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"Five minutes," she ground out through gritted teeth.
"More like thirty seconds," the prince told her with something almost like a laugh. "If we can get our clothes off in time, that is. But it's thirty seconds we need to not take. I've already lost hours with this despair shit, and we don't need to lose any more with the reverse."
She stuck her hip into his and rolled him over onto his back with the grip on his chameleon suit.
"Listen to me, Prince Roger Ramius Sergei Alexander Chiang MacClintock!" she hissed. "I want a promise. You can make it on anything you care to name, but you will make it! And that promise is that as soon as we get somewhere safe, and all the crises are past, you will take me to bed. And take your time at it. And do it well." She picked him up and pounded him lightly on the ground with each phrase. "Do you swear?"
Roger wrapped his legs around her, pulled her down on top of himself, and kissed her.
"When we're back on Earth. When all of this is behind us, when we're back in the Imperial Palace, and we can be sure it's not the situation. When I'm sure that I love Nimashet Despreaux more than life itself, and that it's not unbridled lust from all the pain and death and blood. Then I'll take you-as my wife, if I can get away with it, or as a senior partner, if I can't. And I will love you until the day I die. I swear it on my dead."
She pounded her head into his breastbone.
"All I want to do is to screw you, you idiot! You're supposed to be telling me you'll love me and marry me to get me to bed-not telling me that to get you into bed I have to marry you. That's my line!"
"Do you accept?" Roger asked.
"Of course I do!" she snapped. "I'd have to be an idiot not to. I love you so hard it hurts, and don't think I'll get over that just because we get back to Earth. Hell, I was so far gone I loved you when you were just an overblown, brainless, arrogant prick of a clotheshorse and I damned well should have known better!"
"Speaking of clotheshorses," he said, fingering the placket of her chameleon suit, "these uniforms could use some work. That's the second thing I'm going to do when we get back to Earth." He looked into her eyes. "So we wait?" he asked in a quieter voice. "You're okay with that?"
"I wouldn't use the term 'okay,' " she said. " 'Okay' is definitely not the adverb, or whatever. As a matter of fact, if there's a direct opposite of 'okay' for this situation, that's about where I am. I'm not exactly 'bad' with it, I guess, but I'm definitely sort of 'anti-okay.' On the other hand, I'm a big girl. I'll live."
Roger rolled over, then stood, and pulled her to her feet.
"You ready to go?"
"Sure," she answered sharply. "Let's go find something for me to kill before you start looking any better."
"Okay," Roger said with a smile. "I want you to know, I really do want you. But I don't get any easier with time."
"I've noticed," the sergeant muttered darkly. "Stubborn as a Mardukan day is long." She shook her head. "I have never had this much trouble getting a man to bed. For that matter, I've never had any trouble getting a man to bed. It was always the other way around."
"Frustration is good for the soul," Roger said. "Look at what it's done for me!"
"Yeah," Despreaux said with a sigh. "No wonder you're so dangerous. Ten years?"