Romancing The Crown: Leila and Gage: Virgin Seduction / Royal Spy

“But, this is your bedcham—bedroom.” She wasn’t touching him at all, now, but somehow he knew she was trembling. “Betsy told me. If you do not wish me—” She broke off suddenly, as if she’d been choked, and swallowed hard several times. Then he saw her body stiffen and her chin lift, and his own heart sank. With her face now pale and frozen as a statue, she said in a proud and quiet voice he’d never heard before, “If you do not wish me to sleep here with you in your bedroom, then you must tell me. It is I who should move to the guestroom, not you.”

“It’s only for tonight,” he heard himself say, as his free hand doublecrossed him by lifting to her cheek. He felt himself brushing it with the backs of his fingers, and it was hot and smooth, like the skin of a ripe peach. What the hell was he doing? And why had he ever imagined this would be easy?

“We are both so tired,” he gently explained, “and I’m pretty sure if we share a bed tonight, neither of us will get any sleep. There’ll be other nights….” Was it a lie? He didn’t even know for sure. And if it was, why did it come so easily to him? He wasn’t—or never had been—a dishonest man. “We’ll have plenty of time. When I get back. Tonight…you just rest, okay?” He ducked his head and touched his lips to her forehead. He’d never felt so confused and ashamed of himself. “Get some sleep,” he said huskily, and walked away and left her there.

Leila woke up in a very large bed and for a moment could not think where she was. She felt sweaty and her heart pounded the way it had sometimes done when she was a very little girl, waking from a nightmare she could not remember.

But she was not a little girl, and there was no Salma to stroke her hair and kiss her cheek and tell her everything was all right. And besides, she remembered it all, now. She was in Texas, in America, and the wife of a man named Cade Gallagher, whom she did not know. And did not understand at all!