Page 50 of Lost Kingdom

“Jesus.” I drop my head back, arching my spine and inadvertently curling my sensitive core against his leg. “Tim…”

“Now I want to comeinyou.”

Good lord and fuck me. Tell him, Aubree! Stop being a pussy and speak your truth. He won’t freak out.

“I can’t be gentle.” He drags the silky fabric of my dress up, exposing my legs and revealing the lace of my underwear. “I’ve never been the guy that was gonna be gentle. So I need you to speak up, okay?”

“Um…”

He grabs my hip and shoves me over so fast I gasp and roll, my hands frantically dropping to the mattress and my neck aching as I attempt to see him over my shoulder.

“You worried this dress would be too revealing.” Shaking his head, he unfastens the single, tiny catch at the back that keeps an entire gown from exposing me in front of a hundred people, then he tugs the dress down until I remember I’m not wearing a bra.Oh my good lord, I’m not wearing a bra. And Timothy Malone is gonna see in a minute. He’ll flip me over just as easily as he managed the first time, and then he’s going to see my breasts. And, well… boobs are boobs. They’re all kind of the same at the end of the day. But still, they’remyboobs, and no man has ever seen them before, andhe’sthe guy I’ve been pining after for too damn long. “Aubree?”

“Hmm?” My heart screeches to a painful stop that feels like cogs jamming up and a manufacturing line going on the fritz. The word for that, of course, is a myocardial infarction. But I’m Virginal Aubree right now. Not Medical Examiner Aubree. “Yeah?”

“You seem nervous.”

“Uh… nope.” I lift my hips, giving him room to drag my dress down and expose me completely. And he’s a Malone, so of course, he does exactly that until I’m left with nothing but lacey black underwear, a pair of heels that make my feet ache, and an expensive necklace that leaves my heart a sighing, swooning mess. “We can have sex now, I guess.” I dig one arm under my stomach and use it to cover the bulk of my breasts, then I turn on the mattress and sit up, the rolls of my stomach folding forward and my entire existence, nothing short of cringy. “Do you have a condom? That’s important, of course.”

“A condom?” He looks me up and down, his eyes glittering and his lips curling despite the beard hiding a lot of what he does. “You’re ready, then?”

“Mmhmm. Sure.” I don’t dare lower my arm. But I use my free hand to reach down and unclasp my heels. “I’m ready.”

“So you’re wet for me?” He backs off the bed and wanders slowly, infuriatingly casually, to the duffel bag set on the rack by the closet. But while he walks, he shucks his coat off, dropping it to the back of the couch as he passes, then he drags his tie off and starts on the buttons of his shirt. “Wet between the legs, Aubree Grace? And not nervous at all?”

“Nope. I’m…”Dying. Terrified. Horny, but horribly nervous. “Wet.”

Chuckling, he opens his shirt and slides the fabric off to reveal a muscular back marred with ink and scars. I don’t know where one begins and the other ends, and I have no clue how he could stand to tattoo over what would have been horribly sensitive sections of skin. But I do know that, despite my nerves, my heart beats for him.

An over-pouring of empathy has a flood of pain settling into the base of my stomach. Every time we spend the night together and I see his body, sadness envelops me until it feels like I’ll never catch my breath. Anger, for the boy who deserved better. Rage, for the man who earned his place in hell.

“Seems to me that…” He slides the zipper open on the bag and digs his hand in. Then he turns, a shirt and a book bundled together and a filthy smirk curled across his face, “the woman who demands honesty isn’t being entirely truthful right now.”

“A book?” I snag a pillow, slamming it to my chest so I can argue with a modicum of dignity.Sort of. “You brought a book?”

“But sure,” he snickers, leaving his shirt behind and wandering back to the bed so the flicker of the fireplace bounces off his firm stomach. “Let me get a condom. No real foreplay. No prepping. Not even my tongue on your sweet pussy first?” He drops the book by my thigh, then a shirt—one of his—on my shoulder. “If you think I’m gonna wrap my cock in rubber and lube, and fuck you when you’re dry and terrified, then I’m scared to wonder who youreallythink I am in the back of your mind.”

When I remain stock still, clutching to my pillow and indignation, he snags the shirt, opens the fabric, and plops it over my head. “I’ll fuck you, Aubree. And I’ll make it hurt, a little, at least. I don’t know any other way. But you’ll tell me when you’re ready, and you’ll mean it.”

“You set me up?”

“Consider it a test, maybe.” He crouches in front of me and reaches across to cup my face. “You’re an outspoken, people pleasing, rule breaking contradiction. It’s hard keeping up sometimes. But I know one thing, Emeri, and it’s that I’m not gonna fuck you while you have to hype yourself up and mentally chant ‘you got this. Be brave. You can do this.’”

“I wasn’t hyping myself. I was?—”

“When it’s time, you won’t think of anything else except me. And when you’re ready, you won’t be able to stop. That’s when I’ll have you. And fuck,” he groans, his jaw tensing with the movement, “that’s when I’ll claim you. But we’re doing this on your timeline. So while you’re brave enough to let me carry you, and crazy enough to ride your charade all the way to my bed, you’re not prepared for what happens next. When you are, we’ll both know.”

“So you brought a book.” Disappointment washes through my veins and brings my shoulders down into a slump. It’s so dumb, really, considering I was freaking out a moment ago. But now he’s letting me off the hook, and there’s a huge part of me that wanted to do this. Get it done. First times will always be awkward, but if I can get past that, the rest is bound to be better…

“Stop looking like that.”

Stunned, I glance up into his emerald stare, only to squeal when he wraps his arm around my belly and drags me along the mattress.

“We’re going to bed.” He tears the blankets down and deposits me at the end, my back plastered to the headboard and my legs horrifyingly bare and on full display. We’ve slept together before, of course, and I’ve dressed down almost every single time. But never to my underwear. Never to a lacey black scrap of material that is, I admit,wet. A little, at least. “You’re going to read to me, and I’m going to fall asleep with your fingers in my hair.”

“So all of that was a lie?” Blood continues to pump in the wrong half of my body. My pulse throbbing horrifyingly south, when I wish, so desperately, I could reroute it back to my brain. “All the, ‘I touch myself and think of you’ stuff. It was?—”

“Absolutely the truth.” He pushes up to stand at the side of the bed, grabbing the book and dropping it into my lap. Then he presses a kiss to my forehead and turns away to peruse the kitchen area. “Every single morning. Every fucking day for as long as I’ve known you.”

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