Caged Kitten (All the Queen's Men #2) - Rhea Watson Page 0,96
up as I eased even closer. One deep breath and it was all over. “We can fuck right here, or I can lick your pretty cunt until our time is up.” I gripped tighter when her eyes widened and heat exploded across her entire face. “Or, we can just talk. Or shower—in separate stalls if you so desire. But I’ve bought us an hour in which we can pretend we’re not in a fucking prison. Pretend it’s a bathhouse, darling, and we can be whoever you want.”
No one had ever received such an offer before.
And no one ever would again.
Tentatively, Katja reached up and brushed the brown curls away from my forehead. She smoothed my hair back, taking her time to ensure it stayed, clutched in my grasp yet utterly at ease.
“I want to be us,” she murmured, voice low and certain, like she was whispering a secret for my ears alone, “but I don’t want to touch a single tile in this bathroom.”
I grinned down at her, relief mingling with need and, for the first time with a potential lover, earnest affection. “I will fall on that sword for you, my beauty.”
I had never taken a sword for anyone before—they always took them for me. Always.
“Chivalrous and rich,” Katja mused as she gently coiled her hand around my wrist, then coaxed my fingers from her chin, slowly steering them down to her chest. Nothing too scandalous, of course, just to the broad, flat plane beneath the hollow of her throat, and still my cock responded as if she had steered me between her thighs. Instead, it nudged insistently at her toweled belly, aching for attention. Katja, meanwhile, lost herself in my eyes, and I in hers, her little dubious breath like the sigh of the heavens. “How are you still single?”
I needn’t think of a clever response—truth came free and easy for once. “Because none of the rest ever made me feel anything.”
Her heartbeat quickened beneath my palm before I slowly smoothed it up her neck and over that miserable collar. Utterly bewitched, I lost myself in those sapphire pools, in the depth they promised, the acceptance they offered, until finally I cupped her cheek, cradling her head in my hand. What a precarious position: one sharp jerk and I could snap her neck. Funny how intimacy and brutality shared so many common threads.
But there was no brutality when I kissed her. No selfish taking, no indulgent tongue-thrusting on my part. Our lips met softly, tentatively. Romantically. After centuries of fucking with no one of real importance, I had long since given up on romance. Yet heat flared in my chest, my gut somersaulting in the most pleasurable way, my cock hard against her belly. Easy to confuse a twinge of romance for outright lust, but as our mouths opened to one another, slowly and surely, I finally felt the difference.
Lust was all frantic fire and greedy caresses.
Romance was sugar and spice, taking one’s time because you savored the moment, every minute detail of the act itself.
The idea for this morning’s little fling came about when I considered all the times I’d seen Katja after her interactions with Elijah and Rafe. Sex seemed to make her feel better—and who could blame her? She had been hauled off to the warden’s office twice since my prison stint began, and each one battered her spirit, ground it into the dirt. As I lay in my pathetic cot, trying to think of ways to brighten her mood, sex had seemed obvious. It always made me feel good, after all, but as she sidled closer now, I realized that feel-good from past lovers came from the physical release alone.
Not from… this. Not from the closeness or the intimacy.
Her tongue was a tease, a natural flirt, darting into my mouth and coaxing mine to play. I tasted her smile, saw it stretched all the way to her eyes even with her lids closed and relaxed, and I seized the opportunity to catch her by surprise again. Spiderwalking my fingers up her side, I found the top of her towel and yanked, ripping the final material barrier between us from her body and tossing it away. She gasped into my mouth, the hand in my hair tightening and twisting with admonishment, and my dark chuckle had little telltale bumps exploding across her exposed flesh.
Katja arched against me, pebbled nipples brushing my chest, and I jerked her closer with a growl. The sugar gave way to