Page 37 of Twelve Nights In The Prince's Bed

‘But there were people everywhere,’ she replied breathlessly. ‘Watching. Possibly recording...’

He should have been glad for her awareness of that because Adrastos, despite his years of living in the public eye, hadn’t had the fortitude to think of their surrounds for even a moment.

‘I want you,’ he said, rather than analyse why he’d been incapable of being more discreet.

Her eyes were shuttered from him then, hiding whatever she was feeling, and her skin went from flushed to pale, so he had no idea what he’d said or done to make her prevaricate, but he felt her uncertainty suddenly and wanted to release a deep, guttural growl.

‘Poppy, listen to me.’ He caught her face in his hands, held it steady, stared deep into her eyes. ‘You have no experience with men. I don’t know why you doubt the truth of my words, why you think I would say I want you if I didn’t, but please stop. I wantyou.Here and now, I ache for you in a way I will never be able to put into words.’

Her lips parted and something shifted in her features. Confusion, wonderment, and something else. Uncertainty? But it was gone, in an instant. She smiled at him, a bright smile that he wasn’t sure he’d ever seen on her face, certainly not directed at him, and then lifted her brows. ‘Well, then, Your Highness, what exactly are you waiting for?’

He growled as he swept down and picked her up, carrying her against his wet frame, right back into the shower—more than big enough to comfortably accommodate the two of them—and kissing her hungrily as he stripped her out of her beautiful dress, growing darker and wetter by the minute as the shower drenched it.

It was harder to strip from her body than it should have been. The fabric clung to her wet skin, and he felt utterly thwarted and quite mad with longing by the time it finally dropped to the tiles beneath them and she stepped out of it, revealing a simple pair of briefs and a strapless bra.

Such utilitarian underwear, really, as though she’d chosen it with no thought of him seeing it, and yet it was somehow the sexiest fabric he’d ever seen. Nonetheless, he discarded it quickly too, seeking her nakedness, needing her to be as bare-skinned as he was.

The first time they’d made love had been her first time ever, and Adrastos hadn’t even found his own release. That was something he intended to rectify. In fact, there was much he wanted to change about what that experience had been.

Poppy had deserved so much more than that for her first time, he realised with a growing sense of anger. How had she ever thought a one-night stand would be enough? She deserved to have been seduced properly, kissed until she was mindless, built to a fever state then made love to again and again until her body was so awash with sensations that she could barely stand.

Suddenly, he saw the gift she’d given him, the responsibility, and wanted to live up to it. He wanted to be not just her first but her best, for ever, so that no man who came after him in her life could ever equal the pleasure Adrastos had given her.

The thought evoked something strange and primal in his chest, a feeling that stirred almost barbaric instincts to life. It was normal to feel jealous, imagining other men with your lover. At least, he imagined it was: Adrastos had never been a particularly jealous man.

He didn’t want to think about Poppy’s next lover or lovers.

With a dark sound deep in his throat, he kissed her harder, more hungrily, as he lifted her and pressed her slim body against the tiles, standing between her hips, holding her easily at his waist, his arousal hard and throbbing for her, so he was almost mindless with desire. Wet and slippery made this somehow more hedonistic and elemental.

He moved his mouth to her breasts, revelling in the feel of them in his palms, his mouth, his stubbled jaw dragging across them until he knew every inch of her. The sounds she made, her little cries, were driving him wild, making it almost impossible to resist driving into her then and there.

But Adrastos wanted to slow this down, to make it last. He wanted to make this a night to remember. He wanted to give Poppy the sort of pleasure she should have understood by now, to show her everything her body could sense and feel. He wanted...everything.

With a guttural noise of impatience, he knelt down, hands on her hips pinning her to the wall as he pressed his mouth to her sex, tasting, teasing, listening to her cries of pleasure, feeling the wobble in her legs as she struggled to support herself and, finally, her shuddering release as she moaned his name over and over. Water doused him, doused them, but nothing could wash away his intensely urgent need for her. As he stood, their eyes met and the air between them seemed to light up with sparks, her mouth was parted and her gaze seemed to be pleading with him in some way.

He understood, without words. Her fear, her surprise, her desire to feelmore.He snapped off the water and grabbed Poppy in one motion, lifting her against his chest, pausing only briefly to grab a huge black towel from the rack. At the foot of his bed, he placed Poppy down and dried her, but even that was a temptation and torment. She was so beautiful. He shifted his gaze to her face, staring at her, and something shifted in his gut, or his chest, or his throat, making it harder to breathe, to think, for his heart to pump blood through his body.

‘You turned into a woman overnight.’

Her smile was slow, and wry. ‘Not quite overnight. You just missed a lot of time here.’

He had. He’d been busy for a long time. Busy with the military, in which he held several command positions, busy with policy work for the government committees he served on. Busy staying away? From his family, from their expectations, from Nicholas’s absence. From Poppy, too?

He kissed her rather than dwell on that: why should he want to avoid Poppy? She spent so much time with Eleanor, it wasn’t as though her presence in the palace was a problem for him. Particularly not when she made his parents so happy.

‘I noticed at your twenty-first,’ he admitted. ‘I came home and, all of a sudden, you were all grown up, and so very, very tempting.’

Her eyes closed and he had a familiar sense, a misgiving; she’d reacted like that before, to something else he’d said, only he couldn’t quite remember. It was as if she didn’t want to hear the compliment, or didn’t believe it.

‘Stop talking,’ she said with a rueful shake of her head, an attempt at a joke, and he let it go, because it suited him fine not to talk. Adrastos wasn’t one for conversing while making love. Not usually, anyway. He’d never bought into the ‘spending the night’ concept either. For him, it was sex, and that was that.

Better to avoid entanglements, raised hopes, better to leave before anyone could ask him to stay.

‘Your wish is my command.’

‘Isn’t it meant to be the other way around?’

‘We can take turns.’

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