Page 4 of His Hidden Royal Heirs

It was all the invitation she needed. “Let’s go.”

CHAPTER TWO

CRISTHIANDIDNOTconsider himself particularly uptight, despite a life well organized to suit his needs. He enjoyed women, wherever and whenever the opportunity presented itself. He was not choosy.

But he was usually careful. There were ground rules set.Hewas in control, so that nothing messy came from such an encounter. He ordered his life just how he liked it—whether that be business or pleasure. This had always been...easy.

This woman had blasted rules and control all to hell. He had driven too fast, breaking too many laws, with one hand curled in her hair. While her mouth had been pressed in impressively imaginative ways against his neck.

He could not remember a more desperate stumble into any of the many apartments and homes he owned, no needy rush to a hotel room in his many travels. He could not recall a time when the only possible thought in his head was to explore every last inch of her naked body, over and over again. Not since he’d been a teen eager for that first taste of something he only barely understood had he ever felt so out of control.

Control, that tenet to his life, but she seemed too pretty a flame to try to tame. She was brave and impetuous, but with something more careful underneath. Something that spoke to him, as if it needed tending. He had no desire to structure her in some way to suit his needs. He’d rather just...experience something. Without those rules and lines he knew kept him safe.

There was something revelatory in a lack of safety, of control. And the way the minute they stepped inside his hotel suite, shewrapped around him like the tide, pulling him under, into wave after wave until he was drowning in her. Her short hair was silk in his fisted hand, her mouth a fire of need against his.

He pressed her against the door he’d just closed. Unwinding her arms from his neck so he could pull the dress up and off of her.

Her eyes met his, that blue that didn’t fit at all. And yet they were still part of that ocean pulling him under. That and the slender, athletic body underneath. Not his usual type, and yet his mouth watered.

Her underthings were silk, terribly expensive, and any alarm bells that rang in the back of his head that she might be more than he bargained for, that she might know who he was despite the fact that they hadn’t exchanged names, were completely muffled by the sound she made when he pressed his hand between her legs.

He took his time exploring the contours of her body while she shivered and begged. He slid the straps of her bra down, following the slope of her shoulder with his mouth. She unbuttoned his shirt, pushed it off him.

It was like a battle. Fencing, maybe. Move and countermove. His mouth on her breast. Her hands on his zipper. Her mouth hot, needy, demanding. And yet she submitted to every demand of his own.

She tasted like some brand-new delicacy, felt like some hidden garden that grew things he’d never seen before. He didn’t recognize himself or the strange sensations ricocheting inside him as he devoured her mouth with tongue and teeth.

Her hand fisted over him, gave one slow stroke. “Now,” she panted, meeting his gaze. It was an order, and yet... “Please,” she added breathlessly.

There was nothing else beyond thatplease. Not a second’s thought. Only a need so all-encompassing he’d later wonder ifhe’d suffered some sort of medical event that had rendered him completely brain-dead.

He lifted her and with quick strides had her laid out on the large, luxurious bed. He rid himself of the rest of his clothes in seconds flat, moved over her, slid home with a pounding desire that blotted everything else out except the slow, slick slide of perfection.

She exploded around him in a rush, so hot and fast it nearly took him out. The wordkismetseemed to dance around them, like by uttering such a silly pickup line at that bar he had spoken it into existence.

Fate. Destiny. Her.

He didn’t even know her name. But that seemed such a shallow thing in the moment. In the panting of her breath, the soft velvet of her skin. The molten give of her.

He rolled her on top of him, and she balanced herself with two hands on his chest. She grinned down at him.

She moved against him, arching that beautiful body. He slid possessive hands down her sides, then urged her to move faster. To chase these things rioting inside him. He toyed with her nipple and her breathing hitched, the graceful pace she’d set fractured.

Into something wild. Frenzied. There was only the sounds of their breathing, interrupted moans and sighs, their bodies moving together in perfect rhythm. She cried out, shuddered over and over again, and still he held on to that tiniest thread of control.

He rolled her under him, slowed it down to take every ounce of pleasure out of every second. Her moan was a shot of adrenaline. That lost look on her face would stay etched into his memory, possibly forever.

When he followed her over that last edge, he couldn’t help but feel like they’d both been found.

Zia had to leave. She shouldn’t have stayed as long as she did. It was nearly morning. Not only did she have a plane to catch, but this man could never know who she really was. The more time she gave him, the more ammunition she gave him to figure out her secret.

Throughout the course of the evening, he’d looked at her slightly sideways, like he suspected something. But she’d only needed to kiss him, touch him to make that look disappear.

She couldn’t risk more, no matter how much she wanted to.

Regret didn’t coil inside her like a weight so much as a wistful kind of longing. For a different life, where she could enjoy any kind of intimate relationship without fear all her misdeeds—meant or inadvertent, true or false—could be sold to the press for so much money it would be hard to blame a person for it.

She thought maybe she could live under the weight of the press’s scrutiny, but she would not be able to live under the weight of her parents’ forever disappointment. She’d already caused them too much grief. It wasn’t their fault, any more than it was hers, that they were the king and queen. It was simply the happenstance of the world.

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