Page 36 of Twelve Nights In The Prince's Bed

‘I don’t know if I really thought it through,’ she said, finally, brushing the subject away with an overbright smile. ‘It happened and, unlike you, I don’t regret it.’

CHAPTER NINE

BUTHEDIDN’Tregret it either. He could think something was a mistake without wishing it hadn’t happened. It was a technicality, but an important one, and yet Adrastos didn’t correct Poppy. As with all things Poppy, her answers had only given him more questions, but he was in no rush to push the subject tonight. Again he thought of an animal in the forest, of not wanting to frighten her into bolting.

There was something about her, a fragility that was almost at odds with her success as a lawyer and her outward confidence.

When she was fourteen, he’d wanted to protect her, and those instincts were still a part of him. It was why he’d gone with her at the party when she’d approached him. He hadn’t known then that she was about to proposition him, but he’d seen urgency in her eyes, and recognised that she was coming to him, just to him, that she needed him.

And why had he slept with her? He wondered, as he showered that night, lathering his body until it was covered in white suds then standing beneath the stream of water until his hair was plastered over his brow. He was no virgin, but a man with more than enough experience under his belt to control his libido—or so he’d thought.

Frustration twisted in his gut.

He felt like a stranger to himself.

Where usually Adrastos could understand his own motives, his reasons for acting, in this regard, he drew a blank. After all, he’d leapt at the chance to take her to bed. Whether she was a virgin or not was beside the point. Sex with Poppy was still...layered. Complicated. Made so by her relationships with his family, her placewithinhis family.

He groaned, pressing his head forward, against the tiles. The water was so loud in his ears—or was that his own pulse?—that at first he didn’t hear the knocking on the door, but it grew louder, and he switched the water off impatiently.

‘Yes?’

‘Are you okay, Adrastos?’

His body responded instantly. Naked and wet, his groin tightened at the sound of Poppy’s voice, and his heart thudded heavily against his ribs.

‘Why?’

‘You’ve...um...been in there a while, and you just groaned as though you’d stubbed your toe.’

He couldn’t help smiling, but it was a smile of irritation and impatience. Whatever desire had flooded his body and thrown rational thought away on the night of Poppy’s party, it was still a part of him, dictating and controlling him, so before he could think it through he switched the water back on and turned towards the door.

‘If you are concerned about my welfare, you are very welcome to come in and check on me.’

Having thrown down the challenge, he had no real expectation of her taking it up. Poppy had very wisely put a stop to things whenever he’d kissed her, but he stood still, waiting, for several long, tense seconds, hope swelling in his chest until he realised that ofcourseshe wasn’t going to walk into the bathroom as he showered. He reached behind his back for the tap just as the door creaked open and her familiar, beautiful face peeped around the door.

Not her body, which she kept firmly anchored on the other side, as though she were afraid of stepping into the abyss. But her face was enough. Her eyes, huge and round, stared at him, locked to his at first, before dropping to his lips, which she hungrily studied, then falling lower, flashing, almost, to his cock, lingering there, so he grew hard and hungry beneath her inspection, then lower again, sweeping over his legs until she closed her eyes and stayed right where she was, head peering around the crack in the door, elegant neck aching to be touched.

He groaned at the futility of this, of the frustration. ‘Well?’ His voice, though, was pleasingly level. ‘Are you going to come in,deliciae?’

Her eyes flared open, locking to his once more, and he felt her indecision and uncertainty like a sledgehammer. A curse filled his mind, reverberated around his skull, as he contemplated his next move. Only Adrastos wasn’t sure that this was a time for thinking.

With Poppy, he didn’t think. And maybe that was just how it had to be between the two of them? Instincts alone had brought them together—his, on the night of her twenty-first, then hers three years later. And his when he’d thrown caution to the wind and ignored what heshouldhave done, what he’d known was right, and done what he’d simply, desperately wanted. Poppy’s when she’d concocted this plan to save hurting his family’s feelings or making things difficult for Adrastos.

Their instincts had guided them and maybe their lot in life was to act first, regret later, but he couldn’t be sure.

Out of nowhere, he remembered what she’d said only hours earlier:‘Unlike you, I don’t regret it.’

Moving without thinking, he stepped from the shower, and Poppy stayed where she was, just a head, until he opened the bathroom door wider, eyes probing, challenging, warning her to stop him now if she wanted to.

But to his delight and relief, once the door was open, and their bodies close, it was Poppy who moved first, melding to him as she pushed up onto the tips of her toes and tilted her head back so they could kiss. He was naked and wet and she fitted against him so perfectly, her body so soft and sweet, reminding him of something he’d felt the first night they’d kissed, years earlier.

There had been so much passion in that kiss but there had also been a strange, eerie sort of peace, like the stars in the desert sky in the very middle of the night. Clarity. Ancient wisdom. He’d felt as though he was every single version of himself that he was ever destined to be, distilled into one omniscient moment.

A strange way to feel as he’d simultaneously delighted in the mastery of his body over another’s, but that was the effect Poppy had had on him, and he felt it again now. He was conscious of nothing. Not the still-running water behind them, not the loud pounding of his heart, not the ticking of the clock in his suite, not the palace, not his family, nothing.

‘I have wanted to do that all night,’ she said, pulling back a little and blinking up at him, surprised by the admission, or perhaps by the passion that had ignited the second they’d touched. But Adrastos couldn’t bear the thought of Poppy pulling away from him again. He couldn’t kiss her and catch fire and not give into it.

‘I kissed you earlier.’

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