Page 47 of Falling for the King

She leant towards him her eyes never leaving his and nothing, nothing, could get him to move away. Loosened silvery locks fell forward and he sucked in a ragged breath his senses filling with the scents of summer, meadows, her.

Her lips brushed his for a fleeting second, he shuddered it wasn’t nearly enough. He groaned his appreciation when she did it again, and again, firmer, longer as peppermint and chocolate teased his senses. Opening her mouth, she touched her tongue to his and an earthquake-like rumble rocked him.

Igniting a path of heat, she scraped her nails up his chest to link behind his head and his aching, desperate need to touch her broke free. With a shaking hand he ran it over her hair, shoulders, down her back. Shuddering she twisted closer their knees knocking. Mouths fused she moaned and rose out of her chair and so did he, pushing his away and tangled a hand into her hair entwining his wrist, himself, in its silken tresses.

Angling her head up, deep drugging kisses bound them, their bodies jammed together with nothing but her robe his jeans and jumper between them.

Lost to everything but this, them, he lifted her up and swung her around so she sat on the edge of the table. Hampered by her robe, he pushed it up her thighs exposing her creamy skin. He kept the pace slow, leisurely like she had, even though every inch of him screamed otherwise.

He stepped between her legs, and she leant back pulling him down on top of her. He swiped a hand across the table, his laptop crashing to the floor, and pressed a palm into the oak anchoring himself above her. He looked down at her lit by the chandelier, her eyes closed, lips parted, fair hair fanned out against the dark wood table. His heart skipped a beat and words failed him. Action did not, reaching down, his lips found hers and her familiar intoxicating taste that he couldn’t get enough of flowed through him again.

Her fingers gripped his shoulders as his hand inched up her rib cage over her robe. She jerked and moaned, her responsiveness almost his undoing as he held onto the last vestiges of his control as something stronger than desire rushed at him and lodged in his heart.

‘Please.’ She tilted her head back granting him full access to her throat, her body. Obliging he pressed his mouth to the wild beat of her pulse, her skin like a nectar he never knew he craved until now, that he couldn’t get enough of. She quivered beneath him as his lips trailed down her throat to her collarbone. With reverence he pushed aside her robe, revealing her nightdress. Two thin straps held up a bodice of translucent white lace and flowing silk that reached her toes with a split up to her upper thigh edged in the same lace. His groan ricocheted around the room, nothing his imagination conjured up could compete with seeing her like this.

Shaking with need he leant down and ran his lips across the lace. She cried out, not a name or a word, but he knew what it meant. Exactly what he wanted. More.

Still, he needed to hear it from her. ‘Kat?’ he paused, hardened to the point of pain.

Suddenly, she stiffened beneath him and pushed into his shoulders.

‘Stop!’

Her cry registered slowly contrasting to the pounding in his ears, the frantic beat of his heart. Confused, he pushed into the table rearing up still wedged between her legs. Lying beneath him, she flung a hand up to cover her eyes. His gaze roamed down creamy skin to her heaving chest, where his hand remained, dark skin contrasting with fair, rough with soft. He ached to continue, instead he drew in a shuddering breath and looked back at her face.

Eyes wide and anguished locked with his.

He sprung away, breaking all contact. He’d hurt her, frightened her. He’d taken it too far and for a horrified moment could only stare as she struggled to sit up entangled in her nightdress and robe until finally spurred into action, he put out a hand to assist her.

‘Don’t.’ She smacked it away.

He backed up until he bumped into a sideboard behind him watching her trying to right her attire that he’d undone, pushed aside with his hands, his teeth, exposing silky skin that he’d remember to his dying breath. He shouldn’t be seeing her like this yet jealousy pumped fast and furious at the notion of anyone else doing so.

On a curse he turned from her and jammed his eyes closed, ran a hand down his face and tried to erase what had just occurred, what had almost happened. He would have taken her right there on the polished walnut table if she hadn’t stopped him. He wouldn’t have made it to his room, to hers, wouldn’t have cared that he didn’t have a condom with him. She’d been right to stop him, why then did he continue to shake with need? His primed body struggled to catch up with his brain, his erection pressing painfully against his zipper. He kept silent not trusting himself to say anything that made any sense. He had to beat this attraction and he had no clue how. All he knew was that there was something about her that made him … primal. Like nothing he’d ever experienced and it scared the hell out of him. He had to fix this.

Swinging around he registered her arms wrapped around herself, tremors racking her body. She stood barefoot in front of the table where he’d almost lost his mind. Self-disgust settled into a hard knot in his stomach and he thought he was going to lose his dinner.

‘Kat, I’m sor—’

‘I don’t know what came over me.’ She could’ve been discussing a nasty rash from the disgust in her tone.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

Of course, she wasn’t okay. She’d pulled her hair back in a hastily tied ponytail, her lips red and puffy from his kisses, her face stark except for the faint red marks from his unshaven face creating a path down her throat to where he dare not let his eyes linger.

‘Stop asking me that.’

He nodded unable to articulate his remorse, not trusting his stomach.

‘I’m sorry. I had no right to touch you, to kiss you,’ she said low and anguished.

He wanted her to regret the kiss, the rest of it, didn’t he? Yet part of him hated it, the part that refused to listen to what was at stake. Because this was madness, the only word he’d allow as a label—want, desire, had absolutely no place in his life.

‘Kat …’ he tried again and cleared his throat bereft that touching her to offer comfort was not an option because the sad truth was, he couldn’t trust himself. She wasn’t the only one involved in the kiss. He could have stopped it, moved away, done something, anything to prevent it. Instead, he’d responded to her like a man dying of thirst and her the long drink of water. ‘I was there every step of the way. I played my part.’ And wanted to play more.

‘I set the rules, then I broke them. I know you’re going to get married. I know this is wrong.’ She stood ramrod straight tension vibrating from her.

‘Married?’ The word foreign to him, his stomach rolling at the thought. He flinched and felt the blood drain from his face and for one truly horrific moment he thought he’d faint. He didn’t want to marry anyone other than her. ‘Wrong?’