Conquering His Virgin Queen (Harlequin Presents)

by Pippa Roscoe

  In the shadows of the room her pale skin gleamed like the purest white marble and he wanted to see more of it. He could see a soft shaft of light from the bedroom through the darkness, but he knew right then that he wouldn’t be able to make it that far.

  Taking her mouth once again with his, he pushed her back, making her legs step in time with his until he felt her stop, pressed against the dark mahogany table framed by the floor-to-ceiling glass vista behind it. He lifted her up and sat her on the table, pushing apart her legs with his strong thighs. Not that he needed to. Her legs were already willingly spread, granting him access to her.

  In the dark room he watched her hands come up to his white shirt, and with satisfaction he saw that her fingers were trembling—just as he had wanted them to be earlier that evening, not from cold but from the same insane desire that gripped him.

  Impatient to feel her skin against his own, he reached up and ripped the shirt apart, sending small buttons flying across the room. A look passed over Eloise’s face and he wondered momentarily if it was fear. But that couldn’t be right, and with a split second’s decisiveness he changed tack.

  He wanted her blind with desire. He wanted to hear her call his name before he entered her, before he found solace inside her. He wanted to know that it was he and only he who could drive her wild.

  He reached behind her and swept everything from the table. All of it. The lamp, the pens and paper from earlier, when he had been preparing the speech for his press conference. He wanted all of it gone.

  He wanted to hear the cries of pleasure he knew were waiting on his wife’s tongue. He wanted to block all thoughts—hers and his—of the future that was to come and simply immerse them both in this heady, impossible passion that threatened to consume them whole.

  He pushed her back against the smooth wooden table top and gathered her small feet in his hands. Such delicate feet...he had never realised. He smoothed away the silk of her dress, pushing it up the shapely calves he found hidden beneath the material, up further past thighs of such smooth skin that it was almost enough to undo him right there and then.

  Eloise moaned from the table, almost rising up to greet him, but he placed one palm on the plane of flat skin between her breasts, gently pushing her back down.

  Hard. The thought came into his mind once more. He had never been so hard. So turned on. And for that he would ensure that she felt exactly the same. He relished the delicious punishment he was about to bestow upon his wife.

  He pushed the skirts of her dress over her hips and found the tiny black thong covering the core of her femininity. And that was what he found there—nothing but utter femininity...

  * * *

  Eloise felt so incredibly open and exposed it almost took her breath away. She felt the heady combination of being both utterly vulnerable and incredibly powerful. Her husband—the most imposing, commanding man she knew—wanted to please her in this way, was looking at her with lust-filled eyes...eyes that promised and brooked no argument.

  Somehow, in a room that was silent of everything other than the sounds of their harsh breathing and the desire-fuelled cries that seemed to come from somewhere other than her, even though she knew it was her, he was telling her what he was going to do. He was giving her time both to anticipate and prepare herself, for there was no stopping him now.

  That was what his look told her before he dropped to his knees and began pressing open-mouthed kisses along thighs that had never even known the touch of a man, let alone the hot trail of his tongue.

  His lips moved away from her thighs and she felt him press that same mouth that had toyed with her only moments before against her wet core. She felt the pressure of his tongue through thin fabric of her thong and she cursed it—shifting her hips beneath the gentle pressure he maintained, desperate for him to remove the last barrier between them. She cried out loud—a keening sound that she could not recognise as herself—and somehow she knew that he was smiling.

  She shifted her legs, brought her foot up to rest against the corner of the table and used it to push herself further into his kiss.

  And he took instant advantage, allowing the lift of her bottom to pull the tiny thong down around her thighs. Her fingers moved of their own volition, reaching for the thin ties to pull it off, but his hand reached out and held her, stopping her in her tracks.

  ‘No,’ he commanded.

  With her thighs held in place by the binding of her underwear, stretched almost to the breaking point, he dropped his head and with one long stroke of his tongue almost brought her to orgasm. Almost—because she knew he could tell how close she was and he stopped.

  He was playing with her, and in that moment she both loved him and hated him for it.

  * * *

  Never in all his life had he tasted anything so sweet. He knew how close she was to orgasm, and thanked his lucky stars that she had no idea how close he was. With his thumbs he massaged the inviting hollows just above the juncture of her thighs, opening her further to him. He let the pad of his thumb caress that delicate bundle of nerves and was surprised by the jolt that ran through her.

  Never before had he felt so powerful. Never before had he seen such an instant reaction to his touch. And he couldn’t help himself. Again he thrust out his tongue and swept it across her—this time not for her but very much for him. And he was rewarded with the one thing he had wanted since he had been mad enough to touch his lips to hers earlier that evening.

  His name on her lips echoed out into the room and he swept his tongue across her once more, just to hear it again. He wasn’t disappointed.

  ‘Please,’ she whispered, her voice fractured by her breathing. ‘I want to feel you. I want to feel you inside me.’

  She was begging now, and he’d never heard anything so good.

  He smiled against her thigh, shaking his head. He couldn’t speak—he didn’t want anything to intrude against the sound of her pleas.

  He plunged a finger into her and felt glorious as her hips thrust her further and deeper against him. Her thighs, still bound with the ties of her thong, began to shake and her chest lifted from the table.

  He lifted his free hand and placed it back on her chest, sweeping beneath the material of the halter-neck and gently tightening his fingers around the taut nipple he found there...

  * * *

  With one last stroke of his tongue Odir pushed her over the edge of an abyss she hadn’t realised she’d been on the brink of ever since he’d taken her mouth with his. She felt herself shatter into a thousand pieces, totally overridden by a million sensations that she couldn’t put into words. She was mindless with a pleasure she had never experienced before—so much so that she didn’t have time. Time to think...time to prepare herself, to warn him.

  He had slipped the thong from her thighs and cast it aside. He had undone the fastening of his trousers, and stepped out of them and his underwear. He had freed himself and positioned himself between her thighs. He had waited until her body was racked again with the aftershock of her orgasm, and now he entered her with one long thrust.

  * * *

  It was the sound of her cry, so different from any that had come before it, that alerted him to the fact that something was wrong. It was only then that he registered the thin barrier he had pushed his way past in his eagerness to find his pleasure, to find his fulfilment. And it was only then that he stopped himself completely. Holding himself impossibly still when everything in him—everything—screamed for him to continue.

  ‘Eloise...?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It’ll pass. Just...just don’t move. Not yet.’

  He cursed out loud, the words falling harshly into the air about them. And then he cursed again.

  He watched her head fall to the side, as if avoiding him.

  ‘Look at me,’ he commanded. Because he needed her to.

  He needed to see it in her eyes. He needed confirmation of the suspicion that, if he was brutally honest with himse
lf, had been creeping up on him since their second kiss.

  ‘Habibti,’ he said, softening his voice, smoothing over the harshness of his curses. ‘Look at me, please...’ He asked this time.

  And when she looked at him he knew. He could see both the truth and the accusation in her gaze.

  He made to withdraw, but her hand stopped him.

  ‘Don’t...please. Just...just a minute more,’ she requested.

  And in that moment he probably would have given her the world, had she asked.

  * * *

  The pain receded as quickly and as suddenly as it had come. She felt him so deeply within her, filling her, joining with her in a way she had never imagined. She felt connected to him in a way that words and promises could never have done.

  She flexed her hips experimentally and felt him jerk within her. He cursed again, and she almost smiled. She had never once seen her powerful, proud husband lose control enough to curse in such a way, and within the space of seconds he had turned the very air blue.

  She felt him move, reaching further and deeper than before, but so very differently. The movement held none of the recklessness from before—none of the unleashed fury that had risen between them. It was almost caring and honest. And it was all the things that she didn’t want, because it would hurt so much more when this stopped and they were back to sniping at each other. She didn’t think she would survive it—not now that she knew he was capable of this.

  She pushed herself up from the desk, still luxuriating in the feel of him inside her. He backed up, giving her room, and lifted the dress over her head and arms and tossed it aside. He circled his arms around her. And finally—after all this time, all the things he had done to her—they were skin to skin, her breasts pressed against the rough hair covering his chest.

  His hands lowered and came around her bottom, bringing her closer, impossibly closer, and he was now completely and fully within her. She wrapped her arms around his broad chest, and there in his arms she felt safer than she had ever felt in her entire life. No matter what happened next, no matter what happened later that day, and the day after, and the day after that, they would have this moment. Nothing would take that from her.

  He started to rock his hips towards her and she felt the tendrils of another orgasm reach out within her. Her breath came out in harsh gasps, and the sound of a cry—his or hers, she could not tell—wrapped itself around them, weaving a sensuality between them that far exceeded her wildest fantasies.

  Every time he moved he pressed against the sensitive nerves at her core, exciting her both within and without. Eloise felt that she was once again on a precipice—on the cusp of something that was just out of her reach. It mirrored the feeling she’d had earlier that night, of how everything she had ever wanted was just beyond her, and she wondered whether with this man she might just find it.

  She knew then that it was nothing to do with sex. It wasn’t completion, it wasn’t orgasm, and just before she could finish the thought—just before she could feel the ache and the pain of realising that it was his heart she was looking for, the one thing that he would never let her have—he drove her over the edge, taking her with him as they both found orgasm at the same time.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  August 2nd, 02.00-03.00, Heron Tower

  ODIR’S MIND WAS completely blank. He’d just been rocked by the most intense orgasm of his entire life, and yet somewhere in his mind coherent thought was trying to break through. But he didn’t want it to. He knew where those thoughts would take him and he wasn’t yet ready for them.

  The stirrings of guilt and unease were persistent, though, and he knew he needed space—needed time that he simply didn’t have—to work through the revelations of the past few minutes.

  His wife had been a virgin.

  That was an inescapable fact. How had he got it so wrong? Had he got it wrong? Just because she’d been an innocent, it didn’t mean that she hadn’t somehow enticed his brother to behave so recklessly—hadn’t bewitched Malik to break his solemn oath to Odir. And it certainly didn’t explain why she had fled Farrehed for another country and effectively disappeared for six months.

  But if he was wrong...if he had misjudged her...

  He had coerced her into coming here, demanded without explanation, without consideration of any feeling on Eloise’s part, that she resume her wifely duties, bear his heirs, just so he could be King, just so he could get what he needed to secure his country’s future...

  What did that make him? If he could so badly mistreat his wife, what would he do to his country?

  The ground shifted beneath his feet and his stomach lurched. But it wasn’t the ground. It was his wife. She was beginning to stir in his arms. Arms that were still circled around her slim frame as if his life depended on it.

  He slowly disentangled himself from her—and he hated the small part of him that wanted to do more than just put physical distance between them. That was a coward’s way out, and he was not a coward.

  * * *

  Eloise glanced up at her husband, the light from a pale moon revealing his features under its touch. Thoughts were crossing his mind—hundreds of them, showing little glimpses of how he felt. She could see doubt mar the skin over his high cheekbones. She could tell that he was beginning to question his belief of her betrayal and knew that she should feel in some way vindicated.

  She waited for it—the slow spread of satisfaction that she had wanted so desperately in the past six months.

  But it didn’t come.

  The flavour of victory was absent, because the only thing she could taste was Odir—a heady mix of spice and salt that turned bitter the moment she saw what lay in his eyes.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me? What the hell was that kiss with Jarhan about?’ he demanded, stepping back and thrusting his legs into the trousers he had so carelessly ripped off before.

  And in an instant her heart was no longer beating with euphoria. The pressure she felt in her chest was not the same as the feel of his palm pressing between her breasts, and the confusion of the two feelings mixed within the same thought was too much to bear.

  Secrets. Years of keeping so many secrets welled within her and a familiar anxiety spread out into her lungs. She turned her head aside, unable to bear the weight of his scrutiny, slowly drawing her dress about her, covering her nakedness.

  ‘Have you not spoken to Jarhan about it?’

  ‘Never. The only way—the only way he and I could move on from that...that night, was to agree never to speak your name between us.’

  ‘That is a shame,’ Eloise replied, feeling the bitter sting of his familiar anger. ‘It is not something that I am able to discuss.’

  She pulled herself up to sit on the table and watched him pace the room.

  ‘Discuss?’

  ‘It is not my secret to tell, Odir,’ replied Eloise, hating herself for the beseeching tone that had crept into her voice. For it was the truth. It was really not her secret to tell.

  ‘And just what exactly is that supposed to mean?’

  She arched an eyebrow, retreating behind the practised façade that took longer for her to assume than before. ‘I am not in the habit of repeating myself, Odir.’

  ‘I can’t believe this. Even if you didn’t sleep with Jarhan, you still have more loyalty to him than to your own husband!’

  ‘Jarhan earned my loyalty. He spent time with me—came to see me, talked to me. He was the only person in that palace who even seemed to know or care that I was there. Your father locked himself away in his rooms, and your staff were—’

  ‘Locked away with me,’ he finished.

  ‘Jarhan also needed someone to talk to. Together we worked on the very same outreach programme you have spent this evening lauding as if it were your own. My father and mother left Farrehed as quickly as you did after our wedding. Jarhan was my only companion.’

  ‘This is getting us nowhere. I’ve explained why those two months were so difficult.�
�

  ‘Yes, today you have. Today we’ve spoken more than in all the time we were married. Does that not strike you as odd? That it takes talk of divorce and a death to bring us together?’

  The words were out of her mouth before she could recall them. But her husband didn’t seem to notice.

  ‘You can hardly claim to be innocent of what was expected of us when we married.’

  ‘You think I had a choice? That I could have denied my father’s demand? Did you think that it was the height of my ambitions to marry a prince?’

  ‘Didn’t have a choice? In case it hasn’t escaped your notice, Eloise, this is the twenty-first century. Women have fought long and hard—burned their bras, even—so that you can have a choice. So unless you are willing to speak plainly, and stop talking in riddles, this will be a very long conversation indeed. One that, as you know, I really don’t have time for.’

  He looked at his wife, glaring at him like a hell cat. God only knew what the expression on his own face was like. He was furious, and he knew that some of that fury was misplaced towards Eloise. He was angry with himself because he was missing something. Why would his wife direct his questions to his brother? Why couldn’t she just tell him?

  ‘Secrets or silence—these are the only things that you offer me,’ he bit out into the cold room.

  ‘And all you offered me was absence!’

  ‘Well, habibti,’ he said, barely reining in his fury, ‘I’m promising now that you will not be spending the rest of this marriage alone. A king needs heirs, and as we have finally proved that there is at least one area we are compatible in,’ he went on, feeling once more the heat of desire tighten his body in anticipation of times to come, ‘that shouldn’t be such a hardship.’

  He could see small shivers beginning to ripple through his wife and hated it that he had put them there—not through the stirrings of a mutual desire, but at the thought of them spending their lives together.

  When had he become such a bastard that he would bind a woman to him against her will?

  When the country he loved had been put in such jeopardy, that was when.