Page 19 of What Dreams May Come
Surely not. I’d got cleanly away. Only if someone knew my destination couldthey track me.
...Truly, someone did know my destination. Someone with rough men who lived to do his bidding. Count Prospero had let me go only to hunt me.
I picked up the pace. Took a side street. The bootsthundered past.
I leaned into a recessed doorway. Put my hand on my aching side. Thought I’d misled them. Thought I’d imagined that they tracked me.
Then, oh God, then they returned, muttering in deep voices. I heard my name, and I knew this pursuit wasn’tmy imagination.
I sprinted away, dodged and weaved through the dark, narrow streets, while the boot heels thumped in pursuit. My heart pounded like a rabbit’s that was hunted by hungry wolves; I dared not stop, for violence itself chased me. I wound my way through the back streets toward Casa Montague, trying to lose my stalkers, but they seemed always to predict my route and to herd me toward some unknown destiny. Fatigue hunted me as fiercely as ever did the villains, and I began to falter. They would be on mein a moment...
I spied an open iron gate that led into a courtyard dimly lit by a single candle. To me, at that moment, it seemed like a haven. I dashed inside, pulled the gate almost closed and flattened myself against the wall.
The gate clinked shut with a resoundingthunk.The key turned in the lock.
A tall man, dressed in dark clothing and wearing a satyr mask, stood with his arm outstretched, his hand firm against the gate. “Rosie, how good of you to come to me and save me the trouble of hunting you down.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
For one moment, I thought myself crazed with exhaustion, for this man sounded likePrince 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? Ihadbeen herded, right into this courtyard, to a confrontation with Escalus. As if I hadn’t been humiliated enoughfor 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 comfortablewith 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 myculo.
I could not comprehend such an indignity. Never in my life had anyone hadthe 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 tobe 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 asif 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.
