Page 2 of Twelve Nights In The Prince's Bed

He didn’t touch her, but as they cut through the room she felt his nearness like a caress and her whole body responded, goosebumps lifting, her stomach twisting with the realisation that she was about to be alone with him for the first time in years.

It was impossible to walk anywhere with Adrastos and not acknowledge the way people watched him. She saw heads turn, women appraise, men react with respect. A blade of doubt pushed its way into her thoughts, so she knew she had to do this quickly and get it over with.

At the doors to the balcony, he stopped abruptly, turning to look at her with an expression that could best be described as doubt, his eyes raking over her, almost as if he’d never seen her before, as if he wanted to say, ‘Are you sure?’

In response to the unasked question, Poppy tilted her chin and held his gaze with a defiance she wasn’t quite sure she felt.

A moment later, the Crown Prince opened the door, and a blast of ice-cold wind rushed in at the same time they stepped out, the gentle din of the party silenced the moment the door clicked shut behind them.

Poppy loved Stomland.

When she’d first come here, her heart had been broken, shattered by her parents’ shocking deaths, and she’d recognised in the royal family kindred spirits—in many ways, but particularly in their shared state of grief, having lost their oldest son just months before her parents. They told Poppy, many times over the years, how her arrival had helped to mend their family, to make them feel a little closer to whole, and it was a sentiment Poppy shared.

‘Well, Poppy?’

She almost flinched at the cool tone of his question. Before the kiss, they hadn’t been close. Not like her and Ellie. They were best friends as well as sisters in spirit. Adrastos had always been a step removed, busy and important, carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. But they’d at least been friendly. He’d been protective, just as he was with Ellie. She’d been in awe of him, intimidated by his overwhelming strength and masculinity, but there’d never been this kind of awkwardness, this skin-tingling awareness.

Now they were here, alone, the questions she wanted to ask seemed insurmountable to speak.

Silence fell, a silence in which Poppy was aware of absolutely everything. His breathing, the smell of the salt water, the sound of distant traffic, his aftershave, the cool night air, heavy with the promise of Christmas, just around the corner. They hadn’t been this close, alone, since the kiss, and it was impossible not to feel ghost memories of that touch flicking over her skin. Was he thinking of it too?

‘Poppy?’ The sharpness to her name had her eyes darting to his, her heart racing. ‘What did you want from me?’

It was a curious phrasing. Not, ‘What do you want to discuss with me?’ Somehow, his choice of words was so much more provocative. She took another gulp of champagne, eyes closed, letting it explode into her belly.

‘I’m—’ She opened her eyes, stared at him, and lost sense of everything. Whatever they’d been before her twenty-first and anything that had happened since didn’t matter. The stars overhead seemed to wink down at them, giving Poppy their blessing, or, at the very least, their encouragement. Maybe it was a devilish idea, maybe she’d regret it, but tonight, Poppy was filled with a need that only Adrastos could meet. She didn’t want to think about the consequences.

That kiss on the night of her twenty-first had been just a flash. A few passionate seconds she’d replayed over and over and over so many times the memory was in danger of getting static cracks through it from overuse. A fresh taste of Adrastos, a secret, forbidden kiss, just for this one night...

Time seemed to slow almost to a stop. She was conscious of the very atmosphere that wrapped around them, the cool winter’s night, the sparkle of the stars overhead, the sound of the ocean lapping against boats in the distance, and then, Adrastos. All of him. Right there, within easy touching distance.

She licked her lower lip quickly, mouth dry, throat thick. His eyes dropped to her mouth and her heart accelerated so she thought it might hop out of her chest. It was now or never.

‘What I want,’ she said, slowly, but with steel underpinning those words, a challenge in each syllable, ‘is for you to kiss me.’ She moved closer, so her breath fanned his cheek. ‘But this time,’ she almost purred, ‘I don’t want you to stop.’

Adrastos felt the boundaries of his world tighten around his body, making it impossible to breathe, to think, to see anything besides this damned woman, this vexatious, tempting, beautiful woman. When had that happened? She’d been a teenager at first, just like his sister. The pair of them so silly, always giggling and whispering secrets. He’d looked on them both with fond indulgence. He’d never thought of Poppy as awoman, until her twenty-first birthday party, when he’d walked into the garden marquee that had been erected in the grounds of the palace and seen—not just a woman, but a deity. A goddess. Stunningly beautiful, untouchable and entirely transformed. Suddenly, all their conversations over the years, all their shared stories, everything he knew about Poppy, had shifted and morphed and he’d wanted toreallyknow her, beyond the words they’d exchanged. He’d wanted her in a way that he hadn’t even fully understood. He’d had plenty of experience with women, but he’d never wanted another human being in the way he wanted Poppy. It went way beyond sex. He’d seen her and wanted to make her his on some elemental level.

The need to possess her had terrified him. He’d spent the entire night trying to avoid her, to tamp down on those unwelcome feelings, and he’d almost succeeded. He’d almost won the war, but then she’d walked past him, quite distracted by a conversation with his mother, and Adrastos had fallen under her spell. Her fragrance, so sweet and sensual, had called to him, and when he’d found her alone, in the rose garden—one of her favourite spots—he’d known the war was far from over: it was no longer in his grasp to win.

If a waiter hadn’t walked past that night and dropped a glass, rousing Adrastos to his sanity, he would have made love to Poppy then and there, amongst the roses.

But that had been three years ago. He’d run so hard from that night, that unfamiliar moment that had completely lacked Adrastos’s trademark control, when he’d kissed a woman he’d been told to think of as his damned sister! He had no right desiring her. He had no right to kiss her. Any other woman, he thought with a grimace. Adrastos had made no effort to hide his lifestyle from the press. If anything, he’d relished that reputation.

Having been lauded as ‘The Perfect Prince’ since Nicholas’s death, in one aspect of his life, at least, he didn’t feel like a treacherous usurper. He couldn’t change his traits, those inbuilt leadership instincts that did indeed make him an excellent prince. Nor could he change the fact that Nicholas had been, in many ways, unsuitable for the life for which he’d been born. He’d been quiet, academic, timid and naturally shy, every public outing a torture for the oldest sibling, where Adrastos cared so little for anyone’s opinion of him that he’d not been bothered by any engagement whatsoever.

But he hated the comparisons.

He hated that at times there’d almost been a sense of joy at Adrastos’s promotion to heir—never mind that it had come about through the death of his much-loved brother.

Was it any wonder he’d lashed out in the one area of his life that was beyond the control of anyone? While his parents desperately wanted him to settle down and marry, to have royal heirs of his own, Adrastos delighted in showing everyone they were wrong about him—at least a little. He wasn’t The Perfect Prince. Not as perfect as Nicholas would have been, because surely Nicholas would have married by now, had he lived.

Poppy made a little noise, a husky exhalation, and she was pulling back, ever so slightly, so his gaze narrowed, his pulse grew louder in his ears and he knew he had seconds to act—or not act, which would be far smarter.

That night, he’d kissed her because he’d wanted her, and he’d pretended it had been just like with any of the women he met in bars or at parties. But this was Poppy. There were layers between them that complicated things. His parents viewed her as a daughter. She had no family besideshisfamily. He couldn’t take her to bed then forget about her. It was messy and Adrastos didn’t do messy.

And yet, even just the thought of kissing her had his groin tightening, his arousal straining against the fabric of his trousers, so he was intimately aware of every inch of his manhood, the powerful need for Poppy compressing the walls of his world even further.

‘Listen, Poppy...’

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