I’ll give you what you ask for. But not here. Not while I’m driving, and not in the back door. For you, I’m going to make an exception.” His smile is rueful. “Consider it an early wedding present.”
He drives slower, but just as masterfully. The perfect, chiseled lines of his face are made for brooding. I find myself hypnotized.
“Damien?” I ask at last. It’s strange how his name tastes so familiar on my tongue. “Why do you only ever take women in the...back door? Have you never tried the, uh, front door either?” A mad sort of hope flickers in me. Perhaps I’m not so stupidly naive and innocent. Perhaps he is like me, a virgin.
That faint glimmer of hope is doused by his bitter chuckle.
“Yes, Princess. I’ve tried the front door. But only ever with one woman.” His knuckles go bloodless on the steering wheel. “A woman who is now dead.”
Realization dawns on me. “Your brother’s fiancée. Your once future queen. You seduced her, didn’t you?”
“Technically, Victoria seduced me,” he rasped. “But I suppose I should be proud of my notoriety.”
“She was your lover?”
“I had rather thought that she was my one true love.” A shadow falls across his face. “But I was nothing but a boy, and it was all a lie. Yet when it came to our lovemaking...sex meant something with her. And I’ve never felt that way about another woman. So I still fuck. I just do it on terms that make it bearable.”
My heart aches at the pain lacing his words.
We arrive at an exquisite hotel, and he pulls past the main entrance. Instead, we approach a gated drive from a side street. He punches a pass code into a keypad, and the great brass doors swing wide open. He pulls forward.
“So what makes me different?” I don’t look at him. I focus my gaze on the ten-story hotel before us. I breathe a small sigh of relief that although we are in a public place, no one will see me enter. I don’t want to be found out before I get what I came here for.
“I’ve been asking myself the same question,” he mutters. “And I don’t have a good reply. At least not an easy one. So why don’t we go inside and see if the answer is hiding in your perfect pussy?”
Damien
WE RIDE THE elevator in silence. With any other woman, I’d have made her come at least twice before we reached the top. But something about Juliet is different, and it’s more than knowing she is Nightgardin’s virgin heir. I can’t place my finger on it, but I want to take my time with her.
When we reach the hotel’s penthouse, the doors slide open, and Juliet sucks in a breath.
Rich mahogany wood covers the floor that leads us to the main living space where the sofa—the color of the deepest ocean—sits before a roaring fire.
“How did you...?” she asks, and I grin.
“I tip well,” I tease. “And in return, I get special—favors.”
She blushes, then moves toward the couch, running her fingers across the lush fabric. She’s barefoot now, having removed her one good shoe, and something about her seems so casual and comfortable in what must be the most foreign place she’s ever been—a strange man’s home.
I stride up behind her. “The only thing better than Italian velvet against your skin, Highness...is me.” I brush a soft kiss on the nape of her neck, and she shudders. Then she spins to face me.
“Damien?” she says, demure and shy.
“Princess?”
She licks her lips, then reaches behind and unzips her dress. It drops to the floor.
“God in heaven,” I say, my strangled voice unrecognizable.
That same flush from before creeps up her neck to her cheeks, and she grins. “Do you—like what you see?”
I take my time drinking her in, ignoring my cock’s urgency to free itself from my jeans and plunge between those lithe legs.
Her full breasts are milk white, her pale pink nipples pebbling at their tips. Beneath the left one is a constellation of birthmarks that, if connected, would draw an arrow straight to her heart. I trace the shape with my index finger.
“You should be allowed to love,” I say, not knowing where the words are coming from.
Her breasts rise and fall as she breathes in and out.
“I will learn to love my husband,” she says flatly. “It is my duty.”
I brush my thumb over her nipple, and she bucks into my hand.
“I want to see you,” she says, her voice barely more than breath. “Before you do any more, I want to see you while I still have my wits about me.”
I nod, but because I am a greedy bastard, I dip my head quickly and swirl my tongue around that perfect, hardened peak.
She cries out, and I step away, grinning.
She narrows her eyes at me, then takes a bold step forward as she starts to unbutton my shirt. She opens it, running her palms over my chest, and pushes it off my shoulders until it falls to the floor.
Her hands skim over my biceps and my forearms. They slow as her fingers run over the raised scars I’ve made invisible beneath the ink.
She looks up at me, wide-eyed.
“There was a lot of shattered glass in the—accident.” That last word tastes so bitter on my tongue I wish I could spit it out. Or take it back. Because I was behind the wheel. I was the one responsible for taking the life of another. Accident is far too kind a word for what I did. The Royal Police blamed the weather and absolved me of any technical crime. But I know the truth, as does my brother Nikolai, the man who loved Victoria too. If we hadn’t run, she’d still be alive.
She reaches for my face, and I flinch. But she is not deterred. Her gentle hand traces my most visible scar, the one that runs from my left temple to the line of my jaw. The one no one ever talks about anymore because what is left to say? Every time I look in the mirror, I’m reminded of the monster I truly am.
“You punish yourself,” she says.
“Stop,” I tell her, but she shakes her head.
“Maybe you aren’t as free as I thought you were. Maybe,” she continues, unbuttoning my jeans, “we’re more alike than I ever could have imagined.”
I step out of my shoes and let her lower my pants and briefs to the floor. Then I step out of those as well.
“Oh!” she says, staring at my erection. Then, “Oh.” This time with less shock and something more like reverence. “Can I...touch it?”
I chuckle, grateful for her act of levity,
