Page 17 of Engaged to the Mountain Man

I select a soft song that’s easy to learn to waltz to and tell him to close his eyes. “Hum along with me.”

He does what I say and pretty soon our humming is synced to the song. “Do you hear that rhythm? The slow one…two…three of it.”

When I open my eyes, I find him staring down at me with a look of awe and wonder on his face, like maybe he’s seeing the whole universe in a glance. I hope that’s true. I hope Rafael is as madly in love with me as I am with him.

“I got it, sweetheart.” His voice is honey and sin, a deliciously tantalizing sound that has me wanting to pull him back onto the sleeping bags for another round of naked fun even as my heart warms at the pet name. “Now show me.”

I position his body, pleased when he automatically grips me so tightly that his fingerprints are likely to be on my skin tomorrow. I want to always have his marks on me from the hickey that he sucked on the side of my neck to the beard burn between my thighs. I want the whole world to know that I belong to him. That he’s marked me as his own.

He pulls me flush against his body, and I feel his arousal between us. He groans softly. “Fuck, being near your soft curves is heaven.”

He stumbles through the song once and as we get to the end he says, “Again.”

But by the third time we’ve gone through it, the steps are coming easier. Even though he’s not a fluid dancer, he seems to be finding the rhythm of it.

“With more practice we’ll make a proper dancer out of you yet,” I tell him and lean up to give him a long kiss. I can’t help it. There’s something about this man. I always want to be touching him and kissing him just as much as he wants to always be touching and kissing me.

When I pull away, he doesn’t look happy at all. Pain in his gaze. “Do you think we could be together, even though I’m not your prince?”

“You’ll always be mine, prince or not.” As soon as I say the words, I realize how true they are. If the monarchy rejects him, they’ll be rejecting me too. We’re one and what happens to him now happens to me.

His gaze drops back to my lips. I’m pretty sure he’s going to ravage me again right here. But there are still a million things I want to learn about my man. “Can you tell me about the nightmares?”

I’m guessing that he has them, given how restless he was in the sleeping bag last night. He spoke at one point in his sleep, about a man coming for him in the dark but I couldn’t make out the rest of what he was saying. It was too garbled.

He sighs and looks away, staring out at the lake. “I had them since I was a kid. Always this orange glow with a feeling of doom, like I couldn’t breathe.”

I reach out and touch his arm. I don’t want him feeling alone in this. “Do you think it’s anxiety?”

“I used to think that then the dreams started changing. Right about the time you got here. Now there’s a man in them. He’s dark and I can’t see his face. Hell, maybe it’s my father. Whoever it is, he breathes funny. It’s a weird noise.”

I need to do some research later. Maybe Violet knows if Rafe’s father ever had a breathing disorder. Maybe she can give us more insight into his family and why his kingdom doesn’t seem to know anything about him.

Before I can suggest this, Rafe changes the subject. “What do you like to paint?”

I still have a million more questions for him about his past and the nightmares. But he’s clearly done talking about it for now. “Still life mainly. You know, everyday items artfully arranged. I’ve been thinking about doing landscapes though. The mountains here are—”

His phone rings out, startling us from the moment. He steps away from me to pick up the phone and frowns at it.

“Is it Roman again?”

He nods. I suspect he’s afraid of learning he is the prince.

“Go ahead,” I encourage quietly. I already know in my heart what Roman is going to say. There’s no way that Violet made a mistake. Rafael is a prince even if it’s hard for him to acknowledge this.

He answers the call and listens for a moment before he says, “We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

When he ends the conversation, his jaw is tight. He glances at me, a storm brewing in his Atlantic gaze. “It’s time to learn if I really am your prince.”

9

RAFE

The birds are chirping.The sky is blue with white fluffy clouds overhead, and woodland creatures are rustling in the forest. All around me the world is at peace, continuing to spin. But as I walk toward Roman’s house, I feel like a man going to the gallows.

Beside me, Aurora slips her hand into mine. She gives it a gentle squeeze and looks up at me with such trust and devotion in her eyes. Could she be happy living as a simple mountain man’s wife?

That’s what I was really asking her back there when I wanted to know what she loved about her life. I’m no fool. I can’t offer her the splendor she’s used to. All I can give her is a warm bed and a man that will make her the center of his world.

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