The Reluctant King

by Rachel Higginson

Page 33

 

  This wasn’t just a kiss that was shattering Amelia’s world.

  This kiss was shattering mine.

  She was shattering me.

  There was never a more perfect feeling than Amelia wrapped around me, holding on to me as if her life depended on it. Our lips had not stopped moving against each other, my mouth swallowing her soft sounds, my arms wrapped securely around her, I wasn’t sure if I would ever let her go.

  I felt myself walking, but didn’t remember making the conscious decision to move my feet. Before I knew it though I had walked across the room, Amelia in my arms and laid her down on the bed. I wasn’t far behind, I couldn’t be far behind, and so I was down with her, daring my lips to move from hers and explore the rest of her skin.

  She shivered when I moved to kiss her jawline, down to her neck and back to the place behind her earlobe. She dug her nails into my shoulder as I kissed and tasted as much skin as I could before I felt drunk from her.

  I slowed down from the frantic kissing of a desperate man to a man that now had possession of what he most desired. Frantic, desperate longing turned to reverent, absolute worship. She didn’t move out from underneath me or stop the kiss when I slowed down and I had to acknowledge that was a real fear for a moment. Her fingers started tracing slow patterns on my shoulder blades and even while I shivered underneath her I could finally admit to myself that my fears were no longer justified. She sighed my name when I moved my kisses to her exposed collar bone and I sunk impossibly deeper into her possession.

  We kissed forever, or for only minutes, I couldn’t tell. There was no time in that kiss, no way to determine anything outside of the taste of her on my lips and the feel of her underneath me. She trembled and shifted beneath me, she pressed against me and clasped her arms around me like she needed me to survive, and she made the sweetest, softest, sexiest sounds I had ever heard.

  I didn’t think I would ever stop kissing her, or would ever want to, but as the long lines of light disappeared from the room and we were shrouded in the heavy darkness of night I started to worry about her.

  And it wasn’t fair…. because I had set out to prove to her that she was mine, but now that I was doing exactly that I suddenly wanted to make sure I was hers. I wanted to confirm that her feelings were as strong as mine and that all this kissing stuff was Ok with her.

  And mostly that there would be a lot more of it in my future.

  It was kind of annoying, since I could have happily kissed her until the end of time. And now I had to talk about feelings when there was a real possibility she could still reject me.

  Damn it.

  I slowed the kiss down, detangling my mouth from her and ending it by a simple peck on her perfect lips. I was rewarded with her stretching up to meet my lips for one last lingering kiss.

  That meant something right?

  I looked down at her, memorizing her face, the beautiful lines of her jaw, the sexy pout to her lips, the depth and wholeness of her eyes. She wasn’t going to speak first, I knew that, but at the same time I felt like I had lost the ability to verbalize any kind of coherent thought. I wouldn’t survive rejection and even though the last, however long it was, tried to speak up inside my head and remind me she kissed me back, I couldn’t get over the fear that she would come to her senses and realize she didn’t like me and never would.

  “Hey,” I finally sighed, smiling down at her.

  “Hey,” she smiled back. She lifted her fingers and brushed my hair out of my face and my whole being sighed with the movement.

  I nuzzled into the crook of her neck, hating the inches of separation between us. She giggled and squirmed as my breath tickled her skin but I just pulled her closer to me so that we were both lying on our sides facing each other. She was cradled in my arms.

  This was the most perfect moment of my entire life.

  A mixture of the fear that was still crippling me and a deliciously hazy fog from her kisses prevented me from speaking. She had to be the first one to break this second silence. “So you kissed me?” she asked as if she were confused on the details of the last few hours.

  “Is that Ok?” I tested taking liberty by kissing the side of her mouth and then her jawline and then her ear. I wanted to remind her that even if her brain told her it wasn’t Ok, her body was clearly in agreement.

  “Uh, huh,” she murmured. She leaned into my lips and then stretched her neck to give me better access. “It’s Ok. ”

  “Good,” I laughed, my voice raspy and low. “Because I plan on doing a lot more of this. ”

  Her fingers wandered down to my side and slipped beneath my shirt. She made trails of gentle lines up and down my bare skin making me quiver.

  Damn it, she made me quiver. What girl had that kind of power?

  “You do?” she sounded so innocently confused I paused from paying her neck such reverential attention and propped my head up on my hand to stare down into her gorgeous eyes.

  “Mmm,” I nodded my head slowly, holding her gaze with the intensity of mine. “I don’t play games very well Amelia. I conquer things. So we are done with this game. I might not have conquered you yet,” I waggled my eyebrows trying to lighten the situation. She slapped me on the arm. “But I do plan on taking this very seriously…. I plan on taking you very seriously. ”

  “Avalon, you can’t seriously mean you want to date me,” Amelia laughed incredulously and tried to wiggle out from underneath my arms.

  I wasn’t having that. I tightened my hold on her and laid her back on the bed so that I could partly hold her down, but mostly so I could draw her back into kissing me.

  “That’s exactly what I mean,” I whispered.

  I kissed the side of her mouth to tease her and I was rewarded when her lips turned into mine immediately, like she couldn’t stop herself from kissing me…. like she was as addicted to me as I was to her.

  “But you don’t date,” she said against my lips in a breathy voice that had me pressing closer to her despite her argument.

  “I do now,” I growled, deepening our kiss. Her mouth opened to mine and I extended the kiss meeting her tongue and swallowing her gentle moan.

  “Wait, wait,” she panted, out of breath, her fingers pressed gently against my chest.

  I obeyed, but dropped my head against her shoulder in a resigned sigh.

  “Amelia,” I said sternly, lifting my eyes to meet hers. “I haven’t dated before because there was no point. There was no girl that could hold my attention for more than five minutes, let alone trap me inside this never ending tornado of emotions and anxiety and…. want. ”

  She raised her eyebrows in surprise, but then lowered them into a scowl. “I’m not just a conquest Avalon. I am not a war you can win. ”

  I laughed at her fierce anger and her scowl turned into a hateful glare. “Believe me when I promise you I have never thought of you that way! If anything, you have waged a war against me and won. ”

  Her expression softened infinitesimally. “What do you mean?” she squeaked.

  “Ever since you arrived at the Citadel Amelia, I have not been able to stop thinking about you. My mind is usually a constant whir of activity, but never before has it been because of a woman. And yet my thoughts are consumed with unanswered questions about you…. What are you doing? What are you thinking about? Who are you talking to? What your lips will feel like against mine? Which even my wildest imagination never did them justice by the way…. complete perfection. ” She blushed beneath me and my confidence grew exponentially. “Do you feel the same way about me? Am I even a blip on your radar? What will happen when I ask you to be my girlfriend? And ever since I found out Eden was pregnant, I can’t seem to stop myself from asking questions about what our children will look like. ”

  “Eden’s pregnant?” she gasped and then her face blushed to the most beautiful deep red. “Our children? Girlfriend?”

  She yelped her questions. I smiled
down at her, but inside I was a crumbling ball of anxiety.

  “Mmm,” I settled on paying more attention to the soft skin of her neck, rather than stay for a minute more under her scrutiny. “I want you to be my girlfriend, Amelia. I want you to consider what that means for you, what forever would look like with me. ”

  “Avalon,” she pushed me away so that I was forced to meet her eyes again. “Are you serious? You really like me?”

  “Amelia, I more than like you,” I admitted. “I will wait until you’re ready to hear exactly how I feel about you, but you need to know that I have only ever planned to make this decision once. Forever is a long, endless time. And I want you to be sure before you give me any kind of answer. ”

  Well, that’s what I said. I stayed diplomatic about the whole thing. But what I meant was that she needed to say yes so that I didn’t completely implode into tiny bits of nothing in a future that didn’t exist without her.

  She was silent for a while, but she held my eyes tangled in her serious gaze. She was searching for something, something like the truth and I wasn’t about to back down to her. She had the truth, I had just laid everything out to her and I would prove it no matter how long it took.

  “I have a crush on you,” she blurted in her adorable English accent and then covered her mouth quickly with her hand.

  “What?” I asked, completely confused.

  She laughed then, shaking beneath me in her fit of giggles. A tear ran from the corner of her eye as she dissolved into more laughter. I smiled down at her and caught the stray teardrop on my pointer finger.

  “What is so funny?” I demanded but I couldn’t help but laugh along with her.

  “I have a crush on you,” she gasped and then settled her laughter. “I’ve had a crush on you, Avalon for…. for forever. At Eden and Kiran’s wedding I fell head over heels for the new King. ”

  “Are you serious?” I demanded, my voice gruffer than I intended. But after all this confusion, after she made me chase her like a madman, she had a crush on me the whole time!

  “You were all recklessness and trouble and I was just so young back then,” she pouted, reaching her hands up to smooth the lines of my collar. “You didn’t even look twice at me. And here I’ve been pining after a man that didn’t even know I existed for years. ”

  “You’ve liked me this whole time?” I clarified incredulously.

  She nodded, biting her bottom lip again as if she were afraid I was mad at her.

  “Jericho? Titus?” I asked still grumpy with her for not falling immediately into my arms and declaring her undying love for me from day one.

  “Attempts at finding something else…. anything else to protect myself from you,” she admitted with a casual shrug of her shoulder.

  “What do you mean?” I demanded.

  “After Eden’s wedding I was crushed. I mean, as crushed as my young heart could imagine. I really thought you would notice me and fall as immediately in love with me as I had you. But you didn’t. You didn’t even spare two glances my way. So I decided to forget completely about you. You and your cocky attitude and devilishly handsome good looks. ”