Page 32 of Vows to a King
Adonis stared at her, his eyes dark and intense. “Why do I have a feeling you’re dying to have a go at me, Princess?” The moment stretched, ripe with tension and unsaid things.
A cue from one of their aides had them standing up and waving. And then came the next cue—for a chaste, polite kiss, perfect for the public’s consumption.
When Adonis dutifully reached for her, Jemima stiffened. “I’d rather kiss a frog right now than kiss you.”
“And here I thought you didn’t lie to yourself, Jem. Come, let’s see how much of a lie that is.”
And then, without warning, he sealed his lips over hers. Breaking convention, breaking protocol, breaking every boundary she drew around herself, Adonis deepened the kiss. He licked and nipped at her, his tongue sweeping over the cavern of her mouth as if he were looking for treasure.
The kiss rivaled his stunt in how dizzy it made her.
When he released her, her chest was heaving, her head was off floating in the clouds and her heart…her foolish heart was ready to get on the roller coaster of wanting to know the real Adonis all over again.
She flushed to the roots of her hair at the applause that broke out and pretended to not hear when he whispered at her ear, “Now, who’s the liar, Your Majesty?”
CHAPTER NINE
WHENADONIS STUMBLEDinto his palace wing past midnight, it was to find his private suite,their private suite, and the extremely large kingly bed, disappointingly empty. Like the city itself, some interfering busybody, apparently also incurably romantic, had decorated the room like a bride itself.
The air was thick with the scent of jasmines and roses, arranged in lavish bouquets through the room. Through the large, open French doors, the sound of the waves endlessly crashing against the cliffs matched his hungry mood.
Where the hell was his new bride?
You didn’t pay attention to her all day. And yet you stomp about like a child now, that innately fair voice whispered inside his head.
It had been necessary, he reminded himself yet again, to keep her at a distance, to snuff out the very real thread beginning to weave between them. She had been so incandescent—her passion so achingly honest, that he’d forgotten he didn’t do emotional intimacy. That the deepest wound he’d been dealt still pulsed with pain. And given a chance, she too would find him not enough someday, she too would only cause him pain.
But now that the endless day was over and the inky darkness of night had surrounded him, he wanted her under him. Away from his father and the crowds and without the crown on his head, he wanted her, as a man would want the most thrilling woman he’d ever met.
He wanted her unraveled for him, wanted to spend himself on her lush curves so badly that he would forget that he was nothing but a poser, a fake.
How like a bloody king to seek her out when it pleased him, he thought, but even the voice calling out his hypocrisy couldn’t stop him.
He continued stomping through the endless, expansive rooms, even searched behind those stupid marble columns and thick velvet curtains as if she could be playing queenly hide-and-seek with him on their wedding night.
Their wedding night…
He pushed a hand through his hair as the phrase brought on memories of her expressions from the day. There had been anger, relief, pain, and disappointment in her gaze. That he had been the author of all of them didn’t sit well with him.
Not that the day had been the least bit about either of them. For a man who had thought he would never marry though, he did feel a sort of disappointment that it had been so utterly somber. Nor was he completely sure why he felt this sudden urgency to seek her out now.
Of course there was the ever-present lust pounding through him, urging him to plant himself deep inside her. Made even more potent by the adrenaline running through his veins since the air show. Not that it had satisfied the dark urges roiling through him. Only one thing, he knew, would at this point. Touch and connection and losing himself in the voluptuous valleys of his new queen.
And this, he knew, she needed it too.
Pushing the heavy double doors that felt like sentinels silently ordering him to stay out of her private space, he entered the pretty decorated salon. It was a replica of the smaller suite he had stood in on that first night. Some tight constriction in his chest that he had been walking around with eased to find the familiar sight of piles of books and discarded chocolate wrappers strewn about.
He maneuvered through a host of sofas and footstools and walls covered in breathtaking local art, instead of the heavy paintings of ancestors he didn’t want to think about, to reach the recessed part of the room.
With the flick of his hand, Adonis dismissed the young maid who had been half-asleep on the armchair.
Was the young woman to have acted as buffer between him and Jemima? Was his peace-loving queen pissed off that he had neglected her all day?
With every step he took toward the bed, her shape took form and something else with it. Jemima was half sitting, half lying down on the bed in a baby-pink wrapper that fell off one shoulder. Baring gleaming golden skin for his eyes.
The thick reading glasses she wore dangled precariously at the edge of her cute button nose. But even in exhausted slumber he could see the dark circles etched under her eyes, and her left hand was stretched to rest on the head of a boy child of about four or five.
Shock punched through Adonis, leaving him sweaty and cold. In the boy’s sleeping face with its thick lashes and button nose, he could see the resemblances to the woman who couldn’t let go of him even in sleep.
