“I smile every time I think of you. You’re outrageously handsome, you know. And when I talk, you make me feel like there’s nothing else you’d rather be doing, nowhere else you’d rather be. You make me feel like I matter. Plain old Kelsey Wishner.”
“Extraordinary Kelsey Wishner,” he corrected softly. He looked over her shoulder and cursed. “Stay here.” Then he disappeared through an arched doorway into the…kitchen? She only glimpsed the curve of a small, round wooden table, set with wineglasses and a fat candle in the middle. But there were heady smells coming from the room, a sort of rich tomato sauce with spices she couldn’t identify.
When Elias came back, his jacket and holster were gone. “I’ve turned it all off. Dinner’s on hold. Indefinitely.”
Oh no. She’d screwed everything up by freaking out about his gun. “You’re going to take me back to my suite now?”
“What? Of course not. Kelsey, what your life has spun into is a new normal, for sure. But one with a few perks that I promise are worth it.”
Not getting dinner sure didn’t come off as a perk. “Such as?”
“Sex with me.” His cocky grin and you want a piece of this pose with one leg outstretched in front and both arms up was pure, absurd male ego on parade. Apparently, Elias knew it, too, because he only held the pose for a few seconds before laughing. “I’m taking a page from the American dating handbook. We’re skipping straight to the sex, because that’s the one thing I know will get your mind to stop spinning about all the changes in your life.”
She could get on board with that. “Consider it my gift to your country.”
Elias gripped her upper arms tightly, and his voice was so deep it rumbled. “You’re a gift to my country, all right. But the only thing that matters right now is what a gift you are to me. Let me show you.”
Before Kelsey could pick up her dropped jaw and reply, Elias moved in. He shuffled her backward a few steps until she was pressed between him and the wall. Pressed tight enough to feel the steel wall of his pecs against her already hard nipples, massive thighs caging in her legs, and the gratifyingly hard and long bulge against her belly.
Oh, and while they took those few steps, his mouth devoured hers. Heat and speed, yes, but mixed with a thoroughness that left her lips a little bruised and a lot electrified. There was no doubting the depth of his desire.
There was no denying the depth of hers.
Kelsey gave back as good as she got. Her fingers raked across the top of his skull, delighting in the soft brush of his super-short hair. Her tongue danced and tasted and licked.
It wasn’t nearly enough.
She wanted her bodyguard to stop guarding her body, and start using it.
Boosting off the floor, she wrapped her legs around his lean hips. It shifted the solid length of his penis to notch right between her legs. Kelsey moaned. Elias swallowed the sound, then broke free.
“Christ, you can’t move. Not at all. This can’t be over in two minutes against a wall.”
“Why? Because I’m a princess? Because it wouldn’t be proper?”
Because Kelsey liked the sound of that. Very much.
“Because you deserve better,” he said. And it was the sweetest thing she’d ever heard. The man had a raging hard-on, but wanted to slow down on her behalf. The way he cared for her, cared about her, grounded her in the moment, in him, more than even the fiery kisses.
“Save better for later,” she ordered. “I don’t want to wait. I’m so turned on I could eye-fuck you to orgasm.”
His hips bucked once. Hard. “Holy—that’s worse than moving, my treasure. No dirty talk, either.” Yet his lips kept trailing across the side of her face, her neck, down the vee of her shirt…
Oh, this was fun. And her heart almost exploded from his touching endearment. “You know how you can make me stop? By filling me up with your cock until I literally can’t form words.”
“How do you do it? Make me discard common sense. First, you talk me into putting off dinner. Now this.”
“Now what?”
“This,” Elias repeated. He unzipped his pants. Kelsey put her feet back on the ground, happy to help. Then he cursed again, fumbling to undo the buttons at her waist. “Jeans. Even harder to get into than spandex. Turn around.”
Two quick yanks got her jeans to just below her ass. She heard the metallic rip of a foil packet. Whew. Good to know birth control was as standard an expectation over here as in America. And then the thick head of his penis was right against her.
His warm breath stirred the fine hairs in front of her ear. “Are you sure, Kelsey?”
“Sure that I want you? Yes. Sure enough to almost make it a pseudo-royal command.”
“Your wish is my pleasure to fulfill.” After that sexily formal turn of phrase, Elias sank into her in one smooth stroke.
If she could do a Facebook post about this moment? It’d be that exploding fireworks background behind the single line #worththewait.
“Do it again,” she…ordered? Urged? Begged?
“Of course, Your Highness.”
Okay. This one time, she’d acknowledge that hearing Elias use her title, in a deep voice pushed through gravel, well, it worked. Kelsey scrabbled, clawed at the wall. Thrust her ass at him as best she could with her knees locked by her jeans.
“Trust me?” he asked, pumping in and out in a steady rhythm.
“I really, truly do.”
“Then relax.”
She was wound tighter than a violin string. But in this one, particular case, she’d obey. Consciously, she willed her shoulders down, her arms to her sides, and her knees lax.
Sure enough, Elias had her. One arm clamped across her waist tighter than a restraint bar on a roller coaster. And the other? Oh, he had that hand angled down from her hip, so that the tips of his fingers tapped at her clit. And without her straining for it anymore, her orgasm just washed over her. No warning. No time to do anything but try to scream his name…and get stuck at “Eliiiiiiiiii—”
Three more fast snaps of his hips brought him to the same point. Elias groaned into her ear, a guttural, primal sound that positively thrilled her.
As Kelsey still shuddered a little, he brought his arm up to her chest. Shuffled backward six steps, still holding all of her weight, her feet not even touching the floor. He leaned on what she guessed to be the arm of the couch. From this angle, it was simple for Kelsey to slide off and pull her pants back on.
Or so she thought.
Elias’s hand shot out to stop the upward tug of her clothing. “I think not.”