Princess Annie by Linda Lael Miller

forehead and her hair.
    “Shh,” he said, consoling her in her inconsolable joy.
    After a long time, she turned her head and looked into his gray eyes, seeing sadness there, as well as passion. “I want you to do that to me,” she told him. “What you said before—about taking me into your mouth.”
    He groaned. “Annie, love—have mercy. A man is allotted only so much honor and forbearance.”
    She didn’t know then, perhaps she would never know, what caused her to be so brazen. But she was. She raised her hips off the bed and, at the same time, pushed down her skirt and drawers, revealing herself to him.
    Rafael made an elemental, innately masculine sound, somewhere between a moan and a curse. Then he removed her boots and her stockings, as well as her skirt and drawers, and she lay before him, naked except for her gaping shirtwaist and camisole.
    “May God forgive me,” he murmured. And then, still kneeling on the floor, he turned Annie, so that she lay sideways on the bed, with her legs on either side of him.
    A primitive cry of welcome escaped her when he burrowed through the silken tangle and took her hungrily, greedily, into his mouth.
    *  *  *
    What in hell had he done? Rafael asked himself, after Annie had been sated not once but several times. What demon had possessed him, that he would teach an innocent young woman the finer points of pleasure?
    “Rafael?” She was still naked, but he’d put her legs back on the bed and covered her with a musty blanket brought down from the chest in the loft. The fire was burning low, and if Barrett or his men were out looking for them, they must have run into trouble….
    He turned his back on her and went back to the hearth, making a fuss with the fire, wanting to hide the hard arousal pulsing behind the buttons of his trousers. Whatever his other sins, he had not plunged inside her, even though he’d never wanted a woman more than he wanted Annie Trevarren that rainy afternoon.
    “Are you angry with me?” she asked, in a small voice, and Rafael cursed, for he did not want her playing the game so many women played, torturing herself for doing and feeling things that were perfectly normal, even instinctive. No, he would have Annie revel in her glorious femininity, not feel shame for it.
    “No,” Rafael said, but he would not look at her. Indeed, he could not. “There’s been no harm done, Annie,” he said, testing her clothes, which he’d hung over the backs of chairs close by the fire, for dryness.
    “Harm?” he heard the corn husks inside the old mattress rustle as she sat up. “Of course there’s been no harm—it was wonderful, but—”
    Rafael ran one hand down the length of his face, wishing she would be quiet and at the same time feeling her voice brush the strings of his soul like a soft breeze passing through a harp. “But?” he prompted, moving to the window, hoping to convey an air of disinterest. He saw the gelding, still tethered to his branch, ears laid back, hide soaked, flanks quivering, and felt profound pity for the beast.
    “But I don’t think you enjoyed the experience—” She stumbled in the middle of the sentence, and he knew without looking that she was blushing again. “I don’t believe you were as—happy as I was.”
    Happy . The word struck Rafael funny, and he might have laughed aloud if he hadn’t known Annie was serious. She was especially vulnerable now and he didn’t want to hurt her.
    “It’s all right, Annie,” he managed to say, turning around at last. She was sitting up in bed but, God be thanked, she pulled the blanket he’d given her up to her throat. “I’ll be fine.”
    Something flashed in her eyes, a sort of wounded fury. “You’ll turn to some other woman,” she accused. “Miss Covington, perhaps.”
    Rafael schooled himself to patience. Annie was a woman, and a young one at that, and such things were vitally important to her. He must be gentle, for she might well remember this afternoon