Until all she wanted was more.
She kissed him, her hand against his chest and his hand on hers, and he followed her lead. And it felt the way she’d always imagined fairy tales would, in those stories that belonged to others.
Soft. Sweet.
The faintest hint of heat and need—
But then Orion shifted, angled his jaw, and everything...ignited.
He kissed her and he kissed her.
And she forgot her goals here. She forgot all the bold words she’d thrown at him when they’d met, or the promises she’d made herself about how this would go down. She forgot everything, because he tasted too good.
Because nothing about this situation was real...but he was.
This was.
She let out a soft sound as she felt the hard wall behind her, but then the harder, far more fascinating wall of his body was pressed up against the front of her, and that was delicious. And everywhere. And she’d had no idea she could burn like this, so hot and bright.
She wound her arms around his neck and lost herself in the dance of their tongues, the taste of him, and a lifetime or two could have passed that way. Maybe they did.
But the heat was growing. The need wound around and around inside her, coiling tight, then tighter still, until she worried she might crack open. And when Orion lifted her against him so she could wrap her legs around his waist, she could do nothing but groan out her approval.
His kisses were deep, wild, perfect. But there was too much in the way. Her dress with its voluminous skirts seemed to anticipate her growing need and counter it, and all the clothes he wore seemed like an affront.
And it was as if he read her mind, because he pulled back, then. He tore his mouth from hers, but didn’t put her down. For a moment all she could do was pant and wonder if her heart could really beat that hard without hurting her, and then Orion was shouldering his way into her suite, holding her against him as easily as if she weighed no more than a handful of feathers.
There was something about it. Something about being carted about by a man. Effortlessly. It made her feel feminine and sweet in all the ways she’d never been, like spun sugar. A confection.
The kind of dessert she couldn’t wait for him to sample.
He carried her straight through to the bedroom without breaking his stride, then set her down at the foot of the grand bed that stood gracefully against the far wall. Across from it, the fire had been lit and danced there in its stone hearth, sending light and shadow spinning into the elegant room.
In the flickering of the flames, Orion’s face seemed carved from marble, taut with need, and marked with a passion so intense it made his hazel eyes dark.
And better still, made her shudder, deep within. Where she felt exactly the way he looked.
“Orion...” she whispered, though she didn’t know what she meant to say. Or how she could say it when she was so wild with wanting him, it hurt.
“I want you,” he said, as if he knew. And his voice was thick with it.
With something else, too, though she couldn’t place it.
It was not until his hands found her face to slide along her cheeks, then his fingers dug into her hair and pulled it loose from its pins, that she realized what it was.
Wonder.
The word seemed to shimmer inside her, heat and flame. But then he was kissing her again, and everything became a part of that. The slide of his tongue. The dizzying, glorious mastery he took of her.
And then when he pulled back and gazed at her as if he’d never beheld such beauty.
Calista felt lit up from the inside out, and trembled with it, especially when all Orion did was smile.
A very male, very dark sort of smile.
And then he undressed her.
But he didn’t simply rip her clothes off, or hurry them along in any way.
He...unwrapped her, as if every bit of flesh he uncovered was a gift and he had nothing better to do than savor it. For eternity, if necessary.
Because that was what he did. He took his time, lavishing attention as much on the space between her breasts as the aching crest of each. He learned her collarbone, her shoulders, and each of her fingers. He spent a lifetime on the line of her spine, the curve of her lower back, the flare of her hips. Calista lost days, weeks, months, as he found his way down the length of each leg, then up again.
And by the time he made it between, to that place where she ached for him the most—molten and sweet and hot—she was gasping for breath.
Then her gasps turned to cries as he tasted her there, too.
Orion feasted on her with a fierce, possessive intensity that had her first falling back against the foot of the bed, and then lifting her hips up to meet the flat of his tongue, the faint scrape of his teeth, right where she needed it most.
And the first time she broke apart, arching up against him and sobbing, she understood fully why the French called it a little death.
Though there was nothing little about it.
Orion shifted her, moving her farther back onto the bed. Calista simply...lay there, fighting for air, as he rid himself of the suit he wore at last.
And then, despite how hard it still was to breathe, she had to prop herself up on her elbows to watch. Because the truth about the King of Idylla was that he was far more beautiful naked than he was magnificently clothed. He was a work of art. He belonged on all the statues that cluttered up this palace, and she was half-afraid that her heart would clatter its way straight out of her chest, because she was going to get to touch him. All of him.
She was going to get to lose herself in all that spectacular maleness, and even imagining that made her flush. Everywhere.
And the look on his face as he regarded her, sprawled out naked on the bed while she waited for him, almost made her tip straight over that edge again.
It was so intense. Too intense, almost. He looked at her with so much focused ferocity that she felt fluttery.
And then he crawled his way up onto the bed to join her, and that only made the intensity and the fluttering worse.
Better, something in her argued.
“I want to touch you,” she whispered. “I want to taste you.”
“Next time,” he growled.
Calista meant to protest, but he was kissing her again. Deep, drugging, intense kisses that sent her spinning.
And when Orion finally gathered her in his arms, then rolled her beneath him, she could feel how close to out of control he was. She could feel that electric tremor in him, running through him, as if he’d plugged himself into a wall socket.
His kisses grew wilder. More glorious.
And then she could feel him, the hardest part of him, flush up against the place where she wanted him the most.
It was almost too much to handle.
He blew out a breath, and she could feel his heart pounding against hers. His gaze was dark, gleaming with a kind of fierce longing, and she could hardly bear the intensity of this moment.
She could hardly bear this.
Him.
She felt as if they were both caught in a mad storm. It howled and shook the windows, but in the center of everything was Orion. In the way he notched himself into her soft heat, and then waited there, one heartbeat. Another.
And she thought there could be nothing in the world more real, more true, than this. No matter how they’d gotten here. No matter what their future held. Wanting him made her feel open wide and utterly bared, and the craziest part was that she longed for that, too.
For someone to look at her the way he did, as if he’d never wanted anything more and never, ever would.
“Please,” Calista whispered. “Please, Orion.”
And with a deep kind of growl, he thrust forward and buried himself within her.
Calista fell apart. She b
urst into a thousand pieces, when she would have said it was impossible for her to have hit such heights again at all tonight. Much less so soon.
She shook and she shook. And when the glorious quaking subsided, she was still clutching him to her.
But he hadn’t moved.
“Orion...” she whispered.
There was a grimness about that stark expression on his face as he braced himself above her. As if he was holding himself so tightly that the slightest movement might break him.
And suddenly Calista wanted nothing more than to see him break. To see the reserved, guarded king break apart the way she had. So she shifted, rolling her hips to take him even deeper into her, and he let out a sound that could have been a laugh.
Though perhaps it sounded a bit more tortured.
But then, finally, he began to move.
And the storm they’d made moved in, wrapped itself around them, and began to howl.
Or maybe that was Calista. She couldn’t tell.
Orion set a rhythm, but she didn’t want that. She didn’t want patience when she’d already lost hers so completely. She didn’t want a single second more of his regal composure.
So she wrapped her legs around his waist and set her teeth to his neck. She met each thrust. And she knew the exact moment when King Orion Augustus Pax, King of Idylla, simply...lost it.
He dropped his head to her shoulder. His hips pistoned, tossing her straight back into that wildfire she’d thought had already burned its way out of her. Twice.
But it turned out there was so much more to burn.
He hurtled them both over that cliff, and his mouth against her shoulder while he went. And somewhere between those two things—the way he lost himself and the way he found himself with his mouth against her flesh—took her with him.
Tossing them over the edge and into oblivion.
Together.
She had no sense of falling asleep, though she knew she must have when she woke to find herself lifted up in Orion’s arms. A faint alarm stirred deep inside her, but she ignored it, because perhaps not every last second of her life had to be a fight. A struggle.
It was far better to rest her head on his shoulder the way she imagined regular women might, and dream a bit as he carried her through the suite, and deposited her into the huge bathtub already full and foaming.
Calista slid into the embrace of the water, smiling, because she couldn’t remember the last time someone had cared for her. That was her job. And she smiled wider when he surprised her completely and joined her.
Then liked it even more when he shifted her around so he could hold her, her back to his front.
And held like that, where no one could see her, the hot water could sink into her bones, and Calista could simply...be.
It felt like a revolution.
She let herself relax, as if nothing outside the confines of this tub could touch her. Or could matter, one way or the other. No schemes, no goals, no worries. Just the warm water, the bubbles, and Orion.
Calista rested against him, and let the quiet soothe her. Or maybe it was him, so solid and strong behind her.
She sighed a little when he picked her hand out of the water and held it between them, once again fiddling with the ring he’d put there. The Ring of Queens. The ring, it was rumored, a besotted ruler of Idylla had created for his beloved, fashioning it from sky and sea, so she could wear it forever on her finger and think of Idylla. Of him.
And for the first time since this farce had started, Calista found herself really imagining what it would be like if this was real. If the only thing she had to do was become Orion’s queen. If all the rest of it was a skin she could shed when they married, and once they did she could simply be the sort of woman who could wear a ring like this all the time, without irony. She could be the kind of woman he could hold in his arms the way he did now, the whole rest of the world at bay.
The kind of woman who could allow herself to be as real as he felt to her.
All she had to do was imagine herself anyone else alive, and this moment would have been romantic. A beautiful new beginning. The start of an unexpected chapter in the kind of arranged marriages families like hers had been mandating forever.
But wishes were never horses, and Calista didn’t get to play Cinderella games. She didn’t have a fairy godmother. Instead, she had a nasty, terrible father... And what was she doing?
The water was still warm, but she felt cold. How could she let herself sit here, surrendering to all these treacherous feelings for this man when nothing could ever come of them?
This could never be real. This was only a game, and if it was a game, that meant she had to win it. She couldn’t let either one of them be lulled into any false senses of security when there was none.
Not when so much was at stake. Not when Melody would be the one to pay the price.
Every wish, every feeling inside her was a betrayal of her sister. Calista should have hated herself.
She squeezed her eyes shut, happy that he couldn’t see her face or the torment there that shouldn’t have been there, and made herself laugh. A sharp dagger of a laugh, precisely calculated to make him stiffen beneath her.
Which he did, and her heart ached. But she kept going.
Because he was her adversary, not her lover, and she really didn’t know how she’d let herself forget that for a moment.
“I really am shocked, Orion,” she said, making her voice arch. Insinuating. A hideous intrusion into the beauty of this moment, and she hated herself for it. But she didn’t stop. “How on earth have you managed to keep your lovers from prattling on to all the tabloids about your prowess in bed? I would have thought they’d be lining up to talk about how good you are. To compare notes, even, the better to brag to each other and all the poor women out there who can only dream of touching you.”
Calista wanted to cry. She couldn’t let herself, however, so instead she laughed again. Another sharp knife.
And she could feel him change beneath her, going stern and harsh.
You did that, she snarled at herself. Good job.
It wasn’t lost on her that she should have been happy that she’d done it.
“I’m not a show pony, Calista.” His voice was disapproving and dark. And she could feel it inside her as if every word was carved into her ribs. Flaying her open, and deservedly. “I do not perform for the crowds—much less the filthy tabloids.”
“You don’t have to perform. You’re you.” That almost veered back into the mess of feelings that made her throat feel tight, so she kept on with that bright, brittle blade of a laugh. “And you must be some kind of magical creature to keep them all so quiet all these years. I’m not sure it’s ever happened before in the history of royalty.”
“I do not care to share my private life,” he said, his voice a rumbling bit of thunder that she could feel against her back like a new, worse storm. “I have been at some pains to tell you this.”
“Not everyone gets to choose what they keep private, Orion. Especially not when they sit on thrones and expect others to bow and scrape before them. I’m amazed you haven’t learned that lesson already.”
“Perhaps you will need to teach it to me,” he said then, a different, silky note in his voice. It made her shudder, and she wasn’t sure if that was pure sensual reaction or some kind of foreboding. “Because there is only one person who can talk to the tabloids or anyone else about my sexual prowess, Calista. I have not had to use magic spells to ensure any particular loyalty from anyone. I’ve maintained a dignified silence about my exploits by simply...not having any.”
She didn’t understand.
She blinked at the tub and the water before her. “Is that a fancy way of saying you made them all sign nondisclosure agreements?”
But he didn’t reply. He simply stayed where he was, lounging th
ere in the hot bath behind her, his back like a wall. And she turned the word she’d said over and over again in her head.
And then again, when an inkling bloomed inside her.
“Orion.”
He sounded amused. “Calista.”
“You don’t... You can’t mean...?”
“Indeed I do.”
Calista pushed away from him. Something great and terrible was expanding inside her chest, fast and hot. And she really didn’t know if it was a sob or if she was about to scream, or some mad combination of both—
“You can’t...?”
She turned around in the water, ignoring the way it sloshed alarmingly at the sides of the tub. Then she knelt there, facing him.
Her heart kicking at her so hard she was astonished she wasn’t running flat out.
His eyes glittered dark gold. But otherwise, he looked almost entirely at his ease. His mouth in its usual stern line. His head high. Not in the least bit concerned about what he’d just told her.
What he’d just admitted to her.
“You can’t possibly mean...?” she whispered.
“That is exactly what I mean,” he replied, quietly. Almost as if he was relishing this, she thought. “You are my only lover, Calista. And soon to be my wife and queen. Your reaction suggests you did not enjoy yourself when I feel certain you did.”
“I... That’s not the point! You’re supposed to disclose things like that!”
He lifted a shoulder, then lowered it, looking entirely unconcerned. “I apologize if this upsets you in some way.”
“Upsets me?” She felt a deep, shuddering thing, rattling through her. As if her bones were coming apart. As if your heart is breaking, something in her whispered. “Of course it doesn’t upset me, I just don’t believe it.”
She didn’t know what she imagined a virgin ought to look like—or someone who had so recently been a virgin—but she was sure it wasn’t this. Orion, every inch of him majestic in all ways, lounging back in the bath they shared. An enigmatic look on his face and not a single shred of anything like insecurity about his performance or her reaction anywhere.
Not that he should have been insecure. But surely there should have been fumbling. Mistakes or even misfires. Not...all that fierce possession that made her clench with need all over again, just thinking of it.
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