Page 23 of A Throne for the Taking

‘I knew that I would never get away again.’

He shook his dark head roughly, closing his eyes against the admission that had been dragged from him. Pushing both hands into the drift of her hair across the pillows, he held her head just so, dark eyes fixing hers, his mouth just a few centimetres of temptation away from her own.

‘I didn’t want to want you so much—never did. But there is little point in denying it any more. So now, my duchess, it is decision time. If you are going to say no then say it now—while I can still act on it.’

Bending his head, he took her lips in a kiss that was pure temptation, sliding into a hungry pressure that told its own story. It was barely there then gone again and the moan of disappointment that rose in her throat, the way that her own mouth followed his, trying to snatch back the caress, made it plain that she wanted more. The hands that had been in her hair now slid down the length of her body, one cupping her bottom and pressing her closer against him, the other slipping under the lace-trimmed edge of the blue silk gown, sliding it from her shoulder, baring the creamy skin to his mouth.

The heat of his kiss made her writhe on the dark green covers, and when his teeth grazed her skin in a tender pain another soft cry of response escaped her.

Six restless nights had brought her to his door. Six nights of wakefulness and frustration, six nights of longing and growing need. And every one of those nights was behind her action now. She was hungry, needy, her hands shaking as she pulled at his clothes, wrenching his shirt from the waistband of his trousers, tugging it up so that she had access to the smooth warmth of the skin of his back. With the other hand, she reached up, catching the dangling ends of his unfastened bow tie and holding them together, pulling down on them to draw his head towards her, his mouth imprisoned against her own, his groan escaping from between their joined lips.

She was lost in those kisses, abandoned to his touch. His hands were even more impatient than her own, dispensing with the fine blue silk that covered her with a roughness and a lack of finesse that had the fine material ripping as he tore it away from her. And then his mouth was on her breast, hot and hungry, kissing, nipping, suckling in a way that brought a moaning response from her own throat.

‘Lexei...’ she sobbed, daring at last to use again the affectionate nickname he had once let her call him. ‘Lexei...’

A sudden thought seemed to catch him, making him pause, lift his head.

‘You’re not...?’

‘What? A virgin?’ Ria finished for him, the fight she was having to cope with this abrupt change making her tone sharp, the words shake on her tongue. ‘What—do you think I spent all these years just waiting, saving myself for you? Don’t be silly.’

She might just as well have done, she added in the privacy of her own thoughts. She had believed herself in love with Alexei, had had fantasies, dreams in which he had been the one—her first. So when he had left and had made it plain that he had never spared a thought for the former friend he had left behind, when he had been seen everywhere with the beautiful, glamorous Mariette, when he had had a baby with the other woman, she had later flung herself into a relationship at the age of twenty that she’d known within days had been a major mistake. And if she had needed any further proof then it was right here, right now in the storm of feelings breaking over her. The sort of tempest that no other person had ever been able to arouse in her.

The nightdress was gone, ripped away and discarded on the floor, and somehow he had managed to shed his own clothes, the heat and hair-roughened texture of his skin a torment of delight against her own sensitised flesh. And when he combined it with the stinging delight of his hot mouth closing over one pouting nipple she could only throw back her head against the pillows and choke his name out loud.

When he threw a leg over hers, pushing her thighs apart, opening her to him, she went with him willingly, arching up to meet him, to encourage him, to welcome him. With her face muffled against his throat she slid her hands down to his buttocks and pressed hard, urging him on.

‘Ria...’ Her name was rough and thick on his tongue, revealing that if she was on the brink of losing control then he was right there with her all the way. His mouth was at one breast, his hands teasing the other, tugging at her nipple, drawing it tighter, and she thought that she might lose the little that was left of her consciousness as she felt her head swim with the sensual pleasure that was burning up inside her.

The moment that he eased himself inside her had her holding her breath, abandoning herself, yielding herself up to him. The slow slide of his body into hers was like that teenage dream come true but harder, hotter, so much more than she had ever been able to imagine in her fantasies. It went beyond any experience that she could have ever thought was possible.

She was so close to the edge already that there was barely time to breathe between this moment of intense connection and the pulse of something new, something hot and hungry and demanding as he moved within her, and she lifted herself to meet his thrusts, gasping her delight as they took her higher, higher...soaring into the heavens, it seemed.

A moment later she was lost. Sensations stormed every inch of her body, assaulting every nerve, her mind whirling in the delirium of ecstasy. She froze with her body arched up to his, her internal muscles clamping around him so that she caught his choking cry of release as he too let go and abandoned himself to the tidal wave of pleasure, losing himself in the oblivion of fulfilment.

The storm of sensual ecstasy that had exploded inside Alexei’s head took a long time to recede. Even then, it was impossible to move, impossible to think. His heart thundered against his ribs and it seemed his breathing would never get back under control. But at long last the red-hot tide receded, his blood cooled, his mind was his own again. With Ria’s soft warmth curled up close beside him, her face buried against his chest, her hair spilling across his arms, he knew a powerful sense of satisfaction, of the closest thing to contentment he had known in a long time.

A contentment that was shattered in the moment that the first rational thought invaded his mind like a shaft of ice.

What the hell had he done?

He had known that he had kept away from Ria for a reason. The reason being that he didn’t trust his own control when he was with her. He wanted her but, after the bitter lesson he had learned in the past, he had vowed that never again would he risk sleeping with any woman without contraception. But the moment Ria had been in his arms, the heat of the hunger he had felt as she lay underneath him, open to him, giving to him, had taken all his ability to think and shattered it. He hadn’t even had a brain cell working that had thought of protection or consequences or the future. Only here and now and what was happening between them.

In a lifetime of wild, reckless, foolish mistakes, he might just have made the worst possible one ever.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

RIA STARED AT her reflection in the mirror and       tried to recognise herself in the woman she saw there. The change wasn’t just       physical, though the groomed, elegant person who looked back at her was so far       from any previous image of herself she had ever seen. There was so much more to       it than that. And that meant that she found it hard to look herself in the eye,       harder to admit to what she was seeing there.

Her dress was perfection, the sort of dress she might have       imagined in her dreams. A narrow, strapless column of white silk, it had tiny       crystals stitched into the material so that the effect when she moved was like a       fall of stars. Her hair was swept into an elegant half-up, half-down style with       the rich glowing strands falling over the creamy skin of her shoulders and       partway down her back.

Growing up, she had always dreamed about one day being able to       attend the black and white masked ball. She had also dreamed of falling in love,       of marrying and living her own happy ever after. And the biggest part of that       dream had been loving just one man.

Loving Alexei Sarova.

Well, she had done just that. She’d given him her heart as a       child, but now she’d fallen in love with him for real, as an adult woman, and       there was no going back. But the dream she had longed for had turned into a       total, bitter nightmare as more and more of it came true. Because there was no       happy ever after. Now here she was, about to attend the ball that people were       calling the event of the decade. She would be expected to put on her public       face, stand at Alexei’s side, dance with him, smile—always smile!—and never let       anyone see just how bruised and crushed her heart actually was.

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