LOL #3 Romantic Comedy Anthology Page 7

  Wulf was aware that his father’s own prejudices were causing both his mortification that Wulf might have converted and his predicament that Rae had used to her advantage.

  Brilliant.

  He should have expected nothing less.

  Wulf said to Rae, “You masterminded this.”

  She nodded, still giggling irrepressibly.

  “Remind me never to cross you.”

  Through the phone, his father begged, “It isn’t true, is it? You haven’t converted to Islam and aren’t taking three wives!”

  Wulf hesitated.

  Every instant that he failed to deny it was flaying his father alive, but the man had brought it upon himself.

  He delayed his answer a little longer, mostly to admire Rae’s evil plot. She had given his father everything he wanted, indeed, she had given him all three of the women he had sent to disrupt Wulf’s marriage.

  Wulf held the phone away from himself so his father couldn’t hear and told Rae, “I can’t decide if you would have made a better Machiavelli or a Borgia.”

  “Borgia,” Rae said through her fingers, her warm brown eyes dancing. “Definitely a Borgia.”

  “Then I am forewarned.” Anguished squawking still emerged from Kira’s phone in his hand.

  Surely his father had been tormented enough in revenge for this escapade.

  He brought the phone back to up to speak.

  His father yelled through the phone, “Wulfram, I forbid this! You will leave those women at once and return to Germany now.”

  If Wulf had still been a teenager, that would have incited rebellion, even though he had been legally emancipated at fifteen.

  Wulf sighed, delaying further.

  His father blustered, “Islam! The shame of it! You have brought shame to our family name and our House! I will take back the Head of House from you!”

  That was an elected position, not something his father had bestowed. Wulf wondered just how long he should dally before he ended his father’s suffering.

  His father yelled, “You’ve always been impetuous and impulsive and disobedient!”

  Yet when he said things like that, Wulf needed to take a breath and examine the snow-blanketed hills outside the floor-to-ceiling windows for a few more moments to regain his composure, or consider his options, or at least decide his strategy.

  “Wulfram! I demand an answer!”

  The women were still squirming with giggles.

  He shouldn’t let this go on any longer. “Father, I have not converted to Islam and have no plans to do so. You have been played in an intrigue suitable for the Elizabethan court. You should be ashamed at being taken in so easily.”

  Sputtering emanated from the phone.

  The women dropped their hands, and their laughter rang through the small suite, echoing off the crystal chandeliers and cold-brittle windows.

  Wulf walked into the bedroom, taking Kira’s phone with him, and closed the door gently behind him.

  He dropped into German to make himself perfectly clear. “More importantly, if it were known that you had involved these young women in your machinations, they would have been ruined. No one would have trusted them, not after allowing themselves to be used in such a scheme.”

  Virginity and chastity had not been demanded of princesses for generations, but naiveté and attempting to steal someone else’s husband were simply not tolerated.

  His father shouted, “For the love of God, Wulfram! Did you truly not convert to Islam?”

  Wulf hesitated again, fully aware that every second of agony he was inflicting was due to his father’s unconscionable prejudices. “No. I have not.”

  “Thank God.”

  Wulf wondered if his father was aware of the irony. “You must not speak of this stupid attempt to anyone. Those women deserved better from you. If you tell anyone, you’ll look like an idiot for being so expertly manipulated by them.”

  “So you have not thrown over the commoner?”

  “Certainly not, and you are very aware that we have already married. I informed you the morning before the ceremony.”

  His father barreled on. “Why would you marry such a woman? She is beneath you.”

  Wulf’s sharp tone cut through the air. “I have never been so insulted, both on her behalf and for your insinuation that merely throwing women at me would dissuade me from marrying her.”

  “We have nothing in common with her.”

  Wulf rubbed his eyes, sore from squinting against the snow glare. He shouldn’t tell his father anything because it would make no difference, but he could not help himself. “I can talk to her. I can tell her anything and she understands. She is kind, and her heart will change the world. And she can outwit you and everyone we know.”

  He scoffed, “She’s just a commoner.”

  Anger shook Wulf. “You have destroyed every woman you have had in your life, and I know of dozens. You are careless and cruel with them. I thank God every day that I took Flicka away from you before you could destroy her.”

  He heard a click behind him, and he pivoted. Reagan was standing in the bedroom doorway, her eyes wide on her astonished face. She asked, “Are you okay?”

  Wulf switched to English. Rae needed to hear this, lest she fear otherwise. He said to his father, “Stay away from me, and stay away from Reagan, or I swear to God that I will stop you. I will sell Schloss Marienburg out from under you and donate the money to charity.”

  “You would not dare!” his father roared.

  Wulf kept his tone low and icy. “I will. That residence has a deeply negative cash flow and I keep it only to humor you.”

  “Where would my cousin Elizabeth have her birthday parties if we didn’t hold Schloss Marienburg?”

  “Buckingham Palace, I rather imagine. I can also reduce or eliminate your allowance from the House’s investments. Your income would be cut by greater than ninety percent if you had only your personal investments to live on.” Wulf looked straight into Rae’s horrified eyes as he spoke to his father. “My point is this: do not attempt to disrupt my marriage nor my wedding next weekend nor the rest of my life or there will be repercussions. I will not stand for any more interference.”

  His father sputtered something.

  Wulf’s voice dropped. “Also, you’re to be a grandfather sometime before Christmas. Goodbye.” He thumbed the red bar on the screen to hang up and hefted it in his hand to smash the phone against the wall.

  But it wasn’t his phone, and he was surely too civilized to do something so demonstrative and juvenile. He slipped Kira’s phone in his pocket rather than succumb to the temptation.

  “Wulf, are you all right?” Rae’s eyes were still wide on her face.

  “Honestly, I’m fine,” he ground out.

  She was beside him in an instant and took his hand. “You’re shaking.”

  “I am not.” Utterly impossible.

  Her hands caressed his arm and slipped up into his hair. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”

  He leaned his cheek against her palm. “Josephine found me on the slopes today and told me what my father had wrought. I thought it had ended there, but when I saw them sitting with you, I was tormented that you might be in distress. I’ve never been so relieved to see you laughing. It astonishes me that my father would try such a thing, that anyone would attempt something so vile. I had thought better of him, but I was mistaken.”

  “Well, he got what was coming to him.”

  “Quite.”

  She smiled at him. “I invited them for supper tonight, around eight.”

  Wulf rubbed his aching forehead. “That is exceedingly civilized of you.”

  “They went back to their rooms to wash up.”

  “Splendid.” Wulf looked up. Past the sheer curtains over the window, the snow was absorbing the peach and scarlet light of the setting sun. “One thing continues to elude me.”

  “What’s that, honey?” Her fingers trickled down his shirt.

  “The early
snow fell last week. We made these reservations only a few days ago.” The fresh snow glittered outside the window. “How did he know we would be here?”

  CHAPTER 7

  Rae

  At that precise moment, Rae didn’t particularly care how Wulf’s father had sussed out that they would be in Argentina for June skiing. She wound her fingers through Wulf’s fingers that were still cool from skiing.

  Wulf wrapped her in his arms. “When I walked in and saw them gathered around you, I thought that since they had failed to dissuade me, they might have told you terrible things.”

  She snuggled closer to his chest. Evidently, he had showered at the ski lodge before coming back to the hotel because he smelled clean, a whiff of soap and clean masculine musk, but his usual cologne was missing. Rae leaned her cheek against his shoulder and inhaled near his neck, breathing in the earthy scent of just Wulf. It was almost intoxicating. She said, “I trust you.”

  She touched her lips to his neck and felt the quick intake of his breath. “Why on Earth would you trust The Dom of the Devilhouse?” he asked, his deep voice rumbling against her lips. “I am hedonism incarnate.”

  “First of all, you’re not The Dom anymore, and I trust you. Even if they had lied and told me that you’d cheated or that you were going to break it off, I certainly trust you a far sight more than I trust three women that I had just met.”

  Wulf’s hand crept down her back. “I will keep that in mind, should evil princesses ever try to steal you away from me again.”

  “Do you regret it, though?” she asked.

  “Regret what?”

  “Say, I had gone back to Pirtleville.”

  “I would have followed you and convinced you to leave eventually.”

  “Okay, fine. Say you had never met me. Say that I had refused to go with Georgie and Lizzy to that Devilhouse party.”

  “What a terrible hypothesis,” he said. He caught her hand that had drifted up around his neck and drew the inside of her wrist to his lips.

  “Would you have married one of them?”

  “I would probably still be sequestered in The Devilhouse, with all that entails.”

  “That’s not what I mean. You would have had to marry one of them eventually.”

  “In all honesty, I probably would have gone on as I was. I was not seeking to marry. It was only after we met that I wanted to marry you.”

  He had snapped shut that shiny shell, which didn’t mean that the answer was one that she didn’t want to hear. Right now, it probably meant that Wulf felt ripped open again, still.

  As always, her heart broke for him again.

  Rae reached behind his head and steered his mouth down to hers.

  His gentle kiss was just his lips caressing hers, but she tightened her arm around his neck and dragged him closer, kissing him deeper.

  His arms firmed around her, and his lips became more insistent, sucking at her mouth. He drew back for a moment and asked, “Are you quite sure? It was just this morning.”

  “You know what they say about pregnancy hormones,” she said. Rae grabbed Wulf around the shoulders. She was only four inches shorter than he was, so she fit her mouth to his and kissed him hard.

  He growled in his throat and lifted her, carrying her to the bed. She had stopped protesting a few months ago but knew that the time was coming when he would have to stop doing it, probably in about two more months.

  But for now, she was nestled in Wulf’s strong arms, kissing him.

  He settled her on the bed, still mussed from her nap, and crawled on top of her, kissing her, and she ran her hands over his long, lean body, all hard muscle and glistening gold skin under that suit, and she wanted more.

  He whispered near her ear, his breath wafting through her hair, “That headboard might be quite useful, considering all those iron bars. Perhaps I’ll revisit my Dom days and tie you to it.”

  Close, but that wasn’t quite what Rae had in mind.

  Even though she trusted Wulf, there had been a few precarious moments when the princesses had tilted her view of him and how his friends must see her, and she was more of the mind to lock him down, to remind him why a strong woman was more to his taste than a pale princess.

  Rae bent her leg, planted her foot on the bed, and tipped Wulf over on his back.

  He chuckled a hoarse grunt and grasped her wrists, obviously intending to wrestle her into submission, but Rae dodged him and grabbed his throat with her teeth.

  He stretched his neck under her mouth, breathing a harsh gasp.

  She switched her hands to grab his wrists, crawled on top of him, and pushed his muscled arms up until his fingers met the headboard. “Grab it,” she whispered in his ear. “Don’t let go.”

  Wulf’s fingers wound around the twisted metal in the headboard. “I want to touch you.”

  “Let me touch you.”

  His deep moan that rumbled through his burly chest under her body sounded more like pain than passion.

  Rae pulled off his clothes. She unbuttoned his shirt, letting her fingers drag over his rounded pecs, and shoved the crisp fabric over the thick muscle wound around his arms, telling him to let go of the headboard just long enough to pull his shirt over his hands. The richly inked tattoo on his back flashed into view—the black, green, and violent pink of the cherry blossoms swirling around the white dragon at the center where the gnarled scar tissue was too knotted to tattoo. Rae’s fingers strayed toward it, but sometimes Wulf went quiet if he knew she was exploring it, so she pulled her hands back.

  She unbuckled his belt and gathered the cloth of his suit slacks, dragging them and his snug underwear down his long legs, stroking the heavy sinews in his thighs and calves.

  By the time she had him naked, all six feet and four inches of him, his long, muscled body as golden as sunlight, his harsh breathing sounded like he had run a marathon. The stacked bricks of his abs swelled with each rough breath.

  Rae straddled him, his stiff shaft nudging her, her knees on either side of his hips on the soft bed, and unbuttoned her own blouse. The small buttons slipped through the silk that was the dark blue of Wulf’s hungry eyes. His head was propped up on the pillow, and she swore that he didn’t blink the whole time she stripped for him. His knuckles whitened where he gripped the headboard.

  Yeah, he wasn’t thinking about numbers or blood or princesses acting like horse thieves at all. She would have bet dollars to donuts that his head was full of nothing but testosterone-fueled fire.

  She slipped off the bed for a moment and shucked her pants and underwear, and then she clambered back on top of him and stretched out on his strong body. Pressing herself against his thick muscles felt like lying on a dry riverbed of sun-warmed, water-smoothed stones.

  He shuddered under her, his muscles straining with effort.

  Rae mouthed his neck and the hard, round muscle of his shoulders, and each of his groans was more tortured than the last. Wulf’s natural male musk filled her nose and her mouth.

  His arm twitched under her tongue.

  Rae was sure that he had let go of the headboard for just a moment, but he had remembered himself.

  Rae smiled, her breath warming the skin on his neck.

  Yes, it is wonderful when a man takes control and you lose all yours, but sometimes, when a man gives up control and allows you to explore his body, to touch and tongue his hard flesh and the crenellations and rounded muscle of his abdominals and pectoral muscles, to have your way with him, even though he trembles under your hands with mastering his slender self-control, that’s a whole hell of a lot of fun, too.

  And sometimes, you just want to get him so riled up that animal instinct takes over, so that even Wulfram Augustus Heinrich Ernst Georg Berthold Friedrich Wilhelm Louis Ferdinand Prinz von Hannover can’t think about anything except you.

  Rae crawled up to his ear. Her thick auburn hair fell around them, lying in long ribbons where that tattoo stained the heavy deltoid muscle over his shoulder, and she whis
pered, “You can let go now.”

  Wulf shoved her off of him and rolled onto her, his mouth crashing down on hers and his hands finding her wrists to lock Rae against the soft bed. His satiny skin slipped over hers and he dragged himself on top of her, pressing her down with his weight. She caught a glimpse of his face as he tore himself away to breathe. Passion glazed his dark blue eyes.

  His hands and mouth were everywhere, grabbing her and sucking on her flesh and breasts, and within minutes she was panting for him, but he wasn’t done with her yet.

  Wulf flipped her over on her stomach and wrapped her in his arms, pulling her up to stand on her knees and lean against his muscled body. From behind her, his hands roamed her body, palming her breasts and sliding down her belly to her folds. Rae arched against him as he slipped against her swollen flesh, then massaged her, then his fingers slid inside her and stroked her until she writhed against him, trying to turn, but his arms clamped harder around her hips and breasts and he drove her, rubbing her inside and over the sharp points of pleasure, tightening the tension in her body but never quite letting her fall over the edge, until she cried out for him.

  He spun her in his arms and pushed her to the bed, falling and catching himself above her, and he parted her thighs with his knees.

  He pushed inside her, filling her at just the limit that she could take, and she held him around the neck. She tried to pull his body down to her, but Wulf watched her, his dark blue eyes blazing. His body glistened with fresh sweat. His nostrils flared with each breath like he was trying to control himself but failing.

  Rae let one hand drift down to his cheek, and he didn’t look away from her eyes.

  He pumped into her, a thrill running through her as his body rubbed against her. He said, “I would never have let you go.”

  “I wouldn’t have left you.” The ripples were becoming waves as he thrust harder, and her head began to buzz.

  He slammed into her, taking her hard. Her body pulsed with each thrust inside her, clenching, tightening, until she couldn’t hear her own breath and she broke through. Ecstasy shot up her spine, arching her body, and Wulf grunted through clenched teeth, strained into her, and crumpled against her body, panting against her shoulder, “I love you. I can’t let you go.”