Page 14 of His Highness's Hidden Heir

It had worked. She had thought she had a low libido, never discovering true passion no matter how many toads she kissed.

Tonight she’d kissed a prince, she thought with amusement.

She watched him cup his hand under the running faucet to rinse his mouth. He straightened and used a hand towel to dry his beard, stilling when he noticed her watching.

“What are we thinking, pretty bird?”

“That this feels like a dream.”

His rumbled noise might have been agreement. He took the hairbrush from her and moved behind her, running it smoothly through the length since she’d already done most of the work.

People fussed with her hair all the time, but this felt different. His hand petted behind every stroke, as though he took as much pleasure in this act as she did. He was a prince, for heaven’s sake. What was he doing, playing attentive lady’s maid?

A scald of heat arrived behind her eyes that didn’t make any sense. Or rather, she didn’t want to pick apart why she felt so emotive. In this moment, she felt cared for, truly cared for, even though this was only sex. Once morning arrived, they would never see each other again.

“I don’t want to wake up.” She didn’t realize she said it aloud until his gaze met hers in the mirror.

The hairbrush landed next to the sink and his arms came around her, drawing her backward into him. One hand dived behind her lapel to cup her breast. Her nipple tightened to a point against his palm. His other hand burrowed below the tied belt, finding the quivering jump of her stomach.

“I don’t want to sleep,” he said in a graveled voice. He nuzzled against her hair, seeking her ear. “Are you sore? Or—? Mmm...” A satisfied noise left him as he traced into her folds and found her slick enough to bloom against his touch.

She was very tender, but his touch was lazy and gentle. Even so, she was so sensitized, the friction was almost too intense to bear.

She covered his hand, stilling his touch, but felt his erection against her bottom, through the thick velour of the robe.

“I’ll be so careful, Lexi,” he whispered against her ear, tongue dabbling into the whorls, teeth teasing the rim. “Do you really want me to stop?”

“No,” she admitted, closing her eyes against the watchful glitter of his gaze.

His heavy hand lifted beneath the weight of hers. His touch was barely there, but the knot of nerves at the top of her sex was so swollen, the barest roll of his fingertip had her turning her face into his shoulder. A groan of helpless desire escaped her throat.

“Tell me no one else gives you this,” he commanded.

“No one,” she gasped, arching her bruised nipple into his palming hand. Climax danced as elusively as his caress between her thighs.

“You make me feel like a god.” He pressed his wide, claiming hand over her mound.

Her hips instinctively pushed into that firm hold and she broke, awash in sensations that melted her bones, but that was okay. His strong arms kept her from falling.

He woke her once more in the night, rolling away long enough to put on a condom, then stayed spooned behind her while they spent a long time simply enjoying the sensation of being joined, caressing and kissing what skin they could reach, sighing with bliss into the dark.

When orgasm arrived, it came in long, rolling pulses that took Lexi out to sea like a tide. She drifted to sleep still rocked by the waves of pleasure.

Magnus must have fallen asleep, too. She had a vague memory of waking with a start when he drew a breath and hardened inside her.

His arms tightened around her and he said something in his language before he asked, “Are you asleep?”

She made a noise between dismay and reassurance, wincing slightly at the sensation as he withdrew, but she didn’t want to leave this liminal state between dream and waking.

He rolled away, then came back to envelop her and kiss her shoulder. They both sighed and slid back into dreamland.

CHAPTER FOUR

IFITWEREup to Magnus, he would have kept Lexi in his bed indefinitely, but it was never up to him.

Resentment was a wasted emotion, though. He had wallowed in buckets of it through those early years of learning who he was, but it hadn’t retrieved any of what he’d lost. The man he had believed was his father was still firmly gone, turning his back in a way that still tightened Magnus’s chest.

His siblings hadn’t known whose side to take and Magnus had been needed here so there’d been a wedge there, too. His brother and sister were strangers to him now. There was nothing left of their childhood camaraderie. He’d even lost his mother, to some extent. While he had come to understand and accept her reasons for hiding his paternity, he’d lost a measure of trust in her that could never be regained.

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