His Majesty's Forbidden Temptat - Maisey Yates Page 0,20

like an electric current, and he could feel it, resonating down below his belt. Throbbing there.

He had sex. And plenty of it. With women who were willing. With women who knew the score, absolutely and completely. All of his decisions about sex were made clearly and consciously. He did not act on impulse.

The first time he had realized he wanted to deviate from that had been when he had cornered Tinley in the corridor of the palace once, at barely eighteen. When that initial kick of desire he’d tried to push off as an aberration when he’d seen her in her swimsuit had turned into something darker, sharper.

Something he couldn’t ignore.

She and his brother had caused some sort of spectacle at a state dinner, and he had felt compelled to scold them both. But her before Dionysus, and he hadn’t immediately known why. But he had followed her, that trail of red hair and humor, down the hall from the dining room, and when she had turned and looked up at him, those eyes had been wide. And then she had licked her lips and he had felt it like a glide of her tongue against his manhood. And he had known then. What forbidden was. What desire was. And why those two things together created something delicious that he would never be able to explore.

His brother was a known womanizer, so even then, he doubted that Tinley was a virgin. Would it be so bad then for him to touch her?

He had entertained that, if only for a moment.

For virgin or not, she was his brother’s. If he’d decided that he wanted her, and then desired to return her to Dionysus, he would be within his right to do so. He was the King. The future King. And no one could tell him he could not. His weight and rank far outstripped his brother. And there was nothing his brother had that he could not.

He knew the true temptation of an abuse of power then as well.

And none of it would have been half so dangerous if he hadn’t seen a strange, innocent desire in her eyes too. The sort of desire he imagined she didn’t quite understand.

But with the right touch, the right kiss, she would have.

And that was when he took a step back. Because he was pondering violating everything that he was supposed to be for the chance to touch a woman who was unsuitable. A woman who should not possess the ability to tempt him. And she tempted him now. Still. Four years later.

A glaring testament to the weakness that lived inside of him.

To the dark terror he truly suspected. That the world was random and he was the lion of nothing. Not chosen for any one particular thing. Just alive.

A man who had let his brother wander into the woods so he could have a taste of what his brother had. Who perhaps had wanted to ensure that he could never be challenged by this spare who had no true responsibilities. And who had a woman that made Alex’s heart beat faster and his blood run hotter.

She reminded him of all those things, of all those potential shortcomings, even now. And it ate at him like acid in his gut.

But worse, the look on her face set a fire to his blood, made it flow hot and fast and low, pooling below his belt. Making him hard.

“I’m engaged,” he said.

“You are?” The question came out a hoarse whisper.

“Perhaps not in the way you might think of it. But I’m in the process of drawing up an agreement with an Arabian socialite. Nadia is exactly what I want in a queen. She is everything suitable to this position. The position of Queen. And that is why I have chosen her.”

“I...”

“You must marry in your twenty-third year. I must marry by my thirty-fifth. And so, we are both in the middle of the deadline, you see.”

“And you just chose someone. Just like that?”

“Yes.”

“What about love?”

“What about it?”

“Did your parents love each other?”

“I don’t know. I never asked.”

“I didn’t have to ask mine. They didn’t. And it made the lives of everyone around them quite miserable.”

“No one is around me.”

The truth of his own words struck him then.

“What are you talking about? You have an entire household of people around you.”

“It is not the same. We are separate. By station.”

“And when you have children?”

He did not like to think of such things, nor of the future. Living