How to Catch a Queen (Runaway Royals #1) - Alyssa Cole Page 0,46

the eye and spoke to him like this? He hadn’t even imagined horny was a word in her vocabulary but he was very glad it was.

Shanti shook her head and pulled back a bit. “Wait. That’s not true. It’s the husbandly thing to do if you’re the kind of husband who wants to be a horniness helper. If you’re not, that’s fine! We all have different needs and desires, and marriage doesn’t change that. I won’t judge you for that, it’s just something we’d discuss.”

“By the two gods,” he muttered as she continued to talk, because the way she’d pulled back to consider his discomfort instead of pushing him to do what a husband should do was just as arousing as her sexy talk. “Shanti?”

She stopped talking.

He reached up to brush his fingertips over the shell of her ear. It was hot to the touch. Anticipation slid through him, a feeling so rare that he sucked in a breath of surprise and delight. “If that is part of being husbandly, in our specific marriage, I would very much like to do some things with you. I’ll happily be your horniness helper.”

They laughed at that silliness, both of them relaxing as they did. The lust didn’t leave, but their laughter added to it, like the perfect spice added to an already exceptional dish.

“I’m not a virgin,” she said, her hands moving back and forth over his chest. “Are you?”

It was the kind of question she might have asked on their wedding night or in the days after if he hadn’t been so bound by grief and anger that he’d left her alone. Alone in a strange country, with not even a true lady-in-waiting. Shanti had been treated worse than a visiting dignitary—despite what he’d just said, in trying to follow in his father’s footsteps, Sanyu had repeated one of the man’s worst mistakes.

“I’m not a virgin,” he said. “But I’ve never been with someone who I . . .” Cared for seemed too revealing, especially since care didn’t seem to particularly matter to her—this wasn’t about feelings. “I don’t need general instruction in sex. I need to learn how my wife wants to be pleased.”

She worked her lip with her teeth as she looked up at him through eyes that were shrewd even through the haze of desire.

“Are you sure? I was told that the queen must never try to lead her king. I don’t know if I’m allowed to teach you that.”

Sanyu chuckled. She was teasing him.

“Fine. I command it of you, then,” he said, his voice a low rasp. “Teach me, Wife.”

One of her hands was still fisted in his robe and the other went up to cup the back of his neck. She gently tugged him down toward her with both hands. The folder dropped from under his arm as he stepped against her, his bare knee grazing her thigh and pulling a soft gasp from her.

“I like to be kissed,” she said, her mouth a few centimeters from his. “Touched. And vice versa. I want to feel those big hands of yours all over me. Is that okay?” She was so close and smelled so good. His hands settled on her waist, and the thin strip of skin between shirt hem and shorts waistband might as well have seared grill marks into his palms. He hooked his thumb beneath her shirt and brushed it back and forth over her stomach, feeling the jerk of her abdominal muscles just before her breath hitched.

“You don’t have to ask if things are okay. I want what you want,” he said, his need for her a throb in his belly and groin and, strangely, chest. He didn’t want questions, which required thinking and sorting those thoughts and—

“No.” She shook her head. “That’s not how this works. I’ll tell you what I like, but you decide what’s okay and what isn’t. We ask and explore, not assume. Teamwork, remember?”

“Teamwork,” he repeated. “Fine. I like to be kissed and touched, too, so that’s okay. By all means, kiss me. Immediately.”

She tugged his robe harder—no, she was levering herself up closer to his mouth and using his weight as a counterbalance.

She kissed him, finally.

When their lips met, Sanyu was even more certain he was the weakest king Njaza had ever known because in that moment, he would have given anything for the sensation of his wife’s touch to never stop. Her silky lips sliding over his, so impossibly soft. Her tongue, warm and slick