‘I know...’
Her eyes held his, her hands against the flat of his stomach.
‘I want to feel you against me. The man beneath those barriers of an adopted legacy.’ She lifted the hem higher, exposing his hard, peaked nipples. She touched one. ‘I want to see you.’
Groaning, he tugged off his tunic, throwing it to the floor. ‘Touch me,’ he commanded, and she did.
She touched him, placing her hot palm against his chest and stroking her fingers over him.
‘You’re perfect,’ she said, running her fingers through the fine fuzz of hair to follow the ripples of his washboard chest.
She ventured lower. Tentatively moving her hands to his firm, full backside. Her hands stroked around the tense globes. She hooked her fingers into the band of his trousers and pulled, testing the elasticity.
His hands clasped hers and dragged them back up over his flat abdomen, raised them above her head.
‘I’ve dreamt of this moment,’ he confessed, leaving her hands to raise himself above her.
‘Akeem!’
Eyes wide, Charlotte squealed as he gripped the seams of her tunic and tore it in two, ripping the fabric apart to expose her black lace-covered breasts.
He tugged the ripped top from her body and bent to expose her golden flesh. He trailed his fingers down her upper arms. ‘I’ve dreamt of being a king between your thighs,’ he confessed. ‘Extreme pleasure, surrounded by opulence.’
‘And now?’ she whispered.
Akeem set to work on her exposed throat. He kissed the arched tension from her neck slowly, tasting the sweetness of woman and the earthy, fresh sweat of passion. The slight tingle of salt on his tongue tempted him to suck deeper and bring her skin between his lips in a kiss that would mark her.
His mark.
She’s already marked. And so are you.
Forcing himself to go slow, to stem the urgency demanding that he find her slick core and push inside her, he unhooked her bra.
‘So beautiful,’ he murmured, exposing her breasts and moving his mouth, licking and kissing the length of her collarbone, moving down to a dark nipple. He sealed his mouth over the puckered tip. Her moans grew faster, her nails digging in anywhere they could as he sucked her nipple deeply into her mouth while teasing the other beneath the pad of his thumb.
He flicked his tongue again and she quivered against him, panting hard. ‘You are so responsive, qalbi.’ He kissed and licked his way through the valley of her breasts.
‘I want you....’
He raised his head. ‘Say it again,’ he commanded throatily.
‘I want you, Akeem Ali, son of Yamina Ali.’ Her eyes, green fire, thrust into him, inside him. ‘And I want you too, Crown Prince, future King of Taliedaa.’
He lunged. She would have all of him. Take him deep. Until she didn’t care who was inside her. The boy or the King. Only knew it was him.
He buried his mouth against her skin and kissed her harder, silencing the voice inside him and moving his mouth down her stomach. He kissed the waistband spanning her hips and tucked his fingers inside, then pulled the trousers off in one swift movement and threw them to the floor.
He returned to her. Positioning himself between her thighs, as the length of him found her core, he pressed against the entrance.
‘Say yes,’ he demanded, tilting his hips to apply more pressure.
One more nudge and he’d be inside her, and he needed her to tell him to push, to cement this moment with his body inside hers.
‘Tell me this is what you want.’
‘I need you, Akeem.’ She wrapped her legs around his hips. ‘Both of you.’ The heels of her feet pressed into the dip of his lower back. ‘Inside me.’
He swelled—his chest, his shoulders, his every muscle expanding to accommodate the realisation that she was giving herself to him. Completely.
The room whirled around him, disappearing.
He thrust deep inside her.
‘Akeem... Oh, Akeem!’ Charlotte lifted herself and tilted her hips.
‘Charlotte!’ he cried as she brought him deeper inside her.
Her hands grabbed at him, pinching his flesh between her fingers as wave after wave of pressure ignited inside him, taking him to the edge.
She gripped his chin, making him look at her, and kissed him. It felt like a promise. A wordless pact. The way it had nine years ago. The night they’d shared then had been a promise.
He sank deeper inside her and he was lost. They both were. The boy and the would-be King were lost to Charlotte Hegarty.
And from the song of duty there was not a peep. Not a sound.
‘Akeem!’
Charlotte sobbed into his shoulder, holding on to him as he pumped into her body, keeping his promise to bring her extreme pleasure.
But she couldn’t see the opulence surrounding them.
She could only feel him.
The man she’d always wanted.
The man she’d never stopped wanting.
It was all-consuming and overwhelming. Because in nothing but their skin they were everything they had once been and everything they had become. They were nothing but a man and woman, seeking sanctuary in one another.
Escape.
He was her oasis and she was his.
That had always been the case.