Page 53 of Innocent in the Prince's Bed

He let her stroke until he couldn’t allow the pleasure without ruining her own. ‘Now it’s my turn.’ His voice was gravelly with desire. ‘Give me your back, Dove.’ He worked the laces, slipping it from her to reveal the delicate slope of her shoulders, the feminine flare of hip, the sensual bell of rounded buttocks. ‘Oh, God,’ he murmured his reverence, dropping a kiss at the notch where neck met shoulder. ‘You’re beautiful, Dove. Far lovelier than I. Let me see you, all of you, as you saw me.’

He turned her out from him, letting his eyes honour her. His gaze swept the small, high breasts, the tapered waist, the silver pelt between her thighs. She was beauty personified and his blood thrummed with the age-old call of possession. His. His. She was his—his to claim, his to protect. He reached for her, his hand slipping loose the pins from her hair, the last vestiges of bondage.

‘You, too,’ she whispered, her hands going to the leather strip holding his bun in place. ‘You look like an ancient warrior.’

Illarion laughed. ‘Stepan thinks it’s girlish.’

Dove moved into him, pressing to him skin to skin, her hand wrapped about his phallus once more. ‘Stepan has never seen you like this. He would never think such a thing.’ Sin wrapped in satin. He’d not been wrong. Illarion kissed her mouth. ‘My sweet, innocent, Dove, I do believe you are a temptress, after all.’

She looked up at him with wondering eyes that belonged both to the innocent and the courtesan. ‘Do I tempt you, Illarion?’

She drew her thumb over the tip of his phallus as if to test the assumption and he groaned. ‘In so many ways, Dove. You can’t even begin to know.’

* * *

She tempted him, this man who could have any woman. Those were heady words, nearly as heady as feeling the proof of his desire in her hand, against her lips, against her body as he moved her backwards to his bed and laid her down. The enormity of these moments swept her as she looked up at him from the pillows. Oh, sweet heavens, she was naked with the man she loved! And it was beautiful. ‘Like Adam and Eve in the garden,’ she murmured. With a few exceptions; mainly, Adam likely didn’t have the appearance of a Norse god and she had not come here tonight with the conscious intention of making love. Why had she come here? She could answer that only with abstract ideas; she’d been looking for escape, for reassurance, for hope. But now those ideas had taken on a more concrete aspect. How better to escape, to hope, to seek reassurance than in the arms of a man she trusted? A man who understood her? A man who knew the way to freedom, to pleasure? A subconscious part of her discerned the very real probability that only Illarion was uniquely positioned to give all of that to her, that this might be her only chance to experience true passion. Tonight, and tonight alone, there were no titles, no expectations, no social pressures, nothing between them but skin and desire. This might not have been the intended outcome of her visit, but that didn’t make it any less right.

Dove trembled with anticipation as the bed took his weight and he came down beside her. She was not afraid, not with Illarion’s blue eyes holding hers, not with his warm touch on her body, his hand moving her breast, his thumb passing over the peak of her nipple until it was taut. She could feel the now-familiar ache pool low in her stomach as her desire gathered, just as it had that afternoon at the picnic, and her body quickened. Each touch, each caress played on her sensitive skin until her nerves were raw with wanting him, wanting more.

He moved over her then, his knee between her thighs, urging them apart, his mouth moving down her body, her breasts, her navel, blowing soft puffs against her skin. Her body gave a delicious shiver, knowing the path his mouth would take, wanting the pleasure that would follow. Her legs opened in welcome. At the first stroke of his thumb, the first lick of his tongue, she sighed into the pleasure, falling into the soft heat of his touch against her skin, building the fire in her to a slow, steady burning. She arched into him, like a cat and he gave a playful growl. ‘You like that, my vixen.’

‘I could do this all night,’ Dove murmured, but it was her downfall. He was not content to let her. His tongue deepened its work. Her hands gripped the thick depths of his hair, irrationally torn between tearing him away from her and anchoring him there so that he could never leave. The soft fire became an inferno, swallowing her whole until all the world was reduced to the sounds of her cries, and afterwards the feel of his head on her belly, his breath coming fast as if the pleasure had been his as well.

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