taking great pains to be gentle with something that was precious to them. Precious belonging.
But there was something deeper and richer underlying it, and she knew. Knew that it was flowing both ways. Knew it to be true.
And if he wouldn’t admit, it was all right. She would simply know it in her heart until he could.
And she would try. With everything. Not in the way that she had been.
Not sliding under the radar, hiding out in a cottage in the woods.
No. With everything.
She reached behind her back and undid the zipper on her dress, let it fall to her waist.
The undergarment was built into the gown, and unzipping it left her breasts bare.
“These are yours too,” she said, a small smile tugging at her lips. “My body is yours.”
It was sort of cheesy, and she felt half silly saying it, but his response wasn’t silly at all. He gathered her up in his arms and kissed her. With everything.
It was a claiming. An absolute devastation.
And she loved it.
“Do you have any idea how beautiful you look tonight? Coming down the stairs with your hair loose? It’s everything I was afraid to see in you. Your wildness. Your beauty. Because I was afraid that if I thought, I would not be able to resist it. Disapproval was so much easier.”
“And running away was always easier. Pretending that what I felt was fear.”
It was true. It was so much easier than this. Than diving headlong into a flame that might consume them both, reduce her to ash, leave her less than nothing.
He was the King, and in the end he would stand, even if he was reduced. But she... She would not. She knew it. With everything inside of her she knew it.
He shifted her on his lap so that she was astride him, so that the very heart of her was pressed against the hardness in the front of his slacks. Then he reached between her thighs and began to stroke her there. He pushed his fingertips beneath the edge of her lace panties, teasing her, finding her wet and ready for him.
She had been ready for him. For so much longer than she’d realized. And she felt no shame at all, golden and brazen in the great dining hall of this palace.
“You were so scathing of my being loud at this table some years ago,” she said, wickedness overtaking her. “What do you suppose you would have thought of such a display?”
“I wanted it then,” he growled. “Make no mistake. I wanted it then.”
Pleasure bloomed low in her stomach and he continued to stroke her, gliding through her pleasure, using his fingers inside of her and tormenting them both. She tilted her hips against his hand, moving with the rhythm of his strokes. Then she reached out and curved her fingers around him through the fabric of his pants, squeezing him before unbuttoning the pants, drawing his zipper down and freeing his hardened masculinity.
He was glorious. The feel of him in her palm satiny and hard. Hot.
“I did not know a man could be so beautiful.”
“How can you speak of male beauty when you are here? When you are golden? When you are every fantasy a man could ever possess. Tinley,” he said, her name a growl on his lips.
And she burst into flame.
Her climax overtook her, suddenly, radically.
She hadn’t been expecting it. Her name on his lips. Her. He wanted her.
King Alex de Prospero wanted her. She was not a second prize, nor was she simply his responsibility, his ward. He wanted her. It was laced into every word he spoke, but most especially into her name.
For she wasn’t only a generic woman to him. She had cost something.
And perhaps she wouldn’t be able to lay sole claim to his body as he could to hers, but she had that. And it mattered.
He gripped her rear end, pulling her hard against him, his flesh pressed against her aching cleft. He rocked against her, eyes blazing. And she gasped. A pulse beat between her legs, and she felt hollow, desperate for his invasion. But he only teased her, his masculinity growing slick with her desire as he teased them both.
She was gasping, weeping, barely able to breathe as he continued to rock in a maddeningly slow rhythm against her.
With one hand, he gripped the back of her hair, forcing her to keep her gaze steady on his. Then he leaned forward, kissing her, the edge of his teeth scraping