Page 25 of The Desert King's Kidnapped Virgin
“Perhaps what you say is true. That you did not know you were mine. For I am many things.” His voice was like the night. Like the desert all around. It was within her as well as without. It was taking her apart without him having to so much as lift a finger. “And many stories have been told about me. But the only tale you need tell yourself is this: that whatever you knew or did not know, you are here now. Where you belong. And you are my wife, as was promised long ago. A prince now a king in a place that is very real, who wants only a kiss. Is that story enough for you?”
And she could see that he meant that as another challenge. Maybe even a warning a wise woman would heed. But Hope felt the strangest sensation wash over her, then. So strange that she knew it was mad even as she thought it.
But...if all those fairy tales her father had told her were true, then why not all fairy tales?
Maybe she really should kiss him, here and now, because wasn’t that how spells were broken? Maybe if she kissed him, everything would go back to the way it was.
Maybe if she kissed him, with all these feelings she’d shoved down deep inside her, she could turn back time.
So she would never have to find her father unresponsive in that study that had always been about their coziest family moments. Her mother dancing to the music her father played for her. Her parents sometimes dancing with Hope held between them, as if that kind of joy could last forever if they all sang along.
Maybe all of this was a dream. A terrible dream, nothing more.
Maybe if she kissed an impossible man on top of a magical tower, surrounded by candles and beneath the stars, she could wake up at last.
So Hope didn’t think.
She closed the distance between them, and she didn’t stop at that. She threw herself at Cyrus, knowing on some instinctive level that he would catch her—
And he did.
Hope was aware of the strength in his arms, and how that chest of his felt even more like a stone wall now than it had earlier today, when he had carried her so easily away from the cold life she’d seen as a reprieve.
Bracing herself against the hard ridges of his abdomen, she tipped back her head as she surged up onto her toes.
And she thought,If this is a fairy tale, the spell should be broken.
So Hope leaned up as best she could and kissed the Prince who had become a king, just like her father had told her she would long ago.
CHAPTER SIX
HOPEKNEWTWOthings immediately.
One, that this was not the spell she had imagined it was, because his mouth was both harder and softer than she ever could have conceived when she pressed her lips to his.
And two, that this was magic all the same.
It was true that the world didn’t explode into a shower of stars that turned into small dancing creatures. There was no magic wand or sudden swell of music.
But there was heat. Almost too much heat to bear.
When she made as if to step back, his arm went around her and hauled her even closer against him. And then she stopped worrying about what was happening, or what was magic and what wasn’t, because his mouth opened against hers and it was sogoodand everything seemed to slide into that same spiral of sensation that was winding tighter and tighter within her.
Cyrus licked his way along the seam of her lips, silently commanding her to open for him. And she shivered, but she did. And though she felt hesitant, maybe, and yet wild at the same time—everything seemed to feelrightwhen his tongue stroked hers.
She hadn’t understood, before, how a kiss could involvea whole body.
Hope wasawareof him in a thousand different ways.
There was the spicy scent of him, all around her, like the candlelight flickering over them both. And more, the profound and alienmalenessof him—of his body, of the way he held her, of the differences between his mouth and hers.
That he felt so hard when she felt soft, and softer by the second.
She was aware of herself, too, in whole new ways. There was a driving need between her legs, but that was only part of it. Her breasts felt rounder and softer even as her nipples hardened against his chest. And her body seemed to make up its own mind about what it should do, because she found herself pressing against him, rubbing herself into him, so caught up in the way all these different sensations made her feel—the mad storm of it all—that she found herself making greedy little noises in the back of her throat.
And all the while, his mouth moved over hers, with hers.
Hope didn’t have to have had sex herself to understand that the way he thrust his tongue into her mouth, over and over again, mimicked that action.
