Rick looks to me for back up because we always see eye to eye on strategy, but I’ve barely processed what he said. I stare at him blankly and manage a nod, drawing a questioning frown from him.
Dammit.
I never lose focus. It’s not in my nature and goes against all my training, but the memory of Lani is so vivid that I practically feel her luscious ass pressing into my lap. My thoughts keep drifting back to the presidential suite and away from this meeting.
Drifting back to last night.
You don’t have to explain, she’d said, even as her shoulders curved in on themselves, as if to protect her heart from yet another man using her up and shoving her aside.
But I did have to explain, I still do, because I did a shit job of it last night. She deserves everything, every single thing her proud little heart could ever want—and she also deserves a man who can give it to her unreservedly. She deserves a man who can challenge her and worship her and lavish her sweet, curvy body with orgasms every chance he gets.
She deserves something like what Maxim and Lennix have: a love so powerful and raw that nothing and no one can take it away from her.
Except . . .
Except even the idea of Lani—my Lani—being courted and adored by another man is enough to clench my fists under the table. Only I made her brave enough to move her flower for me, and only I helped her feel safe enough to explain the danger she feels daily in her own palace. Only I wrung orgasm after orgasm out of her perfect body, and only I fit inside her so big and so tight that every second we were joined felt like ecstasy. She’s meant to be mine, she’s made to be mine, and god fucking dammit, I want her to be mine. I want her thighs over my shoulders as I eat her; I want her kneeling between my feet with those pretty lips parted. I want to be inside her snug little cunt, and I want those berry-brown nipples in my mouth.
But it’s more than that.
I want her curled up in my lap when she’s tired. I want to stroke her hair and kiss away her tears when she’s sad. Her blazing pride, hard-won honesty, that incredible, indelible courage—the courage to ask for what she wants, to say what she needs—I want them all.
The same courage, I realize with a small measure of shame, I couldn’t muster last night. I didn’t want to leave her and yet it was all too much too fast: her bravery and her joy and her guarded heart unfurling like a rare flower, just for me.
It’s not love, at least, I don’t think it’s love yet. Having never been in love, how would I know?
But it’s something. It’s something clamoring for me to find her, to throw her over my shoulder and carry her off to some place safe. It’s something saying: yours to adore, yours to protect.
And she does need protection above all else. My fists squeeze again as I think of that asshole-weasel, Kimo, and his repeated assaults on Noelani’s safety. I know men like him, men who get off on intimidating the people around them, and they don’t respond to anything other than intimidation in turn. A bigger bully. They only respond to strength, to power. To another predator snarling back.
Would it solve your problems, little queen? Having a ring on your finger again?
If I chose the right man . . . maybe.
I felt it last night, like the flushing burn of sodium thiopental tingling in my veins, like simply being in Lani’s presence dosed my blood with truth serum. When she said those words to me, all I could think was one undeniable fact.
I am the right man.
Not I want to be the right man, and not I could be the right man.
I am the right man. After only a night with her, I know this. I would keep her safe from Kimo and make sure she and her son were fully protected. I would honor her freedom. I have no political ambitions, no desire for her crown or her son’s. Everything I did would be solely for Noelani and Ka’eo, solely to keep them safe and happy. And if the natural benefit of being Noelani’s husband was having her in my bed to tease and fuck for hours on end, then all the better.
I think of us last night against the window, her hair comb sparkling in the dark, her pussy so sweet and greedy for my cock. When our gazes clung in the glass reflection, there was nothing between us. Not just the nakedness of our bodies. There were no lies, no games between us, only the stark, honest need we both felt. A connection that is so rare it might very well be once in a lifetime, and a connection I sealed when I came with my arms around her and my mouth against her flower hair comb. I can still feel the indentations her diamond tiare flower left against my lips last night.
“Grim?” Rick asks. My head snaps up. He glances from my mouth to my eyes with a puzzled expression.
I’m caressing my lips. Usually a man of economical movement, spare even, I’m caressing my damn lips. A tell. A clue to inner turmoil and a lapse in discipline.
Shit.
I drop my fingers from my mouth where her flower marked me. Where Noelani marked me.
The truth burns everywhere inside me now—not just in my veins but all over my entire body.
I am the right man for her, and there’s only one thing to do about it.
“How long do you think it will take me to get to CadeCo?” I ask, standing up and glancing at the steady fall of thick snowflakes. The team members around the table look up at me, stunned. I’ve never left a planning meeting early, not once, and here I am leaving in the middle of one hammering out crucial campaign security for my best friend.
“Uh . . . maybe half an hour,” Rick says, surveying the wintry conditions.