Page 29 of Untouched Queen by Royal Command

She would like it more. She had to—for his sanity. He didn’t know what he’d do if she liked it greedy and rough, because that wasn’t him. He wasn’t drawn to explore the darker sides of desire, those places where control bled away and chaos slipped in. Regardless of whether she was willing to accommodate him.

One kiss, and this time he’d do right by her, ease in slow with the barest touch of his lips against hers. Plenty of room for her sigh and his relief as her eyes fluttered closed as he slanted his head and fitted his lips more firmly against hers. Waiting rather than demanding her compliance, and there it was, the tip of her tongue skating along the edge of his upper lip, and he was careful, so careful to follow her cues and keep his hands to himself. Easy, never mind the want that pushed up from those places he always kept hidden. Sweet, because first kisses should be savoured, not driven into someone with the force of a fist.

He pulled back slowly, letting the space between their lips grow, watching her face come back into focus, pale and perfect, and her eyes open to regard him steadily.

‘Better?’ he asked and she smiled ever so slightly.

‘Different.’

He could do better. Another kiss, this time with the reins less tightly held. Letting slip, just a little, to allow for a response that wasn’t so carefully composed. She responded beautifully, so willing to follow where he led, so open to whatever he wanted to bestow. Enough to make a blush light her cheeks and her eyes look unfocused. Enough to risk his thumb against her lips when his mouth wasn’t there, smoothing them, learning them, setting everything back in order because he couldn’t have it any other way. ‘Better?’

‘Is this what you want from a wife? Someone who’ll never truly know your heart because you’re too busy hiding beneath all that delicious self-control?’

‘Don’t push me.’ Even as he pressed her bottom lip lightly against her teeth. Not hurting her, no. And yet. ‘Rule number one of the Arunian monarchs: don’t ever lose control.’

‘And what’s rule number two?’

‘An eye for an eye.’

He dropped to his knees in front of her and tugged the towel from her body. He pressed his lips to a bead of water that sat at the junction of her perfectly toned thighs. She gasped, and it was all the encouragement he needed. Hands sliding up her thighs to part them. The taste of her sweet on his tongue, and just like that he was ravenous again, licking and striking, flicking and sucking, listening and responding to every sound and twitch she gifted him with. He was good at this.

And she was so utterly, gloriously responsive.

Virgin.

A virgin he should have left alone or, failing that, someone whose pleasure should have very definitely come before his own. His shaft twitched, only this time he ignored it. He’d taken his pleasure. Now it was her turn.

Her fingers came up to guide his head with more force than expected. But then, this slip of a woman knew exactly how to wield swords and knives and even sharper words.

A ragged curse that felt like an endearment. A trembling ‘oh’ when he redoubled his efforts.

He wanted her to say his name again as she came.

Words that seemed lost beneath her quiet gasps and his growls when he grew greedy and still couldn’t get enough.

She came on his tongue, tense and trembling, and he could swear he felt the ripples of her body beneath his hand, and he should have withdrawn then, done and done, but there was always one more taste he had to have, even if he did avoid her most sensitive areas, and then she was dropping to her knees to face him and her hands were on his shoulders, and she said, ‘Kiss me again and mean it, Augustus,’ and his name on her lips was like a promise, so he did as she asked and knew himself for lost.

‘Don’t,’ he whispered, when he finally found the will to pull away from her. ‘Don’t tempt me.’

This time, when he left, he made it all the way back to his quarters before shedding his clothes and stepping beneath a scalding shower in a futile effort to cleanse his soul.

Don’t make me lose control.

* * *

Physical activity was the only thing that prevented Augustus from climbing the walls in the days that followed. He swam until he either had to get out of the pool or drown, he ran on the treadmill in his private gym until he bent double and emptied his stomach. He put his recently purchased catamaran through its paces until he found its tipping point and it still didn’t take the edge off.

He tried burying himself in work, which worked until his put-upon secretary demanded an assistant.

He went on a date with a perfectly eligible woman who was charming and accomplished and didn’t challenge his self-control one little bit. He hated every awkward, stilted moment of it.

He visited Theo’s cousin Benedict to look at horseflesh and met the long-term mistress of Theo’s father, who just so happened to own the horses they were looking at, and he’d stood in the stables and wanted to ask her what it was like to own the heart of a king but never to hold his hand in public. In the end he didn’t ask because he didn’t have the right to pry and he probably wouldn’t have liked the answer anyway.

Benedict, after spending half a day with him, dropped all pretence of pleasantries the minute they left the stables and brought out the bolt-cutters in an attempt to prise Augustus open.

‘What on earth is wrong with you?’ he demanded bluntly. ‘I’ve seen junkies desperate for their next fix in better shape than you.’

And Benedict would know. Even though he’d settled down and returned to the family fold after his father’s death, there wasn’t much Benedict of Liesendaach didn’t know about the darker side of sex, drugs and reckless self-indulgence.

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