Awakening Beauty (3 page)

He held her in a big, rocking hug, stroking her hair until the storm had passed. Even then, when she slowly, shame-facedly, lifted her head, he didn’t let her go. His lips tugged upward and, in shy response, she let hers follow.

He bent his head and softly kissed her mouth.

At the first touch of his lips, something surged through her, vital and desperate. It was a brief kiss, less even than she had shared with Karl the night before the ball she’d never got to, and yet it changed everything. He drew back slightly, and she realized he meant it as no more than comfort. Comforting the child that she wasn’t. She needed… She didn’t know what she needed, except him.

So she reached up and fastened her mouth to his.

Stunned, Joel let the deranged girl’s sweet, clinging lips move over his. He should never have kissed her in the first place. She’d just looked so wounded and vulnerable—and yes, so damned beautiful—that it had seemed the right thing to do. It had been impulse, instinct, with the purest intentions, but even as he did it, part of him was aware that if she’d been male, old or unattractive, he was unlikely to have chosen that particular form of comfort.

He put his hand up to her face, meaning to disengage with gentleness, to explain how he couldn’t possibly take advantage of someone so emotionally upset right now, but as he moved his lips to speak, she took it as a sign of response and sank deeper with a sigh.

Joe’s body acted without permission and from the worst of intentions. Fire seemed to curl from her lips through his entire body. His cock, already perked by her beauty, rose up like a rampant beast in his pants. She was all softness and passion. Her breasts pressed into his chest. His hands itched to touch, to caress and tweak. With some superhuman effort, he prevailed, but he wouldn’t have been human at all if he’d been able to resist kissing her back.

Hell, it was only a kiss, and whatever the beast in his pants was demanding, he’d make damned sure it got to be no more than that. So he opened his mouth wider, taking hers with him and slid his tongue into her mouth.

She tasted of lemons and vanilla, at once sweet and tangy, and she smelled delicious too, some heady scent of roses and sunshine that made him long to bury himself inside her. Her tongue seemed shocked to encounter his, but after an instant, it slid along his, and let him suck hers into his own mouth.

She let out a little moan, twisting in his arms as if she needed to get closer. Her lips, her whole body seemed to burn up with a fever of passion, and everything in him leapt to meet it. His hand closed over the softness of her silk-covered breast at last, felt the nipple grow under his palm until he slid his hand downward and caressed it with his thumb. She moaned again, her breath hot and exciting in his mouth.

Hot. Fever. Illness. Confusion.
For fuck’s sake, Thorne, what are you doing?

He slid his hand back to her waist, drew his mouth free with as much gentleness as he could muster.

“Aurora,” he said a little too harshly. “Slow down.”

Confusion clouded the warm passion in her eyes. Then hurt overlaid them both, and he groaned aloud.

“You don’t like me,” she whispered.

“God, it isn’t that…”

“It must be. You don’t fear my rank, if you even believe in it. I’m not usually so…immodest, but I’m not stupid. Just say I disgust you.”

“Disgust me? Aurora, this is how much you disgust me.” He seized her hand and carried it to the rigid hardness of his cock to make his point. Perhaps that wasn’t wise under the circumstances, but he didn’t think best in the grip of sexual frustration.

Her eyes widened, but she didn’t pull away in shock. Neither, fortunately, did she delve inside his pants. Her fingers moved uncertainly, feeling the outline of his shaft. He swallowed, maintaining his self-control with difficulty.

Her face burned. He lifted her hand off his cock and carried it to his lips for a quick kiss. “That’s how much I want you, so don’t tempt me anymore. When you’re better, and if you still want to come, I’d love to take you out to dinner.”

Even as he said the words, he laughed at himself. He sounded so pompous and grown up. Which was another matter. The girl was nineteen and clearly not as experienced as he’d expected. Yet another reason to back off.

And yet the sneaking thought entered his head that if Vee had ever felt half so good in his arms, he wouldn’t be this tormented over the decision he needed to make concerning their possible future together. She was not yet his fiancée, not really even his girlfriend, more of a business partner if anything. He owed Vee nothing, at least not in emotional terms, and yet even thinking of her now felt like treachery. Though whether to her or Aurora he wasn’t clear and didn’t want to be.

Aurora’s gaze fell. She shifted away from him, and perversely, he wanted her back in his arms.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I just feel so…”

“Needy,” he said ruefully. “Me too, but with considerably less cause. Come on, eat up. It’ll make you feel better.”

Chapter Three

“This drawing room was one of my mother’s favorite rooms in the house. She loved to sit here playing the clavichord.” Aurora stroked her hand down the dusty keyboard and the musical instrument gave a discordant jangle. “She would die to see her beloved instrument ruined.” Her choice of words struck her like an arrow to the chest, for very likely her mother
was
dead, long dead and turned to dust.

“How could all this time have passed? A magic spell must have catapulted me forward through time. I must find a way back to my own time.”

Joel walked over to join her by the clavichord. He plunked one key over and over, a horribly out of tune B-flat. “Magic. I suppose that’s one possibility. Or some sort of wormhole through space. Or maybe, you simply came here with a film crew to make a…a music video or something. You went up into the tower alone, knocked yourself out and remained unconscious until I happened to come along.” He paused. “The wormhole idea is seeming more believable.”

Aurora stared at this odd man with his strange speech—and his mouth that could do such strange things to her insides when he kissed her. “Many of your words make no sense to me at all. How is it that you speak my language if you come from someplace far away?”

“I often come to Schlaushagen on business, so I speak the language fluently. In fact, I’ve lived in the capital, Hambriega, for nearly a year, overseeing the merger of two corporations. My work often involves travel and extended stays in various countries. I can speak three languages fluently and several others enough to get by.”

“Travel. How exciting that must be for you. I always wanted to go somewhere, anywhere, but my parents would barely let me outdoors. Do you know, in my entire life I’ve never been beyond the castle gardens?”

He glanced around the drawing room, now half garden itself. “A deluxe prison.”

“Yes. That’s the way I always felt, as if I was sheltered and loved but a prisoner.” Aurora didn’t share her secret—that most of the reason she’d been excited about marrying Karl, the Prince Regent of Blessen, was because the marriage would at last take her to a foreign land and an exciting new life. “But now I would give anything, even if I had to stay in this castle forever, to have my parents back.”

Joel stroked a hand over the ebony cover of the clavichord. “I can understand that. I lost my parents when I was very young, or rather, my mother. I never knew my father. Mom died from a brain hemorrhage. I didn’t have any relatives who wanted to take me in, so I went into foster care.”

“You were an orphan?”

“Yes, that’s right. I went through a lot of foster homes before I decided I’d had enough and struck out on my own.” He shrugged and smiled, but there was no humor in the quick flash of teeth. “‘A self-made man’ they call me in the media, but I’d say my circumstances had a big hand in it. Now I’m a rich workaholic who never takes vacation days.” A slightly rueful look passed across his face. “Although this trip was my idea. I thought I’d enjoy hiking here in these remote mountains, and I wanted some time alone.”

Aurora pictured a boy with nothing, no father or mother or anyone else to care about him and no money to help him survive. It made her appreciate her overprotective parents with all her heart. Where were they now?

She turned away from the instrument that her mother would never play again. She faced Joel and met his dark blue eyes. “Please tell me about the world as it is now. I must know what I will be facing.”

He blew a breath. “I hardly know where to begin. Why don’t you tell me more about your world first and maybe we can piece together what might have happened.”

Aurora wrung her hands together. She felt restless. She needed to see every part of this place that until yesterday had been her home but was now a moldering ruin. “Let us walk as we talk. I feel too beside myself to sit still.”

“Sure. We can look around.” Joel did something with a small cylinder and a beam of light shot from it, illuminating the drawing room.

Aurora gasped at the display of magic. “You have wizarding skills?”

“What? This? It’s called a flashlight.” He flicked it on and off several times, then looked at her and murmured. “You really do act like you’ve never seen one before. All right. I’ll play along. It runs on a power source called batteries. There’s also something called electricity that lights, heats and cools our houses. You’ll see lots of machines these days that make work easier for people.”

“That is good. It is my understanding the peasants live hard lives.”

He offered her the metal cylinder and she shone the beam all around the room, up and down the walls and into every corner. But the sight depressed her. Then the light caught a mirror, reflecting her cloudy image back at her.

Aurora walked over to the wall and swept her hand across the glass, smearing the thick coating of dust. The mirror beneath was nearly ruined from the passage of time and barely showed her face in its spotty surface. The contrast between her face, which appeared perfectly normal, and the ancient mirror, which only yesterday had been highly polished, underscored the truth of what Joel claimed. Many years had passed since she’d pricked her finger on the spinning wheel and fainted.

A muddy version of Joel appeared in the glass beside her, a tall man with brown hair and kind eyes that gazed at her pityingly. He rested his hand on her shoulder, the warmth of his palm seeping through her gown and into her skin. “Don’t look so sad. I’ll find a way to help you. That’s what I’m good at—fixing things.”

She turned away from the looking glass to lead the way out of the room. They entered the main hallway, drafty and filled with drifts of leaves that had blown in from the courtyard.

“If the drawing room was my mother’s favorite place, his private office behind the throne room was my father’s. When he was finished holding court, he would retire there with his friend Lord Brandenbolt and smoke cigars until it looked like the room was on fire from the smoke billowing out beneath the door.” She smiled. “How Mother complained about the smell that permeated his clothing.”

“I don’t mind a fine cigar myself once in a while.” Joel glanced into the throne room as they passed. “And where did the princess spend her days?”

“I loved my garden best of all. It may have been walled, but I had the illusion of freedom when I strolled there. I’ll show it to you.” She was almost more afraid to see the ruin of her beloved garden than any other part of the castle. Her heart fluttered as she walked with Joel down a side corridor and through the door that opened into her garden.

It was a tangled wilderness. The ornamental trees had long since lived their span and toppled over. Weeds choked every flower bed, and an overgrowth of ivy or brambles covered most of the fountains and statues. The only beauty to be found was in the pink roses that grew in wild profusion among the brambles.

Aurora felt disoriented. Although she’d walked the paths of this patch of ground all her life, now she couldn’t even find her way to the gazebo where she’d spent so many days reclining on a divan and reading stories about faraway lands. Her throat constricted and her eyes burned, but she didn’t want to cry in front of Joel Thorne—not again.

“I guess there’s nothing to see,” she said bitterly and turned to walk back inside.

He took her arm, his firm hand supporting her elbow and reminding her of how it had felt when he touched her face and held her body. “Come on. We’ll sit down and talk. I have a flask of whiskey. I think you could use a shot.”

Aurora allowed him to lead her through the desolate place that had once been her home. She sat on the cushion he called a “sleeping bag” and watched Joel poke the little fire on the hearth. He added some more twigs and leaves and helped the feeble glow along with a magic wand he said was a “lighter”. It occurred to her a chimney that hadn’t been used in a thousand years might not be the safest conductor for smoke and sparks, but decided it didn’t really matter if the entire mausoleum of her lost life caught fire.

After he’d built up the fire by adding a few logs, he crouched by his bag and pulled from it a metal flask that he handed to her. “Just a sip. It’s pretty strong, but it will warm you up.”

Aurora thought of all her mother’s warnings about taking food or drink from strangers and what magic potions could do to a person. But could things get any worse if she suddenly sprouted a tail and horns or was put back to sleep for another thousand years? She took the flask and sipped at the liquid within. It seared her throat and set a fire glowing in her belly. She coughed and choked, and Joel patted her back.

“Easy now.” He took the flask back and sipped from it himself. “Tell me more about what happened to you in the tower, how you fell unconscious. Some event must have triggered that. Tell me about this, um, spinning wheel. Since it isn’t there now, someone must have taken the trouble to remove the evidence. Do you have any idea who would have wished you harm and had the power to…make a spell like this?”

Aurora leaned her head back against one of the cushions. “My mother hinted at something that happened at my birth or shortly after, but she was always vague. She never told me the exact reason she and my father were so concerned about my having contact with pointed objects.” She frowned. “I asked her many times. I asked my nursemaid and later my governess and any other servant I could cajole into gossiping with me, but they all shifted away from the topic every time I brought it up. It was almost as if they
couldn’t
tell me. I wondered if there was some kind of spell keeping them from telling me the truth, for certainly knowing
why
I was in danger could only have helped protect me from it.”