Caged Kitten (All the Queen's Men #2) - Rhea Watson Page 0,65

gaze raking across my body, lingering on the dip of my throat and the valley of my breasts. If we had the time, I would have liked to just look at him—maybe even desensitize myself to such a gorgeous creature so that I’d stop flushing bright red at the thought of what was hidden under his jumpsuit. But we didn’t have time. Someone was always watching in Xargi, always waiting to screw you over.

And no one was going to take this away from me.

From us.

I shoved my jumpsuit the rest of the way down, clumsily stepping out of the purple material and kicking it aside, not caring that it would be dusty and floury when I put it back on. Elijah went for my panties like they had their own gravitational pull, his expression hard and unfamiliar, everything taut—like he was fighting himself, pushing for restraint—his arm like steel when I grabbed it.

“Do not rip them,” I whispered hoarsely, shooting him a warning look that finally broke the tightness around his mouth, that shattered the dangerous glint in his eyes. He grinned down at me, all predatory and daring, like he saw my words as a challenge, and I huffed, pushing his arm away ever so slightly. “You know how much they cost.”

“Does that mean I can’t keep them?” Elijah rumbled silkily, his head cocked. I bit the insides of my cheeks to stop my smile; this wasn’t a train of thought I wanted to encourage, even if there was something so wickedly sexy about him carrying my panties around in his pocket as we went on with the rest of our day.

“No,” I hissed, “you definitely can’t keep—”

He swallowed my words with another kiss, fierce and brutal, more punishing than those that came before, and I wilted against the door with a whimper. I’d never been one for rough stuff in the bedroom, but as I wriggled the cotton down my thighs, let it fall to the floor, I couldn’t imagine any other way with Elijah. Outside this room, he was sweet and thoughtful, protective and inclusive, patient to a fault about my struggle of coming to terms with being wrongfully incarcerated—kidnapped, actually, by a madman.

But right here, right now, Elijah was a dragon—the dragon, alpha to the core.

As soon as I was bare before him, his hands went wandering, roughly perusing my figure, mapping every curve, delving between my thighs and snarling when he found me wet. I whimpered as he stroked me, swept his thumb over my clit, wondering how his punishing mouth would feel against my folds.

But—no time.

My hands found his shoulders when he hoisted me up, and I wrapped my legs around him, locked my ankles behind his back and dug in, the pair of us driven by instinct, moving and rearranging and jostling each other like this wasn’t our first time. His cock nudged my slick entrance, and I speared my hands into his shaggy hair, into surprisingly soft waves I’d wanted to stroke and finger-comb and nudge out of his eyes for weeks. Today I twisted. I tugged. Just as my teeth and tongue and lips reminded him that I wasn’t passive, that I could give as good as I got, my fingers were cruel, using his hair like reins, driving him onward—

Elijah shoved me hard against the door, then filled me with a single, gloriously brutal thrust. I cried out into his mouth, eyes wide, pleasure and pain deliciously twining into one. Foreplay had always been my favorite part of sex, but having been single for years, most of my gratification came from one-night stands—and guys who didn’t plan to stay the night weren’t super keen on wasting time before the deed.

But this wasn’t that; Elijah wasn’t like them. This was frantic and hurried out of necessity, not only because of the time constraints, the threat of being caught by anyone, but also because in that moment, as he stilled and buried his face into my neck, as I adjusted to the sheer size of him, to the way he stretched me, it felt like we had been dancing around this all along. Like every conversation, every lingering glance, every heated argument, had led up to him and me coming together just like this, fitting so perfectly that it ought to be a crime.

“Are you a-all right?” he murmured, hands trailing up my body, rough at first, then gentle as he cupped my face. I swallowed hard, noting the way his eyes