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She breathed deeply, but she didn’t shy away. She took his erection in her hand, her fingers encircling him, and he groaned. “You like that,” she said to herself in Zakharan, a tiny smile of discovery playing over her mouth. She raised her gaze to his as her fingers tightened around him. In English she asked, “You like that, yes?”
“Hell, yes,” he said, more harshly than he intended. Part of him wanted to take her hand and show her the rhythm he needed, but another part of him wanted to let her discover it for herself—if he could stand the torture.
She stroked him, petted him, all the while her breathing quickening along with his. She whispered to him in Zakharan, little words of praise he didn’t think she even realized she was saying, and which he desperately wanted to respond to...if he could let her know he understood.
Then she bent over him, her golden brown hair falling in soft, cooling waves against his heated skin. She whispered something in Zakharan, words his mind processed automatically but which his brain refused to consider in the heat of the moment. And when she took him into her warm, moist mouth he thought he’d die from the exquisite pleasure. Unable to stop himself, he arched upward, head thrown back, eyes closed. He groaned again. “Princess... Oh God, yes!” Shudders wracked his body when her tongue swirled around him.
His eyes flicked open, and he propped himself on his elbows and watched her, the sensations she was creating with her touch nearly unbearable, but the erotic picture she made as she loved him with her mouth in the glow of the firelight even more unbearable. He’d had more skilled lovers, but never one like her. He never would again. His body trembling as it had never trembled with a woman before, he surrendered to her without a fight.
* * *
When it was all over Trace lay there, his body spent, one forearm across his eyes as he wondered what the hell he was going to do. Wondered how he would survive the endless remaining months as her bodyguard without making love to her, without taking what she’d so sweetly offered. Wondering how he was ever going to let her go back to Zakhar when the year was over.
Because the words she’d whispered—words she hadn’t wanted him to hear since she’d uttered them in Zakharan and not English—now came back to haunt him. She loved him. Or thought she did. And now he had no defenses against her. Now the losing battle he’d been fighting was lost. Because whether she loved him or not, whether she wanted it or not, now he knew he loved her, too.
He removed his arm, opened his eyes, and sat up. The princess was kneeling beside him, her hand still wrapped around his sex as she watched his face, waiting for him to say something. Her face was soft and defenseless. Her eyes, those lovely green eyes were so full of love and hope as she gazed at him that Trace said the only thing he could think of, repeating the words he’d uttered earlier. But this time they weren’t uttered in the heat of passion even though they were meant just as fervently. “You are the sweetest gift God ever made.”
She flushed up to the roots of her hair, but she didn’t glance away. “Am I, Trace?” she asked shyly.
“Yes.” Gently he removed her hand and kissed her palm, then tugged his jeans into place and zipped up. Other words struggled to escape, but he fought them back. He couldn’t tell her the truth. He couldn’t tell her he loved her, but that there was no future for him in loving her. No future for them.
He should remove himself from this assignment—he knew that as surely as he knew anything. What he’d just allowed to happen had compromised his objectivity, his professionalism. But there was a part of him that refused to accept what his head was telling him. And besides, what reason could he give for wanting out? Not just Walker—he might have been able to tell Walker the truth. But there was no way in hell he was going to tell the State Department what had happened. No way. Not after what they’d originally asked him to do where the princess was concerned. He could just see the smirks, the sniggering, knowing smiles, the humiliation the princess would suffer because of him.
No, he had to protect her from that any way necessary, even if it meant staying on this assignment. He just had to pull back. Had to return—if he could—to the way things had been between them before today. Yes, it would be difficult. Especially now that he knew it was more than just desire...on both their parts. Now that he knew he loved her and she thought she loved him, it would require every bit of resolve he could muster to stay with her and not touch her again. But he had to do it. Not just because it was still his job to protect her, but because he couldn’t bear for anyone to know her intimate secrets. And because he couldn’t bear for her to think herself rejected again, when that was the last thing he wanted to do.
