My Forbidden Royal Fling

A muscle jerks in his jaw. ‘Respect?’ He strides towards me then, his body emanating tension, his spine ramrod-straight. ‘Do you think I am treating you disrespectfully? How, exactly?’

But I can’t explain it. It’s not anything he’s done so much as what he’s not doing. He’s not smiling at me; he’s not touching me. He’s looking at me as though we’re two strangers. He’s speaking with icy civility bordering on disdain, but it’s only the contrast to how he was in Spain that I resent.

‘Forget it,’ I say, my voice wobbling with tears. ‘Just go.’

‘Is that what you want?’ he demands quietly.

I stare at him, frustration slicing me. It’s not. But what I want isn’t possible. I look around me, as if to reinforce that. I’m surrounded by ceremony. This room is one of the oldest parts of the palace. Gold wall panels meet double-height ceilings, crystal chandeliers run in a line down the centre and, at the end of the room, there’s a wall of mirrors. The floor is a shining parquetry.

It’s a physical reminder of who I am and what I owe my country. Across the corridor is the throne room; he would have walked past it before coming in here. Two golden thrones sit side by side, as they have done for hundreds of years, awaiting occupants.

‘Or do you want this?’ he asks, purposefully laying the contract back down and rounding the table slowly, giving me time to realise his intention and to stop him if I wish to.

But I don’t. Despite the impropriety and impossibility of Santiago I am stationary. Waiting, wanting, needing...

CHAPTER TWELVE

MY BREATH BURNS from my lungs. I stand, waiting, my whole body on alert as he draws me into his arms and kisses me in one motion. His lips press hard against mine, his tongue an invasion, a reminder of his dominance and my surrender. And yet it is also his own surrender. I feel his body’s acquiescence to mine, a reminder that there is something bigger than us, something neither can control, overpowering us both.

I groan into his mouth, my arms lifting and wrapping around his neck, my body cleaved to his as I kiss him back harder, hungrier, whimpering with desperation.

He takes a step forward, pinning me against the wall beside the window before lifting me, wrapping my legs around his waist so I feel the force of his arousal against my sex, and I cry out with a visceral, overpowering need.

‘Please, Santiago!’ I cry, not caring that we’re here in this ancient room, not caring for anything right now but coming home again—and, yes, that’s exactly what it feels like when we’re together. His response is a guttural noise echoed into my throat and then he’s pulling me from the wall, surrendering us both to the floor, his hands removing my pants as he pushes up my skirt. My own hands loosen his button and zipper, pushing down his waistband so I can feel his buttocks in the palm of my hand.

Even then, when passion has overtaken me so that I can’t think straight, he pauses to provide protection, sheathing himself before driving his length into me so that I cry out, and would have done so longer and louder had he not kissed me, swallowing my noises, muffling my cries with his mouth as his body pleasured mine over and over; driving me to the edge of sanity and then beyond it, before dragging me back to start all over again.

My nails run over the soft fabric of his shirt then dig into his bottom until his own body is racked with pleasure. Finally, his weight collapses on top of me, our breathing rushed, the room a silent witness to something so powerful it shakes me to the core.

I don’t know how long we lie there—time seems to have bent beyond recognition—but he stands eventually, turning his back on me as he zips up his trousers. Belatedly, I do the same, shifting and straightening my skirt at the same time. I can’t see my panties. It takes me a second to realise he’s holding them. My heart lurches.

It was an act of passion but it wasn’t like what we shared in Spain. I feel further from him than I did before. I have to understand why.

‘Have I done something to offend you?’ I ask quietly, moving to him and putting my hand on his chest. His heart thuds, rhythmically but hard.

‘No.’

I close my eyes. ‘I don’t understand. How can you go from making love to me to speaking like this again? I don’t get it.’

‘There is something I’ve been wondering,’ he says after a beat, his tone cool.

‘And that is?’

‘Did you kiss him?’

I frown, not understanding what—or who—he’s talking about. ‘Did you make love with him? Do you feel more for him now than you have previously?’ He speaks calmly but there are dark emotions in the depths of his eyes and my pulse fires into overdrive. ‘Do you have any idea how I have been tormented by that?’

It’s almost conversational, and yet his words stir something deep in my soul. ‘That photograph of you and your fiancé was in every newspaper,’ he murmurs. ‘It was easy to imagine that he’d taken you to bed. And all I could think about was undoing that—coming here and making you mine again, making you beg for me, erasing any memory of him from your mind, erasing his touch from your body.’

He pauses, allowing his words to sink in. ‘I did not mean to treat you with disrespect, Freja. I was fighting my own instincts—my base, disgusting instincts to claim you as though you are a possession rather than a woman who can make her own choices. Does that make you happier?’

‘Nothing about this makes me happy,’ I say quickly, urgently, honestly. ‘I didn’t sleep with you because of Heydar. I slept with you because I wanted to more than anything in the world.’

His lips form a grim line in his face.

‘Are you saying this was just...about ego for you?’ I whisper, pressing a hand to my side, digging my nails into my hip.

‘I hate the idea of him touching you.’ He grips the back of a chair until his knuckles show white. ‘I have no right. I know that. But I have been tormented, imagining his hands on your body, your voice calling out his name...’