Читать книгу Royal Protector - Dana Marton - Страница 12

CHAPTER FOUR

HIS KISS WAS like a bomb.

It detonated inside her, she burst into a shower of light and all the need and want and haunting desire that had been chasing her across the months she’d run from him slammed into her.

Amaya clung to him. She didn’t think. She didn’t want to think.

She kissed him back.

Just like six months ago, his kiss stormed through her. He wasn’t gentle. He wasn’t particularly kind. His kiss was carnal and dark, a blistering-hot invitation to a wickedness she’d experienced but once and still only vaguely understood.

But she wanted it. Oh, the things she wanted when this man took hold of her as if he had every right to her. As if her presence was all the surrender he required.

His hands moved from her hair to slide sleek against her skin, and she shuddered against him as he fit his hard palms to her breasts the same way he had done earlier to her cheek. But this was nothing like tender. This was pure, uncontainable wildness.

And it thrilled her, low and hot, dark and deep.

Amaya had never considered her breasts one way or the other. They were small, incapable of creating cleavage without help, and she’d have thought they weren’t the least bit sensual or enticing. But that low growl in Kavian’s throat, the one she felt inside her as he continued to take her mouth as if he truly did own her, made her think otherwise for the first time in her life.

Made her feel something like beautiful and cherished, all at once, which was as bright as another flame. And as dangerous.

When he pulled his mouth from hers, she let out a moaning noise she knew she’d later regret, which she almost regretted even as it happened—but in that moment, she didn’t care. She couldn’t.

There was that bright hot fire, dancing inside her. Whispering that she was as beautiful as he was, as powerful. Telling her that she was his. His mate, his match. His.

Amaya didn’t even care when he let out that very male sound of laughter, of sheer and unmistakable victory. She felt the same thing shudder through her, as if the more he won this intimate battle of theirs, the more she did, too. She only shook when he pressed his open mouth to the column of her throat, and then she simply gave herself over into his talented hands.

The way she’d done once before. He made her mindless with longing. He made her shake with need.

He made her feel more alive, brighter and wilder and hotter and right, than she’d imagined was possible.

And Kavian knew exactly what he was doing. He bent his head to her breasts and this time he took one taut peak in his mouth. Then he lifted her against him with another matter-of-fact display of his superior strength, settling her so that she straddled his leg. The bright hot center of her was flush against the rock-hard steel of his thigh, and she could tell by the way that his hands moved to press her there that it was no accident.

And then he sucked her nipple in, deep and hard despite the T-shirt she wore, and the world disappeared.

Heat. Delight. That impossible blaze she’d half convinced herself she’d made up over all these long months alone and on the run—

He never removed her T-shirt, and that made the whole thing feel more illicit, more wild. Amaya could hardly breathe. Her thoughts crashed into each other and flew apart, and there was only him.

Only Kavian. Only this.

He toyed with her through the sheer material, using his hot mouth, the edge of his teeth, his remarkable hands, all the while keeping her in place against his hard thigh, where she couldn’t help rocking herself with increasing intensity as the sensations stormed through her.

It was like being caught in a lightning storm, struck again and again and again.

Amaya couldn’t imagine anyone could survive this—and she didn’t care if she did. It was worth it, she thought. It was all worth it—

Harder and harder she moved herself against him, shameless and mindless at once, wanting only to do something about that wild need that shook through her and centered in her core. Wanting nothing more than him.

Kavian made a harsh noise, and that only lit her up all the brighter.

“You will be the death of me,” he growled, low and intent, as if he read her mind.

As if, she managed to think with no little wonder, she had the same affect on this hard, wicked man as he did on her.

He took one nipple deep into the heat of his mouth again while his fingers rolled the other between them, lazy and sure. The twin assaults were like a new flash of light, a new storm. He did it once, then again, her core molten against his thigh.

“Now, Amaya,” he ordered her, his mouth against her breast.

And Amaya shattered all around him, only aware that she screamed as she toppled straight over the edge into a wild oblivion when her own abandon echoed back from the walls as she lost herself completely in his arms.

When she came back to herself, Kavian had swept her up, high against his sculpted chest, and was carrying her out of the pool toward the central seating area. He wrapped her in a wide, soft bath sheet and sat her down on one of the lounging chairs. Amaya couldn’t breathe—but then he left her there while he claimed his own bath sheet and tucked it around his lean waist, which only seemed to call more attention to the mouthwatering perfection of his glorious form.

She should say or do something, surely. She told herself she would, just as soon as her head stopped spinning. Or when he came back over here and claimed her once again, as he was surely about to do.

But he didn’t.

Instead, Kavian went to the low table and the trays of food laid out for his pleasure. He took his time filling his plate with various local delicacies, and then sat in a lounge chair facing her where he could watch her as he ate.

Amaya didn’t understand what was happening.

Her heart still pounded. She could feel it in her temples, her throat, her belly. And hot and soft between her legs.

“Aren’t you going to...?”

She trailed off into nothing, irritated with herself. Why did this man turn her into the blushing, stammering fool she’d never been at any other point in her life? Why did he make her feel so foolish and so young with only the merest crook of his dark brow?

“If you cannot say it, Amaya, it does not exactly inspire me to do it,” he replied mildly. Almost reprovingly, she thought.

And then he carried on eating, as if he hadn’t left her in a spineless heap only moments before. As if that had all been a demonstration of some kind and he was entirely unaffected by the lesson he’d decided to teach her.

She didn’t know why that made her furious, but it did—in a shocking, searing wave from her head all the way down to her feet. And if the rush of temper felt like some kind of relief, she told herself that hardly mattered. She struggled to sit up, ignoring the aftershocks of all that pleasure that still stampeded through her, as if he really had made her body his own.

She didn’t want to think about that. She refused to think about that.

“I’m not a two-year-old,” she threw at him instead. “I have no idea what your expectations are. We had sex once, by accident, and you chased me all over the planet for six months. You rant about how I’m yours and how I gave myself to you. But then you give me an orgasm and break for a quick snack. Right here in a subterranean bathhouse where you kept seventeen women under lock and key until recently, or so you claim. I have no idea what reasonable is under these circumstances. I have no idea what you’re capable of doing.” She pulled in a breath that felt much too ragged. “I don’t have the slightest idea who you are.”

That gaze of his took on an unholy gleam, but he only lounged back in his seat, looking otherwise unperturbed. Remote, as if she were looking at a carving on the side of a temple, not a man. She thought of ancient kings and actual thrones, feats of chivalry and strength and drawn-out, epic battles better suited to Tolkien novels, and found her throat was dry again.

“No one was held here under lock and key,” he said after a moment, when she could feel anxiety like pinpricks all up and down her body, and was afraid she’d actually broken out in hives. “This is neither a prison nor a work of overwrought fiction.”

“I’ll keep that in mind the next time you start thundering on about promises.”

Something far too dangerous to be amusement moved across that face of his and did not make her feel in the least bit secure. It occurred to her then that she was wearing nothing but a soaked-through T-shirt and panties, and a towel. And that this man had absolutely no qualm using her body against her when he felt like it.

But he didn’t move toward her and prove that all over again, as she was far too aware he could. He stayed where he was, and Amaya couldn’t understand how that was worse. Yet it was.

“And this might come as a great surprise to you,” he said, his voice like smoke and temptation, “but thus far you are the only woman I have ever encountered who was not delighted at the prospect of sharing my bed.”

“As far as you know, you mean.” She glared at him, trying to be as furious with him as she should have been. Furious with herself that she was not. “People lie, especially to terrifying kings of the desert who threaten the very air they breathe.”

“Ask yourself why I am so sure,” he encouraged her, in a tone that made her stomach swoop toward the ground, though he could not have seemed more relaxed as he said it. No matter that glittering silver thing in his gaze. “Ask yourself how I can know this.”

Amaya had absolutely no desire to do anything of the kind. Because she could think of several ways a man could be that certain, and he’d already demonstrated it to her twice. Six months ago in an alcove of the Bakrian Royal Palace and right here in the large pool today.

And she had no idea what must have showed on her face then, but Kavian only smiled, an edgy and dangerous crook of that hard, hard mouth of his she could still feel, as if he were still touching her when he was not.

That didn’t help.

“You do not have to wonder about my expectations,” he said, the way other men might comment on the weather. Their favorite sports team. Unlike with other men, whole armies he could command with a wave of his hand lurked beneath his words and settled around her neck like a heavy choke collar. “I do not traffic in subterfuge. I will tell you what I want. I will tell you how I want it and when. You will provide it, one way or another. It is simple.”

“Nothing about that is simple.” But he only gazed back at her, implacable and resolute, and she felt a searing kind of restlessness wash through her. Hectic. Almost an itch from deep within. She couldn’t name it. But she couldn’t sit still, either, and so she let it take her up and onto her feet. “I don’t want to be here. I want to go home.”

“If you wish it,” he said amiably enough, and everything stopped. Her breath. Her heart. Had he truly agreed—and so easily? But that smile of his was not the least bit encouraging. It made her feel...edgy. Edgier. “Which home do you mean?”

Amaya thought in that moment that she might hate him. That she might never recover from it. That it was stamped deep into her bones, like a different kind of marrow, as much a part of her as her own.

It had to be hatred. It couldn’t be anything else.

“You can return me to Canada,” she bit out. “Right where you found me. I’ll take it from there.”

“Canada is not your home.” Still he lounged there, as if this were a casual conversation. As if he weren’t holding her between his hands like a giant, malicious cat, and toying with her because he could. Because he felt like it. Because he enjoyed using his damn claws. “You were born in Bakri. You lived there until you were eight years old. Then you and your mother wandered for the next decade. Here, there. Wherever the wind blew her, that is where you went. The longest you stayed anywhere in that time was fifteen months at a family-owned vineyard in the Marlborough wine region of New Zealand’s South Island. Is that the home you mean? It pains me to tell you that the gentleman you stayed with then moved on from your mother’s much-vaunted charms some time ago and now has a new family all his own.”

Amaya remembered crisp mornings in a late New Zealand winter then, walking through the corridors of rich dirt and gnarled vines with the friendly man she’d imagined might make Elizaveta better. Happier, anyway—and he’d seemed to manage it, for a time. She remembered the long white-capped mountain range that stretched out lazily alongside her wherever she went, reaching from the vineyard she’d called home that year toward Blenheim and the sea in the east. The skittish sheep and curious lambs who marked her every move and bounded away from any signs of movement in their direction, real or imagined. The stout and orderly vineyards, set in their efficient lines all the way north to the foothills of the Richmond range.

Most of all she remembered the thick black, velvety nights, when the skies were so filled with stars they seemed messy, chaotic. Magic. Weighted down, as if, were she to blink, all that fanciful light might crush her straight down into the rich, fertile earth like nothing but another seedling. And yet somehow they’d made it impossible for Amaya to believe that she could really be as terribly alone as she’d sometimes felt.

She hadn’t thought about that period of her life in a very long time. Elizaveta had moved on the way Elizaveta always did and Amaya had stopped imagining anyone could fix what her father had broken. She felt something crack inside her now, as if Kavian had knocked down a critical foundation with that unexpected swipe—but he was still talking. Still wrecking her with every lazily destructive word.

“Or perhaps you are referring to your years at university in Montreal?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “While it appeared to be a city you enjoyed, in many respects, you left it as often as possible during your studies. You went to the mountains, as we have established. But also to Europe. To the Caribbean for sun in the midst of all those relentless winters. And you left Canada altogether shortly after your graduation for Edinburgh, where you took up a very unsuitable job in a local pub while you made the most feeble of gestures toward a master’s degree in some or other form of literature at the university there.”

Amaya wanted to make a gesture toward him that was anything but feeble, but restrained herself. Barely. She felt the prick of her own nails against her palms, and wished she could sink them into him instead.

“It’s not up to you to decide what feels like home to me. My life is not something that requires your input or critique.” She fought to keep her voice even. “You can tell because I didn’t ask you for either one.”

“Unfortunately for you, it is indeed up to me.” Kavian shrugged, and it was not a gesture of uncertainty on a man like him. It was another weapon, and Kavian, she was beginning to understand all too well, did not hesitate to use the weapons he had at his disposal. “You do not have a home, Amaya. You never have. But that, too, has changed now. Whether you are prepared to accept that or not is immaterial.”

She couldn’t breathe. She felt as if he’d thrown her down a staircase, as if she’d landed hard on her back and knocked all the air from her lungs, and for a moment she could do nothing but stare back at him.

“I want to be somewhere you are not,” she managed to grate out, finally.

“I am sure you do. But that is not among the choices available to you.”

“This is a huge palace. There has to be a room somewhere you can stash me, far away from everything and everyone. I don’t care if it’s a dungeon, as long as it’s nowhere near you.”

Where she could figure out how to breathe through this, recover from this. If that was even possible.

Where she could work out what the hell she was going to do.

“There are many such rooms, but you will be staying in mine.”

He only watched her, utterly without mercy. And she didn’t know which was worse, the wet heat threatening to spill from her eyes, the simmering flame deep in her core that she wanted to deny, the shaking she couldn’t quite seem to control now he’d upended the whole of her life in a few short sentences or the fact that he’d trapped her here. In every possible way, and they both knew it.

“No,” she said.

But it was as if she hadn’t spoken. It made her wonder if she had.

“I apologize if this distresses you, but I am not a particularly modern man,” Kavian replied. He did not sound remotely apologetic. Nor did he look it. “I do not trust what I cannot touch. I want you in my bed.”

Bed. The word exploded inside her, ripping through her with a trail of white-hot images that centered on his mouth, his hands, that body of his above her and around her and in her—

“I don’t want to be anywhere near your bed. You’ve already done as you like with me in an alcove, a pool—why can’t we leave it at that?” She sounded hysterical. She felt hysterical. “Why can’t we just leave it?”

Kavian, by contrast, went very, very still, though his dark eyes burned.

And she felt another foundation crumble into dust at that look on his face.

“The next time I take you, Amaya, two things will happen,” he said softly. So very softly. It was a whisper that rolled through like a battle cry. “First, it will be in a proper bed. I may not be civilized, precisely, but I do have my moments. And I wish to take my time. All the time in the world, if necessary.” He waited for her to shudder at that, as if he’d expected it. Then he nearly smiled again, which was its own devastation. “And second, you will use my name.”

“Your name?”

“You have yet to utter it,” he pointed out, and she could see that though he still lounged there, though his voice was almost as languid as he looked, there was absolutely nothing mild about him at all. That mildness was an illusion he used to do his bidding, nothing more, like everything else. “I assume this is yet another attempt on your part to maintain distance between us. Is it not?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I say your name all the time, usually as a curse word.”

“You will use my name.” He didn’t rise. He didn’t have to. It was as if he held her tight between those hands of his even as he reclined in his chair. She was sure she felt the press of his palms, like all those New Zealand stars when she’d been thirteen, crushing her deep into the earth. “You will sleep in my bed. You will give yourself to me. There will be no distance between us, Amaya. There will be nothing but my will and your surrender.”

“Followed by my suicide, as quickly as possible, to escape you,” she threw back at him to hide the pounding of her heart that told her truths she didn’t want to face.

But Kavian only laughed at her, as if he could hear it.

As if he knew.