Page 51 of The Desert King's Kidnapped Virgin
I love you.
Later that night when the guards came for her they found her sitting in the room in the harem that had been made up for Mignon. Hope rose from her chair, leaving her mother sleeping soundly. Still not quite believing that Cyrus had actually let her come here.
That he had gone and fetched her, according to her mother.
“It’s amazing what good it does my soul to see her happy,” she said when she’d been led up the stairs and out into a terraces of his bedchamber, with heat lamps blazing all around to keep the cold desert air at bay. “It’s been a long while since I’ve seen her sleep without chemical help. And I owe that to you.”
It felt strange to be with him again like this, but also familiar. Deliciously, marvelously familiar.
“I am sorry,” Cyrus told her from where he stood near the rail, so stiffly she understood that he had not come to her on purpose. That he was even, perhaps, unsure of his welcome.
As if he was unused to the very words he used, come to that. If she thought back, had he actually said he was sorry the last time he had admitted he was wrong? All she remembered was losing herself in his arms.
She knew she should be mad about that. And yet she smiled at him, because she couldn’t seem to help it. “You mean...because your pregnant wife felt she had no choice but to lock herself in your dungeon?”
“That,” he said, inclining his head. His midnight eyes seemed to gleam in the dark. “Among a great many other things. Too many things to name, though I will if you wish it.”
And once she would have laughed at that. She would have teased him into saying something or other that sounded like a list of wrongs, though it would never be finished. He would end up thrusting into her. She would end up forgetting.
They would do this again and again.
There was a part of her that was perfectly fine with that.
But things had shifted now. She was in love with him. She was going to be the mother of his child. And love Mignon though she might, she did not intend to end up like her mother. So destroyed by love that she’d been rendered weak because of it.
Hope was prepared to be many things, but she’d never been weak. She did not intend to start now.
There was the baby to think of.
“You have dungeons and palaces to match,” she agreed, “though I’ve only heard tell of your palaces. I suspect you think that’s the sort of thing you should apologize for, but it doesn’t matter. If I were you, Cyrus, I would be far more worried about the little jail cell you keep right here.”
His gaze was on her, as intently as ever, as she drew a little circle on her chest. Directly over her heart. “Because there’s only one person who has that key, Cyrus. Only one.”
He muttered something she didn’t quite hear and then he closed the space between them, dragging her across the cushions and bearing her down into their soft embrace.
And there was some part of her that wanted to fight him. That wanted—
But even as she thought that, she also thought that she’d be punishing herself that way. He might deserve it, but Hope knew she certainly didn’t.
And so she exulted in him instead.
In every stroke of his wicked tongue. In every glorious touch of his skin next to hers.
This had been the longest she’d gone without him since she’d met him and Hope felt as if she had a lifetime of pent-up hunger inside her.
They took each other in a blaze of passion, right there. They ate, not bothering to put clothing back on, and then he carried her to the bed, where they feasted on each other all over again. As if they were touching each other for the first time.
And that whole night, hour after hour, it was as if they bathed themselves in each other, in this passion that was only and ever theirs.
That was another thing Hope knew, without needing context or conversation. What they had between them mattered. It was special. If it was only sex, she would not be the only wife he kept in his harem.
If it was only sex, it wouldn’t wreck them both like this.
It was near morning when she woke one more time to find his hands on her. Hope blinked as she looked around the bedchamber she knew as well as her own, now. And then to Cyrus, who had his hands on her belly.
Not attempting to stir her up into another display of that endless fire between them.
But for another, more intimate reason.
