Stealing His Princess (Kings of Conquest #2) - Adelaide Forrest Page 0,13

the moment my own personal Hell settled over me once again.

I pulled at my other hand, but she still held my fingers entwined with hers. With a strength I hadn’t known it possible for a woman to possess, she kept her hold on mine. She shook her head and, with eyes still closed, raised our joined hands to rest against her cheek. Her dark lashes lay flat against cheeks that were as pale and smooth as porcelain. Her lips were full and swollen from the harshness of our kiss.

She reached up with a slender hand, pressing mine against those lips, but not before I saw them turn upward into a smile. Her eyes opened, an amber so bright against the darkness of the night they reminded me of a stalking cat. She smiled, and the illusion was broken. She was again Bristol, bright and beautiful.

His.

Even when I'd had my hands all over her, she was not mine. But the sweet and seductive taste that was uniquely her still lingered in my mouth. It was something I would cherish until the end of time.

"So that's what it feels like," she said softly, and the look she shot me was purely feminine. The innate confidence of a woman who knew and exploited the power she had over the male caught in her web. It took everything in me not to worship at her feet and beg her to cloud my mind, until the only thing that remained was the essence of us crashing together like two waves in the ocean.

I pulled again, and this time her fingers let mine go easily. I knew the smooth and delicate feel of them would not be easily erased from my mind. I cleared my throat and tried not to dwell too much on the way her hair was mussed from my fingers and the catch of my ring in the strands, or the heat that flushed her cheeks from our passion. "That shouldn't have happened."

She laughed, light and carefree as she flung her arms out and twirled. Against the moonlight, it looked like she had the wings of an angel. Ethereal and delicate, and just as untouchable as the sky. "And yet it did. I didn't know that just a kiss could be that.”

She looked back at me over her shoulder, and my hands bunched into fists as I fought to gain back the restraint she had ruthlessly severed, without thought of the consequences. "And it shouldn't have happened," I repeated, biting out the words one by one. With each word, it was a lock closing over my control, snapping back into place. It took all my years of training to claim that personal victory. All the moments I had sworn I would do better than the people who had made me.

She spun back around, arms crossed over her chest, eyes burning as hot as molten lava. "You can't deny that you wanted that kiss as much as I did. I may be inexperienced, but I’m not an idiot.”

My shoulders tensed, my body straining against my mind when all I wanted to do was show her everything I wanted. "I don't deny that when I had you in my arms I couldn't think, Bristol. You're a beautiful woman. It's not hard to desire you. But you, yourself said that you’ve heard stories about Lantis. You can’t claim to know nothing about what my father was like. About the sort of man who married my mother and made her queen of my country."

Sympathy flashed across her face and she stepped forward, no doubt with a comforting word. Even though I yearned to have her wrap her arms around me, to soothe all the heartache I had growing up in the shadow of a royal family born out of scandal, I took a step back. “Aric, you aren’t your father. From what I know, he never would have worked half as hard as you have to recover Lantis’s reputation.”

It was a shock to be understood so easily by a woman I’d really just met. But as much as I felt like I’d known her for centuries, it seemed the same could be said of her. It only made it harder to do what I knew I needed to do and push her away when all I wanted was to ask her to stay. “I will always do what is right for Lantis. I don’t deny that I want you, more than you could imagine. But to act