Font Size:  

And then he set his mouth to hers once more.

Because kissing Brittany, he discovered quickly, was fast becoming his favorite vice in a life fairly overflowing with them.

This time when she pulled away, he discovered his hands had found their way to her thick hair in its tempting copper twist, and he’d pulled the fragrant curtain of it down around them. Her lips were sweet and full, her breath came as fast as his did, and her eyes had gone wide and dark.

Cairo thought he might never get enough of her, and it was a measure of how obsessed he was already that the notion failed to alarm him.

“You can’t do this,” she told him, and he had the strange thought that this was the real Brittany, after all her edge and flair. She sounded a little bit shaken. She looked a little bit fragile. He should have felt a surge of triumph at that, but instead, the thing that turned over inside him felt a good deal more like regret. He knew all aboutregret.“You know you can’t.”

“I don’t think you’ve been paying attention,cara,” he told her, and he shifted one hand from her thick, gorgeous hair to drag his thumb over the plump seduction that was her lower lip. He ached to taste her again. He didn’t know how he refrained. “I am the last of the Santa Dominis. Some still call me a king. I can do as I wish.”

“Not with me, you can’t.” She jerked her mouth back from his touch and shoved her way to a more vertical sitting position on his lap, and the sweet agony of it all threatened to unman him where he sat. “I want nothing to do with your little game of lost thrones, thank you. My life is complicated enough.”

“Marrying me would uncomplicate it.”

“Right. Because that’s exactly what you are.Uncomplicated.”

He could see the moment it occurred to her that despite the hard tone she’d used, what she’d said might as well be a compliment. Little did she know. He could teach darkness to the night, and that was on his good days.

“I want to be inside you,” he told her then, raw and untutored, as if he was a stranger to himself. He felt her shiver, as if the electric charge of it had seared straight through her. “So deep inside you,cara,that neither one of us can tell who is a king and who is a stripper. Until there is nothing in all the world but that sweet, wet heat and what burns us both as we drown in it.”

He was close enough that he could see the way her pupils dilated at that, so close he could feel the goose bumps beneath his hand as easily as he could see them rise up all over her exposed skin. So close he could feel all that intense heat as it burned through her, like a wild flame incinerating them both.

“I can tell who is who, though,” she said, and Cairo was certain he wasn’t mistaking the sheer misery he could hear in her voice, as if this was as hard and mystifying a thing for her as it was for him. That was something. He told himself that had to be something. “Just as the tabloids certainly can. And I doubt that would ever change.”

“Why would you wish it to change?” He hardly sounded like himself. Or maybe he’d forgotten what it was like to be so honest, about anything. His whole life was a collection of misdirection and straight-out lies, wrapped tight around the blackened, shriveled heart of a man who should have died years ago. “You’ve crafted your public persona with exquisite precision. Why not take it to its logical end?”

“I know exactly where my public persona is taking me,” she gritted out at him. She shifted in his lap, brushing up against the part of him that yearned for her the most, and they both froze. She swallowed, her eyes dark on his, and he had the most absurd notion that she lookedpanickedfor a moment. “And it’s not to your bed.”

“That is why you melt against me, I am sure. Why you cannot look away.”

“I’m trapped in your lap.Youare trapping me.”

“We’re in a public place,” he continued, and though his palms itched to move over her, to learn her in the best and most tactile way possible and prove his point besides, Cairo didn’t do it. He let his voice cast that spell instead. “How many people do you think are watching us instead of the stage?”

“All of them.” He didn’t imagine the sheen of something harder in her gaze then, or the way she tilted her chin up. “You saw to that.”

“And yet, were I to slip my fingers just a little bit higher, what would I find?” He moved the hand on her thigh a scant centimeter higher, letting his fingers toy with the satin edge of her underwear. Her breath came in a rush even as she shivered out the truth again. “How wet are you, Brittany? Right here in a strip club where everyone can see you? Would you even protest if I slid my hand beneath those silly red underthings? Or would you lean in closer so no one could be sure and ride my hand instead?”

“Neither.” But her voice was soft then. Too soft. As soft as he imagined she was only a fraction of an inch from the place his hand lingered. “I’m going to stand up and get back to work.”

“Work?” Cairo laughed and moved his fingers again, and the flush on her delicate cheekbones told him she felt that precisely where he wanted her to feel it. So did he. “This place is an ill-mannered salute to your late husband’s family, not your work. We both know what your true calling is.”

Her lips pressed together and that melting heat in her dark hazel eyes faded. “If you mean that I’m a whore, you’ll have to come up with a better insult. My mother’s used the word so many times I’ve come to consider it an endearment.”

“Then marry me,” he heard himself say, quite as if it was a real proposal and he was truly as raw and ruined anddesperateas he felt inside just then. As if there was any real thing inside him at all, when he knew better. But no matter that he told himself he was playing a role, he couldn’t seem to stop this electric collision course he found himself on. Worse, he didn’t want to stop it. “And we shall see what words your mother uses to address my queen.”

“Evidence has never persuaded my mother away from the things she’s decided are true,” Brittany said, and what was remarkable, Cairo thought, was how she didn’t sound bitter at all just then. Only matter-of-fact. It made that same temper he couldn’t afford to indulge flare inside him all over again. “But thank you. I’m sure a season as queen to the King of Wishful Thinking would be a delight. But my dance card is full.” She nodded at the stage before them. “Literally.”

And this time, Cairo felt a kind of hitch in his chest when she pulled away from him. He let her stand, and watched her as she stood there before him, making no attempt to hide the evidence of his need. Her cheeks burned, her eyes gleamed dark, that marvelous copper hair of hers tumbled all around her in unruly waves, and Cairo understood that role or no, he would never, ever rest until he had her.

In his bed, to start.

But no other queen would do. He ignored the part of him that questioned that—the part that reminded him he was a king without a throne and in need of any unacceptable woman to make sure he stayed without it—and indulged the part of him that had the blood of five hundred years of Santa Dominis pounding in his blood. Five hundred years of autocratic rulers who knew what they wanted and took what they wished, and brooked precious little disagreement as they did it.

He might have lost his kingdom. He might never set foot in the palace his family had built from a primitive fortress into a splendid fairy tale ever again. But he was still who he was, who he’d been bred to be, and no matter the darkness he knew he carried inside of him—or else how could he make himself such a believable disgrace?—none of that mattered in the end. He was still Cairo Santa Domini.

“You can’t have me,” she told him, as if she could read his mind. As if she could see the truth of him, stamped in his bones, deep in his veins, all the kings and queens who’d gone before him.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
Articles you may like