“Is your life at court usually so interesting?” I ask him.
Simon’s pace mirrors mine even though he’s not quite looking at me. “Not in this way.”
We go down a twisty stairwell, and as we follow the curved walls, the tension thickens between us. Our bodies move nearer. Our steps slow. The stairwell is dark, and it makes me think of the tent. The tent where we both felt on fire. I start to feel that way again now. I steal a peek over at Simon, and judging from his tense muscles and flushed cheeks, he feels it, too.
Still, when we reach the landing, I try to cling to sanity one more time before it’s too late. “Let’s wait a second,” I tell him, catching hold of his wrist. “Simon, are you sure about this? Imean, are you really, really sure? Because this... whatever we’re doing, it could end really badly. So if you’ve changed your mind, I understand.”
Simon steps in closer, his green eyes absolutely endless. If I was wearing Tudor panties, they would drop of their own volition.
He stays quiet as he steps back and away from me, moving to a door along the wall. He carefully swings it open to reveal a small room. When he turns to look back at me, his gaze is decided. “Get in,” he says.
And I’ve forgotten how to breathe.
He doesn’t say anything else, just keeps holding the door open. On some level, I knew what was going to happen on this walk, even if I pretended I didn’t. And Simon is making it clear that he knew, too.
A quiet breath slips through my lips as I move past him and into the room. Moonlight sifts in a narrow window. With all the bags of wheat piled on the floor, this must be some kind of a space for storage. We walked a decent distance from the royal apartments and are now closer to the servants’ hall. It makes me like the room all the more.
Simon shuts the door, closing us in. When I turn to face him, he’s already in front of me, dipping down to claim my mouth in a drugging kiss. The air around us feels charged with electricity. My arms instantly wrap around his neck as his hands fall to the small of my back, anchoring me against him. Before I’m too far gone, I pull back slightly, my eyes searching his as I take a disjointed breath.
“I need to ask you something: When it’s just the two of us, can you call me Lily?”
Simon pauses at my words. It’s a big, weird ask, but it feels necessary. When he and I alone, I need to be me. I don’t know what he’s thinking as his hand shifts up to cup my cheek. I turn into the comfort of his palm.
“Can you actually say it now?”
He strokes his thumb up and down the line of my jaw. “Lily,” he murmurs softly.
A serene, sad smile crosses my face as he says it, and I’m still smiling as he bends down to taste my lips again. His mouth moves over mine in a sinful, soft possession. An anthem ofmore, more, moreplays on repeat in my brain.
Within the confines of this tiny room, with the door bolted shut, everything feels heightened. Dangerously desperate. Someone could catch us. So many things could go wrong, but none of that matters. All that exists is the slow glide of his lips as he urges mine open, and the tightening in my stomach when his tongue teases mine.
A consuming need flares through me, blazing outwards. My impatient hands tangle into the hair at the nape of his neck and a low moan reverberates in Simon’s throat as I draw his tongue deeper into my mouth. Then we’re both moving, crossing the space until my back meets the stone wall. My hips buck forward, rocking restlessly against his. The cold surface behind me is the opposite of Simon’s engulfing heat, and even through my layered gown, I start to feel Simon’s hard length straining against me. My thigh instinctively lifts to bring him closer. He bears into me with a half roll of his hips, and my head falls back against the wall. Simon covers my mouth with his as he kisses me harder. I’m nearing delirium when his lips make a tantalizing trail down my neck, licking along the column of my flushed throat.
“Lily,” he growls, his hands reaching down to pull at my skirts with a barely controlled urgency. “Why can I not stop? Tell me now if you want me to stop.” His nimble fingers slipunder the last layer and catch the soft flesh of my bent thigh, pulling it up higher and locking it around him as he keeps me pinned against the wall.
I can barely form a cohesive thought, let alone speak, but somehow I manage it. “I don’t want you to stop,” I answer, my voice breathy and shaking. “Please, don’t stop.”
Simon lets out a low chuckle into the soft juncture between my neck and ear. “Thank God.” His nose skirts across my cheek as he leans back to kiss me again, his lips nipping at mine in relief. “What would you have me do?” he asks, his voice faltering as much as mine. His hips push into me again, moving in a driving rhythm that sets a twitching sensation in the softness between my thighs. “What would you have me do, Lily?”
“Just keep touching me,” I all but beg. “I want to feel you everywhere.”
I can’t believe I just said that. I’d be embarrassed, but as I watch his eyes fill with an almost menacing level of longing, I let the fleeting feeling go.
“I can do that,” he drawls. His hand leaves my leg to run along my front, over my hip, and up my stomach to stop just under the curve of my breast.
I heave in a labored breath as he stops there, his head dipping low until I feel the wet brush of his tongue against the surface of my cleavage. A flood of heat washes through me as my nipples harden against the material of my chemise. With the strings being loosened as they are, Simon is able to take full advantage as he delves his hand inside my dress’s front, drawing the neckline down and one breast up.
The night air meets my burning skin as he cups me in his palm. His hand rotates, his thumb and forefinger lightly pinching and pulling as they work the small bud. A whimper builds inside me, and when he lowers his head to suck the swollen flesh into the warmth of his mouth, I can’t help myself from letting it out.
I roll my hips, looking for any kind of relief as his tongue continues to mercilessly lick at my chest. With his free hand, he exposes my other breast and begins his delicious torture of flicking and teasing all over again. Moisture pools between my legs as my gaze turns down. Simon devouring my tits may be the most erotic thing I’ve ever seen.
I clasp his head and pull him up for another mind-numbing kiss when his hand moves down low. He bunches up the right side of my skirts even more and pins them between us with the driving press of his hips. His hand is free to brush skin of my outer thigh, then my inner thigh, until his wandering fingers find the wet heat of my folds. I gasp and push my head into his shoulder when one finger slips inside. My walls squeeze around him. His free hand grips the hair at the nape of my neck, tilting my head back up. He meets me in an untamed kiss, his tongue pushing into my mouth as his finger does the same to my center. He eases out and moves back in, and as he does, the pad of his thumb rubs around my swollen clit. I moan into his mouth, because he won’t stop kissing me, and my voice pitches when he curls a second finger in at the perfect angle. I’m close. It’s right fucking there, and when I push down as he twists his wrist, a white hot current washes over me in a shaking, scorching rush of sensation.
This. This. This.
This is what it’s supposed to feel like. How the fuck did I ever go without it?
My mouth is parted in the aftermath, my shoulders still squeezed up, and Simon’s eyes are molten as his fingers keep moving in small, slow circles.
