Carrying The King's Pride. Jennifer HaywardЧитать онлайн книгу.
built until she was drowning in it.
Eyes glittering, he brought his mouth down to hers, their breath mingling. “Come for me, Sofía. Now.”
His sexy command pushed her over the edge. The insistent caress of his thumb against her nerve endings strung tight with tension sent her spiraling into a white-hot release that curled her toes. A release only Nik could give her.
His mouth closed over hers as he kissed her through every mind-numbing second of it, murmuring his husky approval of her response against her lips. She shuddered and grasped his powerful biceps to ground herself as the aftershocks tore through her.
He lifted himself off her, ready to retrieve a condom. The magnificence of his virility in full arousal was heart-stopping. Indescribable. “No,” she said, curling her fingers around his arm, wanting, needing the intimacy of them together, just them, this last night. “I’m protected. You know that. Can’t it just be us?”
He hesitated, his hand midway to the bedside table drawer, then he came back to her, settling his hard body between her thighs. “Nai,” he murmured, bringing his mouth down to hers. “I want that, too.”
In bed, out of it, in the elevator to his penthouse, their lovemaking had not lacked in creativity. But tonight, he palmed her thigh and brought it around his waist in the most traditional of positions.
“So I can watch your face,” he murmured, reading her expression. “I want to see you as I take you apart, Sofía.”
The dark emotion in his eyes marked him angry. Angry that she was ending it, not he. He would ensure she thought of nothing but this in the future and she was sure, in turn, he would be right.
He notched himself into her slick opening and slid into her welcoming body. She gasped as he buried himself to the hilt, pressing an openmouthed kiss against her throat as he stayed motionless deep inside her. She felt him everywhere, stimulating every nerve ending, making her entire body feel alive.
He withdrew and took her again and again, the silky sensation of his body sliding against hers incredible, imprinting itself on her mind in a possession that claimed every last piece of her. She blinked, holding back the emotion storming through her. Nik brought his mouth to her ear telling her how sexy she was, how good she felt, refusing to take his own release until she came again with him.
When she cried out against his mouth and he stiffened and allowed himself to join her in a powerful orgasm that shook them both, she had never experienced anything so exquisitely intimate as the sensation of Nik joining his body with hers without reservation.
She collapsed on his chest, catching her breath as Nik smoothed a hand over her hair. Long moments passed, moments that felt suspended in time. She should go, she told herself when their breath evened out in the shadows of the silent room. Tonight was not the night to linger. Not when it felt as if Nik had taken all the control she’d walked in here with and decimated it.
She slid out of bed, found the beautiful champagne-colored dress, slipped it and her underwear on, then found her shoes in the salon. Nik followed her, watching her silently as he leaned against the wall in the entranceway, clad only in boxers. She slipped her shoes on, pulled the last of the pins from her hair, long since having lost its updo, and smoothed a hand over it.
“Regrets?” Nik asked as she came to stand in front of him.
“No.” She stood on tiptoe to brush a kiss against his cheek. “No regrets.”
She left before the conversation could drag on into something painful and awkward. Carlos was waiting for her downstairs, that same pleasant smile fixed on his face as had been there earlier. She slid into the back of the car, unable to summon a smile in return, and rested her head against the back of the seat as Carlos climbed in and set the car into motion.
A raw, achy feeling invaded her. She wrapped her arms around her chest to ward it off. She’d lied to Nik upstairs, perhaps to save face. Because if this was what taking risks felt like, she didn’t need them in her life. She’d rather feel empty than feel any more pain.
* * *
Fully awake and unable to sleep after Sofía left, Nik pulled on shorts and a faded Harvard T-shirt and took a glass of Prosecco into the salon.
Ending things with Sofía had been the right thing to do. She had been starting to get attached. He could see the signs; they were unmistakable for a man who’d spent his life avoiding commitment. And perhaps he’d already let it go on for too long, because hadn’t he always known Sofía was different from the rest of the sycophants he’d dated? Tough with a vulnerable underside... Content to keep their affair between the two of them because she didn’t care about the rest.
Content to keep it uncomplicated. And yet tonight it had gotten complicated. He had hurt her.
His insides twisted. His rule never to allow a woman too close, to trust anyone in his position, was based on experience. He was a target for fame seekers, for those who sought to use him to further their own agendas. Charlotte, his ex-girlfriend, who’d sold her story to the tabloids and almost destroyed his family’s reputation was a prime example.
Not that he put Sofía in that category. She was different. He had trusted her. He thought, perhaps, he was more angry than anything. Angry she’d broken things off first. Angry because he’d thought their relationship still had legs—the sexual part of it that is. It was the first time a woman had initiated an end to a mutually beneficial relationship. He couldn’t deny it stung.
A wry smile curved his lips. Perhaps he’d had that one coming for a long time.
He pulled out his laptop, deciding to work through a few emails he’d left earlier to attend the event. His personal aide, Abram, who must have seen the light, knocked and entered from the adjoining staff quarters.
Equal parts friend, butler and highly trained fixer, Abram was sometimes dour, frequently circumspect, but never flustered. And yet, right now, in the heart of the Manhattan night, he looked distinctly agitated.
“What is it now?” Nik asked. “Don’t tell me—King Idas has somehow managed to put my brother’s nose out of joint with yet another expulsion of hot air.”
Abram fixed his faded green gaze on him. The tumultuous light he saw there made his heart skip a beat. “Crown Prince Athamos has been in an accident, Your Highness. He is dead.”
The room dissolved around him. He rested a palm against the sofa, his head spinning. “An accident,” he repeated. “It’s not possible. I just spoke with Athamos last night.”
Abram dipped his head. “I’m so sorry, sir. It happened last evening in Carnelia. It’s taken time to verify the reports.”
His blood turned to ice. His mind raced as he attempted to process what his aide had just told him. His brother had been raging about Akathinia’s overly amorous suitor last night, its sister island Carnelia and its king, Idas, who wanted to annex Akathinia back into the Catharian Islands to which it had once belonged over a century ago. Insanity in this age of democracy, but there were enough examples around the world to put everyone on edge.
Nik had talked his brother off the ledge. What the hell had happened after that?
“What was he doing in Carnelia?”
“The facts are thin at the moment. There was an argument of some sort over a woman. Prince Athamos and Crown Prince Kostas of Carnelia decided to settle it with a car race through the mountains, the same route the ancient horse race used to take.” His aide paused. “An onlooker said Prince Athamos took a curve too steeply. His car plunged off the cliff and into the ocean.”
An argument? Over a woman? His brother was as levelheaded as Nik was passionate and reckless. And yet he had gotten into his car and raced his arch nemesis through the suicidal cliffs of Carnelia? His enemy’s domain? A man known to have as much fire in his veins as his hotheaded, tyrannical father...
He worked to free his throat from the paralysis that claimed it. “Are they sure...?”