Page 72 of Royal Caleva: Luis

She laughed and finished the unbuttoning, running her hands over the swells and valleys of his chest and abs, his muscles reacting as she touched them.

“The world’s best massage,” he said with a groan of pleasure, his head resting on the back of the sofa. “I confess to being a little achy myself from riding.”

She trailed her fingers over his ribs, making him jump and grab her wrists. “You are ticklish. I wondered.”

“Are you?” he asked, cuffing her wrists together with one hand.

“Nope. Not at all,” she lied.

“I need to test that answer.” He feathered his fingertips along her side, making her squirm and press her lips together to avoid giggling. He kissed the side of her neck before he freed her. “You are a terrible liar.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

Again, the teasing look vanished. “Quite the opposite. A bad liar is to be treasured.” He stood and stripped off the rest of his clothes, making her forget his strange mood swings. Before he rejoined her on the couch, he strode across the room to grab a moss-green blanket from the back of a chair, affording her a mouthwatering view of the muscles flexing in his tight butt and long legs as he moved.

“Could you just walk around the room a few more times?” she requested as he started toward her.

He looked puzzled until she licked her lips in a very suggestive way. Then he laughed, a full-throated rumble. “Are you ogling me again?”

“One hundred percent.”

He stalked back to her with a predatory stride, the blanket held at his side so she had an unimpeded view of his magnificent body.

“Now I want to ogle you, only I will do it with my skin and my hands,” he said, tumbling her onto her back on the cushions as he came down beside her, the length of his body pressed against hers. With a flick of his arm, the blanket unfolded in the air and settled over them like a cloud.

“You’re right. Touching is better,” she said, snuggling closer to feel the stretch of warm skin over hard muscle.

Luis savored the soft curves pressed against him and the ruffle of Eve’s breath over his chest as she lay with her head pillowed on his arm. The sofa wasn’t as comfortable as the bed—his surprisingly sore muscles reminded him of that—but it had the advantage of forcing them into close proximity.

He savored even more the fact that when they made love, Eve responded to him as a man, not a king. He had been with enough women to know when the crown was in bed with them. But Eve wanted to bottle his scent, not a king’s. His position was a problem for her rather than a turn-on. Weirdly, he loved that.

He let his eyelids drift closed but not to sleep. He wanted to bask in Eve’s feminine presence in his arms, in the physical ease that followed an explosive orgasm, and in the pleasure of having his two children with him as they had watched the dragons. It had been a good day…and it wasn’t over yet.

“Grace figured out that something is going on between us,” Eve said without moving.

“She knows we’re sleeping together?” he asked, feeling his mellow mood slip. “Is she upset about it?”

“We didn’t discuss the details. She didn’t want to.” Eve’s voice held an undercurrent of parental amusement. “It doesn’t seem to be a problem for her at the moment.”

He had the sense that Eve wasn’t telling him the whole story. “Is it a problem for you?”

She sighed. “Maybe a little. I don’t want to complicate her decision about being a princess with our…stuff.” She shifted in his embrace. “Does Raul know?”

He considered how different their relationships with their children were. “We do not discuss each other’s intimate relationships.”

But maybe he should discuss more personal things with his son. He had when Raul was younger, but now that they worked together, their dynamic had shifted. Subtly and gradually, so Luis hadn’t noticed it until now. He took tremendous pride in his son’s accomplishments, but he had slipped into treating Raul almost as a colleague. Because so many of their interactions were about governmental affairs, Raul deferred to Luis as the king. Only at family dinners when Gabriel was present did the two young men revert to their occasional respectful tweaking of Luis, a teasing he treasured.

He needed to make his conversations with his son more personal.

“He seems like a very perceptive young man,” Eve said. “If Grace suspects, I imagine he does too. Do you think it would bother him?”

“Why should it?” Raul had seen him involved with other women and never seemed concerned, but Luis wasn’t going to say that to Eve.

“Oh, because children can be uncomfortable about their parents having sex. Especially because they probably think we’re too old to be interested.” Eve sounded amused again. Then she braced her hands on his chest and pushed him far enough away that she could look into his face. “How does Raul feel about having a half sibling appear out of nowhere? He’s so smooth and charming all the time that I can’t gauge his real reaction.”

Luis was tempted to press his lips to her beautiful mouth to stop the flow of contentment-destroying words. That would be far more pleasurable than delving into family dynamics when all he wanted was to enjoy the feel of her silky bare skin against his.

He sighed. At least he could twine the satin of her hair around his fingers while they talked.

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