He started, "Roxanne Dolly Neil-"
"Yes," Rox said.
He frowned. "I beg your pardon?"
"Yes," she said again. What, was that the wrong answer in this situation?
He frowned, lines gathering shadows on his forehead in the dim light. "You didn't even hear what I was going to ask."
"There're only three occasions in a girl's life when you hear all three of your names: when you are in deep trouble with your momma, when you are being served a warrant for your arrest, and when someone is proposing marriage to you. So, yes."
"I might have been going to ask if you wanted to get a taco at one of the all-night food trucks down by the bars," he insisted, his brilliant green eyes sparkling with laughter by the column of light from the cell phone.
The phone behind her vibrated again, shivering the bench under her legs.
She said, "You weren't going to ask me if I wanted a taco, and you know it."
"Perhaps I was going to serve a warrant for threatening the life of a member of the royal family."
She thought about it and frowned. "I haven't threatened to kill you lately."
"I meant Willem."
She pointed back toward the palace and the reception. "I saw how those people in there were looking at him. No court would convict me. Now you stop teasing me."
"All right. I won't tease you. Yes, marry me, lieveke. Always be my paralegal whom I can't do without and my wife."
"That's going to be in our vows, that you aren't allowed to tease me."
"Then you'll have to say ‘obey.'"
"I beg your pardon you son of a-"
"Kidding! I'm kidding you. I can barely get you to make me a cup of coffee when we're in the office."
"I am a licensed paralegal, not a naughty secretary. The only time that I made you a cup of coffee was that one time when you came in the office with a hundred and two-degree temperature and the shakes from the flu because we were meeting with Pitt-Jolie's people that morning."
He looked at her from the sides of his eyes, his mouth turning down. "You didn't actually say yes yet. The stones are beginning to grate on my knee."
"What? I said yes. At least twice. Why are you still down there?"
"But that was before I finished my-"
"Get up! Get up!"
"-sentence."
She tugged on his shoulders. "Come on. Yes. I said yes. Now get up."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out something that glowed in the dim light of the cell phone that was buzzing yet again.
White diamonds surrounded a dark and brilliantly green rectangular stone. The gold band curved down into his fingertips.
"Oh, my," she said and held out her left hand.
He slipped it onto her ring finger. The size was a little jiggly, if anything. "If you don't like it, we can select another from the collection here or go to Paris for a few days and have one made."
She looked up from the emerald and the ring into Casimir's dark green, sparkling eyes. "I like this one."
He slid onto the bench beside her and wrapped her in his arms, his mouth finding hers in the dim light from the cell phone. Even bickering, even teasing, she melted against his rugged body and slid her arms around his waist. His hand pressed along her curves, holding her.
His voice lowered, "Have you ever been made love to in a royal palace before?"
"No. Have you?"
"I probably shouldn't answer that question. You think that I'm enough of a manslut as it is."
"You're right. I don't want to know. Ever. Have you ever done it in this gazebo before?"
She felt his intake of breath against her, and he looked off to the side, as if he expected reporters or his sister to walk into the gazebo. "No."
"Oooh. It's like you're a virgin. That's hot." She slid her hand down his back and grabbed his ass. "It's like I'm taking advantage of the hot, young prince."
"I'm two years older than you are."
"Shush, my sweet, young prince. Let me show you the ways of wicked women."
"And you have done the deed before in the garden of a royal palace?" he asked, his lips brushing her neck right in that soft place behind her jaw.
"Hey, you're the blushing innocent, here. It doesn't matter what I have or haven't done."
"I take that to mean that you haven't."
"Like I said, you're the sweet, young thing, here, and I'm going to have you in this garden, out here, where anyone might walk in or see us through the leaves."
Under her hands, she felt the shiver run through him, and he scraped his teeth over her neck and pulled aside the thin strap of her dress to lip her shoulder, blowing his warm breath over her skin.
Rox hiked her skirt up around her thighs and straddled the bench, turning Casimir so that he did the same. In the laser-like flashlight beam from the cell phone, shadows cut his face into a patchwork of darkness and pale skin, and she could see the scar on his cheek and his brilliant green eyes.
She stood on one foot and with one knee on the bench so that she was taller than he was where he was sitting. She kissed him, her hands on his face and her fingers feeling the satiny smoothness of his jaw in her palms.
With his face turned upward like that, under her lips, it almost did feel like he was the inexperienced one, except that no inexperienced man kissed like that. His lips caressed and sucked hers, and his hands circled her waist, touching her sides and ribs. His hands were so large that his fingers almost touched each other over her spine, even though Rox's waist was as ample as the rest of her.
Her fingers trailed down while she kissed him, holding his shoulder with one hand but still keeping her other hand on his left cheek. Her thumb grazed the scar there, and Casimir sucked in a breath.
"Did I hurt you?" she asked.
"No."
It must've just startled him when she had touched the scar.
She ran her thumb over the lower part of the scar again, keeping well away from where the ember had burned him.
This time, she definitely felt him tense against her.
"Don't," he said.
"I am going to touch every part of you: your mouth," she kissed him hard, breaching his lips and tangling her tongue with his, "and your body," she ran her hands down his chest and ribs, feeling the hard ripples and sinews under his clothes, "and every inch of your skin."
She kissed her way over his jaw and pulled his collar aside to nip his neck.
Casimir stretched under her mouth and hands, and a thrill ran through her as his fingers tightened on her hips. She pushed his black tuxedo jacket off his broad shoulders and down his biceps and arms. It fell on the bench behind him, the long tails trailing down into the darkness at their feet.
She trailed her lips up over his jaw and found the place on his cheek where his skin twisted under her lips. Careful not to get anywhere near the burned area that was blistered, Rox ran her lips over the healed scar tissue.
Casimir was still tense in her arms, but Rox knew how to distract him from that. Her fingers found his belt, and she unbuckled it.
He leaned back, bracing himself with his arms on the bench behind him, and glanced down at her hands.
Yeah, she had his full attention now.
She unfastened his pants and pulled his shirts out so she could reach her hand inside. Under her fingers, through his underwear, he was already hard, his erection curving back toward his stomach.
He groaned when she touched him.
Casimir pushed himself off the bench behind him and grabbed her around her waist, his hands sliding up to find her breasts. He kissed the tops of them, and a moment of worry passed through her about his mouth staining the silk, but he slid his thumbs over the thin fabric, kissing her neck and where she swelled above the neckline, caressing her until she was panting and her nipples were tight.
His hands roamed her body, and he drew her down, pressing on her hips, to kiss her mouth again.
Rox rose back up to cover his mouth with hers, kissing him, while he groped her hips and her ass and her thighs, sliding his hands under the thin silk of the dress. His hands rose farther, finding the waist of her control-top pantyhose, and he stripped them down her legs.
She stepped to the side of the bench and helped him drag the hose off her ankles. His fingers were already up inside her dress again near her waist, and he snagged the waistband of her panties and let those drop around her feet, too.
As soon as she was bare, he reached for her, digging his fingers into the soft flesh of her hips first, and then sliding his hand around and underneath her. His fingers caressed her folds, every massage sending delicious shudders through her.