It was a good decision, as the taste of him flooded her and her knees turned to liquid. He tasted like perfection.
He scooped her up without breaking the kiss for a moment. She broke away to protest, but he followed her mouth and as if he could predict what she was to say, he set her on the railing and pressed her back firmly to the stone wall.
She quickly forgot about reprimanding him. It wasn’t the only firm thing pressing into her.
She moaned, a hand fisting in his hair, and the other trailing down his chest. She pushed his shirt aside, fingers greedily seeking skin. His stomach flinched at her touch and a shiver ran up his body. One of desire and he groaned.
She wished she could eat the sound. She wished she could feel it as he made that sound between her legs.
Mercilessly she ripped the buttons of his shirt, determined to press herself against his firm chest. He must’ve had much the same idea, because her sweater shortly followed, only her thin buttoned blouse between them. Then, his hands went under, on her breast, slipping across her stomach to palm the brasserie she wore.
She groaned, nipples peeking, rubbing against his calluses and the lace. Tight and straining. She dipped her head back, skull hitting the wall as she gasped. His attention turned to her throat and his free hand went to the buttons of her own shirt, prepared to relieve her of another constraint, when through her haze she remembered.
“Roland,” she breathed, hating what she was going to say next, because she thought if she said it, it might end her entirely and the steadily rising throb between her legs was increasing in its demand for attention. She could feel parts of her swelling, begging to be touched, longing for his fingers to tweak and dip and his tongue, gods his tongue. She didn’t care what his tongue did at this point, so long as it was on her, in her, or...anything. She wasn’t picky.
“Stop.”
And as she knew he would, the honourable man with a hand on her breast froze.
She wanted to cry.
He lifted his head from her neck and took a step back, slipped his hand from beneath her shirt, still leaving one hand on her hip to keep her to the wall so she didn’t fall. The movement of it jostled her thighs enough so they rubbed just enough to make her bite her lip, pushing against the sensitive want soaking between her legs.
“I forgot,” he said lowly, “that you were going to go and meet your man.”
Tiana couldn’t help it, breathlessly, she laughed. “What? Oh, Roland, gods no.”
He looked at her, eyes still burning, the black of his expanded pupil eating away at the vibrant spring green of his iris.
Tiana swallowed thickly. “There isn’t anyone else. No one. Do you know how long I’ve been fantasizing about just this?”
Both his eyebrows rose and his eyes glittered. “Care to expand on the fantasies?”
Her thighs simply just clenched at the thought and she shuddered. “Maybe another time?” she said weakly.
He moved his hand as she slithered down, legs wobbly meeting the steps. He went to steady her but she waved him off. If he touched her again, she’d rip her own clothes off, damn her secrets to hell.
“Maybe I should use your cane, eh?” she said.
“That was the idea,” he said lowly.
Tiana found a wince and picked up her sweater.
Gods, the things she did for her lies…
When she finally got the courage to look at him again, he had still neglected to pick up his own clothing and had his arms firmly crossed. Which of course, only made his muscles bulged and those pecs wish to be licked.
Tiana couldn’t entirely pretend her gaze didn’t drop to another bulge he wasn’t in the slightest bit trying to hide.
Shit, had she swallowed her tongue?
She forced herself to look at his face, taking in the beautiful, rugged planes, and the dark points of his ears in his light hair.
She groaned internally. She groaned so loud she was surprised he couldn’t hear it.
He was waiting, she realized, to see if she would provide an explanation. Which, of course, if she didn’t give one and wanted to back to her rooms, he’s do allow without question.
The part of her which spent her nights lying to her family and sometimes to herself, wanted to do just that. It was the easy one, the slipping away.
Yet, here she was, excuses lined up on her tongue, and she didn’t want to use a single one.
Instead, she tried to the truth, which in some ways, made her feel better than she had in years. Of course, it was a truth only of herself.
She blew out a breath, blew out the lies with it. “I’m...a bit odd about being completely naked.”
Whatever he had been expecting, he hadn’t been expecting that. Though, to his credit, he ditched the surprise fast.
“I have some scars I’d rather not...have you see.” She laughed in a somewhat lame attempt to lighten the darkness clouding her face. “Have anyone see, as a matter of fact.” “Are you…” he seemed to be struggling to decide which avenue to go down with this. Anger or understanding. “Okay?”
She gave him a small smile. “It’s nothing dramatic like that, I had a great childhood, just, plenty of accidents.” “But no one hurt you?”
“Well they did, but not in the ways you’re thinking. I grew up in, let’s say an unsavory part of town. Hung out with the wrong kids, got into the wrong stuff, but my life changed when I discovered books. Now I’m here. End of a short and mediocre story.”
He was quiet for one long moment. She saw suspicions clustering in his head, questions alongside them. Which, of course, made sense as he was not only a prince, but apparently liked to dress up and go undercover into dangerous gangs for information. Which she admired, having tossed him out a window, but it wasn’t a good thing now. She was desperately hoping he might respect it enough not to ask. That he could see her for the part of her she was, the part she showed him, and trust her enough not to dig deeper into it.
She could understand if she didn’t; she was keeping an entire life from him, but, really, he’d have to get at the back of a long line if that were the case.
“I’d like you to tell me, one day,” he said finally, his eyes delving deep into her own. “When you can.”
“You think I ever will?”
His look softened and he pulled her to him, arms around her warm and so firm. She longed to simply rest her head on his chest, put her ear to the steady thunder of his pulse, and drift away knowing he would hold her and the world would still be okay when she woke up. “I figure you might. You’re one of the ballsiest people I’ve ever met. I can’t imagine there exists an obstacle you couldn’t overcome.” She stared at him.
“Besides,” he was smirking now. “I don’t know how long you can just stick to your fantasies.” She laughed. Damn him if he wasn’t right.
Chapter 9
Chapter Ten
Days later, Roland found he could walk without the damn cane. He sprang from bed as if he were fourteen years old and the first thing he wanted to do, the first person he wanted to tell...was nowhere in sight.
So he went to find her.
And he did. Sort of.
Firstly, Nik saw him before he could even leave the room and he’d been yanked right to the training ring as though he’d never left. He expected her to show up sometime that day, but she never did. He grew a titch worried whenever he glanced over his shoulder and she wasn’t there, chatting with Gerod or a book in her hand, her fist on her chin, and her hypnotic eyes in another world.
So in the afternoon when he tried to slip away, Alexys found him. Then, of course, Marius had to have his say. There were things he wanted to go over, gangsters he wanted to discuss, not to mention the fact there seemed to be quite a bit of activity within the Ork ports where there hadn’t been in years.
For starters, they were using them.
So finally, finally, as the afternoon bled into the first weaning hours of day, he packed the breakfast-lunch-now-dinner picnic ba
sket he’d asked to have prepared three different times, and went in search of his nurse.
He would have been worried, at first, after their encounter in the hallway two nights ago, but he’d seen her since, and while they hadn’t spoke about it, her smiles were the same. So was her snark.
He nudged open the library door, carefully letting it shush beside him. There was a woman at the front desk who looked up at him. Piles of hair had been carefully constructed into a braided crown to rival his brother’s gold one. She had rosy cheeks, and tilted eyes of bright amber.
She half got up from her desk, as if to come to his aid, her pen rolling on the open book spread before her.
He waved her off, and she slowly, suspiciously, reclaimed her seat.
“Is there anything I can help you with, highness?” she asked politely, her voice cool like a winter’s brook. But her bow-shaped mouth played with amusement. “Or perhaps, assist you in looking for someone?” “Someone,” he said gruffly, despising this woman for making him feel awkward and boyish and a bit stupid, despite the fact he was a damn prince and a grown man. “Tiana?” The woman tilted her chin down an aisle to her right. “She was meant to be cataloguing Old World Literature and selecting the works pertaining to the subject of Rebirth.” Interest glimmered across her pleasant expression. “A recent endeavour of the King’s, I’m told.” Roland froze. “Is he, uh, here?”
“Who, your highness?”
He cleared his throat, wishing he hadn’t asked. What was wrong with him? Had he dropped his sanity? “The king.”
“No,” she said slowly. “He merely sent word to the master this morning, he often does whenever he is particularly stunted on one of his pieces.”
“His pieces?”
She studied him for one, long, slightly unnerving moment. Then, turning her attention back to the book at her desk and picking up her pen once more, said simply, “She should be almost finished now if you’d like to steal her away to the stars.”
He opened his mouth and then closed it. “What is your name?” he asked.
“Serai,” she replied, glancing up once more, the corner of her mouth pressed as if to ask; anything else?
“Well, thank you,” said Roland, striding off the direction she’d pointed with her chin. Women, gods, they were so strange. So...difficult to read. Men, they were simple. He understood them. Women, they were mysterious and so...complicated. There was a power to them, that to men was just baffling.
Yes. That was it. Women were baffling.
Which was why he liked Tiana. She was anything but baffling. She was everything she said she was. Everything she said was a little piece of her. She held nothing back and he liked it. More than liked it.
He wasn’t sure what to call it yet, but, it was certainly more than like.
It was—
He halted, come to the end of the section of books and confronted by the woman herself, sleeping in a chair. Her mouth hung open ever so slightly, lips wetted, smushed into the heel of her palm. Auburn eyelashes brushed against slack cheeks, and coils of ruby were lit like fire by the falling sun. A fairy asleep beneath a window, curled around a tome and lightly snoring.
The closer Roland got, the easier it became to see the imperfections. Her nose was just a bit too long and there was a tiny scar right on the edge of her lip. But all those things, they were things he thought made her perfect. But the bruises, those stretched beneath her eyes like cavernous yawns…
“Are you just going to stare, or were you thinking of a fun way to wake me up?”
His lip curled and he crossed his arms as her feline gaze tracked up his legs, which did not quiver.
“My, my, my,” she said, voice husky. “Look how you’ve grown.”
He inclined his head. “I only have you to thank for that, my lady.”
“Your lady?” she repeated, lids heavy and heady over her eyes. “Well, you simply can’t say something like that and do nothing about it.” “It was why I brought the basket.” Her eyebrow arched and an arm dropped. She peered over her knees, which had been curled beneath her, and inspected the basket. Then looked up at him. “Are you going to try and stuff me in that? I’m going to tell you right now, I won’t fit.” “I had other plans for testing your flexibility, and that was not one of them.”
“I’d like to hear about these other plans,” she purred.
He leaned close and she mimicked the movement until he could see her chest, rising and falling in a way which speared him with pain in his groin.
“One of them,” he began, “starts with you, on your back, and me—”
“Yes?”
“Watching the stars and stuffing our faces with pies.”
She stared at him, eyes narrowed into midnight slits. “Did you say...pies? As in...plural?” she gasped, as if a thought struck her. “Roland, are you trying to seduce me?”
“Absolutely. Body and soul.”
Tiana grinned and damn if that smile could heal and those appled cheeks sustain life, he’d never have spent a day sick in his life.
“Do we have to wait that long?” she asked.
He tsked. “We can’t eat in the library.”
“Can’t we break the rules just this once—for pie?”
“No.”
“Roland—”
Roland stood up straight, disapproval radiating from him hotly. He was quivering, trying hard not to laugh. “Tiana, I am the captain of the city guard. I am a prince. I protect Adalin from wrongdoing citizens like the likes of you who think doing illegal things can be beneficial. But let me tell you, this pie will not be as good, will not be as savoured if we do not both know we are doing the right thing and eating it too.”
She sighed, blowing a stray curl out of her face. “I do have somewhere else we can go. Somewhere closer.” “And where is that, pray tell?”
“My room.” His smile was slow and suggestive. “That works too.”
And Roland had the pleasure of seeing her tip her head back and laugh, sunlight dancing on her skin like kisses, and he thought he might know just the word for what he felt for her.
Chapter 10
The moment Tiana closed the door behind her, and leaned against the oak of it, she knew precisely what she wanted.
Like a cat, she’d always loved to wake up in the sun. She loved it when it beat down upon her face; lavishing, warming, and loving her. It reminded her of her mother…whatever that meant.
It reminded her of curling up in some clearing, with the day bright above, and Killian at her side napping; a voice like smoke tangled in her hair, whispering tales and love, and magic.
And whenever she looked at Roland, it was like waking up in the sun.
It was listening to a voice while falling asleep.
And she wanted it fiercely. Around her, beside her; within and without.
Tiana had always known at her core she was greedy, though it wasn’t the normal sort of greed. She hungered. She saw and she wanted. It wasn’t a malicious lust, or even a selfish desire. It was a need, an endlessly burning fire, demanding more and more and it was curious..if not certainly hungry.
And it wanted the obscenely large man, awkward as a snow pile in midsummer, standing in the middle of her room clutching a picnic basket.
She’d seen Roland’s rooms. Both of them. The empty, lifeless, pretty chambers of a prince, and the cleanly made, homely private room hitched to the barracks.
For all his royal lineage, for all the good looks he happened to possess, he was hopeless. His face, every flicker, was an open book to her. Everything about him was...wholesome. Good. Purely good.
And she wanted to consume it. She wanted a piece for herself. She wanted...for the first time ever, for it to be easier.
And gods, how badly she wanted to sleep.
Yet, here was this man, turning to her now, lips posed in question, and she was helpless.
“So what kind of pies have you, my prince?”
“Well, there's apple and choco
late walnu—”
She attacked him with a ferocity which startled even herself. The lovely picnic he’d packed for her went sprawling. Pies included in the carnage.
His hands went to her waist, which worked, because she sank into that kiss, she tasted him on her tongue and it was good. So good, to cling. To be held. Supported. Felt. She devoured him, pressing herself, her heat, her want, against him, slick as it was between her thighs. Pounding ran through her head, through the strings of her body, taut like they were waiting, begging to be plucked.
Planting two hands on his chest, she pushed him off and broke the kiss. He fell to the bed, eyes wide and startled.
Then she put her fingers on the buttons of her skirt, and his attention was caught.
With a teasing grin, she pushed it off, undergarments and all, and climbed into his lap.
He hardly needed more prompting than that.
Lips went to her neck, fingers pressing into skin; kneading, tasting, slipping under her shirt; never making a single move to relieve her of it. He twisted her so her back met the soft mattress. His shirt left his body, then his pants. And every nerve ending within every fathomable part of her body sprang to life.
He sought her out like a moth to flame and greedily she took him into her embrace. She welcomed him with the curvatures of her body, fitting him into hills of hips and valleys of the beating domes of her chest. She asked him to taste the sweat at the bend of her neck and she wrapped a leg around his waist and brought the part of her, both burning and soaking, to him in all his glory. He slid deep, making her groan in relief.
Everything felt as if it were right and yet, everything was coming apart. Her seams were being stripped, sawed, and he fed into the beat growing between her thighs. Tangles of locks, silky smooth and brightest white, glowed between her fingertips, between her lashes, as she tipped her head back, mouth open as how could he slide so deep, how could he fill it all into the gaping hole within her body and soul. It felt as if he were stroking his way to the moon. To the quiet place only she knew.
Deception: Rogues of the Red League, Book 1 Page 8