"Come 'ere," he said softly when she looked at him askance. "I want you to taste this."
"What is it?" "
"Dessert. Open up."
"Oh, Nik. I don't think I can eat another bite…" Not because she was full, but because her throat was so tight, and aching like sin. But she opened her mouth anyway, because when he smiled at her that gentle way, she'd have done anything he asked. She let him place the sticky morsel on her tongue. An incredible sweetness burst inside her mouth, figs and honey flavored with lavender and…orange blossoms. "Oh, my God," she murmured. "It's delicious…heaven." No- this is sin. Decadent…sensual…
He was already leaning toward her. He had only to lean a little farther to kiss her, and at first she could hardly distinguish the sweetness of his mouth from the honey already clinging to her lips. Then there was a blending of the two sweetnesses that seemed to turn liquid and run into every part of her, filling her to bursting with a sweetness so intense she couldn't bear it. She felt a building pressure inside her chest, a rising whimper…and just when she thought she wouldn't be able to hold it in another second, he pulled back from her, wiped his essence and the stickiness of honey from her lips with his thumb and murmured. "I'm just a man, Rhee. Not rich, not powerful. I'm a rebel, I suppose. But definitely not a king."
"But," she whispered, "you will be."
"Unless I choose not to be." His eyes were grave and very close to hers.
She stared back at him. Her lips felt chilled and bereft without his. with all the sweetness gone and her stomach doing cold flip-flops under her ribs. At the same time her heart was quivering eagerly, doing happy-puppy dances and crowing. Yes, oh yes! Choose not to go back! We'll run away together-or stay right here in this sunny valley among the vineyards. I will even learn to like wine!
While her head, heavy with the weight of duty and responsibility, sternly chided. Are you insane? It's your job to take him back. You must take him back. His country needs him.
Then he kissed her again, and both of those voices went silent, the only sound inside her head now the hushed and daring love words she knew she could never say.
With one hand between her shoulderblades and the other cradling her head, he slowly laid her back. His mouth followed her down, and then his body, as his hands lifted her to meet him. bringing her hard against him. and somewhere amidst the Shockwaves of pleasure rippling through her came the realization that it was the first time she'd felt the full strength and warmth of his body like this, touching, pressing all along the length of hers, without blankets or layers of clothing between.
The first time? Then why did her skin seem to know his touch already? She felt his hand slip under her top, slide rough and warm over her skin, pushing the soft, giving fabric ahead of it until it found and nested one tight and aching breast. Her breast felt so good in his hand…and so familiar…so right. She let her head drop back, baring her throat to him, offering him that and any other vulnerable part of her he cared to conquer. Complete and unconditional surrender.
Her breast lifted eagerly into his palm, and when she felt his mouth encapsule the tender tip and his tongue begin its exquisite torture, waves of desire all but overwhelmed her. She felt like a fragile shell around a liquid center…her inside sweet and melting, like honey in the sun.
She heard herself whisper-whimper-his name. Her fingers were tangled in his hair.
He took his mouth from her breast, pressed his lips briefly, warmly against hers and whispered back. "I know…I know, luv. But not here."
She was dazed with arousal, shivering with wanting… wanting to do anything to keep from stopping this…sick with knowing it had to stop. "Do you really think," she asked, her voice bumpy from the shivers, "anybody's going to come along?"
"Probably not." Laughing softly, he kissed the tip of her nose, then her chin, then each eyelid. "But I know you like to be on top, and I'd hate to think what this rock would do to my tender bum."
Then she was laughing, too, pushing furiously at him, clinging helplessly to him. tears seeping between her lashes. Wondering how she could still laugh when she was about to charge headlong into sure disaster.
The house was quiet and dark when they returned. Nikolas had expected it would be; Phillipe would be out carousing with his friends on a Saturday night and unlikely to return before morning, celebrating the end of vendange. Maman wasn't due back from Monte Carlo until tomorrow.
He dropped Rhia off in the courtyard near the kitchen door, then returned the scooter to the garage. When he came back to the house he found her standing in the hallway, looking uncharacteristically uncertain. She watched him as he came to her, and her eyes followed his as he cupped her cheek in his hand and tenderly asked. "So…is it still yes?"
She smiled then, her lashes dropping across her eyes with what might have been relief, and huskily replied as she swayed into him. "Against every ounce of good sense and judgment…it's still yes. I guess I'm my mother's daughter after all."
A fierce little jet of protective anger spurted through him and hardened his voice. "You may well be, but I'm bloody well sure I'm not like your father."
Her lips parted with an almost inaudible gasp, and he caught whatever response she might have made with his own mouth. He kissed her without restraint, knowing there was no reason now to hold anything back, and found that he was hungrier for her than he'd thought, hungrier than he'd thought he could be. His need for her was a fist in his belly, a burning weight in his loins, and something else the exact location and nature of which were far less easy to define. He knew he'd never felt its like before with any woman. It emptied his head of all coherent thought and filled him instead with feelings too vast and complex to articulate, so that when he lifted his mouth from hers at last he could only gasp and hold her close to him, like a dazed shipwreck survivor finding a raft to cling to.
So it was left to her to mumble, her words a moist warmth on his throat, "My place or yours?"
Cobbling his scrambled wits together, he gave a shaken laugh. "Well, since technically yours belongs to Phillipe's maman, I think I'd prefer mine, if that's all right with you."
She tipped her head back, searching for his mouth, and managed to get as far as. "Fine with-" before he gave her what they both wanted.
He never did know quite how they got from there to his bedroom, or how long the journey took. It might have been seconds or uncounted hours. He remembered shutting the door at last, closing them into the quiet embracing darkness of his bedroom, and after that his only reality was the woman in his arms, the taste of her mouth, the shape of her breasts pillowed against his chest, the firm round weight of her buttocks in his hands…her hands pushing under his shirt, their warm thrusts impatient on his skin…yet no more impatient than he was for her touch.
He'd never felt such a hunger, such impatience before. Lovemaking, liaisons, sex…had always been simple for him. A lighthearted-sometimes intense-experience, no more complicated than the enjoyment of a good meal or a fine wine, indulged in whenever he'd felt the need of relief from the pressures and demands of school, work, the cause. One or two had been…memorable; none had ever consumed him. None had ever obliterated thought, overridden judgment. None had made him consider, even for a moment, shirking his duty to his country or abandoning the task he'd set for himself of releasing Silvershire from the burden of medieval monarchy and guiding her kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century.