The Prince's Runaway Lover (Men of the Zodiac)

by Robin Covington

  “Maybe you’re the only one who has ever had the right to be jealous. The only one.”

  His delivery was as soft as his kiss and it took her a moment to process the words, the meaning. The expanding rush of emotion in the vicinity of her heart scared her and set off a series of panic explosions that gave her the strength to push him away. Her words, harsh and brittle to her own ears destroyed the fragile threads of impossible intimacy they were attempting to spin.

  “No. No.” She panted out her words in a flurry of shallow breaths. “I know who you are with women. You’re the playboy prince. You fuck them and leave them and…oh hell…is there a continent where you haven’t left a trail of women behind? I’ve told you I’m leaving and this can never be anything so I won’t let myself do this because I don’t need a reason to regret leaving. I really don’t.”

  His face went hard and even though anger was the predominant emotion, she flinched from the flare of hurt that turned his eyes into an icy blue.

  “Fine. I won’t give you a reason.”

  Isabel watched as he turned and left the cottage, frozen in place until the slamming door prodded her into movement. She made it to the couch before her legs gave out and she sank down to the cushions and willed herself not to cry or worse…to follow him.

  Chapter Eleven

  What the hell did he think he was doing?

  Nick had spanned the steps in one leap and stomped off toward the palace, anger acting as the fuel necessary to put as much distance between himself and Isabel that he could. He didn’t fucking need or have time for the trouble this woman could bring to his life. She kept telling him that the idea of them was a bad one and maybe it was time for him to listen. Isabel Reynolds didn’t want him and he needed to read the memo even if he wished it said something entirely different. But that wasn’t true.

  She’d said that getting involved with him would be a reason to regret leaving. She wouldn’t let herself do this because it would make moving on difficult. She had never said that she didn’t want him, just that she didn’t want to want him.

  Nick stopped, swaying on his feet as his chest tightened with the realization of just how badly he wanted this to be true, how much he wanted a chance with Isabel. For years he’d gone from woman to woman, taking them because they were available and willing and he’d never had to work for it. Flash a little charm, flirt through a couple of drinkseasy and in. If they’d proven challenging he’d moved on because there was always another waiting in the wings.

  He could do that now. Lady Charlotte and at least half a dozen women his mother had thrown in his direction over the past few months would be here within hours of his making a phone call. But they didn’t want him. They wanted Crown Prince Nicholas. He wanted the woman who wanted Nicky. He wanted Isabel.

  He turned on his heel, quickly crossing the ground he’d covered. He mounted the steps, and then pounded on the door with force.

  “Isabel.”

  No answer came from inside and he tried the handle, hoping she’d left it unlocked once again. It was open and he pushed the door open, stepping inside and finding her hunched over on the couch, head in her hands. She looked up quickly, eyes dry but expression unhappy. His frustration kicked in again at the stubborn tilt of her chin as he shut the door behind him.

  The room was small and it took him three long strides to reach where she sat, her eyes growing wider as he stomped across her floor. She rose to her feet, unsteady but defiant in her stance, and it only made him want her more.

  “You can rail against me, beat against me, take anything out on me, but I’m not leaving or letting you push me away. I have conquered goddamn mountains to get what I wanted, fought oceans to win a prize far less precious than your kiss so I’m not giving up on you without a fight. Unless you tell me that you do not want me like I want you…” Nick reached out and pulled her body close, pressing his hard cock against her and claiming her moan of arousal as his prize. “Unless you tell me that you don’t need me inside you so deep that every excuse is rubbed away by the friction of our bodies, I’m staying.”

  Isabel sagged against him but her hands traced a path up his chest and her fingers dug into the soft fabric of his shirt, bunching it in her hands in her attempt to drag him closer. He shifted his hand to cup her ass, lifting her until she could wrap her legs around his waist and putting her mouth within tantalizing kissing distance. Her eyes were almost black with her desire, pupils blown and matching the dark need burning inside him.

  “Isabel, if you don’t say no, I’m going to strip you down, taste you, fuck you and watch as you come all over me. And then I’m going to flip you over and do it all over again until we can’t move.” He took her mouth in a bruising kiss that was a clash of teeth and possessive and hot intrusions of tongue. Tender would happen later when he wasn’t desperate to claim, when he wasn’t so afraid that she would live up to her threat and leave. “If you don’t want it, say no.”

  He pulled back far enough to see her eyes, still so close that her tongue brushed against his lower lip when she licked her own mouth. He groaned and her grip on the shirt tightened, the thin fabric not much of a buffer from the sting of her nails scraping against his flesh. Nick held his breath.

  “Yes.” Her voice was barely above a whisper and Isabel’s tongue sneaked out to wet her bottom lip once more before she repeated her answer in a voice aching with desperate passion. “Yes. I want you, Nicky.”

  Her words lit him up like a match thrown on a gasoline pump and he threw up a last frantic prayer that he didn’t hurt her. Nick lunged for her mouth but there wasn’t a need because Isabel met him more than halfway and the thought crossed his mind that they would both be bruised and swollen tomorrow. Marked. Claimed.

  His dick liked the thought of that and throbbed in his jeans, pressing hard against the zipper as if it was trying to get to her on its own. He ignored the painful ache of his arousal and drowned in the wet heat of her mouth. She was an aggressive kisser, taking her turns to taste him, to claim him, and he enjoyed the sensation of a lover as hungry for him as he was for her.

  Isabel climbed up his body, using her hand for leverage on his shoulders and he fought to keep his legs under him when the movement brought the hot juncture of her thighs fully against his erection. She ground her pelvis up and down, frantically seeking pleasure-giving friction. If she kept it up he’d come in his pants like a horny teenager when all he wanted was to lose his mind while buried in her heat.

  Pulling himself out of the kiss, Nick reached around his neck with one hand to loosen her grip on him as he leaned forward and dropped her on the couch in front of him. Isabel landed with a bounce that had her breasts bouncing and disclosing that she wore no bra underneath her dress. Her dress was pooled around the top of her thighs and he saw the tantalizing view of a neatly trimmed patch of hair over her sex. Isabel wore absolutely nothing underneath the yellow cotton sundress and he was drunk on the sight of her.

  “Fuck, but you’re beautiful,” he breathed out between teeth clenched with the effort not to drop on top of her and go at her like a rutting beast.

  Nick reached over his head with one hand and pulled his shirt over his head, tossing it to the side before bending down to unfasten his boots and then kicking them to the side along with his socks. Isabel tracked his every move, her eyes not missing a single movement as it took three tries to unbutton his jeans and slide them down his legs and off his body. He straightened and stopped as she gasped and stared, leaning forward slightly as if to get a better look. Her eyes stopped on his cock and the smile twisting her lips got him harder than a spike. She liked what she saw.

  “I knew about the tattoos,” she whispered, the hint of Hispanic flavor normally in her speech deepening to a full-bodied burr of tones dipped in tequila. “But I didn’t know about the piercing.”

  For the briefest second her hand reached out as if to touch him, but at the last second she pulled it back and let it drift across her collarbone and
down in the valley of her full breasts. Nick’s knees almost gave out as he watched her tug down one of the flimsy straps of her dress to expose a dark rose nipple and then leisurely stroke with the backs of her fingers.

  “I can’t wait to feel it against my tongue, inside me,” she said as she continued to tease him and her own flesh.

  “You’ll have to wait a little while longer,” Nick said as he palmed his erection, tugging lightly at the titanium ring piercing at the tip. He dropped to his knees in front of the woman who was driving him wild with her sensual surrender to the need living and breathing between them. “I want to taste you first.”

  He released himself and grabbed her thighs, pulling her to the edge of the couch, and spreading her wider with the breadth of his shoulders. Nick locked eyes with Isabel, soaking in the tousled curls tumbling around her shoulders, the slow caress of her own touch against the puckered flesh of her nipple, the teasing hint of a smile on her lips.

  The first glancing touch of his fingertips against her sex had her eyelids fluttering as she caught her bottom lip between her teeth on a sigh. The second pass against her clit had her throwing her head back, exposing her throat to him as her moan washed over his skin. He waited until she returned her gaze to his before he lowered his head and licked her, letting her taste explode across his tongue. His mouth watered and her hips thrusting upward and her thighs clamped against his biceps was all the invitation he needed to dive in and take his fill.

  He took his time, in spite of the voice in his head urging him to take her now and find his own release. Isabel squirmed under his kisses, pressed into the deep thrusts of his tongue, moaned and cursed at the long, suckling strokes that ended circling her clit. She got wetter and wetter, her sounds louder and lapsing into guttural Spanish as he concentrated on the spots that made her legs shake with pleasure. When her body shifted under him, her hands went to the back of his head, keeping him in just the right spot until she finally let go, her shout of his name loud in the stillness of her cottage.

  Chapter Twelve

  Nicky’s mouth was the best kind of sin.

  He brought her down slowly, continuing the caress of her body with his mouth and tongue and she savored every moment as she regained control of her body. Isabel opened her eyes and watched him as he kissed along her thighs and circled her belly button with the tip of his tongue, pushing her dress up as he went and exposing more of her flesh for him to look at.

  “You’re gorgeous,” she murmured, weaving her fingers in the silky blond strands of his hair, tugging lightly to get him to look at her. Nicky was all hard angles and granite, his lips swollen and wet with her own arousal. “Beautiful.”

  “No, that’s you,” he said as he crawled up her body, pressing kisses against her skin as he raised the dress higher and higher. Sparks of electric pleasure caught fire in her blood when he sucked a nipple into his mouth. She could not look away, the sight of him hungry for any taste of her exciting and intoxicating. Nicky’s enjoyment of her body made her feel powerful, strong. It was something she could get used to if she had that kind of time but she didn’t and that wasn’t what she wanted to think about right now. “Kiss me.”

  Nick released her flesh with a swirl of his tongue and leaned up to capture her lips in a kiss that was achingly tender and ravenous at the same time. Isabel wove her fingers in his hair, wrapping the strands of gold around the digits, anchoring her to this time and place with this man. This memory would be something she took with her, a spark of bright joy that would light up nights in the dark, alone.

  Needing to feel every inch of her body against his own, she released his mouth and snagged the hem of her dress and pulled it up and off her body, tossing it on the floor with his heap of clothing. Nicky paused, sitting back on his haunches to get his fill in a long, lingering pass of molten focus. She had no urge to cover herself, spread out and open to his eyes, his fingers, his cock. She’d spent years hiding, praying to remain invisible, and now she soaked in his attention, daring him to look away.

  “I have never—” Nicky swallowed hard, his chest heaving with every breath, hands clenched tightly on his thighs as if he was afraid to touch her. “I have never seen anything so fucking hot. Did you dig around in my brain and pick out my dirtiest fantasies?”

  She laughed softly, reaching out a hand and tracing the tattoo spanning his bicep and shoulder with the tips of her fingers. “A woman naked on a couch does it for you? That’s not very original.”

  He tilted up the left side of his sensual mouth, eyes flashing with a fire that made her shiver. “No. A woman begging me to fuck her with her spread-eagled legs and tight nipples, that does it for me. The fact that it’s you takes my dirty mind to a whole other level of debauched.”

  “So, if I told you that I want to taste you? What level would that put you on?”

  “I’m pretty sure if you put your mouth on me, I’ll self combust.”

  “I’m willing to risk it,” she said and motioned for him to stand and straddle her legs. He towered over her in this position, the vast difference in their heights exaggerated by her seated position, but she didn’t feel like she was the one in the vulnerable position. His full-body shiver when she took the silver metal ring between two fingers and tugged proved that she was the one in charge. “Does that feel good? When I do that?”

  “Fuck yeah,” he said, his muscles taut with his effort. He smelled of heat and salt and sweat, and the singular dark, musky fragrance that belonged only to him. Nicky reached out and grabbed his dick, offering it to her like a present. “Do what you want. You can’t hurt me unless you stop.”

  Isabel took him at his word, leaning forward and grasping the ring between her teeth. The metal was cold, but quickly warmed with the heat from her breath. She tugged on it, her pulse quickening, thighs clenching at the gasp of pleasure he let loose as she did it again. His hips undulated forward and the invitation was too good to pass up. Isabel opened her lips and slid him in, loving the heft of him on her tongue. His taste was intoxicating, seductive, and bloomed in her mouth as she caressed, sucked, and teased him.

  Nicky grunted and gasped, his fingers digging into her hair, his pulling leaving a shock of tingling pleasure on her scalp. He grew harder, skin tighter, the pulse point in his groin increasing its tattoo as she enjoyed sucking him off. Too soon he pulled away, his expression half pain and half feral desire as he looked down at her. He traced a thumb along her lower lip, pushing in it slightly.

  “We can come this way if you want. I could spend hours with my face between your legs but I would kill to be inside you right now. It’s up to you.”

  Her body sent up a silent hell yeah, everything inside her going loose and tight at the same time. Nothing had ever sounded so good before. Only one thing stood between her and her body’s desire.

  “I don’t have anything. I didn’t plan on this happening.” She hadn’t planned on this ever happening again, period.

  “I have what we need.” He leaned over and snagged his jeans, answering the question in her raised eyebrow. “I kept a condom on me since that first night I came here to meet you. I knew I wanted you then.”

  “And you always get what you want,” she said as he ripped open the wrapper and slid the rubber over his erection.

  “Not always.” His grin was sly. “But I always go after what I want.”

  “And you want me.” It was not a question.

  “And you want me.”

  Nicky lowered himself to his knees in front of her, reaching out to snag her legs and drag her to edge of the couch. Isabel spread herself wide, offering up her body to him with no shame, no games. This was what she wanted right now and tomorrow could go to hell.

  She almost couldn’t breathe she was shivering so hard with her desire. Nicky leaned in and pressed his cock against her flesh and she cried out at the contact; it was electric. He took himself in his hand and stroked his tip against her folds, caressing and teasing her until she had to bite her lip
to stifle the eager, desperate sounds erupting from her throat.

  Nicky pressed in deeper, bearing down and into her and letting gravity take over. She dug her nails into his shoulders, not to get him to stop but to have somewhere to put the exquisite sensations crawling around her skin. She yanked him forward to claim his mouth in a kiss and the action sank him in all the way and the intended joining of lips and tongues morphed into groans and gasps.

  Isabel lifted her hips and Nicky began the slow glide in and out of her body. They both looked down at the same time, the angle giving them the perfect view of his enter and retreat. He was thick, hard, and her body soft and welcoming as his hips rocked against her. Isabel wanted to look away, the wild energy arcing between them and the vision of their joining was going to make her come too fast. But she was trapped, captured by the erotic sight. Only his demand could make her break the spell.

  “Look at me, Isabel,” he said, panting against her cheek, and she did.

  The lock of their gazes was the final spark that set them both in motion. She wrapped her legs around his waist, hooking her ankles together behind his back, clenching her core around his hard cock.

  Nicky dug his arms under her body, gathering her close beneath his weight as he slammed over and over into her body. Deep animal groans from his throat punctuated each thrust of his body and she arched and strained to drag more of them out of her lover. They shifted to the side, until she was lying on her back on the couch and he loomed over her, riding her with a rhythm calculated to get them both off.

  When it hit, she screamed his name and didn’t even care if the royal guards came running to protect their monarch. Nicky continued to thrust into her, drawing her orgasm out and out and out until he also found his release. He collapsed against her, his complaints that he was crushing her ending when he rolled her to her side and he slid up behind her.