The first time she woke up, she was surrounded by diamonds and gold.
It was magical. It was right.
She smiled because she wasn’t awake enough to laugh, then she slipped back into sleep.
The second time she woke up, she blinked in the night, awake enough this time to be aware of the sounds of a city beyond the room. Beside the bed, diamonds and gold reflected the lights that filtered in, color after color, as if there were a party outside, turning the diamonds into a kaleidoscope. Since her pillow was very soft under her cheek, and since her whole body felt wonderfully soft and relaxed, too, she fell back asleep.
The third time she woke up, the diamonds and gold were brilliantly lit by the steady, white light of the sun.
She stared at the bedside table, an entire piece of furniture made of gold. The clear base of the lamp upon it was filled with diamonds. Why would anyone fill a lamp with diamonds?
Her brain began to grind into gear. The table had to be brass. The diamonds had to be crystals. That was only logical; no one had the money to fill a lamp with diamonds.
She wasn’t in her own bed—also logical. Of course she wasn’t in her own bed, because she’d moved out of her lonely house in Seattle and was driving 2,500 miles to Texas, staying in a different hotel in a different state each night.
The trip wasn’t exciting, just routine, because she was an officer in the US Army, and she had no choice but to move when the army told her to move—which, so far, had been five times in the past eight years. Each move had been predictable, from her initial training course in Missouri to her first assignment at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, from there to a deployment overseas, then back to Bragg. Her promotion to captain had been followed by another training course in Missouri, followed by two years as a company commander at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, just south of Seattle.
Everything occurred in the proper order on the proper timeline. Every time she was moved, she filled her car with suitcases, duffel bags and a reliable little toaster oven. The army stored her furniture, delivering it when they left her in one place for more than half a year. When it was time for the next move, the army sent workers to box it all up and store it again.
Because her life was full of duty, predictable duty, and because every mile she traveled was the shortest distance between two army-ordered points, and perhaps because it was nearly her thirtieth birthday (although thirty wasn’t any more significant than any other age—really, it wasn’t), she had decided to add some excitement, taken a detour and stopped for the night in Las Vegas.
Vegas, baby.
Oh, my God, I’m in Vegas.
Captain Helen Pallas bolted upright in the bed and realized immediately that not only was she in Vegas, she was nude, and she had a horrific headache. She pressed one hand to the side of her head and yanked the white sheet up to her neck to cover her breasts, which caused a little avalanche of rose petals to cascade down the sheet to her lap.
She was sitting in a bed—a gold bed—full of rose petals, a thousand of them under her legs, even between her toes. She stopped pressing her palm into the side of her pain-filled head and instead ruffled her newly bobbed hair, dislodging more petals. They fluttered over her shoulders and down her spine to land with a soft tickle behind her bare backside.
Roses are always going to make me think of sex now.
Helen clutched the sheet more tightly. Was that a real memory or had it been a dream?
“Roses are always going to make me think of sex now.”
“Is that a bad thing?” he murmured in her ear, laughter always underlying that deep bass. They’d just been laughing; they were going to laugh again.
She snuggled into him a little more deeply, loving the way they fit together, spooning on their sides with her bare back against his warm chest, loving the strength in his arm as he kept her securely against his body.
“Red roses are supposed to represent true love,” she said. “Romance. Not the hottest, wildest night of sex in your life.”
“True love and romance.” He scooped up a handful of rose petals and pressed them to her breast, cupping them to her skin. When he slid his thumb slowly over the curve of her breast, the velvet of a petal created a fragrant friction. “Like this?”
She shifted in response, sliding her legs together, feeling the pleasant abrasion of his masculine legs against her smooth ones, enjoying the casual intimacy of their bare feet touching. “No, I mean a wholesome, pure kind of love. You’re using roses to make me think of hot sex again. Right this second—yes, just like that. That’s sexy.”
He slid the handful of rose petals down her body, their softness exquisite, her skin more sensitive than she’d known it could be. Everything with him was better than she’d known it could be. She smiled even as she shivered when his hand stopped just below her belly button.
He kissed her shoulder, scraped his teeth along it gently, then a little lick, another kiss. “But the roses came after I pledged myself to you. So did the sex.”
He slid the petals lower still, down to the most sensitive part of her body, and gently pressed them in a firm circle, or two, or three. She tried to breathe deeply, but anticipation had her panting. He let go of the petals to slip his hand under her thigh, to lift her leg and position her a little differently. A little better. “First, we promised true love.”
She ached with desire as she listened to his voice.
“They showered us with rose petals after.” He held her in place with a strong hand on her hip, and stroked into her, joining their bodies. They sucked in their breaths, in unison, at the sensation. “Love first, then roses.” Another smooth stroke, his velvet friction inside her, the velvet roses all around her. “So rose-scented sex, hot sex, all the wild nights in our future—” his body inside hers, his hands on her skin, his words in her heart “—started with pure, wholesome, true love. Wouldn’t you agree—”
Stroke.
“—Mrs.—”
Stroke.
“—Cross?”
“Oh, my God.” Helen whispered the words in a panic. Her head throbbed. Her mouth was dry. She was married.
Was she?
She grabbed a fistful of her hair and tugged gently, but she couldn’t remember anything else. The night wasn’t even a blur in her memory; it just wasn’t there at all. Yet here she was, naked in a bed, panicking on a pile of petals.
Mrs.