Perilous Princess: A Sexy Historical Romance Read online

  She is dangerous to a man like you, he reminded himself. Even if her kiss had been ardent—and it had been that at the very least—she came with a prince for a father, a society that was sensitive to class and a whole family who would do everything in their power to ensure he stayed far away from their daughter.

  As an attorney, he had heard strange stories of men who had suddenly found themselves down on their financial luck and worse. He had seen men accused of crimes when their only real crime had been keeping the company of the wrong debutante. Seth had been one of them and he had been extraordinarily fortunate for he had been cleared of the accusations.

  The old families had ways of closing ranks and dealing with distasteful alliances. Most of those methods would happen while they sipped tea and sherry and kept their hands clean.

  Rhys knew that seeking Annalies out in any way at all would be perilous, but his feverish body didn’t seem to care.

  The day stretched on endlessly and at six o’clock, Rhys straightened his cuffs and slipped on his jacket, more than ready to go home. Jeffries, the new fellow who had stolen his clients, looked up from his desk, his face haggard. The Buxton estate had proved to be far more cumbersome and complicated than even Rhys might have guessed from his conversations with Buxton. There were foreign land holdings, taxes and investments dotted across Europe, into India and China. Those alone would keep a single attorney busy for a lifetime.

  Rhys felt a moment of rare satisfaction. Then he chided himself for the ignoble thought and gave Jeffries a small smile. “Is there anything I can help with? You look positively buried.”

  Jeffries sighed. “You’re a good chap, Davies. But if the partners see me handing the work on to anyone else, they’ll think I can’t handle it and take the client away from me.”

  Which was quite true.

  “Well, do try to get some sleep,” Rhys suggested. He left the office, his conscience clear and made his slow way along Chancery Lane. He didn’t hurry home. It was a lovely day and while he was walking and observing others around him, he could suppress his thoughts and drain his body of the excessive energy, so that when he arrived home, he might possibly relax.

  It was almost fully dark when he reached his rooms. He tapped on his landlady’s door to let her know he was home and that he would not want dinner. Eating didn’t interest him right now. Nor did work, which had been his solace for years.

  He had a new book in his room, The Deerslayer by Mr. Hawthorne, that might possibly keep his mind occupied enough to pass the hours until sleep took him. Then he could rise tomorrow and repeat this day all over again.

  The idea did not please him.

  He unlocked his door and stepped inside, then thrust the door shut quickly and locked it, for Princess Annalies sat in his winged armchair.

  Her legs, encased in good quality worsted wool, were crossed as men crossed their legs. Her feet were encased in dark shoe leather best found on Oxford Street. The cutaway and waistcoat matched and her cravat was almost perfectly tied about a collar that looked ridiculously small. Her hat was low over her eyes, so that all he could see was a stormy blue sliver.

  He glanced over her shoulder. The window was latched shut.

  She held up a thin piece of wire. “I pushed it in between the window and the frame, then lifted the latch from the outside. It was very easy.” She put the wire away.

  There were so many responses he might make regarding her unexpected appearance in his room that he was at a loss to know which one would be the most appropriate.

  Yet underneath his search for a reasonable response was a leaping, building excitement, greater than any he had felt all week. It was as if the intervening week of work since he had kissed her had not only failed to diminish his ardor, but had acted much like kerosene upon a fire, instead.

  His body tightened with the thrill of it, threatening to steal what little thought he had left.

  “My rooms are on the third floor,” he said.

  “Right next to a drainpipe,” she pointed out.

  “You climbed the drainpipe?”

  She smiled and he realized that she had dimples. He had not noticed until now…or perhaps she had simply not smiled in this charming, mischievous way before. “I was always the best at climbing trees when I was a child. The children I was permitted to play with all hated me for it. That was before my skirt hems were turned down and got in the way.”

  “That does not in the least surprise me.” He put his keys on the sideboard and turned back to face her. “Why are you here, Your Highness? I thought that after our last conversation you would give up on this masquerade of yours.”

  “I have,” she said, getting to her feet. “But I needed to speak to you in a way that would not draw attention to me. This seemed to be the best way. I came here directly. I did not roam the streets.”

  “Then climbed a drainpipe where the nearest bobby might have seen you and arrested you. How would you have explained that?”

  She gave a small shrug. “I was not arrested.”

  Her hips made a mockery of the trousers. They rounded out the sides in a way men’s hips never did. The waist, on the other hand, had been cinched in by a thick leather belt, to hold the naturally larger-waisted pants up where they should be. The waistcoat buttons were open at the bottom to accommodate her larger hips, which showed off the belted waist.

  They were differences that Rhys found distracting, including the fact that her legs were long enough that the trousers did not hang around her ankles as they might have on any other woman. She made a fine figure of a man, if one did not look too closely beneath the oversized frockcoat hanging on the arm of the chair, or peer too closely beneath the brim of the hat.

  He pushed the thought away impatiently. It was not helping his equanimity. “Why do you wish to speak to me, Your Highness?” he asked stiffly, attempting to keep his tone formal and polite.

  “I have spent the week reading,” she said, with the air of confession.

  “My felicitations.”

  She smiled and it was the same smile that produced the dimples. “It was rather wicked reading, but very educational.”

  His heart squeezed, then began to leap about in his chest. “Go on,” he said, then silently cleared his throat to get rid of the hoarseness his voice had developed.

  She moved closer to him. “There was much about the day you kissed me that puzzled me. I looked for answers and I believe I have found some of them.”

  Rhys made a fist, his hand hidden behind his thigh. Did she not have any idea how such talk could affect a man? He had to control these moments and behave appropriately, even if she was sorely taxing his discipline. It was only her ignorance that let her say such inflammatory things.

  “You and I are of different worlds,” she said.

  “Yes,” he said flatly.

  “You’re a commoner and I suspect you support the Liberal Party, too. You are inclined toward indecent, shocking behavior. I’ve also learned that you are one of the best attorneys in London. You are a salaried man. All of which make you one of the least desirable men a woman of my station could possibly associate with. If I were a proper lady, I should have swooned when you first spoke to me directly.”

  “But instead of swooning, you pushed a quote from Malthus about experiencing truth for oneself into my pocket, while wearing men’s clothing and strutting about Duke Street as if you were as independent as air.”

  “Which makes my discovery all the more puzzling.”

  “You mean what you learned from your exotic reading?”

  “Yes, exactly.” She took another step toward him, then lifted her chin to look at him directly. Now he could see her eyes properly. “You and I are sexually compatible,” she said softly.

  Rhys’ breathe evaporated, leaving his lungs working hard to draw in more. His mind went blank, while his entire body seemed to envelope itself in flames of need.

  He had thought her ignorant of the effect she was having on him? Who was t
he fool here? Finally, he found his voice. “And what do you intend to do about your discovery?”

  “I am consulting with you. You are as entangled in this as I am.” Her brows moved together. “Unless, of course, you somehow managed to lie without speaking. Your reaction after you kissed me said that you were as affected as I. Was that…were you lying to me?”

  He swallowed. “Princess Annalies, to continue this conversation would be sheer madness. I should see you safely home—”

  She put her hand on his chest and his words halted midstream. It was only a light touch, but he could feel the heat of her hand through every layer. It burned his flesh and seared his mind so that he could think of nothing else.

  “Not yet,” she said softly. “I would first resolve this matter.”

  “Princess—”

  “Call me Anna. We are to be lovers, after all.”

  Rhys stepped away from her, as his entire body seemed to clench tight with wanting. “Your Highness,” he said, fighting to speak evenly and firmly. “This might seem like another simple diversion to you, similar to romping through Mayfair in trousers, but I assure you, this is far beyond a game.”

  “I am well aware of the potential consequences of my proposal.”

  “Are you?” He grimaced. “You are happy with the idea of my being jailed or even hanged?”

  Her frown was back. Her lips pursed, making the fullness at the center round out in a way that was enticing. “I am innocent, Mr. Davies, but I am not a fool—”

  “That is the worst of it,” Rhys returned swiftly. “You are an innocent girl. You have all the knowledge of a married woman, but none of the experience. You have no idea what sort of trouble you invite into your life with such shocking declarations. If I were any other man—”

  “If you were any other man, you would have kissed me by now!” she cried. “I am not asking anything of you but a means to rid myself of this…this obsession that has taken hold of me. I cannot eat. Drink appeals to me not at all. I barely sleep and no book has held my attention for more than a few minutes. If I concentrate very hard upon my sewing, I can rid myself of thoughts of you and what you might have done to me had you been at all careless of my station. But no one can concentrate fiercely upon stitchery for every minute of the day and as soon as my attention wanders, I start to think of you again.”

  She held out her hand. The fingers trembled. “Look at that,” she said, her tone low and anguished. “It began the moment you walked in the room and it is growing worse as we speak.”

  Rhys drew in a breath that shuddered on the way down. “You must not speak of these things,” he growled. “There is nothing to be done about them.”

  “There is only one,” she said quickly. “You must make love to me. Yes, I know that my book learning does not encompass the reality. But I do know that sex is the only way I can rid myself of this feverishness.”

  Rhys squeezed his fist even more tightly. “Is this Malthus again, Anna? You must experience sex to appreciate the truth of it?”

  “I must experience sex to be free of the madness of it.” She moved toward him, until she was brushing against him.

  Rhys found his hands had settled around her waist. He could feel the stiff leather belt beneath the silk of her waistcoat. “You want me to be the ruin of you?” he ground out harshly.

  She put her arms around his neck and despite the manly garb, the scent that washed over him was feminine and light. His body wound up another degree tighter and his nether regions were pounding with the pressure. “If the affair stays between us, then there is no disaster that can arise from it.” She gave him a small smile and pressed against him with shocking deliberateness. With no skirts in the way and no corsetry, she had to be able to feel every taut inch of him. The press of her soft body was almost overwhelming.

  Rhys clawed at the last fragments of his sanity. “The physicals risks…” he ground out. “A child…”

  “There are ways, are there not, to avoid a child?”

  He swallowed. “There are,” he said harshly.

  “Do you have any other objections, Rhys Davies?” she asked. “For I know you do not object to the idea in principal.”

  Her lips were so close to his own, he did not have to bend far to reach them. As he kissed her, the last skerrick of his will fled and he gathered her up in his arms and held her hard against him, as if he might inhale her if he could.

  Chapter Five

  Anna was glad of his arms around her, for she trembled so badly it was a wonder she had remained on her feet for as long as she had. She had not expected Rhys Davies to be so reluctant to seduce her or to care so much what might happen to her afterward. But now he was kissing her. After a week of nights lying in her bed or sitting by her mother’s bed and recalling how wonderful the first kiss had been and wondering how good a second might feel, she had cautioned herself that the actual second kiss could not possibly live up to the expectations she had placed upon it. Few things in her life rarely did meet expectations, after all.

  But the kiss was far and away superior to the first.

  Her hat thudded softly on the floor behind her and her hair was coming loose again, but that was good. It would ease the way forward.

  And her thoughts grew ragged and thin once more as Rhys deepened the kiss.

  Someone groaned and then she realized that it was her making that sound.

  Rhys lifted his lips away from hers and he was breathing deeply and hurriedly. His eyes looked sleepy above the hawk-like cheeks.

  “Don’t stop!” she begged and her voice was that of a stranger’s. An older woman’s voice, throaty and deeper.

  “Hush. I’m not stopping,” he murmured and drew her back across the floor, her hand in his. There was a door at the back of the sitting room that Anna had opened when she first climbed into the room, to check if anyone was in there. It led to a small bedroom, but the bed in it was a wide one.

  “Will you reconsider?” he asked softly.

  She shook her head. “It has moved beyond simple consideration, now.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, his voice as rough as hers. “So be it.” There was a note of finality in his voice. He tugged her hand, pulling her into the bedroom. He closed the door behind her, leaving them in a room lit only by the moon shining in the window and laying a ghostly silver sheen over everything. “Come here,” he said roughly and drew her back into his arms.

  He kissed her again and this time she could feel a difference. There was urgency in his kiss, a need to slake himself driving him onward. It made her own aching want bloom even hotter than before. She craved more of his touch but in this, she was quite as innocent as he’d guessed her to be. She must let him teach her the way of it.

  His fingers tangled in her hair and he gave a soft hiss of frustration, then patiently removed the clips and pins and put them on the table beside the bed. There was a lantern there, but he made no move to light it. Instead he turned and looked at her. “Your hair is so beautiful,” he said after a moment of contemplation. “Why do you hide such a glorious mass by twisting it so tightly against your head?”

  Anna gave a small shrug. “I had not thought about it,” she lied and reached for the buttons on her waistcoat.

  “Let me do that,” Rhys said softly. He stepped closer and in the moonlight, his eyes were dark, hiding any emotions that might show there.

  Anna watched as he slid the buttons undone, leaving the coat hanging closed until the last had been unfastened. Then he slid the garment over her shoulders, so it dropped down to the ground behind her.

  It gave her an idea.

  She pushed her hands underneath his own slim coat and lifted them up to his shoulders, sliding the coat back over them, so that it would drop behind him, too. She could feel the heat of his body through the layers beneath, warming her hands. He stood as she tackled the big buttons on his waistcoat. It wasn’t silk, like hers, but a soft brocade.

  He let out a deep breath as she pushed the waist
coat over his shoulders as he had done with her.

  He dispensed with her cravat with a small smile. “You must learn how to tie one properly.”

  “I know how to tie one on a man. It doesn’t work the same way for me.”

  He loosened the top button of her shirt. The next three buttons swiftly followed. Anna drew in a breath as excitement flooded her. Once he opened the shirt, he would see more of her body than any man alive. It was an exciting thought. Would he like what he saw? He had not seemed to object to anything about her so far. He thought her hair was beautiful. It warmed her in a silly sentimental way. That was something that she had thought only a man truly in love would say to his intended, not a man she had all but insisted make love to her. Instinctively, she knew there would be a difference, despite the more soporific texts she had studied insisting that all marriage acts were acts of love and duty.

  The writers of those texts could not possibly have experienced for themselves the churning, aching need she had felt just from Rhys’ kiss, or they would have spoken more eloquently of pleasure, rather than duty.

  Rhys kissed her again, as he slid the last of the buttons undone and pushed aside the shirt. She shrugged so that the oversized garment fell off her shoulders and slid to the floor, the collar and cuffs still attached by their pins and buttons. There was a soft clinking sound as it settled behind her.

  Beneath, she wore her camisole. Although she had rid herself of her corset and corset cover and all her petticoats with a degree of eagerness, she had not been able to remove this one last garment.

  “At last the lady is revealed,” Rhys murmured. His lips trailed down to her chin, then over it and along the length of her throat. His hair tickled her flesh, but it was the touch of his mouth that was the more delightful. When he reached the base of her throat, he continued onward and with a start she realized that it was possible for him to place his lips anywhere.

  She shuddered as pure excitement tore through her. Would he kiss her breasts? The idea seemed shocking and at the same time, quite natural.