Page 18 of The Hopeless Romantic’s Guide to Enchantment

I smiled at him. “I don’t think you did all of that because I asked. But yes, it seems you did. Every flower in the Four Kingdoms?”

“Every flower that I could find,” he said. “So you’ll marry me. Become my empress?”

I looked up at him, at those golden eyes that sparkled in the glittering sunlight. “I don’t think I have a choice.”

* * *

The wedding was a spectacle, held in the public square so everyone in the City of Flowers could witness our union and the formal joining of the Edgelands into Carethia. White blossoms rained down on the open carriage as we made our way back to the palace, and a trail of crimson petals led to our new quarters inside it, where we’d begin our life together.

He’d worn his golden coat and burgundy cloak. I’d worn a shimmering golden dress, my hair longer now and woven through with flowers. And in the firelight of our new rooms, my husband the emperor, the man who’d brought peace to my father’s land and created a new city, carefully untied the laces of my bodice.

“You are exceptionally beautiful,” he said, voice reverent. “But best of all, you are finally mine.”

He pushed the dress off one shoulder, scattered kisses that had frissons of pleasure dancing across my skin. I unfastened his coat, and he stepped back only long enough to pull it off, let it drop to the floor. His linen shirt followed, revealing smooth bare skin over hard, ridged muscle.

He took my hand, pressed it against his abdomen. “Yours,” he said.

I smiled up at him. “For the taking?”

His eyes lit up with pleasure. “Absolutely.”

I added my other hand to his chest, slid both hands to his waist, then up across his shoulders again and into the waves of his hair. I rose up to meet his mouth, pulling him toward me. We devoured each other with gentle nips and the tangling of tongues, the kisses nearly mad from absence and distance and need. But there was no more distance between us now.

The heat between us rose until he pulled back, panting, pushed back his hair in a motion that made bare muscles ripple. Then he held out his hand. I took it, and he led me to the wide canopied bed in the room filled with more flowers.

“More laces,” I said, and turned away from him, glanced back over my bare shoulder.

“My pleasure,” he said, and set about unfastening the back of the dress, swearing as he worked to pull loose the ribbons that held it together. “Trussed like game,” he murmured.

“Predator and prey.”

He snorted with amusement, and when the ties were loose enough, slipped it off my shoulders and down my waist. I stepped out of it, left it pooled on the floor, stood before him in a thin linen chemise.

“You’ve crossed a continent,” he said. “And still layers to go.”

I pulled it over my head, stood naked, feet cold on the stone floor but the rest of my body warm and needy.

His trousers joined the dress on the floor. He was content to let me stare at him until I’d accepted what I was dealing with. When I met his eyes again, my cheeks were pink and he looked extremely smug. And when I crooked a finger at him, his smile widened with pleasure. “I am at your beck and call.”

He picked me up, tossed me into the mass of blankets and pillows on the bed carved for us, with twining flowers and the Two Sisters and boundaries of the new nation. I laughed and was still smiling when his body covered mine. The weight of him was wonderful. It was right.

His mouth found mine again, and his hands found my breasts, and my breath quickened. I kissed him deeper, wrapped my legs around him. And then we were moving together, hearts pounding and something beautiful began rising in my core. Need gathered like a wave as we moved faster. Fingers pressed into flesh, mouths met, and our move ments sped to a beautiful peak that had me arching back, breathing in the ecstasy of it all.

“Dahlia,” Darien said, his forehead dropping to mine. “My silver Dahlia.”

“Yours,” I said, and kissed him softly. “As you are mine. Eternally.”

FOOL IN LOVE

GHOUL IN HATE

By

GREER STOTHERS

Pietro Angeli leaned in. His small, rounded ears gave him a ratlike look, despite the handsome rectangle of his face. The oil lamp (deposited on their table with a thud upon sunset) only served to enhance this. It hollowed his cheeks, its flame dancing in his small black eyes. “And what,” said Angeli, “do you know about Beadle’s past?”

Inclined as he was across the table, his starched vest hovered perilously close to the ale that Waldemar had spilled several drinks earlier.