hardly breathe. Her thoughts crashed into each other and flew apart, and there was only him.
Only Kavian. Only this.
He toyed with her through the sheer material, using his hot mouth, the edge of his teeth, his remarkable hands, all the while keeping her in place against his hard thigh, where she couldn’t help rocking herself with increasing intensity as the sensations stormed through her.
It was like being caught in a lightning storm, struck again and again and again.
Amaya couldn’t imagine anyone could survive this—and she didn’t care if she did. It was worth it, she thought. It was all worth it—
Harder and harder she moved herself against him, shameless and mindless at once, wanting only to do something about that wild need that shook through her and centered in her core. Wanting nothing more than him.
Kavian made a harsh noise, and that only lit her up all the brighter.
“You will be the death of me,” he growled, low and intent, as if he read her mind.
As if, she managed to think with no little wonder, she had the same affect on this hard, wicked man as he did on her.
He took one nipple deep into the heat of his mouth again while his fingers rolled the other between them, lazy and sure. The twin assaults were like a new flash of light, a new storm. He did it once, then again, her core molten against his thigh.
“Now, Amaya,” he ordered her, his mouth against her breast.
And Amaya shattered all around him, only aware that she screamed as she toppled straight over the edge into a wild oblivion when her own abandon echoed back from the walls as she lost herself completely in his arms.
When she came back to herself, Kavian had swept her up, high against his sculpted chest, and was carrying her out of the pool toward the central seating area. He wrapped her in a wide, soft bath sheet and sat her down on one of the lounging chairs. Amaya couldn’t breathe—but then he left her there while he claimed his own bath sheet and tucked it around his lean waist, which only seemed to call more attention to the mouthwatering perfection of his glorious form.
She should say or do something, surely. She told herself she would, just as soon as her head stopped spinning. Or when he came back over here and claimed her once again, as he was surely about to do.
But he didn’t.
Instead, Kavian went to the low table and the trays of food laid out for his pleasure. He took his time filling his plate with various local delicacies, and then sat in a lounge chair facing her where he could watch her as he ate.
Amaya didn’t understand what was happening.
Her heart still pounded. She could feel it in her temples, her throat, her belly. And hot and soft between her legs.
“Aren’t you going to...?”
She trailed off into nothing, irritated with herself. Why did this man turn her into the blushing, stammering fool she’d never been at any other point in her life? Why did he make her feel so foolish and so young with only the merest crook of his dark brow?
“If you cannot say it, Amaya, it does not exactly inspire me to do it,” he replied mildly. Almost reprovingly, she thought.
And then he carried on eating, as if he hadn’t left her in a spineless heap only moments before. As if that had all been a demonstration of some kind and he was entirely unaffected by the lesson he’d decided to teach her.
She didn’t know why that made her furious, but it did—in a shocking, searing wave from her head all the way down to her feet. And if the rush of temper felt like some kind of relief, she told herself that hardly mattered. She struggled to sit up, ignoring the aftershocks of all that pleasure that still stampeded through her, as if he really had made her body his own.
She didn’t want to think about that. She refused to think about that.
“I’m not a two-year-old,” she threw at him instead. “I have no idea what your expectations are. We had sex once, by accident, and you chased me all over the planet for six months. You rant about how I’m yours and how I gave myself to you. But then you give me an orgasm and break for a quick snack. Right here in a subterranean bathhouse where you kept seventeen women under lock and key until recently, or so you claim. I have no idea what reasonable is under these circumstances. I have no idea what you’re capable of doing.” She pulled in a breath that felt much too ragged. “I don’t have the slightest idea who you are.”
That gaze of his took on an unholy gleam, but he only lounged back in his seat, looking otherwise unperturbed. Remote, as if she were looking at a carving on the side of a temple, not a man. She thought of ancient kings and actual thrones, feats of chivalry and strength and drawn-out, epic battles better suited to Tolkien novels, and found her throat was dry again.
“No one was held here under lock and key,” he said after a moment, when she could feel anxiety like pinpricks all up and down her body, and was afraid she’d actually broken out in hives. “This is neither a prison nor a work of overwrought fiction.”
“I’ll keep that in mind the next time you start thundering on about promises.”
Something far too dangerous to be amusement moved across that face of his and did not make her feel in the least bit secure. It occurred to her then that she was wearing nothing but a soaked-through T-shirt and panties, and a towel. And that this man had absolutely no qualm using her body against her when he felt like it.
But he didn’t move toward her and prove that all over again, as she was far too aware he could. He stayed where he was, and Amaya couldn’t understand how that was worse. Yet it was.
“And this might come as a great surprise to you,” he said, his voice like smoke and temptation, “but thus far you are the only woman I have ever encountered who was not delighted at the prospect of sharing my bed.”
“As far as you know, you mean.” She glared at him, trying to be as furious with him as she should have been. Furious with herself that she was not. “People lie, especially to terrifying kings of the desert who threaten the very air they breathe.”
“Ask yourself why I am so sure,” he encouraged her, in a tone that made her stomach swoop toward the ground, though he could not have seemed more relaxed as he said it. No matter that glittering silver thing in his gaze. “Ask yourself how I can know this.”
Amaya had absolutely no desire to do anything of the kind. Because she could think of several ways a man could be that certain, and he’d already demonstrated it to her twice. Six months ago in an alcove of the Bakrian Royal Palace and right here in the large pool today.
And she had no idea what must have showed on her face then, but Kavian only smiled, an edgy and dangerous crook of that hard, hard mouth of his she could still feel, as if he were still touching her when he was not.
That didn’t help.
“You do not have to wonder about my expectations,” he said, the way other men might comment on the weather. Their favorite sports team. Unlike with other men, whole armies he could command with a wave of his hand lurked beneath his words and settled around her neck like a heavy choke collar. “I do not traffic in subterfuge. I will tell you
