Page 55 of Golden Queen
I did, more perhaps, sinceheseemed able to keep his body still and I simply could not.
I swallowed the last of my wine and leaned forward to sit the glass onto the floor where he had earlier discarded his.
When I straightened, I put my hands onto his thighs on either side of me. I felt his muscles tense beneath my fingers. His legs were so...fucking solid.
When I leaned back against his chest again, it was with a pressure that had not been there before.
He tensed again as I pressed back into him, feeling his unyielding body behind me.
The arm that had slid away as I bent to discard my wine glass, returned, but instead of laying across my waist, his fingers curled around my hip.
All the blood in my body rushed to that one spot, those fingers at my side, holding me still, I realized.
I pushed against them, sliding my body up, almost infinitesimally, so that I could press myself down on him. His fingers at my hip tightened.
Masked faces watched me from the crowd. They should have deterred me. But they did not know who I was. I was not their princess or their queen. I was not even Sera. I was some creature of need and desire who felt the wetness between her thighs and knew what it signified. I wanted him so badly I felt like I might catch fire and burn to ashes in his lap.
So, I moved again, even as I heard his hiss of warning in my ear.
I ignored him, hooking my arm behind his neck. I raised myself up until I was fully on his lap, until I felt the long, rigid length of his erection on my backside.
Even as a jolt of fear at the size of it went through me, even as the eyes of the crowd grew darker, hungry, even as some of them began to crowd closer, I moved against him.
A soft moan escaped my throat as his other arm came around me, not stopping me this time, but laying against my lap to press me more fully down onto him.
His other hand cupped my thigh, fingers sliding across the thin gown, down my inner leg. I wanted his hand to move up, so I grabbed his hand, aching to guide him higher. But I lost my nerve as his fingers continued their almost lazy caress of my leg.
I pressed down against him again, frustration warring with the fire licking through my blood.
His answering growl in my ear sent shivers through me. "Not like this, Sera. Not with all their eyes on you."
"Then take me somewhere," I nearly begged.
And then we were rising, moving through the crowd until we were on the edge of the ballroom where all those curtains were hung. My heart continued to race, my blood still on fire as he took my hand in his and pulled me into a hallway.
We were moving into a dim room, and he turned me, forcing my back against the door as it clicked shut.
He pressed me into the wood, his hips pinning me as he tipped my face up to his. I couldn't even think with the desire racing through me. His scent, the hard press of his body so close.
And then he turned me again, and I felt the softness of a cushion beneath me as he lowered me. His body hovered over me, one knee between my legs.
His breath was ragged. "I wanted to kill them for looking at you," he growled as his lips grazed my neck. "I might go back out there and do it anyway."
He raised his head from my neck and looked down at me. My breath caught in my chest at the darkness in his eyes. "Just so they cannot be out there—livingwith the memory of your body in their minds."
He kissed me just as my smile began to spread. His words were so ridiculously possessive. They should have annoyed me. They should have made me retort that I am not his to choose who sees my body, but I did nothing of the sort. I kissed him back, opening my mouth as his tongue slid between my lips.
He moved his hand down my side, over my hip, and along the back of my thigh, hooking my leg around him. I could feel him rigid against me, through the fabric of his breeches. The seam of his pants slid against thewetness that I knew would be easy to feel through the thin gown pressed between my legs.
I burned with need—need I could not have even imagined lived inside me. Need for him to touch me, take me, to be inside me. I thought I would die from the deep ache in the very center of me.
The music still pulsed. It created a backdrop of deep beats that seemed to echo his fingers as they slid around my waist, up over my belly, and then to my breasts that suddenly felt so full, aching with their own need to be claimed.
He slid the tip of one finger along the edge of the gown, down my chest until I felt the air licking across the heated flesh of my exposed breast.
I heard him exhale harshly as his thumb grazed across my nipple. I arched up to him, following the press of his fingers.
He stopped, tensing, and turned his head to the side, eyes alert.
