Page 25 of Twelve Nights In The Prince's Bed

‘Yes?’

‘Was that your first kiss?’

Her eyes flew open. She should have been prepared for the question. Mortification at her inexperience was making her toes crawl.

‘Answer me,’ he demanded, moving his thumb further over her lower lip, tracing the outline, and a thousand fireworks ignited in her bloodstream. She was mesmerised, quite possibly hypnotised by him. In that moment, she would have answered him anything,givenhim anything.

‘Yes,’ she muttered, gaze held locked to his.

‘Am I the only man to ever kiss you, Poppy?’

Slowly, careful not to dislodge his thumb, because she liked being this close to him, loved being touched by him so intimately, she shifted her head once, in something like a nod. So what if he knew the truth? Did it really matter?

She couldn’t interpret the emotions that swirled in the depths of his eyes, the colour shifting, his expression changing infinitesimally, but she felt a burst of something like restlessness, of need, something unfamiliar wrestling inside her.

‘Poppy.’ He said her name slowly, as though it were a thing of great wonder, and then, slowly, giving her plenty of time to anticipate his intention, and even more time to move if she wanted to, he lowered his head, his eyes probing hers with confusion and disbelief, until his hand fell away from her mouth a short moment before his lips claimed that space. The only man who’d ever kissed her and he kissed her now as though he wanted to read her, to understand her, with his mouth alone. Poppy whimpered as the beast inside her thrashed and turned and her body grew white-hot and she wanted, more than anything, to growl or cry. She couldn’t understand why she felt the way she did, but the energy bursting through her veins was strong enough to power a small country.

She mumbled his name into Adrastos’s mouth, and then he lifted her, placing her on the edge of the kitchen bench and standing between her legs, making him a better height to explore her mouth, his hands on her hips at first then falling behind her, bringing her forward, all the while he kissed her and she wanted to surrender completely, to lie back then and there and have him take her once more.

He was the only man she’d ever kissed. The only man she’d ever made love to, but the same could not be said for Adrastos. He slept with women all the time. None of this meant anything to him. He was very, very skilled at turning women’s bones to mush, just like this. It was an art form for him, going through the motions, not special, not unique.

It was meaningless. Just as the other night had been.

If Poppy hadn’t been a virgin, if someone hadn’t snapped photos and sold them for a nice little pay day, they wouldn’t be doing this.

He was just making the most of the situation, of having her there, and she was going along with it because she had no experience and even less self-control.

With a sharp groan, she pulled away from him, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand as though by erasing his kiss she could jolt herself out of the sensual fog.

‘I’m not going to sleep with you just because we’re sharing a room,’ she said bravely, eyes clouded with uncertainty, but she tilted her chin to make that point.

Adrastos was also confused, she could see, but he rallied faster, concealing his emotions with far greater ease. ‘That wasn’t sex, Poppy, it was a kiss.’

Heat bloomed in her cheeks. What a perfect comment to make Poppy feel every bit as gauche and inexperienced as she was.

‘Yes, well, I don’t want you to do either,’ she lied. ‘Would you please step aside so I can get down?’

She couldn’t meet his eyes.

The last thing she was expecting was Adrastos’s gentle touch as he moved his hands back to her hips and lifted her off the bench, bringing her against his body until her feet were back on the kitchen floor.

The wild beast inside Poppy had stilled, was watching, waiting to see what would happen next.

‘What is it?’

Of course he could tell something was wrong. One minute she’d been kissing him back as though her life depended on it and the next she was barely able to look at him.

‘Nothing.’ She shook her head. How could she explain her strange, amorphous jealousy? Of the women he’d been with, of his confidence with women, of his skill...

At her birthday party, she’d wanted him in spite of all those things, perhaps because of them, but the intimacy of their new arrangement had bred a wariness in Poppy, and a warning, too. It would be impossible to relegate this experience with Adrastos to ‘just another guy’, as he would easily do with her, because she had no point of comparison, no other experience.

In Poppy’s work, she dealt with injustice every day, she worked with people who’d been in situations of inherent unfairness and power imbalance, which made it easy for Poppy to identify that here. The idea of wanting him with her whole soul, and knowing that, for Adrastos, Poppy was just someone to keep his bed warm because they had to share a room, made it all the more imperative for Poppy to draw and maintain some boundaries, or else she’d lose herself in this entirely.

‘I’m going to bed.’ Her glare was an attempt at a warning, and nothing that could be construed as an invitation. ‘Goodnight.’

CHAPTER SIX

SHEHADSLEPTlike a log, despite the tumult of the day and that moment in the kitchen. She’d passed out almost as soon as her head had hit the pillow, but then, at some point, she’d become aware of Adrastos beside her, and then Poppy had been wide awake, the beast in her chest doing laps, pacing around, desperate for Poppy todo something.

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