Alive. Ridiculously, foolishly alive. In charge. In control. Not once in twenty-five years on this planet had she ever felt this. Maybe afractionof it a few months back when she’d insisted that Alexandremustinterfere with Gabriel’s thick-skulled abandonment of Evelyne.
But this…this was a freedom she’d never felt. She was astorm. Powerful. About to dodamage.
So she did not cower, as she might once have done. She did not wilt at his icy, disapproving stare. At the way he could look like an imposing mountain, all broad shoulders and dark hair and eyes. So much larger than her. So much more powerful.
Except, whatever flickered in his gaze madeherfeel like the powerful one.
She crossed the distance between them, pressed her body to his. He held himself stiffly, even as his heat wrapped around her.
And he did not push her away, when he had all the physical power to do so. His nostrils flared, his gaze was angry, but he did not set her apart from him.
So she hooked her arm up around his neck and pulled his mouth down to hers.
And then she kissed him with all this newfound wildness, as she’d never once kissed him before.
She expected cold dismissal. Perhaps even a kind of pleasant response before carefully setting her back and telling herno. She expected so many things.
Except that he shudder out a breath when she pulled his bottom lip between her teeth.
Except that his hand clamped on her hip, strong and steadying.
Certainly not his other hand moving up her spine, the strong, hot weight of his palm a drug in and of itself. Then his fingers were in her hair, tensing into a fist. The pressure a delightful frisson of pleasure that twisted into violent want and need when he pulled enough to get her mouth away from his.
The slight prick of pain in her scalp fused with a dark pleasure of his kiss, his body, so that her knees grew weak, her bodypulsed. She thought it would take nothing at all for an orgasm to sweep through her.
She had enjoyed sex each and every time they’d engaged in it, butthis? This was something else entirely. The wordenjoyhad no place here. It was too tame. Too small.
He held her back from his mouth, his eyes dark and wild, his breathing as ragged as hers, his hands still a fist in her hair. She watched him try to fight for some control, some sense of the usualAlexandre.
But he couldn’t find it.
Chapter Two
IT WAS INSANITY. The pulsing, sexual haze that surrounded him was utter insanity. It was a spell, and he had to be strong enough to break it.
She had tested his control and resolve before, but only in the bedroom, only in his own mind. Never with demands. Never with wants of her own.
Nothing like this.
He held her there, a terrifying thrill of power flowing through him. She was in his grip. She washisto do what he wished with. She was such a tiny little thing in stature, but the curves she carefully downplayed in her royal outfits were on plain display in nothing but her underwear.
Ivory skin. Soft. Warmth.Life.Her cheeks were flushed, her breath as ragged as his. Her blue eyes wide, but there was nothing likefearorconcernin that gaze. No, it was all want.
Underscored by the fact her hands were carefully undoing the buttons of his perfectly pressed shirt, all the while she looked right back at him.
She was just so warm. She smelled as she always did, some alluring mix of citrus and vanilla. It existed in her skin, deep in her hair, everywhere. Now it wound around him like some opiate haze.
Her hands pushed the shirt open so that his chest and stomach were bared to her. She leaned forward, and his hand in her hair allowed the forward movement. As she pressed an open mouth kiss just over his heart.
Then lower. She undid his belt, the button of his pants, his zipper, and he watched her as if outside himself. She tilted her head up, and he still did not let go of her hair, but he let her continue to move down his body.
She held his gaze the entire time she sank to her knees, even as she wrapped her hand around the base of him, guided the hard, throbbing length of him into her mouth.
He hissed out a breath.
They had never done this. They could not be doing this.Thisdid not beget children, which was the only reason he’d ever been with her in the first place. Heirs. Duty. To be sure, it had always ended up being pleasurable, but not solely for the sake of pleasure.
This was.
