Page 7 of Twelve Nights In The Prince's Bed

‘Adrastos,’ she replied in kind, growing bold, moving her hand up and down his length, smiling at his ragged breath and the bead of liquid that pearled his tip. She might have been a twenty-four-year-old virgin, but instincts were stronger than experience, it turned out. Curiosity had her leaning forward, her heart racing with nerves as she pressed her lips to his arousal and tasted his essence, groaning as it hit her mouth.

He swore again, and this time pulled away from her, out of her reach, hands on hips, dark eyes glittering with emotions she didn’t understand.

‘That’s enough.’

She was being pulled from one direction to the next. Had she done something wrong?

Or was it that he’d enjoyed it too much?

She wished she understood.

‘That’s enough,’ he growled, moving back to the bed and quickly coming down over her. He was rough, she was smooth. He was hard, she was soft. His chest hairs brushed against her breasts, and the tip of his arousal, which she’d just taken into her mouth, was now at the entrance to her womanhood. They were seconds away from something she’d always wanted. Something she wanted withhim, and no one else.

But she had no idea what it would be like for him, what he’d think if he realised she was a virgin. Despite the fact she wanted him with the power of a thousand suns, she wasn’t going to risk breaching a moral wall she suspected he would value.

‘I need to tell you somethingnow, Adrastos.’

He made another noise, a hiss, as he pushed on his elbows and stared down at her, eyes piercing her, face flushed, lips parted.

But he waited, hitched at her sex, body held perfectly immovable.

Nerves flooded her, and desire was making it hard to think straight—harder still to do what she knew she needed to.

‘I’m—’

‘Damn it, Poppy, are you sure this conversation cannot wait until afterwards?’

Maybe this wasn’t really a big deal. Maybe he wouldn’t notice. Maybe, maybe, maybe...

‘Poppy?’

He was right there, and it felt so good, so natural, so right, she simply nodded, surrendered, gave herself to what was about to happen and hoped for the best. What else could she do?

But she was didn’t want him to stop and when he thrust into her, it was as though her whole body were exploding with bright white light. Pain at first, searing, sharp, overpowering, so she stilled, eyes wide, locked to his, lips pale from how hard she was compressing them, and her own sensations were so strong that she almost didn’t see the expression on his face, almost didn’t read the shock and incredulity in his eyes.

But then, pain receded as quickly as it had come, leaving a new sort of awareness, of being full of someone else, of having him so deep inside her, of being pleasured from the inside out.

‘Poppy.’ His voice was strangled, deep, a warning in the depths of his tone, but a warning to whom and about what?

‘Please,’ she said again, arching her hips instinctively, so he groaned, his own expression held tight now, his eyes pushing into hers and the rest of him completely still. ‘Please,’ she repeated, knowing she wanted this desperately.

He swore then, dipping his head forward, shielding his face from hers. Was it over? Was he going to end this? Then, he moved, pulling halfway out of her and pushing back in, rolling his hips, lifting his face to watch her, studying her, reading her and seeing what brought her pleasure, what she responded to, so Poppy closed her eyes and drifted away on a growing wave of sensuality.

Adrastos had never had a problem with stamina before. He prided himself on being able to pleasure a woman multiple times before finally succumbing to his own release, but Poppy was so tight, and her inexperience made her responses so completely innate. It wasn’t just that she felt good, it was that she was in awe of how good she felt, shocked by her body’s ability to respond to a man. Her eyes were wide, her skin dewy with sweat, her body trembling all over. It was the single most incredible experience of his life even when, in the back of his mind, an anger was building that he couldn’t fathom nor explain.

Only he knew every reservation he’d had about this, every fibre of conscience, had been right. Poppy was not like the women he usually took to bed. Not only was she considered a part of his family, she had, until a moment ago, been a goddamned virgin.

Anger charged through him, taking over his need for release, so even as he moved inside Poppy and watched her fall apart for perhaps the first time in her life, he knew he would not succumb to his own yearning, aching need to finish.

He waited for her cries to soften, for her breathing to come back to normal, for her muscles to stop convulsing around him, and when she blinked up at him with eyes that were slightly sheened with tears, he felt an ocean of regret build inside his chest.

A lack of confidence had never been Adrastos’s problem, and yet...living your life in someone else’s shoes, as he’d been forced to, meant you second-guessed yourself a lot. The comparisons were inevitable. How Nicholas had been, how he’d lived, what he would have been like if he’d still been here today. One thing was for sure: he would never have given into temptation with a woman his parents viewed as a daughter. This was hisfamily, for God’s sake, and his family had already been through enough.

Adrastos pulled out of her quickly, as though he’d been burned, the faint smear of colour on his still rock-hard arousal all the evidence he needed that what he’d felt had indeed been the physical barrier of her innocence.

Silence sparked in the room, charged with his fury, so the air seemed to almost dance with electricity. Poppy lay there, her breasts shifting as she struggled to properly regain her breath, as she made sense of the feelings that were wracking her inexperienced body, so Adrastos had to turn away from her, to do his best to control his own breathing, to will his arousal into submission, and, most importantly, to stop himself from saying something he’d regret.

Because while he was angry at Poppy, it would be wrong to take that anger out on her in this moment. Whatever else this night had been, it was her birthday, and he’d unwittingly become her first lover.

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