Chapter Nine #2
Which he did. Taking his time. Falling into this lull of relaxation she’d created for them.
He pushed the fabric of the skirt up to her waist, then hooked his fingers in the waistband of her stockings, and she toed off her heels so they fell with a thump on the floor between them.
She lifted so that he could pull the garment off.
It wasn’t exactly like that morning all those months ago. He was too relaxed to feel anger and frustration. Desire pumped through him, but it was warm and sluggish instead of sharp claws of destroyed control.
That had been a break.
This was a yield.
How he’d thought of her here in his office. How he’d relived that day over and over, against his own will.
This would be compounding the mistake, to do it again.
Or just enjoying a mistake already made. He did not tolerate mistakes, but making them with her took his mind off impending fatherhood and all that lay on the other side of that.
Or he just wanted her, and it was like a drug so that nothing else mattered but her.
Still in his chair, he tugged her jacket off her shoulders, but not all the way off her arms. It held her there, a kind of handcuffs if she did not shrug her arms out of the sleeves.
She did not.
Desire pumped through him, drugging him into forgetting everything except her, this moment, the blood pounding in his own ears.
He could not be a real man in any sense of the word.
He had to be a king. He knew this, but it was like she took away all his brain power so that knowledge was gone completely and utterly and replaced with only desire.
He wrapped his hands around her wrists so she couldn’t even shrug out of the jacket, restricting her movement if she wanted to. He needed some control. Some ballast.
“This will count as my next appointment,” he told her. Because that would make it okay. Acceptable. Not another mistake. Just a duty done.
She was completely at his mercy. She couldn’t move if he didn’t let her go. And this was not out of the bounds of their agreement. It was simply…a little spontaneous.
But her eyes held his. Calm and direct. “I’m afraid not. If you want me here and now, you can have me. But you will also make your next appointment. You don’t get to substitute on a whim.” Her mouth curved into a smug smile. “But you may add whenever you like.”
He should argue with her. He should stop. He should refuse. Let her go.
This would not be an addition. She did not get to determine that.
Instead of arguing, he kissed her. Deep and wild and hungry, holding her arms still so she could do little more than kiss him back. She made greedy little noises, squirming there on his desk. He put his mouth to her neck, scraped his teeth down the taut tendons there. She moaned his name.
He wanted to remove her shirt, but that would require letting her go, and he didn’t seem to know how, so he only used his mouth over the fabric, and bit gently just where he knew it would send her arching back, gasping in pleasure.
He felt nothing but an ache, a need, and she alone could solve that. Which meant it was a problem he did not have to solve.
Finally, he released her hands—not that she moved.
Because he needed more. To spread her legs wide.
She still wore her underwear, but he didn’t even bother to pull them down, just moved the offending fabric out of the way and set his mouth to her.
He tasted her, as deep, wild and hungry as the kiss.
She cried out—and if anyone was listening outside his door they might hear. They might know.
He didn’t care. Not as he drove her to a blooming, shuddering climax with his tongue. Her hand fisted in his hair as an anchor.
He pulled her off the desk and into his lap. The chair was just big enough she could straddle him. For a moment, his gaze was hooked to the swell of her stomach, the tiny evidence of his child growing there.
His.
He itched to reach out and place his hands upon it, feel it, the life she grew inside of her, but there was a terrible ache inside of him—one he was afraid would never go away if he did so.
So he kept his hands to himself and looked up at her on his lap. Her cheeks were pink, her hair tousled now, and her hand worked on the enclosure of his pants quickly.
It took nothing at all, just a few tugs, a little rearranging and she was shuddering around him as he moved inside her. So responsive. So perfect. Like she’d been made for him instead of the curse he knew she had to be.
And though he had no time, he took it, building her up again. And again. And again. Reveling in the sounds she made, the way she felt against him. It shouldn’t be here, but here ceased to exist. There was only her. There was only the way he felt with her.
A man, not a king. Helpless and out of control and hers, not his country’s. The relief of that was as staggering as she was.
“Alex, please.” It was the Alex, her voice, the sheer perfection of everything she gave that had him finally giving over to his own release.
Then she simply melted into him. Their breathing ragged, but she didn’t get up. Didn’t remove herself. She held on to him, and he found himself holding on to her, sitting in his chair. When he had responsibilities and meetings and duties outside that door.
“What are you doing to me?” he heard himself rasp.
He should not have said it, but he did not understand.
He could not seem to fight the temptation she was.
She gave too much, and how could he be who he needed to be if she kept showing him some inner part of himself that had no place in the reality of his life?
She pulled back, still in his lap. She framed his face with her small hands. Met his gaze. Looked so earnest. “Loving you.”
It was as if she’d thrown ice water on him. He went from a sluggish, sated confusion to ice. He felt ill. Actually, physically ill. Something old and dark poked at him, but he shoved it away. Set her off him and got to his feet. He moved away from her and these horrible words.
He knew what love could do. To kings and queens. His parents had claimed love, but all it had ever done was destroy. Not just each other. Him. Evelyne. Perhaps some people could wield the weight of love, but not a king.
Not him.
“Alex.”
Her voice was quiet. Plaintive. “No.” He roughly righted the state of his pants and didn’t dare look at her. They had not discussed…love. Whatever this was, whatever they did… She could not fool herself into that.
“Darling, what’s the matter? I—”
“Enough,” he said harshly. Her words echoed inside him like icy tendrils of something he refused to acknowledge. Love. Darling. Something old and sharp clawed through him. Something he didn’t let take up space in his head. Ever. “Put yourself together and leave. At once.”
“Alex.”
“Go away, Ines.”
“Why? What is wrong?” she demanded. But she didn’t sound demanding. She sounded soft and worried.
He hated it. It was exploding inside of him, building and building, and what would he do if she did not leave? Fall apart himself? Impossible. “I said go away.” He swept a hand across his desk, sending anything in its path crashing to the ground.
A terrible loss of control. She made him lose control. She made him someone else.
His blood is in you, Alex. Always in you. You must always fight it.
He would. No matter what. He would. But if throwing things got her to scurry out of this room, it was worth it.
Ines was shaken, and it wasn’t the sex. That was becoming almost normal. The wildness and the joy that came with it. The way she’d found she could make him lose his famed control. She was almost used to the heady knowledge that she did something to him.
But the aftermath of today was different. There was no triumph. She’d never seen him look so… She didn’t even have words for it. The way he’d dismissed her had not been cold or detached or even cruel. It had reminded her of a wounded animal roaring.
There had been a naked kind of hurt on his face that she neither understood nor knew how to soothe. He’d tossed the contents of his desk at the ground, not at her, but the out-of-character outburst still left her shaken to her core.
She stumbled out of his office, grateful that his assistant’s desk was still empty. Because she was about to cry. Even as her body still ebbed with the echoes of a pleasure too big, too wonderful for even Alex’s horrible reaction to stop.
She had known he wouldn’t react positively to the idea of love, but she hadn’t anticipated it…hurting him. She couldn’t fathom it. No matter how she tried to make sense of any of that, it didn’t make sense.
She blinked back tears as best she could, but some fell anyway. She’d mostly put herself back together, though she’d left her pantyhose behind. He wouldn’t be pleased about that. But she needed to get to her rooms. Get herself together and figure out…
“Ines?”
Ines stopped in the hall. She hadn’t expected anyone to be in the common living room they sometimes all had tea in together, but apparently Evelyne was in there and had seen her pass the door.
Ines pressed a palm to the wall, squeezing her eyes shut. She breathed in deep, then out. Quickly she wiped the tears from her cheeks then backtracked. She stepped into the room with a smile on her face.
Maybe it was brittle, but it was a smile. Apparently not good enough because Evelyne’s expression quickly morphed into concern.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
Ines nodded, trying to swallow the lump in her throat. “Where’s Gabri?”
“Napping. I’m trying to get some emails dealt with this morning, and it’s horrible. Come. Distract me.” She grinned at Ines.
Ines tried to look cheerful in return, but she knew she failed.
“You look…” Evelyne’s gaze of confusion turned into a wrinkled nose “…rumpled.”
“I—”
“No, that’s okay. Don’t tell me. I do not want to know.” She waved it away with a laugh. “In the middle of the day, huh? What are you doing to my brother?”