himself from his codpiece, he would have found his place in me with little difficulty. Except for my wretched virginity, which I’d been told was an obstacle indeed.
“I’m pleased to discover I was right about you.” Lifting my palm to his mouth, he licked it, then took my fourth finger, put it in his mouth and sucked on it.
I gasped, for the way he used his lips and tongue felt somehow intimate, and both terrifying and tempting.
He gave that slight upward tilt of the lips that might indicate amusement, or some other emotion I feared to acknowledge, and taking something from the purse on his belt, he slid it on my finger.