Page 29 of The Desert King's Kidnapped Virgin
She told herself that she didn’t know what she would do. She told herself that she took her time mulling it over.
But that was a lie.
She moved almost without thinking at all.
And it felt unseemly, the way she sighed in such a long-suffering fashion and then crawled her way around the low table. It felt significantly more dangerous than what had happened on the top of that tower.
Because they weren’t standing. They were already lounging there, on the ground, and her breath caught as she imagined all the things that could happen in a position like this—
And how much she wanted those things to happen.
Hope could have pretended that she felt manipulated, but she didn’t. All she’d wanted for days now was an excuse. All she’d wanted moments ago was forhimto kissher.
She thought he might sit up as she crawled to him, but he didn’t. He merely waited for her. And gazed at her in pure challenge when she reached him, so that she moved closer still, angling herself very nearlyon topof him—
But though she held herself there, shaking a little with the effort of suspending herself over him in such an awkward position, he didn’t pull her closer. He didn’tdoanything.
“You must kiss me, Hope,” he told her, sounded as if he was bored. She might have thought he truly was, were it not for that dark glittering thing in his gaze.
“Then it isn’t a kiss freely given, is it?” she replied.
If she thought that might shame him, she was sorely mistaken.
“What makes you imagine you are free?” he asked. “What you are is mine.”
And then all he did was wait, his midnight eyes gleaming bright, that curve of his mouth like a new heat inside of her.
She sat back and considered the problem. But there was nothing for it, because he had called herhis, and it was a new storm that danced over her skin. Like a self-fulfilling prophecy. She tipped herself forward and slid her hands onto his chest, making no secret of the way she had to catch her breath as the sensation roared through her anew.
Hope leaned all the way over him again, but this time lowered herself so she was practically lying across his chest. The wall of his chest, all muscle and heat, that put the battlements to shame.
Then she leaned in even more and pressed her lips to his.
Just like before, there was that wild, spinning dizziness, all from the simple press of her mouth to his.
It felt like a song.
And then, after a moment or two of that alone, Cyrus took charge all over again.
He kissed her deeper this time, Wilder. He hauled her up against him and then turned, rolling her down into the pillows so that the weight of him was pressing into her.
And Hope...exulted.
His hands moved the way she’d imagined they might—never quite making it to her breasts or the greedy center of her need, but finding all the places that were exposed when the silks fell away.
Building fires wherever he touched.
All while he kissed her again and again—tutoring her, teaching her, tearing her apart.
She felt her hips rising up as if they were trying to find him. She snaked her arms around his neck, hauling herself even closer, trying to press every square inch of her body into his—
And it was no surprise, really, when he eventually set her aside again.
But this time, he was breathing just as hard as she was. And there was a certain fierceness in his gaze that would have made her shiver anew—
If she could tell the difference between one sort of shiver and another.
“Should I take it that this is you showing who you really are too?” Hope asked, because she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
