A Christmas Vow of Seduction Read online

  And she wouldn’t have been able to speak right now anyway.

  He withdrew his finger, gripping her hips tight and positioning her over his arousal. “Now, Princess,” he said, his teeth clenched tightly together.

  She lowered herself slowly onto him, relishing the feel of him filling her inch by beautiful inch. And once she was seated fully onto him, she simply stopped, relishing the feel. Relishing the sensation of being connected to another person. As close as they could be.

  She took a deep breath, and opened her eyes, meeting his. Oh, she wasn’t just connected to anyone. She was connected to Andres. Her throat felt swollen, tight. And everything inside her felt right.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt as though she was at home. There had been the palace in Tirimia, but she couldn’t even think of it without feeling fear. Grief. Sadness. And the camp, with the clan, it had never been home. They had never been family. Protectors. Valued. But it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t this.

  And it wasn’t Petras, or the palace here, and it certainly wasn’t this penthouse with the Peeping Tom floors.

  It was him. Andres. Home was the place you always wanted to return to. He was where she wanted to return to. Always. No matter where he was, whether it was in a castle or a hovel, then it would be home.

  “I... Oh, Andres.”

  She couldn’t say anything more. Couldn’t get out the words that were swirling around inside her head. It was for the best. She was sure of that. She doubted it even made sense at the moment. She couldn’t even make sense of the things rioting around inside her.

  He held her tightly, guiding her movements with his hands. She followed for a while, before establishing her own rhythm, rolling her hips forward as she raised herself up slightly, teasing them both by going slow. It was torture for her. She wanted nothing more than to close her eyes and ride him hard and fast until they both found release. But she didn’t want it to end.

  She so didn’t want it to end.

  She rocked back and forth, gratified when a tortured sounding moan escaped his lips, when his hands tightened on her hips, his fingertips digging into her flesh, hard enough that she imagined it might leave a mark. She hoped it did. She hoped that she wore evidence of this claiming when it was finished. That the stubble from his five-o’clock shadow left her skin red, that she would be able to see the impressions of his hands where he had held her tight.

  She rocked against him again, and this time he growled. Feral, uncontrolled. As though she had brought him down to her level. She was always doing that. In the hall, in public at the palace, here in this place. But she wasn’t sorry.

  She liked him like this. Uncontrolled, needing her. Wanting her as she wanted him.

  No walls between them. Nothing separating them.

  She felt at home. Finally.

  He held more tightly on to her, and suddenly, she was being propelled backward. He lowered her slowly to the floor, settling between her thighs and thrusting into her hard and deep. She felt tied to the spot, trapped beneath his strength and weight. And she loved it.

  His dark eyes bored into hers, and she was certain he could see all her secrets. See down deep. She wanted him to. She wanted him to untangle all the frightening, intense emotions that were brewing inside her, because she wasn’t certain if she could. She had no experience with this. Perhaps he did. He’d had lovers. Perhaps this was normal.

  No.

  Her heart rejected that thought. Immediately. Violently.

  This wasn’t like his other times. She was certain of that. Because he had said he felt nothing with Francesca. Because he was with so many different women, so often. There was no way it could be this feeling. This, all the time and with different people, would surely consume a person. Which would surely eat him alive from the inside out.

  It was only him, and only her, and still it was going to devour her.

  He held tightly to her hips as he drove deep. The tile was cold, hard beneath the bare skin of her back, but she didn’t care. She was with Andres, and so she felt perfect. Even though her skin felt too tight for her body, even though all the things in her chest felt too large to be contained. Somehow there was all of that, and still she was perfect.

  Everything with him was like that. Contradicting each other, complementing each other, being too much, not enough and yet just right.

  The pleasure that was blooming in her stomach grew, expanded. She couldn’t breathe, could scarcely handle the sensation that was spreading through her veins, bleeding outward, crackling over her skin like an electric current.

  Andres lowered his head, his hold on her tightening as he growled, pushing inside her one last time as he found his release. That added pressure, the intensity of his own pleasure, heightened her own and she found herself letting go. Color flashing, exploding behind her eyelids as pleasure wrapped itself around her, cushioning her from everything. The past, the future, the hardness of the floor. There was nothing but Andres. Nothing but the two of them together. Nothing but the blinding, white-hot pleasure she experienced at his hands.

  She screamed, losing control, utterly and completely as the intensity of her climax shook her. She screamed as she hadn’t done since those lonely days when she was in the mountains by herself. Consumed by grief. Withering in her isolation. But this was different.

  Before, she had only been able to make noise like that because she was alone. Because there was no one there to see.

  But he was here. And she was free.

  And when she came back to herself, she wasn’t alone.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “WHERE HAVE YOU been the past couple of days? You disappeared during my speech. Don’t think I didn’t notice.”

  Andres stopped in the middle of the hall, closing his eyes and gritting his teeth at the sound of his older brother’s voice coming from behind him. “I’ve been in Vegas. Gambling with the crown jewels. I traded our mother’s engagement ring for a prostitute. Don’t worry, she was very skilled.”

  “You can’t have done that, because my wife wears that ring. Otherwise it sounds like you.”

  “I’ve been in my city apartment. With Zara. Did you think she was off in her room shredding newspaper and making a little mouse nest all this time?” He was being unnecessarily cruel to his brother, who probably had genuine concerns that Andres truly had been off whoring around. But for some reason, Andres was incapable of simply backing down in calming Kairos’s fears.

  “I have scarcely seen her since I put her in your custody.”

  “Convenient for you. You pass the woman off to me, and wash your hands of her completely. And trust me with attempting to tame her.”

  “And how has that been going?”

  Andres allowed himself to think back on the past few days with Zara. They had barely left his apartment. They had barely dressed; they had eaten the entire cake he’d brought from the restaurant. Licked much of the frosting from her skin and shown her just what having your cake and eating it too could mean.

  He had put on the bare minimum to receive food when it was delivered to the penthouse, but that was it. Otherwise he had preferred that they stayed naked. So that he had easy access to Zara at all times. In bed, on the kitchen counter, in the shower...

  He had never felt so insatiable for a woman. This was unlike anything he’d ever known. It wasn’t about filling a void with sex; it was about being with her. It wasn’t a hunger for companionship in a general sense, but for Zara.

  That realization left him feeling raw. She seemed happy with him.

  Part of him wanted to hold on to that. To keep her with him. To use her as a cover for that empty well in his soul.

  Zara didn’t know the man he had built himself up to be. Didn’t know the playboy who had done his best to destroy his brother’s trust in him. The restless, uncontrollable boy who had driven off his mother. The man who only ever spent the night with his lovers to avoid being alone because he feared isolation more than any monster
lurking in the shadows.

  “It’s been going well.” He held up his hands, palms facing Kairos. “I’m still in possession of all ten fingers, so there’s that.”

  “She’s supposed to be your fiancée. Could you not talk about her like she’s some sort of rabid mongrel?”

  “I could,” he said, thinking back to all the ways she was nothing of the kind, but a whole, pure woman. “But this is more fun.”

  “Are you going to be able to handle yourself when we announced your holiday wedding at the Christmas Eve party tonight?”

  “I promise you, Zara and I have figured out how to deal with each other.” He couldn’t suppress the smile that turned up his lips.

  Kairos raised his eyebrows. “Have you?”

  “We have.” And the deeper they settled into it, the more she wound herself around his life, the more unsettled he became.

  Strange. He should take comfort in not being alone. But there was something about all this that made him feel as if he were being held underwater. As if he were holding her down with him.

  And the deeper they went, the more panicked he felt. The more he wanted to release his hold on her and make his escape.

  To retreat to the punishment of solitude because it would be better than the alternative.

  Needing her. Losing her.

  Failing her.

  “Please tell me you didn’t take her to Vegas to purchase hookers, as well.”

  “Oh, nothing as salacious as that. We’re sleeping with each other. Only each other. Shocking. I suppose I should be grateful that you’re married, and faithful to Tabitha. Otherwise this would be a wonderful chance for you to exact revenge.”

  In that moment he knew he would kill his brother if he so much as looked at Zara. Any man, really. What was wrong with him? He felt torn in two. Desperate to hold her to him. Desperate to let her go.

  Unable to do either.

  “It would be. But I wouldn’t do that. Not to you. I’m not angry at you, whatever you might think. Well, I am. But not bitter. I’m not happy about what happened five years ago. How could I be? If I was deliriously satisfied in my marriage, perhaps it would be a different story.”

  “All the Christmas trees in the ballroom are decorated.”

  Both Andres and Kairos turned at the sound of Tabitha’s stilted voice coming from the opposite direction. It was impossible to tell whether or not she had heard what Kairos had just said, but judging by the way her pale blue eyes glistened, and the lack of color in her cheeks, she most certainly had.

  Andres had to wonder why Kairos found being married to a woman as beautiful as Tabitha such a hardship. She was completely biddable, nothing like Zara, who was obstinate and imperious on the best days.

  Of course, that was what he found so fascinating about her. Perhaps that explained it. Perhaps Kairos had wanted a woman more like Francesca. Beautiful, impetuous. Very likely to leave her husband, or get pregnant with the royal stable master’s baby rather than her husband’s, but certainly possessing charms. Poor Tabitha would never be able to compete if that was what Kairos really wanted.

  Tabitha was like a china doll who stored herself on the top shelf, ensuring that she remained thoroughly unplayed with, undamaged.

  Though Andres suspected this had damaged her a bit.

  “Thank you,” Kairos said, his tone stiff. “I will be in to see everything in a moment. Andres and I were just talking.”

  “Then I’ll leave you to it.” She pushed her lips upward into a poor approximation of a smile before nodding once and turning away, walking back into the ballroom.

  “You were saying?” Andres asked.

  “Nothing. Only that I’m not actively rooting against you. I never have. You can make this work with her. Especially if you have a physical connection. So do it. Don’t mess it up.”

  “I’m not a child, Kairos.”

  “Nor were you a child when you took my fiancée to bed.”

  “That is true.”

  “For once in your life, listen to someone.”

  He listened. He listened well. It had just never made a difference.

  “She’s a good woman,” Kairos said. “Strong. She’ll make a wonderful princess. And a wonderful wife.”

  She would. Andres couldn’t argue with that. More than that...he wanted it. This time with her had been beyond anything he’d ever experienced. He hadn’t wanted to connect with anyone like this in longer than he could remember.

  But Zara...he took joy in caring for her. Giving to her. That was new too. Wanting to give to someone rather than simply take all he could.

  The desperation he felt, so sudden, so intense, to cling to her nearly brought him to his knees.

  It reminded him of every other time he’d wanted something, only to make a mess of it.

  As he would do with Zara.

  He pushed the thought away. He had no choice but to succeed with her. But that didn’t mean surrendering to this...thing, this emotion that rioted through his chest.

  They could work together. They could be partners. It didn’t have to be like this.

  He would explain it to her. Tonight, after the ball, he would explain to her how it would be. A partnership. No feelings. Nothing so unstable, nothing so powerful.

  A commitment, a decision, he could control. But he had proved to himself over and over that his heart was unreliable.

  He took a breath and looked at Kairos. “If you’ll excuse me,” he said, turning away from his brother, “my fiancée is waiting for me. And she isn’t mad at me.”

  “Give it time. And, Andres...”

  “What?”

  “If you leave during my speech tonight I will be unhappy with you.”

  “Then make it interesting.”

  * * *

  Tonight, she was wearing the pink gown. That fluffy confection that had been fitted to her the first day she was here in the palace. Her dark hair had been tamed into a sleek bun, a tiara resting on her head.

  It was so foreign. Yet familiar at the same time. This had been her life once. Parties, beautiful dresses, crowns. She had been royalty in the palace and Tirimia. In her daily life she had only ever felt the distance of royalty, and none of the benefits.

  This was different. Tonight, she would stand with the entire royal family. Part of something. Not apart from something. Tonight, Kairos would be announcing that she and Andres were getting married after the Christmas service tomorrow morning, in the old church down in the city.

  The most beautiful dress had been created for her. Zara could scarcely believe it had been made up so quickly. It glittered like the snow that fell here in Petras. Lace with little glass beads stitched all over it.

  She couldn’t think of anything more beautiful to wear while becoming Andres’s wife. And she couldn’t think of anything more beautiful to wear tonight for when the country found out she was becoming his wife.

  And all of it mattered more because she had realized something over the course of the past few days spent in his penthouse. She loved him.

  She had no experience of love, that much was true. She didn’t even remember what it felt like to be loved by a family. But that was why she knew what this was. She imagined you never appreciated food more than you did when getting it after you’d been starving. That everything tasted better, each bite more precious, worthy of savoring. You didn’t need to have experience of feasts to understand that you were dining at an exquisite table.

  She knew. Knew that this was everything she’d been waiting for.

  She’d thought of it as home the other day. Thought of him as home. Had thought of this as destiny, the fulfillment of the promise of her royal birth. She could see now it was more than that. The feeling people talked about when they discussed their homes was love. And as much as you could love a place, she loved a person so much more.

  Andres.

  Her first foray out of the woods. Her first real human connection, in so long.

  Being with him was more hea
ling than time or distance. Being with him, choosing him, forced her to realize that while the clan had certainly been distant, she had been distant, as well.

  It wasn’t until Andres that she had reached out.

  “Are you ready?”

  She turned and saw Andres standing there, looking perfect in an expertly tailored tux. A striking black jacket, a matching bow tie and a crisp white shirt. He was clean shaven, his dark hair brushed off his forehead. He looked less rakish than usual, but he was as devastatingly sexy as ever.

  He was going to be her husband. He really was hers, to keep. The very idea made her giddy down to her bones.

  She couldn’t recall ever being giddy in her life before this.

  “Yes. Ready.”

  “This is a massive party. And the service tomorrow will be even bigger. I hope you feel adequately prepared.”

  “I don’t know if it’s possible to feel prepared for an event on this magnitude. But I’m not going to revert to an animalistic state and hide under a table.”

  “Well, that is reassuring. Though I must say I wasn’t particularly concerned.” He held his hand out and she took it, electricity sparking over her fingertips, straight to her heart as their skin made contact and he pulled her close. He kissed her and the world fell away. “We will have to dance, though.”

  “I’m ready if you are.”

  He smiled. “I’m always ready.”

  She slipped her hand down between them, cupping his arousal. “I know you are.”

  A rough sound vibrated in his chest. “You can’t do that. We have to go. Kairos will notice if we’re late.”

  “I suppose it’s bad form to upset the king. Especially if he’s about to be your brother-in-law.”

  “Very good advice.” He kissed her cheek, then looped his arm through hers, turning them both toward the door. “Advice I would like to ignore.”

  “Poor Andres. Forced to behave.”

  “We’ll see how long it lasts,” he said. His tone was dry, but it wasn’t as full of humor as his voice often was. There was something strange beneath it. Something she couldn’t identify.