Page 59 of A Princess for Christmas

Leo had just enough coherent reason left in him to peel off his gloves first. He knew he was going to want to feel Marie. Her skin, her hair.Her.

Her breaths were shallow. Little bursts of steam emitted fromher lips. His world shrank so those lipswerethe world. That rosebud. That heart. He swooped in, but stopped just short of her mouth, so the steam from his breath joined with hers. Waited. Because although he had come, rather rapidly, to his “fuck it” revelation, that didn’t mean she had.

He hoped she had.Please let her have.

There were only a few millimeters between them.

Sheclosed the gap. It felt like a triumph. Belatedly, he remembered his hands. Or maybe his hands remembered her. They came down on her cheeks to ensure that she didn’t go anywhere—no one was going anywhere for a very long time. He was going to feast on her.

It was different this time. This wasn’t some impromptu kiss outside his building where Gabby might stumble on them. This was premeditated, and they were in her secret place in the middle of the goddamn Alps.

When his lips came down on hers, her mouth opened. So smoothly, so completely. As if this was choreography they’d been doing together for a long time. As if this was a dance sheknewhow to do.

He’d forgotten how amazing kissing could be, even—maybe especially—when it wasn’t just the precursor to more. Kissing for its own sake, like you had all the time in the world, was pretty fucking great.

He could feel Marie relax as his tongue made its initial incursions. Even her head grew heavier in his hands. It was like she was shedding an invisible burden, surrendering it to him. He was happy to take it. Proud that she trusted him with it. That she thought he was, as she had said,safe.

So they stood there in the cold and kissed. Kissed like they were in a goddamned movie.

But it wasn’t all heady emotion urging him onward; it was also pure, animalistic want. It was powerful, coarse, and highly improper. As he swept his tongue deeply through her mouth, he let one hand leave her face and slide down her back until he made contact with her ass. He encouraged her forward then, wanting her to feel what this was doing to him. Not that he expected anything to happen beyond this kiss, but he suddenly felt like the girl who thought she wasn’t graceful or beautiful orwhatevershouldfeeldecided evidence to the contrary.

As with the dancing, she went where he wanted her. She wentfurther: she huffed a moan that seemed part arousal, part frustration and ground herself against his thigh. They were both wearing jeans, but he could feel the heat emanating from her through both layers of denim.Fuck.Yes.He had not imagined things going this far, but now he could not imagine stopping. He used his leg to grind back against her. Abruptly, she broke their kiss and let out another moan. This one was lower, longer,dirtier. This one was all frustration. She rocked her hips against his leg, and he thrust it harder against her core. Did it again, setting up a rhythm meant to encourage her to writhe against him. Let his face fall to her neck and whispered, “Yeah. Take what you need.”

She sucked in a sharp breath, like she was shocked, but he was pretty sure it was a good sort of shocked.

If no one ever danced with the princess of Eldovia like no one was watching, it was safe to say no one ever talked dirty to the princess of Eldovia like no one was watching. “Yes. Keep going.”

Another gasp. She liked this. He did, too, so he amped itup—both the pressure and the dirty talk. “Use me to make yourself come.”

And she did.

It wasastonishing.

Oh dear Lord. What had shedone?

When Marie came back to earth, she wasn’t sure which was the worse transgression, that she’d shown Leo her mother’s secret hideaway or that she’d humped his leg like a dog in heat and had an orgasm in her mother’s secret hideaway.

He was still holding her. They were both breathing hard.

He was a wizard. Those fairy tales Gabby so loved? Marie was in one now, and she’d been bewitched by an evil wizard with sexy forearms and a secret plan to ruin her. She knew how these stories went. Soon, she’d be locked in a tower. Or asleep for twenty years. She needed to get away from him.

Her face was on fire. She didn’t want him to see her. So she buried her face in his neck. Which wasn’t helping on the whole getting-away-from-him front.

He only let her rest there, mercifully out of his sight, for a moment before he gently pushed her back. Held her at arm’s length. “Hey, hey.” He studied her face for a long moment with those all-seeing, unnaturally pretty eyes, and though it should have been impossible, her face flamed higher. Hotter. Throbbed along with the juncture of her thighs, which was still tremoring with the occasional aftershock.

“Regrets?” he asked softly. “Realregrets, I mean. Not bullshit ones you think you should have. Because if so, I owe you an apology.”

Real regrets.That was an interesting way of putting it. It reminded her of the dancing like no one was watching metaphor. Did she really, in her heart, regret what had happened? The prospect of him apologizing for it helped answer that question. She smiled sheepishly and shook her head. “No regrets. If there’s any apologizing, it should be me to you for...”

Leo raised his eyebrows. “For what?” For a moment, he looked like he was trying not to laugh, but she wondered if she had imagined it, because a graveness washed over his face, a kind of serious intensity she hadn’t seen on him before. “For grinding all over me and getting yourself off?”

Oh my. His words went straight to her oversensitive sex. She wanted to put it down to the fact that she hadn’t had sex in the two years since university. She’d used her time at Oxford, away from the spotlight of royal life in Eldovia, to gain some experience. To have some fun—at least, until her mother died. Not that she had a bedpost full of notches, but she’d had some good times with a few boys. Still, even in those carefree years, no one had ever made her feel like this, and certainly no one hadeverspoken to her the way Leo had.

She liked it. It was embarrassing but thrilling. How to answer? Her first instinct was to be all abashed and missish, because that seemed like the “proper” response.

But was it? In the sense that proper meant “right”? That sort of response felt weak.

No, she would own what had happened. She would own her own response to it. “Yes. For grinding myself all over you and getting off on it.”

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