His Royal Prize (6 page)

She shivered at the note of lust in his voice. No one had ever wanted to make slow love to her before.

“I want your hands on me.”

“They are,” he said, running his hands down her back, spanning her waist and bringing them back to her front.

She realized that he wasn’t going to be hurried. He would take his time until he drove her insane with pleasure. Two can play at this game, she thought, reaching for the buttons of his shirt again and undoing the rest of them.

She pushed the fabric open and finally had her hands on his chest. It was well muscled and lightly dusted with hair. She ran her fingers from his neck to his waistband, following the line of his sternum. She lightly scraped her nails down his chest and he shuddered as her touch moved over his abdomen.

“Do you like that?”

“Yes,” he growled.

She smiled to herself as she reached lower, stroking his erection through the fabric of his pants. He grew harder and longer under her fingers as she found his zipper. But instead of lowering it, she simply stroked him harder through his pants. His hips shifted, following her touch, and she leaned forward to kiss his chest.

He smelled so good. She took a deep breath of
his unique scent—she’d never smelled anything so wonderful in her entire life.

His hands were back on her body, slipping inside the opening of her dress and finding the clasp of her bra between her shoulder blades. He kept one hand there, splayed across her back as he drew her forward. The other hand pulled the loosened dress away from her body.

“Take your arms out of this dress,” he said, his voice shot through with desire.

She followed his commands. He pushed the bodice of her dress and her bra straps down until she was naked from the waist up. The night air caressed her bare skin as she studied his face.

He held her wrists loosely in both hands and stared down at her. She wondered if she was pleasing to him—every man liked something different in a woman’s body. She hoped he got as much pleasure from looking at her as she did from seeing him.

He brought his free hand up to her mouth and touched her lips before drawing one finger down her body. He traced the line of her collarbone and then moved lower. His fingers fanned out to caress her chest and then the full globes of her breasts.

Her nipples tightened and she wanted to feel his fingers on them. She shifted her shoulders but again she was reminded that he wouldn’t be hurried. When he could tell she liked what he was doing, he seemed to slow his pace even more, making her whole body ache with desire.

His hands spread down her back, bringing her forward until the tips of her nipples brushed against his chest.
She shivered as her blood began to run heavier. He held her firmly in his arms, making very sure that she stayed where he wanted her to. She tipped her head back and met his dark blue eyes.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” he asked her.

She couldn’t really think—all she could do was feel and every atom of her being cried out for Geoff. She nodded.

“You have to say it. Before this goes any further, do you want me, Amelia?”

She reached up and cupped his strong jaw in both her hands. Then she leaned in and spoke her words against his lips.

“Yes, Geoff. I want you.”

G
eoff had never held a woman like Amelia. She made him feel alive in a way that he had never experienced before. And now he was going to claim her for his own. A part of him felt that she was already his, that he wouldn’t feel this strongly about a woman who wasn’t meant to be in his arms.

He took control of the soft kiss she had initiated and brought his hands to her nipples at the same time. She moaned in the back of her throat, inflaming him even more.

He teased her with soft touches at first, running the pads of his fingers over her aureole. Then, when he felt her nipple bead under his finger, he scraped her lightly with his nail.

She tightened her hands on his shoulders and
pulled her mouth from his. Her head fell back and he hesitated.

“Do you like that?” he asked, wanting to be sure that he wasn’t hurting her.

“Yessss.”

He continued to caress her breasts and brought his mouth down the side of her jaw. He dropped nibbling kisses on her neck and when he reached the base of it, he suckled gently right over her pulse.

She came alive then. Her hands grasped him and her body moved over his until she straddled him. Her skirt pulled taut at her knees and she moaned in frustration.

He slid his hands under the skirt of her dress, pulling it up to her waist. She wore only a minute pair of bikini panties and he slipped his hands under them to cup her buttocks.

He moved one hand forward and felt the humid warmth at her center. He could no longer resist, rubbing one finger up and down her slit over her panties until she was moaning his name.

“What do you want?” he asked, whispering in her ear.

She shivered and shifted her body against his hand, trying to increase the strength of each stroke of her feminine center.

“You. Geoff, I want you.”

“Not yet,” he said, carefully moving her panties to the side so he could touch her bare flesh.

She made a soft sound when he touched her skin. He tugged harder on her panties and ripped the delicate fabric from her body.

“You owe me…”

“I’m going to give you an orgasm to make up for it,” he said.

She gasped at his blunt words and a flush spread across her face.

He smiled to himself. He’d never had a woman whose passion matched his as perfectly as Amelia’s did. She reached between them, grasped his zipper and freed his erection.

He felt the warmth of her center spilling over on him—it made him so hot and hard, he felt as if he would explode at any second.

But he wasn’t ready to come yet.

He wanted her to have so much pleasure that she’d be addicted to him the way he was quickly becoming addicted to her.

“I have to tell you I’m unprepared,” he confessed. He hadn’t brought a condom with him since he hadn’t anticipated this ending to the evening. “Are you protected?”

“Yes, I am,” she said.

“Thank God.”

She laughed. “Why, would you have been upset if we’d had to stop?”

He took both of her nipples in his hands and pinched lightly. She moaned and moved against him, her slit sliding over his erection.

“I don’t think I could have handled that.”

“Take me, Geoff. Make me yours.”

He shifted his hips until the tip of his penis was at the entrance to her body, but he held still.

“Once you are mine there is no going back,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“This isn’t a one-time thing. I’m not like the other men you’ve dated.”

“This isn’t the time for a conversation,” she said, groaning, rubbing herself against him.

He put his hands on her hips and started to draw her forward as he thrust up into her body. She was tight, fitting around him like a velvet glove. She squeezed him so tightly that he had to stop and breathe to keep from spilling himself with just one stroke.

He held her hips as she tried to move and set about bringing her to the brink. He bent and caught the tip of her breast in his mouth. His tongue teased her nipple and he used the very edge of his teeth on her until she was clutching at his shoulders and frantically trying to move her hips in his hands.

He heard her long moan and then felt the minute tightening of her inner muscles as an orgasm ripped through her body. Only then did he let go of her hips and thrust up into her with all his strength. He took her mouth as he felt that telltale tingling at the bottom of his spine.

His orgasm was coming and he looked up into her eyes to find them half opened. He knew she was on the verge of coming again. He reached between their bodies and found the center of her pleasure, stroking her until he heard those sexy gasping sounds again that made him want to explode.

“Come for me,” he said.

She did. He came a moment later, spilling himself inside her. He wrapped his arms around her back as she collapsed against his chest. He held her tight, resting his
head on top of hers and realizing that he didn’t know if he was ever going to be able to let her go.

Amelia couldn’t catch her breath and didn’t want to. Geoff’s arms around her were solid and he held her close, as if she might disappear if he didn’t. She loved it. She had wanted to find a man who would make her feel cherished for as long as she could remember, and it might be self-delusion, but right now, she felt cherished.

She felt Geoff sliding out of her body and the sweat on his chest was starting to dry, but he continued to hold her. She stayed where she was with her face resting against his neck and forgot that there was a world outside his arms.

The longer he held her, the more reluctant she was to actually get up. But she knew she couldn’t stay in his arms forever. So she made herself do it.

She lifted her head, intent on disentangling herself from him. But he kissed her when she looked down at him. It was a soft, gentle kiss but she could still feel the passion that had flared between them.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he said.

“I just need a second,” she answered, suddenly feeling very exposed. This was much more than that fragile emotion she’d experienced when she’d brought him into her home for the first time. This was too intense. She had no idea what to do or say next.

She wanted him to stay—wanted to spend the night in his arms—but this was a first date. Dammit, this was another reason why sex on the first date was a mistake. If you truly cared about the person, things could get very complicated very quickly.

She used his shoulders for balance, climbed off his lap and stood next to the bench. Her dress started to fall to the ground but he caught it as he stood up and helped her with it. He wrapped one big arm around her shoulders and kissed her again. He kept her tucked under his arm.

“Shall we go back inside then?” he said.

She nodded. He reached down, tucking himself in his pants and fastening just the button. Then he lifted her into his arms.

“What are you doing?”

“Carrying you,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because I’m not ready to let go of you yet.”

He carried her down the stairs into her apartment. She gave him directions to the master en suite bathroom and he set her on her feet next to the sink. The bathroom was large and luxurious, something she’d insisted on when she’d had it designed.

“Would you care for a bath?” he asked.

“Geoff, you are going to spoil me.”

“It’s the least I can do. I did ruin your panties,” he said.

She flushed, remembering how the sound of the ripping fabric had made her so wanton in his arms. “Yes, you did.”

He adjusted the taps on the large tub and let the water run. She stepped out of her dress as Geoff quietly undressed next to her. She opened a jar of bath salts and poured a small scoop into the warm water.

She turned on the towel-warming rack and got an extra towel out for him. As silly as it sounded, she’d
never bathed with another person before. Geoff seemed at home, though, and that put her at ease. He held her hand and helped her into the tub, then climbed in after her.

He settled himself back against the wall and drew her down so that her back was pressed to his chest. Then he took the loofah sponge she had on the tray next to the bathtub and poured some bath gel onto it. Her skin tingled in anticipation.

“Tell me more about growing up. How did you become a world-famous heiress?”

She tipped her head back against his shoulder and looked up at him, trying to see if he was teasing her, but his expression was sincere. “I think I’m more infamous.”

“No, you aren’t,” he said. “Tell me.”

“What do you know about me?” she asked. “I take it you don’t want the story of my birth.”

He laughed, a deep rumbling sound that echoed off the bathroom walls. “No, I don’t. I know your father is Augustus Munroe and your mother is Mia Domenici, the legendary fashion designer.”

“My father was married when he met my mother, but they have what she calls ‘fiery passion,’ and that, apparently, is something that can never be denied.”

“It can’t?” Geoff asked.

She shook her head, realizing that she understood now what her mother had meant. She’d never experienced passion like it until Geoff. Why him? What draws people to each other in such an extreme way? She was sure her own mother wondered why Gus Munroe had inspired that kind of passion in her.

“Have you experienced it?” he asked.

“Only once,” she said. She didn’t want to reveal that she was thinking of him, of what had just happened between them. She had no idea what this all meant to him. Perhaps she was just another woman to pass the time with until he found someone suitable to be his wife.

He stroked the sponge over her body. She knew she shouldn’t want him again so soon but every time the sponge brushed over her breasts she felt an answering pulse between her legs.

“Have you experienced it?” she asked him.

“Define it for me,” he said.

She shrugged. She didn’t know how to put it into words without revealing that he was the man who’d inspired it in her. She really hoped that her affair with Geoff didn’t turn out as disastrously as her parents’ relationship had. Despite their marriage, they had never found the happily-ever-after that Amelia wanted for herself. She wondered if passion precluded happiness.

She hoped not.

“I don’t really know how to put it into words. I only know that in my parents’ case, it wasn’t enough. They need each other desperately but can’t live together.”

“Sounds painful. Did you understand that as a child?”

She shook her head. “No I didn’t. Auggie and I often felt as if we were on a sailboat in the rough sea, trying desperately to keep ourselves from capsizing.”

Amelia had the sensation once again that she was revealing way too much. She decided to close her
eyes—and her mouth—and revel in the feel of his touch, however long it lasted.

Geoff wanted to protect Amelia but she was a woman who had always scorned the protection of others, hadn’t she? That had been his impression. Listening to her talk about her childhood, however, made him believe that she’d always had to make her own way and figure everything out on her own.

“I don’t remember seeing much of you in the papers when you were a child,” he said vaguely, fishing for information from her. He already knew that if he demanded it she’d simply clam up and tell him nothing.

“I spent most of my childhood in New York, but frankly, they weren’t at all interested in me until I turned eighteen. I’m afraid to say I was a bit of an ugly duckling.”

“There’s no way I could believe that,” he said.

She lifted one of her delicate shoulders. “Well, I was. I had braces and glasses. I was just about as awkward as a young girl can get, much to my father’s great disappointment.”

She was rambling a little and he realized she did that when she was nervous. “I’m sure you were lovely.”

She shook her head. “You say that now but if you had met me back then, you wouldn’t have even noticed me.”

“That’s where you’re wrong,” he said. “I have two sisters. If you were half as awkward as they were, I would have gone over to talk to you just to let you know you weren’t alone.”

She looked up at him, those wide weary eyes of hers trying to see if he was telling the truth. He hoped she could read the sincerity in his eyes. “So you became a sexy young woman and the paparazzi just swarmed around you?”

She laughed, a very sweet sound that made him want to hug her closer.

“Not exactly. I wore a very sexy dress that my mother had designed for me to my then-boyfriend’s film premiere. And when they took photos of Andy and me, people started asking who I was. And Andy told them. We went to a few more functions together and then we broke up. But the paparazzi were still following me and at the time, I liked it. And so did my parents—it kept the family name in the public eye.”

Andy was Andrew Hollings, one of the hottest directors in Hollywood. She lived in the world of celebrity and for a second, he wondered how a British peer measured up. But based on the way she’d responded to him, he didn’t think he’d been found wanting.

He and Amelia were electric together. He had thought maybe there was fiery passion between them because of that addictive thing he felt for her. But he supposed it was just the newness of lust that made him feel that way.

He finished washing her, feeling himself harden as he touched her. He wanted her again. And he knew he’d take her another time tonight.

But not now. He wanted to know more about Amelia than how her body reacted to his touch. He wanted to know the secrets behind her eyes. He needed to find out every detail of her past and present.

Damn, he was obsessed.

How had that happened? It was sometime between the restaurant and here. Probably when she’d taken him out on her rooftop garden and shown him her own private hideaway—and let him into her luscious body. He struggled to focus.

“Is that when you decided to use the paparazzi?” he asked.

“This is going to make me sound like a spoiled brat, but please keep in mind that I was young and not very mature,” she said.

“I will.”

“Every time I had a photo in the papers or showed up on TV, my father would call me. I was speaking to him more than I had in my entire life. And though the conversations weren’t meaningful, I finally had his attention.”