Page 41 of The Desert King's Kidnapped Virgin
And it was different like this, kneeling over him and rubbing the greediest part of her against him every time she moved.
It was different this time, because she knew where they were going. Because she had an inkling, now, of the catastrophic joy that awaited them both.
Because you love him, came a voice from deep inside her that sounded too much like fate, like another thing she had always known—
But she threw that aside, because what mattered was this, him, now.
This apology of his that felt like grace. Like a new song and the same song, blended into one, intothem.
What mattered was the sensation, nothing more.
Because he might have made her his wife, but Hope knew full well that she was still his captive.
And love had nothing to do with this.
So she told herself as she rode them both to a shattering finish, and poured herself out into his hands.
Again and again and again.
CHAPTER NINE
HOPE’SVIRGINITYWASyet another shock this woman had delivered to him.
It was the biggest yet.
Cyrus could admit, days later, that he still had not fully taken that particular reality on board.
Because he had misjudged her. He had wronged her, as he had said. And he could take all his men to task for failing him—he did—but that didn’t change the broader issue. Cyrus, who prided himself on his discernment, had been completely and utterly wrong about the woman he’d married.
In every respect.
He didn’t know what todowith that. He didn’t know what itmeant.
What else was he wrong about? What else had he missed?
These questions haunted him.
And having enjoyed her in full at last, he had spent the whole next day doing nothing but exulting in her, certain he would find himself satiated at any moment. But when that moment never arrived—because, once again, he was entirely wrong—he thought it prudent to institute some rules.
Meaning, it became a necessity.
Because he was the King. He was the Lord of this desert and he could not lose himself in a woman’s bed, no matter how tempting Hope was to him.
So he waited with ill-concealed and somewhat worrying eagerness until nightfall each day, when he could meet with her at last, suffer through a meal, and then gorge himself on what he truly wanted.
Tonight, while Hope licked her fingers and drove him mad with her greedy little noises in appreciation of the sweet pastries she claimed were her favorite, he thought he might as well satisfy his curiosity as well as his other, baser urges.
If gracelessly. “I don’t understand why you made it seem as if you had enjoyed the company of so many men when you had not done anything of the kind,” he said, as if she was to blame for the reports his men had delivered to him and the conclusions he had reached.
“I don’t know what made you think I was enjoying the company of men in the first place,” Hope replied in her usual bright and carefree way, here in the privacy of the tower, where their only ceiling was the starry night high above.
She lounged back against the bright pillows, and no longer did the silks she wore seem like a costume. It was clear to him that she inhabited them fully. That somehow, she had become the very height of femininity to him, awash in wiles and without peer.
Or maybe it was simply that he knew too well how happy he was to watch the silk against her skin, caressing her as he knew he would. And soon.
He told himself restraint was a virtue, though at the moment it felt far more like a curse.
And he knew too well now that she was not the brazen, careless, hedonistic socialite he’d imagined her before he’d met her. No morally bankrupt creature like so many he had met while doing his Oxbridge duty and had assumed she emulated.
