AllFreeNovel
Share Us
If she was careful, he wouldn’t know. Surely, he wouldn’t. She’d had a shower and she didn’t wear perfume anyway, and she had her hair loose, which she never did in his presence. And she’d stay quiet. She’d try not to speak.
He never cared about names when he slept with women anyway, which she was very aware of, and he slept with strangers all the time. In fact, he’d often told her that all he required was a warm, willing body, so why couldn’t she be that body now?
One thing was certain, though. If she didn’t decide now, he was going to get up and leave the bed, and she’d be discovered, and she’d end up with nothing.
She’d had nothing before. She couldn’t bear the thought of having it again.
So, she put her hand over his where it lay between her thighs and pressed down. Then turned her head to where his mouth was beside her ear, his warm breath on her neck. And she didn’t need any light to know where his lips were; she found them and covered them with her own.
Augustine Solari, King of Isavere, knew something wasn’t right. But he couldn’t quite put his finger—so to speak—on what.
He’d been in a foul temper earlier, because Freddie had called him to tell him she’d be late due to her plane being delayed out of London, and then she hadn’t turned up at the ballat all.
He was here to help celebrate the marriage of an old Oxford friend—Khalil ibn Amir al Nazari, King of Al Da’ira—and while he ostensibly loved a party, the reality was that they were only bearable when Freddie was there, and official parties in particular.
He had trouble with remembering people’s names and Freddie was invaluable when it came to murmuring them in his ear, or dropping them into conversation, letting him know subtly who he was talking to without any embarrassing errors.
Tonight though, because of Freddie’s absence, he’d had to stand there as if he didn’t have the usual headache that had come on an hour earlier, the one that clouded his thinking. Covering it, as he always did, by pretending to be mildly the worse for wear alcohol-wise, all the while trying to remember the speech he had to give and what he had to do at various points in the evening so he didn’t embarrass either his friend or his country in the process.
Luckily he’d managed, but it was only a decade’s worth of control that had enabled him to do it, and the effort had left him fatigued and short-tempered by the end of the evening. Not an unfamiliar state of affairs.
He’d retired to a corner with a drink to deal with himself, only to be joined by a lovely woman with whom he’d exchanged extensive eye contact earlier, and since sex always improved his mood, he’d decided that she was just the thing he needed. She’d been very willing when he’d suggested she come to his room, though she’d taken her time about arriving. The evening had taken it out of him, so he’d fallen asleep, only to wake up the moment a warm female body had slipped into bed with him.
She was naked and must have had a shower since she smelled of soap and shampoo, and her long hair was damp. But the woman he’d been flirting with had been a talker and enthusiastic, and this woman hadn’t said one word, or moved, or even given an indication of encouragement when he’d touched her.
That had scraped against his already foul mood, since he never took a woman to bed who didn’t want to be there and if she’d changed her mind, she needed to tell him as quickly as possible. Certainly there’d been a whole lot of mixed signals going on and while he might only be an adequate king, he was a world-class playboy and he knew when women did and didn’t want him.
This one did. Her breathing had changed the moment he’d put his hand on her stomach, and her legs had spread for him when he’d slid his fingers between her thighs. And when he’d stroked her, she’d got all slippery and slick, a quiver running through her body.
She had a scent to her beneath the soap, something delicate and musky and feminine, that had somehow hooked into everything male in him, making him hard. And it wasn’t just her scent.
He knew all about the physical electricity that occurred between men and women, and he could feel that electricity now, crackling over his skin like a live wire. Making him want to push her onto her back and slide inside her immediately, which was something he almost never did.
Ever since the accident that had taken everything from him, control ruled his life. Even in the bedroom. And he didn’t like feeling as if he wasn’t in full command of himself. So maybe it was the sense that he wasn’t that had given him pause. Or maybe it was that electricity he could feel in the air, an electricity he was sure hadn’t been there when they’d been flirting earlier.
Whatever it had been, he’d needed to know if she wanted this, and he’d been expecting her to say she’d had a change of heart.
Except then she’d held his hand down on her and turned to find his mouth instead.
A soft, hot, sweet kiss. Hesitant at first, yet he could taste her hunger. It was there along with the flavour of the minty toothpaste she’d used to brush her teeth. Was that why he couldn’t taste any alcohol? Because she’d been drinking champagne with him before and he couldn’t get even a hint of that.
Her lips were warm and satiny, and though there was still something ‘off’ about this, he couldn’t think what it was. Soon, he didn’t want to. The feel of her slick flesh beneath his fingers and the scent of feminine arousal, the electricity in the air, the heat between them, were all making it difficult to think of anything at all.
She made a soft noise as he stroked her, and when he took charge of the kiss, easing his tongue into her mouth to explore her deeper, she made it again.
Her hand pressed down harder on his, holding his fingers against her, and she kissed him back with more confidence now, hot and hungry.
There was a familiarity to the sounds she made and to the delicate scent that wound around him, a maddening sense of familiarity. It nagged at him.
Does it matter?
He was starting to think that it didn’t. All bodies were the same in the dark and if everyone was enjoying themselves, who cared about a nagging familiarity?
She gave the softest little moan against his mouth, her hips lifting beneath his hand, and both the sound and the way she moved against him were unspeakably erotic. Without thought, he pulled his hand from under hers and slid it down her thigh, gripping behind her knee and lifting her leg, hooking it up and behind his. Opening her up to him.
She shuddered, gasping, and he was abruptly desperate in a way he couldn’t remember ever being before. She was slight and there was a fragility to her that he hadn’t expected, yet she had the most delicious curves. The softness of her bottom pressed against his groin felt so good, fitting him to perfection.
He buried his face in her neck, inhaling that tantalising, familiar scent, as he slid his hand back between her thighs again, parting the soft slick folds of her sex.
