Fit for a King (13 page)

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Diana
Palmer

Fit for a
King

101

designs, anyway. I'll let them go for a
week or two
and touch base with some of my
contacts back
home."

"You
still live with your parents, don't you?" he
asked.

"Well,
there's been no reason not to," she re
minded him.
"They'd be hurt if I wanted to live alone
in Miami, and New
York is pretty far away. We've
been close all my life."

"I
wouldn't know what that kind of closeness
was," he
admitted. "I like Bobby well enough, but
we've never been really affectionate. I've
never felt
that way about any of my
family."

"I'm sorry, because it's a special feeling."

"I
suppose it is." He bent and brushed his lips
carelessly over hers.
"I'll go for a walk before I head
back. Don't answer
the phone for the next hour, in
case Bess calls to see what's going on over
here."

She
tugged at his shirt sleeve as he turned. "I could
make you some hot
chocolate," she said shyly.

He lifted
her hand to his mouth and kissed its warm
palm. "I could
take you to bed, too."

She looked
up at him in the light from her kitchen.
"King..."

His face
went taut. "Elissa, I enjoy making love to
you. I could make a
banquet of your body. I even like
you. But if I seduced you, what would
we do?"

She blinked. "I don't understand."

He cupped her face in his hands. "Listen to me,

little one. Sex is a
loaded gun. Once you have it with someone, it involves you in ways you might
not re
alize. I can't become involved with a virgin."

"After the first time, I
wouldn't be a virgin," she
reminded
him.

He sighed
angrily. "After the first time, you might
wish you still
were," he said bluntly. "You've been raised to think of sex as a sin
outside marriage. How
are you going to feel about yourself and me
if I let
that
happen? Besides which," he added, "there's always the risk that you
could get pregnant. And that's
a complication
neither of us is ready for."

She
smiled wistfully, shaking her head.

"What does that mean?" he asked.

"I
was just picturing you, your first time with a
woman, going through all that with
her," she said on
a grin.

He cocked
his head a little and smiled slowly. "My
first time," he
said in a loud whisper, "was so
damned fast she hardly knew what was
going on."

Her face
slowly went scarlet, and he laughed. "Did
you expect that the first time is always
good for a
man?" He grinned. "Men
aren't born knowing how
to make
love. It takes experience to make bells ring
and the earth move. After my first fumbling attempts,
I had to work up the courage even to try
again."

"I can't quite imagine that," she mused, smiling.

He nuzzled his forehead against hers, sighing.

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Palmer

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“Funny, I can tell
you things I've never told anyone
else," he murmured. "I must
feel safe with you."

"I
feel safe with you," she echoed. "That was why
I latched on
to you at the very beginning. You never
tried to put the make
on me."

"Until
now," he corrected, lifting his head to
search her eyes.
"Are you sorry I didn't let things go
on as they
were?"

"No,"
she said almost at once. "Even though I
can't imagine lying with any other man
like that, I
know I'd have let you do
anything you wanted to,"
she
admitted, "and I would have gloried in it. I don't even have enough pride
to refuse you; it's too won
derful."

His eyes
narrowed in pain, and his hands tightened
on her oval face. "You shouldn't be
quite that hon
est," he teased gently.
"I'm only human. I might lose
my
head one night."

Her lips
parted on a soft sigh. "I'll bet you're very
good in bed,"
she whispered shyly.

"So
I've been told," he said, laughing. His hands
caressed her
shoulders. "Look, we have to stop talk
ing about sex,"
he murmured, "or we'll both be in
trouble." He
sighed. "What a mess. What a hell of
a mess."

"It
will all work out," she said. She stood on tiptoe
to touch her lips to
his eyelids. They closed tremu
lously, and she drew her mouth over them,
amazed
at the
sudden stiffening of his body, the catch of his

breath. She drew
away, but his hands caught her waist
and held her there.

“Don't stop," he breathed roughly. "I like
it."

"Do
you?" She repeated the soft little caresses,
then instinctively
smoothed kisses over his thick eyebrows, his lean cheeks and high cheekbones,
down to
his very sensuous mouth.

He was
breathing rapidly, and she liked that. She
remembered what he'd
said to her that first time, driv
ing her wild, and with her lips poised near his, she
whispered, "Open your mouth."

It was
like setting a match to dry wood. He seemed
to go up in flames. His arms lifted her,
crashing her
against him, and his mouth
invaded hers with a sensuous insistence. He was trembling, and his loss of
control inspired both fear and wonder in her.

"Yes,"
she whispered when he backed her up
against the door and fit his body to
hers. "Yes!"

His
rhythmic movements should have shocked her, but they were pure delight. She
arched into them, her
pride gone with her inhibitions, her arms
curved
around his neck, her mouth smiling under his as she gasped with
pleasure.

She felt
his hands moving on her body, gliding
down to her hips, easing up the skirt
of her dress. His
urgent fingers felt cool on her hot skin, so welcome,
so right. She moaned.

He lifted
his head for an instant to breathe, his eyes
frightening, His body
shuddering. "Crazy child," he

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Palmer

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ground out, glaring
at her. Then he moved against her,
deliberately. "Feel that! Don't
you know what you're
asking for?"

"Heaven," she
whispered, feeling deprived when
he pulled
away from her and turned his back.

"Heaven,"
he chided. He lifted his head, gulping
in deep breaths, hating
his loss of control and almost
hating her for causing it. He'd never let a
woman
affect him
so deeply. He fumbled for a cigarette. It
was
because she was a virgin, of course. She didn't
know what she was doing.
She was experimenting,
and her innocence
caused her to do things that a more
experienced woman would know better
than to try.

"Damn you!" he burst
out, half laughing, half
groaning.

She was still leaning against
the door where he'd
left her, breathless but
smiling. He was as vulnerable to her as she was to him, she knew now. That was
encouraging. Perhaps he did feel drawn to Bess,
who
was more or less using him to
salve her tortured ego,
but his
emotional involvement with the other woman
wasn't total. It couldn't be,
or he wouldn't hunger so
for Elissa. For
perhaps the first time in her life she consciously felt a surge of pride in her
own woman
hood, in her ability to reach him. Her love life had
been strictly fantasy until now, but King made her
feel fiercely female and totally
unafraid of him or any
thing he might do.

“Chicken,'' she purred.

He
whirled, his black eyes narrowed in a face that
was drawn with pain.

"What in hell are you trying to do?" he
demanded.

"Lure
you into bed with me," she said softly.
"Come on. I dare you," she
taunted with her new
found confidence.

He just
stared at her. He had the cigarette in his
lips now, but
lighting it was another matter. He couldn't seem to hold the flame steady, and
that
brought a string of bitter curses to his lips.

She only
smiled, coaxed the lighter from his lean fingers, flicked on the flame and held
it to the ciga
rette.

"Proud of yourself?"
he asked coldly. He smiled, but not happily.

"Proud
of what I can do to you, yes," she con
fessed gently.
"You seem so reserved at times, so
unapproachable. It's
nice to know you're human."

"You
almost found out exactly how human," he
muttered.

Her eyes
searched his, and she sighed softly. "I
tingle all over. That
was so sweet."

"Not for me," he said through his teeth.

She
watched his face, frowning a little. "I don't
understand."

"I
know." He took a deep draw from the cigarette
and turned away, walking down the beach.

She followed, puzzled. "Can't you talk about
it?"

He reached out, drawing her gently against his hips.

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Palmer

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King

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His voice at her
temple was slow and thick with dis
comfort. "I ache for you,"
he whispered. "Badly.
Have you forgotten what we talked about, how
after
a certain point it's difficult to pull back?"

"I wasn't going to stop you," she reminded him.

"We
couldn't very well make love on the beach in full view of my family!" he
burst out. "Where's your
mind tonight?"

"I
don't know," she sighed. "I ache in places I
never knew I had,
I'm burning up with desire, and
here you are, fully capable of putting out
every fire I've got, and you're complaining that you're in pain."

He
couldn't help it; he burst out laughing. "Oh,
my God," he
moaned.

She threw
up her hands. "I offer you myself, no
strings attached,
and you walk off in a snit."

"Your
parents would be ashamed of you," he
pointed out.

"My
parents don't expect me to be superhuman,"
she shot back.
"God made bodies, you know, so I
guess He expected that people would
want to enjoy
them occasionally."

"Although
you'd rather do so with a ring on your
finger," he prodded.

She
shrugged. "Yes. But that doesn't cool me off
any."

"Cool,
the devil." He flung the cigarette away and
lifted her suddenly,
carrying her into the surf. "I'll
cool you off."

He dumped
her into the next wave. She spluttered
and struggled to her
feet, her dress plastered to her
body, her hair in strings down her back.

"Wild animal!" she raged.

"Sexy
baggage," he returned. "Want to hit me?
Come on. Try
it."

She took
a swing at him. He sidestepped, and she
went down again, and
before she could get up he was
in the water beside her, holding her down.

There was
a look in his eyes that she'd never seen,
and the sheer
strength of his hands excited her. "You
can't very well wear
it like that, can you?" He
laughed softly as he felt her bedraggled
dress. "Let
me
help you out of it."

"You
can't! Not here!" she gasped, looking
around wildly.

"Yes
I can," he shot back, and he began unfasten
ing the soaking
dress.

The surf
crashed around them while he undressed
her, and she reveled
in the contrast between the cool
water and her heated flesh, in the lazy
contact of his
hands, in the look on his dark face as he uncovered
and
savored every soft inch of her, his eyes lingering
on her full breasts.

"God,
what a beauty you are," he whispered. "I
ought to strangle you
for doing this to me."

"I'd
like to point out that you're undressing me,
not vice versa,"
she choked.