Chapter Two #2
Breaths mingling, Caius kissed her harder and Poppy’s blood leapt and her hands clutched at whatever she could find.
Caius’s bulging muscles. She opened to him, instinctively, like a flower blooming under the rays of the sun.
The kiss went deeper, tongues touching and dancing, stoking flames within Poppy that she’d never felt before.
She felt a delicious tightening sensation deep in her belly, a tension that Caius stoked with his masterful touch.
He moved his free hand to her back, pressing her closer.
She could feel the thrust of his erection against her belly.
His hand moved up her back to the opening of her bra, toying with it.
He pulled back from the kiss and Poppy felt dizzy. She looked up at him, the rush of blood and desire pounding like waves through her body.
He asked, ‘Do you mind?’
She shook her head and he snapped open her bra and then pulled back a little to pull it away from her body. He looked at her, at her bare breasts. She felt her nipples puckering, hard.
He reached out and cupped her, feeling the weight of her flesh in his hands. They weren’t soft hands. They were hard. Like a working man’s. Poppy shoved that titbit aside. It was hard to focus when his thumbs were now teasing her nipples, making them harder.
And then he stopped for a second. ‘You have a birthmark.’
Poppy nodded. She did, a little heart-shaped strawberry birthmark under her breast. She tensed, thinking that maybe this would put him off, but he touched her there, moved his thumb over and back, like a kind of benediction.
For someone who had never felt enough, the gesture made her feel a spike of emotion.
Caius looked at her. ‘You are…a fantasy I never knew I had.’
The emotion swelled. Her legs almost buckled at the reverence in his voice. As if sensing her weakness he tugged her with him as he sat on the couch behind her and she came down with him, landing into his lap.
He held her easily, arms strong around her.
She wanted to taste him again so she pressed her mouth against his and he met her, stroke for stroke, finding her breast and squeezing the plump, firm flesh.
He broke the kiss so that he could kiss his way across her jaw, down her neck and lower, to her breast where he found one hard, tingling peak and sucked it into his mouth, hot tongue swirling and teeth nipping.
Poppy was clutching Caius, helpless against the waves of pleasure that undulated through her body from her core. As if sensing her need for more, Caius pulled his mouth away and looked at her. His hair was messy. Had she done that?
He put her away from him for a moment and then he stood up. Poppy was splayed on the couch. Naked from the waist up. Caius said, ‘I want to see you. All of you.’
‘You first,’ Poppy said.
He smiled and it was wicked and sexy as he put his hands to his trousers and undid them, opening them and then pulling them down, along with his underwear.
Poppy’s eyes widened in silent and very feminine appreciation as she took in his unashamedly virile response. He was…big. And flatteringly hard. His thighs were thickly muscled. Hips narrow.
‘Now you.’
Poppy stood up on shaky legs. She undid her trousers and pulled them down but left on her underwear.
Caius looked her over. Poppy had never been so studied She was in her head so much that it was liberating to be so aware of her body for once.
She felt very primal in that moment, forgetting who Caius was.
He was a man and she was a woman and they wanted each other.
‘Lie down on the couch,’ Caius said.
Poppy obeyed. Lying back into the cushions and watching as Caius grabbed something from his trouser pocket. Protection. He put it to one side. Not even that reminder of his profligacy could take her out of this heady moment. The clamour of her body to be joined with his.
He came down on his knees by the couch and put his hands on her legs, smoothing them up all the way to her underwear, hooking his fingers into the sides and then pulling it down.
Poppy felt a moment of panic when she realised that her hair colour wouldn’t match the hair between her legs but the light was dim in the room and maybe Caius wouldn’t notice too much…
She held her breath as he exposed her to his gaze, throwing her underwear to one side.
He pushed her legs apart. Poppy had never been so exposed before a man.
Before anyone. He didn’t seem to notice anything awry and Poppy soon forgot about being worried about small details like matching hair colour as he came down between her legs and pressed his mouth to her inner thighs, working his way up to the juncture between her legs where every nerve-ending in her body seemed to be throbbing with need.
Her whole body seized as his tongue touched the folds of her sex.
It was so intimate, so shocking and like nothing she’d ever experienced.
With the flat of his tongue he licked his way into her, spreading her for him and then he explored deeper, and then with his fingers…
he breathed against her skin, ‘You’re so ready for me… ’
Poppy was teetering on the brink of something she desperately needed.
An orgasm. She’d tried to pleasure herself before now but had always been interrupted or too tense to fully let go, but now she was liquid heat and with one more flick of Caius’s tongue against her, she fell over the edge into an endless clasping wave of pleasure.
Gasping for air, hands in Caius’s hair. Back arched.
When she floated back down to earth he was rolling a protective sheath onto his aroused body.
She gave thanks that he had safety in mind because her mind was blank of everything.
She’d taken the pill as an optimistic precaution in university but since her return to Valdere, she’d stopped, feeling a bit ridiculous because the likelihood of sleeping with anyone before a wedding was going to be even less.
She hadn’t counted on this moment.
He came over her, on his hands, protecting her from his weight, but she reached for him, wanting his weight on her.
In her. They moved together as though they’d done this a million times before.
Poppy was the most pragmatic person she knew but right now she almost believed in fate and things like eternal mates because this felt so… right.
Caius issued a little curse. ‘I don’t want to hurt you. I’m big and you’re tight.’
Poppy urged him on. ‘You won’t.’ She’d always been active. She knew what to expect losing her virginity but she really didn’t think—a long low moan escaped her lips as Caius gave into her entreaty and entered her, breaching her body with his thick girth, pushing deeper.
Poppy’s body adjusted quickly, and she lifted her hips a little, making him go even deeper.
They both breathed out. Poppy noticed their skin was slick.
Caius took one of her hands and interlaced their fingers, bringing it up above her head.
He kissed her as he drove into her, before pulling back out, and then in again, sparking a million and one pleasure zones throughout her body.
She gripped his hip with her other hand, fingers digging into his skin, as their movements became faster, and more urgent.
‘Deus, I can’t…hold on much longer…’
Poppy’s sentiments exactly. Her body was primed and ready to explode into pieces all over again and with Caius’s next thrust into her body, Poppy splintered around him, her body milking his and sending him over his own edge as he tensed and his hips jerked against hers.
Their hands were clasped so tightly she knew he’d have the marks of her nails on his skin. The thought of that, marking him in some way, was deeply satisfying. She shuddered against him as aftershocks of pleasure made her muscles contract around him and he came down over her, breathing harshly.
They stayed like that for a long moment and then Caius extricated himself from her embrace and manoeuvred them so that he lay on his back and bore her weight.
She was limp with exhaustion but also a burgeoning sense of wonder and exhilaration. So that was sex. Good sex. Amazing sex. Feeling the way she did right now, floating on a cloud of sated bliss, Poppy could almost forgive Caius his lifestyle. If sex was this good…she could become addicted herself.
For a few seconds, she dozed off, cheek resting against Caius’s chest, arm across his torso. His arm around her. But then she jerked awake again when there was a sound from outside the room.
She looked at Caius. He was asleep. Lashes long and dark on his cheek. Ridiculously long lashes. They should have made him look pretty but they only made him look even more masculine. He also looked more serious in sleep. Less…frivolous.
Realising she was welded to him and staring at him like some kind of lovestruck groupie, Poppy started to extricate herself as slowly as she could so as not to disturb him. When she’d freed herself and stood up, she realised her legs were like jelly.
Caius made a sound and moved slightly but didn’t open his eyes. Poppy froze. She guiltily took a last look at his impressive body—even at rest—before she gathered up her things, and her freshly cleaned shirt, and got dressed.
She had to leave now. She’d danced with the devil and she didn’t want him waking and finding her still here. This had been a dangerously illicit moment. Indulgent. Crazy.
Poppy had pulled on her clothes haphazardly, her fresh shirt, slipped her feet back into her shoes, and had a hand on the door lock when she heard a rustling sound from behind her and froze.
‘Hey, where are you going?’
His voice was rough and it sent fresh sparks of awareness into Poppy’s blood. Reluctantly she turned around. Caius was up on one elbow on the couch, long powerful body on its side.
She swallowed. ‘I have to go.’
‘Do you?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t even know your name.’
‘I’m no one special, really.’ An old wound reactivated. If she’d been a boy she’d have been deemed more special by her father. But Caius had just made her feel special.
He sat up now and Poppy moved back against the door. If he came close to her again there was no telling what she’d do. She’d just behaved more uncharacteristically than she’d ever done in her life.
But he stayed on the couch and said, ‘I want to see you again.’
Something inside her leapt at that but then deflated again when she realised that he thought he was saying this to a complete stranger. But she knew he was in talks with her to become her husband. And, if not her, then someone else very soon.
Poppy seized on this to make her move. Caius was showing her his true colours.
And it was nothing she didn’t already know.
He’d told her how he would envision a marriage—conducting separate lives except for coming together to have children, and continuing his liaisons outside that.
That was not the father material she wanted for her children.
She wanted someone who would be by her side—she wanted to succeed where her father had failed. She wasn’t asking for a love match; she was happy to keep some emotional distance, but she wanted loyalty and fidelity. A better father for her children than she’d had.
And after what she’d just experienced, she knew that repeating that for the sake of procreating and nothing more was far too disturbing to her to investigate and that terrified her.
She shook her head. ‘Sorry, but I have to go.’
She turned the lock on the door and opened it and slipped out. Caius’s security was standing outside and she didn’t make eye contact. She figured that he had seen this scenario a hundred times before.
A couple of days later, Poppy had Stephen send word to King Caius’s people that she was no longer interested in pursuing discussions about a royal union.
Stephen remonstrated with her but Poppy remained adamant.
The fact that it had more to do with her reaction to him personally and physically than her lofty dreams to have an engaged partner and committed loving father for her children was a shameful secret she would never reveal.
Then, a couple of days after that, Stephen came into her office and put down the daily papers, saying grimly, ‘Looks like your instincts were right all along.’
The papers were full of King Caius’s latest scandal. It had been discovered that he wasn’t in fact the biological son of the late king of Sadat Sur Mer. He was the product of an affair his mother, the late queen, had had.
King Caius announced his abdication not long afterwards. His younger sister would now be crowned as queen. Poppy felt a measure of sympathy for the young woman.
Poppy would never admit it, but instead of relief that the question of Caius’s suitability had now been shut down completely, what she did feel was infinitely more disturbing to name.