Suddenly, that knot is back in my throat, but for an entirely different reason, which is that I’ve never felt this. I’ve never had someone take hold of me like if they didn’t touch me, they’d roar in anguish, and I’ve never had someone kiss me like they’re already imagining what it’s like to be inside me. I’ve never had so much rippling male strength moving against me, around me, silently promising that I can use that strength, that intensity, however I want.
I was never a desire, only a duty, and maybe I can pretend that’s the only reason why I’m kissing Grim every bit as hard as he’s kissing me, why I’m impatiently yanking at the hem of my robe so my bare thighs grip his waist, my bare stomach rasping against the starched cotton of his shirt.
But I can’t pretend, not when he groans against my lips and as I knead the sturdy contours of his triceps and biceps. I pull back enough to catch another breathtakingly wicked flash of his dark eyes.
No, it’s not just being desired.
It’s being desired by him.
“Grim,” I whisper into our kiss.
Hearing his name on my lips seems to rattle something in his ferocious self-control. He pins me against the wall and kisses me so fiercely I can’t breathe.
“Tell me what you want,” Grim orders between deep and dirty kisses. He’s like a wall himself, huge and hulking and immovable, and I love it. I love having all this vigorous power shuddering against me. This is why queens take a guard for a lover, I think in a daze. This is why the ancient Manaroan queens indulged.
“Noelani, tell me. I can’t be careless with you. I won’t. I have to know what you want, little queen.”
Easy question. “More. I want more.”
I’m rewarded with another shuddering groan out of him, and then a kiss so obscene that I can’t stop myself from seeking friction against my taut nipples as he gives it to me. I pull my robe even farther apart so my breasts are exposed, so I can arch and press them against his chest, which is warm and impossibly firm even through his tuxedo shirt and jacket.
“I can give you more,” he promises. “I can give you everything.”
Those words curl into my chest and belly like waves, sun-warmed and filled with the unrelenting energy of entire oceans. Such a simple thing for a lover to say, and yet I feel completely overwhelmed by the power of it. I already know I’ll replay this moment in my head for weeks and months to come, and maybe that’s why I say, “For tonight, Grim. You can give me everything tonight.”
There’s no mistaking my meaning. Tonight is all we can share. For a thousand reasons, tonight is all we can share, but that doesn’t make the words burn any less as they leave my lips.
Grim goes very still for a minute, and I think I hear a catch in his breath, but before I can ask, before I can say something else, something ridiculous like do you want more than one night, because I think I do too, he gives a slow nod.
“Tonight,” he repeats, and then it’s like he’s realized he has no time to waste. He gets to work on my mouth like he’ll be paid by the kiss, and he moves his hands underneath my robe and on my bare bottom. When he discovers the thong, his entire body tenses, and when a blunt fingertip runs along the lace covering my sex and he feels how wet I am, he growls.
I hold on tight to the unyielding curves and swells of his shoulders as he drops his hot mouth to my jaw, to my neck, the hands on my bottom coaxing my hips up and down, up and down. I realize with a kick of jagged lust that he’s slowly moving my spread cunt over his tuxedo-clad erection.
And said erection rises well above the waistband of his tuxedo. Even through my lace thong and the fabric of his clothes, I can feel how thick it is, how swollen and flared he is at the head.
“Big,” I breathe.
Grim grunts in response.
“Give it to me,” I demand, not caring how imperious I sound in the moment. I want it, it’s there—give it to me.
I arch my back and writhe in his arms, needing to rub myself harder against him, needing that big shaft to grind my aching clit against.
“Greedy little queen,” he mutters into my neck and pulls me away from the wall, carrying me into the sitting room where we’re surrounded by windows and the cold D.C. night.
Outside in the snow-fluttering dark, there’s an entire world of deals and decisions, of money and power, but here in this room, there’s only us, two bodies straining and grasping to get closer, closer, closer.
“Grim, please,” I beg. “I need it. I need it, I need it.”
“I know, but even greedy little queens have to learn patience.”
I’m about to protest when he sets me down on the dining table at the far end of the room and then steps between my legs. His face is still impossibly serious when he looks down at me, but there’s a hint of reverence as he gently slides the robe down my arms and off my body.
The silk whispering against my skin is the only noise in this world we’ve made.
When he’s exposed me completely, when he can see for himself the high jut of my breasts and my bare belly—taut but marked from when it stretched to carry a future king—and of course, my lace-covered pussy, he sucks in a breath and then shakes his head at himself.
“You’re a treasure, and above my pay grade.”