Page 69 of Prince of the Sun

He shrugs, lifting the comforter. “Maybe it is. But it’s what I grew up with. It’s the standard to which I will always hold myself.”

“I see.”

We fall silent again. This time, I do not search for a way to break it. I let it sink over us, let it fill the room in that strange way that silences sometimes do.

There is nothing quite so potent as unspoken desire. As two bodies side by side in a bed, arms never touching, legs never grazing, want spreading itself thick and greedy between them. You might think thattouchis what sets flame to desire. But want is perfectly capable of building upon itself. Of multiplying in the air, pressing in tight, so tight you can no longer breathe.

It’s hot. Far too hot. There’s the heat of his body, the heat of mine, and the fever building between us, all churning together beneath the heavy comforter. My heart is pounding, has been since the moment I laid down. I can feel it in my legs, my arms, my entire body. A steady metronome, like a clock ticking down to start.

I inch one leg to the left. I keep inching until my toe brushes his leg.

Daerios goes completely still.

He doesn’t reach for me. Doesn’t brush me back. He waits.

This time, I move my left hand, letting it slide under the covers until my fingertips touch his hip. I feel him twitch beneath me. My hand travels higher, slipping under his t-shirt, running over his ribcage. He shivers under the brush of my fingers.

“Do you like the way I touch you?” I whisper into the darkness.

His voice is a husk. “Yes.”

Pressure builds between my legs as my fingers travel the length of his chest, up and around his collarbone, back down the other side of his body. “And like this?”

“Yes.” The word is a plea.

“Mmm.” I toy with the V at the top of his pelvis, runningtwo fingers along one side, then the other. I feel completely in control. I feel as if Daerios would do anything I ask, if I would just touch him. “And like this?”

I plunge my hand into his boxers.

He gasps at the same time I do. When my hand wraps around him, he’s already hard, as if he is ready for me. As if he has always been ready for me. And he’s—good God, I know I’m inexperienced, but it cannot be normal to be this size. Can it? It feels as if he could break me in two.

And I find, absurdly, that I want him to. The pressure between my legs,beggingto be broken.

I rub up and down his length. I know that this is what I’m supposed to do; I’ve done it a handful of times before. Always tipsy, but never enough to make me less conscious of my every movement, assuming that the men I was with weren’t really enjoying themselves. That they were just tolerating me. Now, I don’t feel that way at all. I feel confident, secure. I know that if Daerios didn’t like what I was doing, he would tell me. But from the unsteady breaths leaping from his mouth, from the force of his hand as it wraps around my left wrist—I don’t think that’s the case here.

“Quinn,” he gasps. Then he rolls over beneath the covers until his body is a cage over mine. “Stop that right this instant,” he growls.

“Why?”

“Because the lady always comes first.”

And then he is on me—his body and his lips. His hard length grinds into the softest, pulsing part of my body, and I gasp a little, surprised at how good it feels. His mouth finds the curve of my collarbone, kissing down its length. When he reaches the flannel’s collar, he growls in frustration.

“Take it off.” My voice scratches like a matchbox.

His teeth flash. “Yes, ma’am.”

He reaches for the hem of my flannel at the same time I reach for the bottom of his shirt. We’re a tangle of limbs and skin as the clothes come off, and then he’s reaching around my back to unhook my bra. I arch upward to help him. It comes free, and he tosses it aside.

In the dim moonlight filtering in through the triangle window above us, I watch as Daerios pauses to take me in. My pillow-tousled curls. My parted lips. My breasts, bared to him for the first time. I feel a spike of the same insecurity from before, a hyper-awareness of the soft folds of my skin, the parts of myself that, at times, I wish were smaller than they are.

“Beautiful,” he whispers, running a hand down the curve of my waist, up the center of my belly, and coming to squeeze one of my breasts. I inhale as his thumb starts to circle, to pass back and forth. My nipple hardens, coming to a stone peak. I somehow feel his touch all the way down between my legs.

Insecurity flees my mind as a sort of drugged haze slips inside.

“Daerios,” I beg.

He bends over, one hand still playing with my breast, and presses a firm kiss to my mouth. I lean into him, slipping my tongue between his lips. His finger keeps circling and circling, and it’s becoming harder to think, to even remember where I am or how I got here, and I wantmore, God, I wantallof him. He tastes like smoke, like red wine, like cedar and sugar and fire. I’m dizzy with need.