Page 16 of Royal Valentine

I couldn’t help myself, though. I was fairly desperate. My stomach tightened in anticipation. “Please.”

“I shouldn’t,” he said, his voice intoxicating.

“Why?” I was feeling very desperate.

“Because I’m afraid that if I do, I’ll never stop.”

My nerve endings hummed with anticipation. “That is fine by me.”

“Are you sure?”

“If you don’t kiss me soon, I am going to—”

He grinned and cut me off by finally, finally, finally pressing his mouth against mine.

My blood seemed to swirl with heat inside my veins as I immediately caught fire, ready to go up like a raging inferno. His mouth moved against mine gently, pressing and then pulling back before kissing me again. Lingering, exploring.

Thrilling.

He was teasing me and the sensations he caused were so intense that they made me burn and shiver all at the same time. Like my lips were directly connected to my nervous system, overloading it.

I let out a soft moan of pleasure against his lips that had him tightening his arms around me as he deepened thekiss, causing a tornado of desperate passion that threatened to overwhelm me. I was floating in a haze of dizzy warmth, focused completely on the feel of his mouth against mine, his hands touching me and holding me close.

He tasted like mint. I smiled slightly as I realized that Lucia must have given him one, too.

His kiss was as perfect as the rest of him. Callum kissed me like he’d been waiting his whole life to do it, like the artist that he was, with a harmonic precision that made me breathless.

Signor Greco could have hung Callum’s kisses in his gallery.

I ran my fingers up to his head, trapping him in place against me, then lightly scratched my fingers along his scalp. I was rewarded with a sound from the back of his throat that let me know how much he enjoyed it.

There was so much of him I wanted to explore, to see his reaction to my touch, my kiss. I wondered if this felt as good for him as it did for me.

I hadn’t known a kiss could be tender, sweet, fiery, and explosive all at the same time. He was exquisitely slow and thorough. Like he was committing it all to memory so that he wouldn’t ever forget what it had been like to kiss me.

He made me feel like I had been a sleeping princess under a spell, and his kiss was waking me up.

I wanted more of it.

More of him.

I could feel his restraint, the way he kept the kiss from veering into NSFW territory, but I was very happy to let things head in that direction. I wanted him to let go.

But then he let go in a way I wasn’t expecting. Callum suddenly stopped kissing me and I was bereft, letting out a protest that he’d stopped.

Then I slowly became aware of people cheering. Lucia’s family had apparently enjoyed the show.

My cheeks burned. I had completely forgotten where we were.

That hadn’t ever happened to me before.

Callum was more intoxicating than anything I’d ever experienced in my entire life. I reached up to touch my fingertips to my lips, still not able to believe what had just passed between us. His gaze followed the motion, and my pulse stuttered when I saw in his expression that he wasn’t done kissing me yet.

My heart was like a butterfly trapped in my chest, beating hard and fast.

Despite the rightness in everything he’d done, this was wrong. I couldn’t kiss him like this.

Not only because we had an audience hooting and hollering their approval, but because I realized that nothing could happen between us until I told him the truth about who I was.

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