Off-Limits to the Crown Prince by Kali Anthony

Author:Kali Anthony
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2021-05-11T18:09:26+00:00

* * *

Duty can go to hell.

The words rang through her like some clarion call. He stood there, jaw hard. Hands clenched to fists at his sides. His bow tie hanging loose, and the top of his shirt unbuttoned to show the dark hair at his throat. Yet he wouldn’t come to her. She knew it. She saw it in the tense set of his body. He wanted her to decide. And she craved him, with a zeal that made little sense to her. She’d never been particularly interested in sex, or so she had always thought, the idea of getting too close to someone, letting anyone in, crushing the breath right out of her. Caring was dangerous. Loving, even more so. But around Alessio, there was no common sense. As if he were all the oxygen in the room, as if to breathe she had to have him.

She wanted to walk into his arms, into all that strength. Bury her nose to the hollow at the base of his throat. Let every part of him overwhelm her. She took a step. The first. It wasn’t so hard because this was a moment of fantasy where they could pretend to be other people. Alessio flexed his fingers as she took another step, and another. And only when she stood so close that his warmth seeped into her, did he wrap his arms round her, as strong as she’d imagined them to be. He dropped his head as if in slow motion. She rose on her toes and their lips touched. The warm press of skin to skin. Gentle, strangely innocent in a way that almost broke her heart. She dropped back, looked into his all-dark eyes, the pupils drowning out the velvet brown.

‘Look,’ she whispered, her voice cracking. A hesitation between them as if everything was tentative and the universe waited. ‘I’ve made a prince.’

And then it was as if the world exploded around them. Alessio groaned and took her face in his hands, crushing his lips to hers. She met him, her hands on his chest, fingers curling into the strong muscles there. She had no experience, but this seemed to lack all finesse, drawn from pure need. Their tongues touched, battled, as if each were trying to win over the other. Her body was all heat and fire, her exquisite dress of fine fabric a scraping interruption to his fingers on her overheated skin. She slipped her hands under his jacket, over the shoulders, tugging because every piece of clothing between them was a travesty. He let her face go, tore the jacket from his body. Tossed it to the floor.

‘Your dress. I don’t trust myself.’

She barely did her own self. But she reached round with trembling fingers and slid the zip down, slowly. As if this were a kind of performance, because she was transfixed by the hooded rapture in his eyes as he watched. There was no time for nerves, no time for doubts. Not here, not now.

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