‘Kiss me.’ She didn’t wait for his answer. She kissed him, moving her hips against his, breathing hard as she embraced the pleasurable pressure-filled waves of his deepening possession.
Sensation soared as he buffeted against her and she began to understand, began to meet him back, stroke for stroke as she discovered how fantastic this felt, and how she too could drive this. With a smothered growl, he pushed his palms against the firm mattress beneath her and levered up, driving deeper in a surge of unfettered passion. She let her hands slide, gripping his forearms, feeling his muscles work beneath her, against her. She gazed up, awed at his power and strength as he fiercely pushed as hard as he could into her and enjoying the utterly exquisite ride. She couldn’t form words, only sound as she gasped with astounded pleasure and he was the same. Grunting now with every pulse, every pound. And then he collapsed again, holding her more tightly than she’d ever been held, trapping her while at the same time imprisoned within her. She held him so fiercely. They were both shaking, almost violently convulsing as ecstasy overtook both mind and muscle.
Alvaro made himself gather the strength to lift away; he’d suffocate her if he stayed where he was. Her long drawn-out sigh in response almost brought him to his knees again. He’d tried to stay gentle, tried to take the time...but she’d come apart around him and he’d charged headlong into the fire with her like a man who’d lost it completely. But now she needed more again. He read it in her eyes and he heard it in her breathlessness.
‘I like it when you hold me,’ she whispered. ‘I like it when you surround me so completely.’
Yeah, he liked that too. He liked the lock of her arms around his back and her thigh hooking over his hip so he could surge deeper. He liked being so close to her that there was no getting closer, but trying anyway with bared skin and salty sweat and sweet pleasure. She’d arched and he’d thrust, over and over until he was drowning in the heated, silky prison of her body, until that pleasure hit, until there was nothing like this satisfied exhaustion in all the world.
Now her long hair was a tangled mess, knotting them together, and her face was flushed as she gazed up at him. Amazement gleamed from her pleasure-bruised eyes and he had never seen anyone as shockingly beautiful in his life.
‘Alvaro.’
It was a whisper that ricocheted through to his soul. ‘I know.’
She was tired, but she needed another kind of closeness. And for once, so did he.
‘You feel so good,’ he muttered as he rolled onto his back and pulled her limp form to rest over his.
‘I’m so tired, but I want—’
‘I know. We will. Soon,’ he promised. Because so did he. ‘It’s not even nine o’clock, Jade.’ He chuckled. ‘We can take our time. We have all night.’
Only it didn’t seem like long enough already.
CHAPTER SEVEN
JADE SLOWLY WOKE in a relaxed, comfortable heap, tangled in soft cotton sheets, soaking up the heated strength of the man curved behind her. It was her strangest, yet best ever way to wake.
They’d snatched only a couple of hours’ sleep at most last night. After that first time, Alvaro had run her a bath and revived her with a fistful of cheap chocolate—all the commercial bars and wacky flavours that had been long banned from her diet by that zealous palace physician.
‘No royal rules here,’ he’d teased. ‘And it’s treat night, right?’
The whole night had been a decadent, delicious, pure lustful treat. Now, her pulse lifted, her aching body still seeking more.
‘You must be used to getting breakfast in bed,’ he murmured.
‘I have a maid who brings me a coffee in the morning.’
‘With cream and sugar, right? I’ll get it.’
His warmth was gone before she had the chance to answer. She sat up. So it was over already?
For a panicked moment she couldn’t believe what she’d done. What if there were cameras outside? What if she was caught somehow and everyone found out?
Would it matter?
Her father wasn’t alive to judge or punish her. It wasn’t an external threat troubling her. It was Alvaro himself. How did she face the man who’d touched her with such profound intimacy? It had felt beyond physical.
It’s not.
She was feeling biochemistry—oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine. Her body’s biology was encouraging her to stay and mate again. All animal instinct. And that adrenalin fix? The rush of the unknown and the unexpected?
That was everything Alvaro had treated her to last night.
But it was over, and she needed to get out of there. Her composure was suddenly shockingly precarious and she’d never lost her composure before this week. She’d never lost her virginity either. Until Alvaro.
Memories swept over her, invoking a real, raw response from her body. She shivered. She couldn’t let him distract or delay her departure. Self-preservation insisted she end this now. If she stayed it would soon become a whole other day and a whole other night and that would become too intense. And impossible to walk away from. She couldn’t let that happen. It wasn’t what he wanted. Or what she wanted either.
She needed this time on her own. Wasn’t that why she was here?
She quickly hunted about for her panties and pulled on her slip before finding her way from his bedroom back to the kitchen—desperately scooping her black dress up off the floor from where they’d left it last night.
He’d glanced up as she walked in and put down the cup he was holding. A glint kindled in his eyes as he watched her back away with the crumpled dress in hand. ‘Not staying for coffee?’
Silently she shook her head. So awkwardly she darted back into the hallway and quickly pulled on her dress over her slip. She was desperate to escape.
‘So what now?’ he asked softly when she stepped back into the kitchen. ‘You’ve no more work to worry about. You’re free to do anything. What’s your plan?’
She didn’t really have one.
‘Neon lights?’ he prompted.
‘Sure.’ She’d focus on those external adventures. Seize on them as a means of avoiding the awkwardness rippling through her and that ache for intimacy welling inside. ‘Ice skating at the Rockefeller centre. Eating doughnuts or a pastry outside Tiffany’s or something, right? Times Square.’ But her smile slipped, and she scrambled to think of more. ‘Art galleries. All the exciting, fun things a tourist ought to do in New York in December.’
‘Sounds like you have quite the list.’
‘Yes.’ She was determined to make the most of every one of those iconic experiences too. ‘Christmas in New York—it’s my one and only chance.’