’Course, wasn’t that how Klingons were supposed to be?
“Who is this?” a woman’s voice asked.
“Uh, Sydney, a friend of Hadrian’s.”
“Oh.” The woman sounded older, with a chipper voice that made me grin. “Is he on a date?”
“Um, well, yeah, I guess you could call it that.” What did I say? That we’d just met and hopefully would be testing the hotel’s bed springs later tonight?
“Oh that’s wonderful. This is his mother. So, tell me about yourself.”
What a way to meet someone’s mom. “I’m a hairdresser. I’m twenty-nine, and I live in Kansas.”
“Oh, Kansas, we’re practically neighbors. Tell me, have you ever been to Table Rock Lake?”
“I have. We used to go to Viola a lot and water ski when I was a kid.” Many a summer was spent on Table Rock Lake skiing and camping. I loved that lake more than any place on Earth.
Back when my parents actually had something to do with me.
“I live in Hollister. Not far from Table Rock Lake, and Hadrian, that sweetie, bought me a lake house over in Indian Point last year.”
“Oh, I would love a lake house over there.” It had been at least ten years since I’d been to Table Rock Lake, and I missed it terribly. There was something so peaceful and happy about that clear lake. “It’s so beautiful there.”
“The lake was down for a while, but it’s starting to fill back up, what with all the rain we’ve had.”
“I bet.”
Hadrian sat down at the table, his eyebrow raised.
“Oh, look Hadrian’s back. Let me give the phone to him.”
“Oh that’s okay, dear, you two have a nice date. I’ll call him tomorrow. Tell him to mind his table manners. Bye.”
“Bye.” I sat the phone down. “That was your mother. She said she’d call you tomorrow. She also said to mind your table manners.”
Red surged through Hadrian’s cheeks. Even the tips of his ears flashed a bit of pink, and I burst out laughing.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do, it was ringing, and that huge Klingon guy came and told me to answer it, and he’s kinda scary when he’s a few inches from your face, and the ringing was so annoying, and then your mother started talking to me…”
“Stop, please.” Hadrian shook his head. He didn’t look outright upset, but maybe bordering on annoyed, with a bit of high school embarrassment thrown in for good measure. “I can’t believe you talked to my mother.”
“Well, I was going to take a message for you, but she just got so chatty.”
“She does that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about it. Who did you tell her you were?”
“She asked if you were on a date, and I said yes.”
“Hell,” he muttered, smiling. “I’m going to get the third degree tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry.” I probably should have let the phone go to voice mail.
“It’s okay, Syd,” Hadrian said softly. “I’m not mad.”
“Why do you call me that?”
“What?”
“Syd?”
“Does it offend you?”
“Not at all, just no one calls me that.”
“Ever?”
“Ever.”
“Huh,” he said, leaning back in his chair.
After they finished eating, Hadrian and Sydney talked about his growing up in Missouri and her spending her summers there when she was a kid.
A hardness lingered in her, he noticed. A stiffness that she didn’t let down very much. In her eyes, behind the cold images, he could see so much warmth and love, or rather, the need for it.
Part of him wondered, if only for a second, what it would be like to date her, to spend time with her on a regular basis. He wanted to see beyond the hurt inside her and see the real part of her that she kept tucked away from the world.
He imagined it had to do with her profession. The need to be perfect and receptive for everyone else causing her to lock down her own problems, her own thoughts, and be a person, must weigh heavily on her. Like himself. He rarely got to open up, to talk to someone like normal people did, and he missed it.
As the alcohol floated around in her system, the more her posture relaxed, and she started leaning forward to reveal her awesome cleavage and looking at him through those hooded eyes that he knew would look mind-boggling on his bed. That would be if she were naked…
Knock it off, he told himself.
Sydney looked around a bit. Her hand landing an inch or from his hand, she stretched her fingers to touch his. He moved his hand so their fingers laced together.
“Hadrian?” She ran her fingers up and down his.
“Yeah?”
“I wanted to tell you a couple of things.”
He raised his eyebrow at her, clenching his beer bottle. “Like?”
She blushed, bowed her head, then looked back up at him. “Uh, yeah, well, I think you’re really very nice…” she glanced away from him. “This is harder than I thought it would be…”
“Well, just say it.” He took a swig from his beer.
“Uh, well,” she let go of his hand, fiddling with her untouched spoon and straightening it as she stared at the table. “Will you sleep with me?”
He choked on his beer, his eyes about popping out of his head.
“This is my last night here, and I have classes all day tomorrow, and I really wanted to do something, well, just not me, and you’re so damn sexy, you have a bod that won’t quit, and I really, really, really would like to screw your brains out.” She let out a breath, and her eyes pleaded with him, innocence and sexiness and pure desire all wrapped up into one look.
He blinked. His mouth went dry, and his dick went hard.
He raised his arm. “Check please.”
Chapter Eight
Inside of twenty minutes, we were back at the Luxor. Three minutes after the valet took the Yukon, Hadrian had me plastered against the wall of the elevator to his room.
God I needed this.
He was incredible. I ran my hands up and down his back, feeling the flesh beneath the layer of cotton. I pressed my hips into his and even through my jeans I could feel his body’s heat.
I slipped my hands into his hair, holding his head in place as we kissed, our heads rocking back and forth of their own power, both of us desperate to be deeper, to feel more of the other.
Hadrian slipped a hand under my shirt, caressing my stomach, and around to the back, scorching my skin. His hands worked their way up my back, and I shuddered as his fingers fiddled with the bra clasp.
But the elevator came to a stop.
Hadrian pulled away enough to catch his breath. The door slid open on his floor, and he took my hand, leading me down the hall.
I felt drunk. More than two-Zima-buzzed, but down and dirty, horny, I’ll-run-down-the-hall-in-a-towel-drunk.
I’d never wanted anything more than I wanted him right now. And it was taking way too long to get to his room.
“Should we run?” I whispered.
“You read romance novels. You know what this is. It’s building sexual tension.”
“If there was any more tension in you, I think you’d rip your pants.”
He smiled and slipped my hand over the crotch of his jeans. “You have no idea.”
“God I hope so.” From what I could feel, I do believe I was going to be very impressed.
He shoved his key card in the door, and it clicked open. Inside, I could almost see that he had a suite, with a dining room table, a couch and stuff, and the bedroom was off the living area. Not that he let me look around much. He tossed my bags from the Hilton on the floor and shoved me against the nearest wall.
Oh my God.
My sweater was off in a matter of seconds, and he attacked the bra clasp, his mouth running rampant over my covered chest.
“I feel metal.”
“Uhhnngg,” I groaned as he sucked on o
ne of my rock hard nipples through the bra. His teeth met the metal nipple ring, and he tugged.
For a second, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.
No one had touched those nipple rings since I got them. They were purely rebellion from the ex-husband eight months ago. Jim hated body piercing, and I had always thought it was very sexy.
Hadrian was the first man to ever touch the nipple rings.
And oh, how wonderful the touch was.
He growled as he tugged through the bra. Slipping the straps off my shoulders, he pulled the cups of the bra down.
The tissues fell out of the sides of the bra, and I was pretty sure my whole body blushed.
He glanced at the tissues, then at me.
“Bella made me do it. For better cleavage support.”
“Your cleavage is fine to me,” he said, pushing my breasts together and kissing the shadow. His hands stayed on my breasts as he placed kisses over my shoulders, neck, ear lobes, anywhere his mouth could reach.
Meanwhile, his fingers tugged at the rings.
These panties were ruined.
I yanked his shirt, trying to unfasten the buttons, anything to make this skin contact more even. I managed to open most of them, but Hadrian started kissing me again, and my brain turned into goo.
He unbuttoned the last few buttons and pulled the shirt off, without losing contact with my mouth.
The shirt hit the floor as his chest crushed against mine, and his hips found that perfect spot to stand in, grinding hard against my pelvis. We rocked into each other, our bodies moving without conscious thought.
We both knew what we wanted to do. There was just clothing in the way.
I grabbed his ass, holding on for all I was worth, which must be code in man-brain for harder, because he increased the grinding, sending ripples of desire through me, from my head to my toes.
I tried to get a hand inside his waistband, but everything was too snug for that, so I headed for the clasp in the front. I desperately needed to feel the flesh of his luscious rump, and I was a woman on a mission.
“Oh my God.” In my efforts to touch him, I didn’t register his hands sliding until they met the center of my jeans. As he cupped me through the denim, the jeans rubbing in all the right places of my female stuff, my eyes rolled into the back of my head.
Hadrian grinned. “Do you think we should move this into the bedroom?” he nipped at my shoulders as he spoke.
“I’m good.” My cheeks flamed red at how raspy my voice was. His hands kept working in between my legs, and I managed to get enough bodily control to reach down and unfasten my pants. In a flash, he yanked them off and threw them across the room. All that was left was the yellow thong with little kittens on them.
He dropped to his knees, kissing my tummy. “You have a pierced naval, pierced nipples and you wear kitty underwear?”
“Read them.”
Hadrian paused long enough to look at them, then threw his head back and laughed. He’d found the words “princess pussy” on them.
“You have a weird sense of humor.”
I ran my hands through his hair. “Gotta love it.”
His response was a kiss planted right in the v-center. My knees almost crumbled. His fingers slipped in the edge of the fabric, and he started pulling them off. “These are a bit wet. You might get a chill,” he said as he slid them down my hips.
His fingers did a little extra exploring as the panties came down.
That’s it. My brain was officially oatmeal.
After he’d removed them, he grabbed one of my legs, and set it on his shoulder, and began his ministrations of other worldly kisses. My head hit the wall as he did what he did, making every part of me cry out.
That tongue needed to be given a Medal of Honor.
He brought me up to a hard climax, and whatever conscious normalness left in my brain was gone as the orgasm left me shaking and pulsing against him.
And bless him for not quitting as the climax started, but taking the extra few moments to bring it out in the fullest possible way.
So many men didn’t know how to properly service a woman.
I was limp against the wall, held in place only because he was there. He crawled back up, planting kisses as he went. He took extra time with each nipple, playing with the metal rings before working up to my mouth.
What a kiss he claimed me with—hard, fast and heated, his eyes dark and feral, igniting fires in me unlike anything I’d ever known before.
Now.
I was so ready now.
I went for his waistband, desperate to get us both naked, and have him inside me before I exploded. I reached inside his pants, hunting for the edge of his underwear. Hell, I didn’t care at this point if they were men’s speedo bikinis—which are totally the grossest men’s underwear in the world—I had to get it all off.
But something didn’t feel right.
“Where’s your underwear?”
“I didn’t wear any.”
Oh. My. God.
“Do you, uh, always, not wear underwear?” Wait, he had them on yesterday…
“Not always.”
I pulled the jeans down, and there he was in all his glory—and boy was it glorious. Really, I knew that females pushed babies out of their girly parts, but that took hours of contractions preparing the body for childbirth.
What about giant penises? How were we supposed to prepare for that kind of penetration?
He only let me admire him for a few seconds, his cock hard, ready, and waiting to enter. His face froze for a second, and he reached for his pants.
“What are you doing?”
“Condom,” he said, snagging the jeans and searching through the pockets.
I shook my head. “Now. I need this now.”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “Just a second, I have some in my…”
I grabbed him and held his face, planting a sweltering kiss on his lips. “I’m covered. The shot.”
“Are you sure? I don’t mind them.” His amber eyes looked a dark whiskey color.
“I’m clean. I was checked last fall.”
He smiled then he plunged into me.
I screamed, partially in pain, partially in shock, but mostly it was pure pleasure and delight. He filled me to my eyeballs, and I thought he might very well rip me in two.
He shuddered as he entered, pausing long enough to look in my eyes. Concern was etched there, but I smiled, nodding my head again, and rocking my hips as best I could, trying to encourage him.
Hadrian needed little encouragement.
I stretched my arm over my head, trying to close my fingers over something to hold on to as he started thrusting into me, but there was nothing to grab.
So I settled for his hair.
He pressed his mouth against me, another searing kiss as he rocketed me toward another cataclysmic orgasm. My vision started to telescope, and all that I knew was Hadrian inside me, Hadrian holding me up and Hadrian’s groans making me cry out even louder.
I came in a fit of ecstasy, tossing my head back against the wall, and Hadrian came a few seconds later, pulsing inside of me. His head dropped against my shoulder, but he didn’t let go of my legs.
Which I had to give him credit for. I was exhausted. He had to be exhausted. How he had enough conscious thought in him to not drop my legs, I didn’t know.
He planted chaste kisses on my neck, then a soft one on my lips. He let go of my legs, wrapping his arms around me and held me tight to his chest. If he hadn’t been holding me, I knew I would have dropped to the ground in a puddle of after-mind-boggling-sex goo.
“Not exactly what I had in mind, but it’ll do,” Hadrian said, his voice breathy and panting.
What? Did I not do well? “What?” Am I that bad of a fuck? Jesus, could the asshole ex actually be right? Was I so frigid and horrible in bed? Well, this wasn’t exactly a bed, but still…
“What did I do wrong?” I managed to whisper.
Hi
s eyes went wide. “Syd, you didn’t do anything wrong.” He put a kiss on my mouth, his hands cradling my face. “Not what I meant at all. I wanted to do this really, really slow. Take my time, make you come over and over and over.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling silly, the self-doubt daring me to try and squash it again. “I did a couple of times already.”
“Two is okay,” he said, letting go. “But slow is better.” He stumbled a bit as he stepped away, wobbling before he regained his footing.
“You sure you can walk there, big guy?” I asked, pulling my cigarettes out of my purse. Hadrian got one from his pants pocket, and we looked around at how our clothes were thrown all over everything. “Wow.”
“We got a little excited.” Hadrian sat down on the couch and took a puff off his cigarette.
If ever there was a time for an after-sex cigarette, this was certainly it. I wanted to join him, but I needed to use the facilities first. “Bathroom?”
“Through the bedroom.”
Hadrian leaned back on the couch, letting out a slow, rolling line of smoke. Christ, he’d never had sex like that before. It wasn’t the first time a woman had point-blank asked him to fuck her, not by any means, but it was the first time he’d ever not been able to get her to the bedroom.
Not that he minded. Wall sex definitely ranked high is his book now. But he wanted to do this much, much slower. Making her writhe and scream and cry and moan was his primary goal for the evening. He glanced at the clock on the wall. It was only ten o’clock. He had plenty of time.
And did he ever want more. She was intoxicating. Why any man would give her up was beyond him.
But from what she told him, her ex really didn’t want to give her up at all.
Sydney reemerged, wearing one of the hotel white robes that hung in the bathroom. Her hair was fluffed a bit to hide the after-wall-sex look, but her lips were swollen and she had a definite intoxicated quality to her face. Her eyes roamed over him, studying his shape as he sat on the couch. Her eyes looked hungry. A hunger he’d be happy to feed. She almost fell over him as she tried to squeeze past him to the couch.
He grabbed her hand and helped her down to the couch by way of his lap. “How are you feeling?” He handed her one of his cigarettes and stretched so she sat between his legs, and they both lay together on the couch.
The Reluctant Prince Page 9
