nipples peak against my cold, wet top, and I wonder if he knows how close to the edge I already am. Just from his words. It was never like this with Jean-Luc, and as soon as the thought enters my mind, I’m awash in a wave of guilt. How dare I compare what I’m about to do to a man I met yesterday to a man I’d planned to be with for the rest of my life?
And yet it’s the truth.
I loved my fiancé, but I can’t recall wanting him with this sort of hunger. I’d always felt performing oral sex to be more of an obligation than anything else. And he had always finished so quickly that I never knew what he really liked.
But I want to taste Nikolai so badly that my pulse throbs between my legs.
I start by placing a soft kiss on his inner thigh, then shift my heavy gaze to his.
“More,” he says, and my core tightens at the command.
I kiss his other thigh, this time a little higher up, and I have to grab his backside to steady myself.
He lets out a groan.
“Hands,” he says, his voice tight, and I do believe I’ve made it difficult for my prince to speak.
I look up at him and grin, releasing his ass with my right hand so I can cup his balls. Then, without warning, I swirl my tongue over his tip, the precum salty on my taste buds. We both moan.
His hands tug at my hair, and I move my own to join my mouth, taking him deeper as he slides slick through my palm.
“Fuck,” he hisses. “Yes, Pet. More. Goddamn, I need more.”
My clit swells at the sound of his need, a delicious, aching pulse between my thighs, and I can’t hold back a whimper as he sinks deeper into my mouth, as I let the taste of him fill me.
Deeper and faster, my hand grips his throbbing shaft, and I feel his thighs begin to shake. I hold his gaze as I bury him to the hilt, and for the brief moment when he begins to teeter over the edge, I see past the facade to a brokenness that draws me further into his orbit.
He shudders and growls. I swallow his release, an intimate connection I never knew was possible. I back away, ready to force my trembling limbs to stand, but he collapses to his knees in front of me.
His hands cup my cheeks, and he stares into my eyes. Without a word he kisses me so hard and deep I can barely catch my breath. He lowers me to the ground, wordless still, his lips never leaving mine. His hand slides beneath my blouse, and I buck against him as he pinches my sensitive peak.
We are animals, communicating with nothing other than our shared savage need, and I need this. I need his hands on me, in me—I need Nikolai Lorentz everywhere. And because we speak the same language, he knows, and I find him wrenching my pants from my hips, down to my knees, all the while his tongue tangling with mine.
Finally, when two fingers plunge inside me, immediately hitting the right spot, I call out his name in an overwhelming torrent of sensation.
“Nikolai!”
And then I finally close my eyes and see nothing but stars.
* * *
I’m nothing short of a mess when we make our way to the road and find X waiting outside the Rolls. Nikolai, despite his dip in the river as well, looks nothing short of spectacular. Or maybe that’s all I can see after what he’s done to me.
What has he done? I feel satiated yet hungry. Remade but ruined.
X opens the door as we approach, not once letting his impassive gaze give away that he knew Nikolai had planned to seduce me. But when I look inside the car and see my scones and fruit replaced by a small platter of croissants, I can’t help but burst into a fit of laughter.
Nikolai’s brows pull together, and it takes every ounce of control for me to simply motion toward the open door and say, “Look.”
He does, and as soon as he sees the pastries, he’s laughing too, and I am surprised the way my heart surges to hear such a sound—a genuine emotion from Prince Nikolai, and I get to bear witness.
X clears his throat and raises a brow.
“Your Highness. Miss Winter—I thought you might have worked up an appetite.”
I decide not to deny it because damn—I am starving. So I reach inside the car and grab a chocolate croissant, tearing off a piece and shoving it into a surprised Nikolai’s mouth before tearing into the rest of it with my teeth.
“You’re right,” I say, mouth full, hair tangled and probably full of sand, clothes still wet and plastered to my body. “I’m famished.”
X nods. “Your Highness, I take it there are supplies to collect from the bridge?”
Nikolai swallows his bite of croissant. “Yes, thank you. One fishing pole, the bucket of bait and Miss Winter’s dossier. You can throw the trout I caught back into the river.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” he says, not questioning why we are short one fishing pole.
Once X is out of earshot, I point at Nikolai with my half-eaten croissant.
“Hey, I thought you said tonight’s royal meal depended on what I caught on our little fishing expedition.”
He shrugs and gives me a sheepish grin, another expression I don’t expect, and it disarms me completely.
“I despise seafood, actually,” he says. “But I was hoping to enjoy putting you through the wringer.”
I open my mouth at an attempt to unleash my fury on him, but he silences me with a kiss, and I’m caught so off guard that I simply melt into it.
“How about a truce?” he says against me, and I squeak out my answer, the momentary fury dissolving into dust.
“Okay,” I whisper.
“Okay,” he says.
“But this cannot happen again, Your Highness. We have—I mean I have a job to do.”
He nods. “Of course. Never again, Miss Winter. You have my word.”
I sigh. I know he’s soon to be my king, that my job is to find him a queen, but right now I don’t believe his word for one tiny second. And that impish grin on his face tells me that neither does he.
Nikolai
“MY, MY, ISN’T His Highness in quite the chipper mood?” My wicked stepmother, Queen Adele, sizes me up from across the mahogany table. Even when it is just she, my father and I in residence at the palace, she insists on using the formal dining room that can accommodate up to fifty guests. Overhead hang three large crystal chandeliers, and lining the wood-paneled room are suits of armor interspersed with the images of frowning black-haired men, my ancestors, the kings of old.
From the looks
