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And then, once more, he claimed her lips with his.
He kissed her, his hands propped on either side of her head. He held her there against that stone wall with only the seduction and steel of his mouth. His lips against hers, coaxing and castigating, as she lifted her hands to the marvel of his chest. He knew how to make her wild. He knew how to shift, at just the right moment, to make it all deeper. Hotter. To make her press up on her toes and push herself toward him, to tease and tempt her almost beyond reason.
Five years ago he had kissed her like this, on a moonless night beneath a whispering palm tree, and he had taught her what desire was.
And then he had taught her how to beg.
Then, better yet, what a thrill it was to get what she’d begged for.
When he finally pulled away now, Amalia was shaking. Joaquin’s gaze was so dark it actually hurt. And she had no doubt at all that they were remembering that same kiss that had changed them both.
Forever, she thought.
There was torment in his gaze then, and she braced herself, because surely now would come a little bit of that cruelty he’d showed her earlier. Cruelty Amalia might know she deserved, but that wouldn’t make it any easier to take.
But instead Joaquin only shook his head, then pushed himself away from the wall.
“Take off your clothes,” he ordered her, his voice rough. “I wish to see all of you.”
Amalia didn’t hesitate. She instantly kicked off her shoes and reached for the side zipper on her dress.
And her own lack of hesitation answered a question for her that had lingered, all this time.
It had been the summer, she had told herself in the intervening years. It had been her youth and inexperience. He’d been the first man who had ever really caught Amalia’s fancy, and that was why she’d been so abandoned with him. That was why she’d begged and knelt and obeyed his every sensual command.
She had tried her best to shame herself for her reactions to him as each year passed. She’d told herself that she had betrayed her people. That someday, Joaquin could easily hold that summer against her, telling all and sundry whatever salacious stories he liked that would undermine her position on the throne. How could she not have thought of that at the time? How could she have put herself inso manycompromising positions?
Though she’d always known the answer to that. It was because she’d thought only of him. Only of Joaquin and the pleasure that burned on and on between them.
But even as Amalia had spent many a day lecturing herself for her trespasses, there had been a part of her that had never been cowed. The part of her that had always wanted him, no matter what happened. No matter what it cost her.
Even if it’s the throne, that part had whispered sometimes, traitorously.
That was the part that haunted her dreams. Disturbing her sleep almost nightly, leaving her tossing and turning and waking up overheated, her whole body chaotic. She would lie there, panting, tears rolling down her cheeks, while too-hot images chased themselves in her head and weighed her down in her sheets.
She’d told herself for years that she’d built all this up in her head and made it—him—into something it wasn’t.Mountains out of molehills, she would mutter at herself as she tried, and usually failed, to expel Joaquin from her head.
Especially when the Queen had talked strategic marriages.
But now she understood. It wasn’t that Joaquin was himself the mountain, though he was certainly no molehill, either. It was this thing between them. This impossible compulsion. Thisneed.That was the mountain, imposing and majestic and theirs to climb at will. She might have been young and foolish then, but she was neither of those things now. Twenty-five was only young when a person was aimless and didn’t know what to do with their lives—not an ailment Amalia had suffered until recently.
And still, she wanted nothing at all but to please him.
Not because she felt subservient to him in any way.
But because the more she pleased him, the more it pleased her. Deep inside. Physically, yes, but it was so much more than merely physical.
And somehow, he had known that she needed that, right from the start. Amalia had spent her whole life in the service of others, but had never done so directly. On her knees. In his hands. She had never really understood true service until then. He’d given her that gift.
I don’t know why I like to do these things, she’d whispered to him that summer.I think it means something is broken in me.
He’d been holding her in his lap in the chair across this very room, having picked up from where she’d knelt before him much as she’d done today.You’re looking at this the wrong way, I think, he had said.
What other way could it possibly be looked at?
But even as she’d asked that question, she’d had her face cradled against his chest and could feel that same need coiling again inside her. Because it was never enough. No matter what they did, she wanted more. One look at Joaquin had opened up the floodgates inside her and she had doubted very much they could ever be closed again.
She’d been right. They had never closed.
