by Dani Collins
His caress was so delicious, she found herself sucking the skin of his neck against her teeth before she realized what she was doing and pulled back.
“Mark me, süsse.” He gentled his touch and circled his thumb around her turgid, stimulated nipple, soothing. “Don’t be scared. I won’t hurt you. But I do want this.” His arms hardened as he lifted her.
Her shoulders and chest came out of the water. As the cold hit her and tightened her nipples even more, he closed his mouth over one. The sudden shifts in temperature and his hard pull sent a jolt of electricity through her. She squeaked and clenched her hand in his hair.
He made a noise of sympathy and drew back to blow and lick circles around her nipple, making her sob under a fresh onslaught of blinding sensation.
She didn’t know what to do. Wires of tension pulled in her abdomen and lower. It was more than she could take, but she was greedy, too. She folded her arms around the back of his head and he captured her nipple again, sucking more gently this time, while she moaned in abject pleasure, head falling back so her hair was in the water.
When he finally let her sink back down into his lap, she was trembling and panting. He was so hard against her hip, she thought he must be in pain. Perhaps he was. He was breathing in deliberately measured breaths, and his thighs opened wider to cradle her more deeply against him.
“Do you want me to...” She didn’t know what to do. What to offer. But she knew she was dying to touch him.
“I want you to let me do this.” His hand slid to catch against the elastic of her underpants. He paused, the fabric pulled far enough from her hip the first ripple of hot water began to caress her bare skin.
Breathless with anticipation, she nodded.
He drew her panties down. The small shift bounced her naked backside against his thighs. Her stomach wobbled at the light abrasion of his leg hair against the sensitive cheeks of her bottom. He pulled the cotton off her ankles and flicked it over his shoulder, joining her bra somewhere in the snow.
“And how does this feel, süsse?” His fingertips trailed across her outer thigh to her hip while she absorbed the eddies of hot water moving freely against her most intimate places.
She could hardly breathe. She thought about his touch trailing into those places and shifted restlessly, her nose finding its way into the wet whiskers under his jaw.
“I don’t know what to do,” she confessed with embarrassment. “I’ve never touched a man.”
“Then by all means, find out what you’ve been missing.” His teeth flashed in a brief smile, but he chucked her chin. “And come here. I want to kiss you again.”
She pressed her mouth to his, joyously returning to this wondrous place where she could flagrantly gorge herself on the taste and feel of his lips and tongue and the beard that was rough and silky and utterly compelling.
Shyly, one arm firmly encircling his neck, she let her other hand drift to caress across his shoulder. Those tendons were tight and straining, but not in the way they’d been this afternoon. His pectoral muscles were taut, too, flexing beneath her touch as she dipped her hand below the surface.
Was that his nipple? She scraped her thumb across it, and he made a low sound of pleasure in his throat, one she couldn’t help teasing out of him a second time before she shifted to make space for her hand to trail between them, down to the fierce shape pressing so insistently against her hip.
As she closed her fist on the girth of him, his fingers bit into her waist where he anchored her on his thighs. His teeth took hold of her bottom lip, and she felt the rumble of his pleasured groan vibrate in his chest.
How utterly fascinating. She moved her hand, learning the shape of him, discovering what made him hiss or release sounds of delicate agony.
“Am I hurting you?” she broke their kiss to ask.
“No.” He stole brief, hungry kisses. “Squeeze tighter.”
She looked down at where the dark water obscured her view of him. “I feel cheated.”
“So do I.” He nuzzled under her chin. Beneath the water, he skimmed his hand along the back of her thigh, but stopped where her leg sat pressed to the top of his.
She tucked her chin and kissed him, squeezed him more boldly and allowed her legs to relax.
His flesh pulsed in her fist and he tilted her, rolling her into a more aggressive kiss that flipped her heart on its edge. Her inner muscles clenched in anticipation, but his fingertips only teased behind her thighs, the barest touch skimming lightly across the fine hairs that protected her folds.
She sobbed with denial. Opened her legs more. Tried to tell him wordlessly what she wanted. He made a low sound of satisfaction and his touch moved to the front of her thighs, stroked inward and upward, until she was the one biting his lip, aching with expectancy.
When his hand finally, firmly covered her, her stomach fluttered and she groaned into his mouth. He seemed to brand her with his intimate touch, claiming her so thoroughly, she had to break their kiss and exchange breathless pants with him.
“If we do this right, we’ll do it together,” he said in a voice like smoke and velvet. “Yes?”
“Yes,” she breathed. Then opened her mouth in a silent scream because he lifted all but one finger from her and gently worked his wicked touch against her.
“Keep stroking me, süsse,” he urged in a whisper. “I like it. It feels like this.” He found the most sensitive place on her body and pressed without mercy, two fingertips now slowly circling to draw her into a place of mindless pleasure.
She shook, groaning with abandon into his naked shoulder, not realizing she had tightened her hold on him until he gave an abbreviated thrust into her grip and made a ragged noise against her ear.
“Like that, yes.” His breath hissed with concentrated pleasure. “We’re going to kill each other.” He rocked his touch, unhurried as he stoked the fire within her. “I couldn’t be happier than to die right here, tonight. Like this.”
It was the most singular experience of her life, to communicate completely with touch. To caress him and sense his pleasure as acutely as she experienced her own.
He became her entire world. Nothing mattered in these concentrated seconds except his touch passing across her bundle of nerves, his pulse against her palm, the wall of his iron-hard body shifting with light friction against her skin.
Tension coiled in her abdomen. Through her whole body. She licked his skin and kissed him with abandon, trying to make him understand how exquisite he was making her feel. How he was torturing her beyond what she thought she could stand, yet she never wanted him to stop.
In a subtle move, he hitched her a fraction higher and his touch probed. Her inner muscles tightened at the intrusion of his finger. She shivered despite being so hot she thought she would incinerate. He bit tenderly at her lips with his own, teasing kisses of reassurance as the pressure of his palm rocked where she needed it most.
She saw stars. Gripped him tightly in her fist and matched the rhythm of his thrusts with a lift of her hips against his firm hand. The crisis rose. She tasted copper and thought she might have bitten his lip. She wasn’t sure, but he didn’t complain. He only kept up the wild caresses that carried them both over a waterfall so they plunged freely off a cliff into the mist.
CHAPTER FOUR
RHYS VAGUELY WONDERED if there was an aphrodisiac in these waters, because he had never climaxed so hard in his life. Despite aching from the force of it, he wanted nothing but to pull Sopi astride him and sink into the satin depths he’d claimed with his touch.
He gently cradled her trembling body against his unsteady heart, trying to find his breath. Trying to find a shred of sense, because all-night lovemaking had a place—and it wasn’t a primordial pond in the frozen wilderness.
With a virgin disguised as a woodland nymph.
He didn’t disbelieve her about her inexperience,
but he was incredulous that such a passionate woman hadn’t found someone to share her sensuality with.
No one has ever made me feel like this.
Him, either, and that shook him. He wasn’t entitled to this sort of high. His deepest instincts began to war, one side warning him that he couldn’t have this. The other, greedier side wanted to mate and mate some more. Grind himself against her until they were nothing but dust.
She posed a very serious danger, this curious, unassuming goddess of a woman.
He rose abruptly, making her gasp at the shock of cold air on her wet skin.
He twisted to ease her back under the warmth of the water, seating her on the flat ledge he’d vacated.
She blinked in surprise, mouth pouted and shiny from their endless kisses, all but her collarbone hidden from his insatiable gaze.
“I’ll fetch you a towel and a robe.” He waded out of the water, welcoming the bracing slap of winter frost that cleared his head so he could think.
“You don’t have to,” she said in a small voice behind him.
“I want to,” he insisted, pushing his wet arms into his robe and belting it tightly. “Two minutes.”
* * *
Sopi was reeling from what she’d done with the prince. Her whole body tingled with lassitude, the kind that made her want to groan in luxury at how deliciously sated she felt. She couldn’t think of any other experience that had left her so dreamily satisfied.
His abrupt departure caused her a pinch of distress, though. The longer she sat here, the more she began to feel self-conscious about her lack of inhibition. About waiting here like a harem girl for the sheik to return.
When she heard his footsteps crunching through the trees, she sat a little straighter, mouth trembling into a shy smile of greeting.
It wasn’t him. It was one of his bodyguards. The clean towel and robe he carried glowed like an armload of snow as he approached.
Throat locked, eyes burning in mounting horror, Sopi watched him look indecisively between the soggy pants and shirt she’d left atop her shoes and the snow-covered bench nearby.
“The prince offers his regrets that he couldn’t bring these himself. He said he will speak to you in the morning. Um... Here?” He shook out the items and hung them on the fence, then stepped through the gate and stood with his back to her.
“What are you doing?” she asked, appalled when he stayed there.
“I’m to escort you safely indoors.”
Her embarrassment turned to outrage. “I’m fine. Go.”
“With respect, I have my orders. Take your time.”
She stewed with impotent fury as she realized her choices were to argue while she boiled or end this as quickly as possible. Why was the practical choice always to give in?
And why hadn’t Rhys come back himself? Had she turned him off? Had he finished with her already? Was he mad that she hadn’t put out with actual sex?
Growing more and more horrified by what she’d done, she waded out and shook the robe open, struggling into it without bothering to dry herself. When she scooped up her clothes, she glanced at the thick snow on the far side of the pool and decided to find her underwear in the morning, when it was light.
Moments later, she stomped through the trees toward her cabin, surprising the bodyguard into saying, “Ma’am?” He hurried to follow her new direction.
She ignored him, aware of him trailing her, but she didn’t even look at him as she got to her door, unlocked it, then closed it in his face, locking it again from the inside.
With hot, dry eyes and wet, tangled hair, she fell into bed.
* * *
Rhys had returned to the deserted spa in time to hear Nanette trying to pull rank on his bodyguard.
“I’m the owner. I can go anywhere I want,” she insisted.
“Your mother claims to own it,” Rhys had said flatly, moving forward to prevent her from realizing he was coming from the hallway to the building’s exit, not the men’s room.
Nanette faltered, frosty expression morphed into welcome.
“That’s what I mean, of course. My mother is the owner. Your Highness,” she added with a sweet smile especially for him. “When I saw your man standing guard, I wanted to be sure you had everything you need.”
“Everything but privacy.”
Her smile stiffened, and she looked past him. He waited for her gaze to come back and held it with his most unapologetically imperious glare.
She sniffed and said, “I’ll leave you to it, then.”
“Do.” He waited until she was out of earshot before he muttered his instructions to his bodyguard to take a robe and towels to Sopi, aware Nanette would stake out his floor to see whom he brought back to his room.
Rhys rarely took action without considering the consequences. If he did, he would currently be wondering if a deflowered virgin was incubating a royal baby. He’d had the presence of mind to stay this side of sane with Sopi, thankfully, but he wouldn’t expose her as his lover to the likes of Nanette until such time as he’d weighed the ramifications for both of them. What little she’d told him about her relationship with Maude meant there could be consequences for her.
She had also left him with the impression that she was the rightful owner of this property, if not legally, at least morally. Her father had bought it for her mother, who had lovingly restored it, but Maude was the one trying to unload it in a private sale under the radar.
That had his mind churning as he took the elevator back to his floor, passing Nanette in a chair in an alcove, hair twisted around one finger, an open book in her lap.
“Good night,” she said as he passed, shoe dangling from her toe.
He nodded curtly, entered his room and went directly to the window on the north wall. He thought he might have seen a flash of movement in the trees but wasn’t sure.
Annoyed, he went back to the folio Maude had given him.
Lawyers cost money, Sopi had said.
They did but, as it happened, he had an abundance of both.
* * *
Sopi’s morning went from bad to worse very quickly.
She woke with the worst type of hangover—the sober kind that piled nausea on remorse with none of the blurry celebration of alcohol to dampen her memory or give her an excuse for behaving so wantonly. She didn’t even regret the sex part. She had wanted that, but she felt very much like she’d fallen for a line from a playboy who set up conquests like bottles on a log, simply so he could shoot them down.
At least no one would know, she told herself. Then her walk of shame past the pump house turned up fruitless. One of the hotel’s maintenance men must have checked the gate and gathered her bra and underwear. She could only pray her things would be thrown away rather than turned in to Lost and Found.
By the time she was heading into the back door of the hotel and passing Maude’s office, her phone was exploding with the usual work-related texts. Sopi had her head down, reading complaints about late deliveries and equipment needing repair, and didn’t see Maude waiting for her until her stepmother’s haranguing voice said, “Sopi.”
Hiding her wince, Sopi detoured into Maude’s office. “Good morning.”
“Two of Fernanda’s friends are arriving in Jasper in an hour. They don’t want to wait for the shuttle. Can you collect them?”
“Fernanda can’t do it?” Wasn’t that the obvious solution?
“She’s tied up.”
Doing what? Sopi didn’t ask. She was too relieved to have an excuse to disappear for three hours. Plus, the drive was always pretty. Minutes later, she was admiring the golden gleam of snow off the craggy peaks above her and caught the stub tail of a lynx as it slunk into the trees.
Maude’s information on the women’s flight was completely wrong, of course. Sopi wound up with time to kill, so she engaged in retail
therapy while she was in the bigger center. Then she sat in the airport addressing as many texts and emails as she could.
When the chartered flight finally arrived, there were a dozen women, too many for Sopi’s SUV, and they’d already arranged for a private shuttle.
Annoyed, but completely unsurprised—this was classic Fernanda—Sopi drove home alone.
* * *
Rhys had grown up on the sort of palace intrigue that had resulted in the murder of his parents. The infantile game Maude was playing, trying to sell this property without telling the person it would affect most gravely, was nothing more than a mosquito-like annoyance to him.
Things took a turn into adult parlor games when Rhys decided to play along while he turned the tables. He kept hearing Sopi ask, How long does it last? What happens when it’s over?
They had barely even started and couldn’t really continue, not properly. That infuriated him, but after their intimacy last night, he couldn’t ignore the way Maude was going behind Sopi’s back. He was convinced Maude would pursue the sale with someone else if he declined, so he decided to go through with it. He had Gerard call Maude first thing and tell her to expect the prince’s counteroffer later today.
Rhys then sent his bodyguard to fetch Sopi. He wanted to come clean about his purchase and include her in the negotiations. Maybe they could work out some other arrangement while they were at it. He knew it was next to impossible, though, and that put him on edge.
When his bodyguard returned with Cassiopeia’s neatly bagged delicates and the news that she had driven away in a company vehicle, he nearly snapped.
This was the only time they had!
He was in a brooding, foul mood when Gerard knocked and entered carrying his trusty tablet. “I relayed the stepdaughter’s details to the palace for the due-diligence investigation, sir. You’ll want to see this. The palace investigators dug fairly deeply into the Brodeur background—”