Page 65 of To Wake a Kingdom

A laugh burst out of me, and he captured the sound, kissing me until the room spun.

“Come, sit.” He pulled me down on the rug and we leaned against the sofa, where we could enjoy the warmth of the fire. The wind howled through the trees, rattling the panes, the temperature dropping as snow fell from the sky.

“Did you order that? Because the only thing that could make this more romantic is a storm.”

“Yes,” he deadpanned. “For you, I did. I heard you love them.” Popping the wine cork, he poured us each a glass as I laughed.

Leaning together, we watched the fire, listening to the snapping of logs and the song of the wind. He traced a finger down my arm, making small circles up and down, sending a delicious shiver to the base of my spine.

“Ronan,” I whispered. “This is amazing. You’re amazing, and I don’t know how I got so lucky that it was you who found me here and thenrefusedto leave.” I tried to look angry about it, but I hadn’t felt that way in quite a while.

“It’s me who’s the lucky one,” he said. “What were the odds of finding my very own fairy-tale princess in a rickety inn miles away from Estria?”

“Rickety? Verna will slit your throat in your sleep if she hears that.”

He chuckled, and we kissed—softly at first, and then more fiercely—as our tongues touched and danced like snowflakes caught in the wind. Getting up on my knees, I pulled at the hem of his shirt, and he lifted his arms so I could yank it over his head. Everything about him was so impossibly beautiful. The planes of his face. The curves of his muscles. The wild intensity in his astonishing green eyes.

My dress followed his shirt to a pile on the floor.

He wrapped his hands around my hips and didn’t move, his gaze learning every inch of my skin. “I knew you’d be breathtaking, but not even my most vivid dreams could ever compare to this perfection.”

He pulled me down, flipping me onto the carpet. His pants went with the rest of his clothes, and he stretched his warm, powerful body over mine.

The lines of my control were fraying, and I tipped my chin up, inviting him to touch me everywhere.His rough palm slid up my thigh and along my ribs as he lowered his head, planting open-mouth kisses along the tops of my breasts. Taking one of my nipples between his teeth, he bit down gently, sending a shivering bolt of lightning to the aching throb between my thighs.

Distantly, I registered the gale battering the windows, its howls shaking the room as the sky erupted into a fall of thick, white flakes.

Ronan settled against my hips, his scalding cock brushing through my center. As he kissed me, he thrust against me, and I moaned. His tongue drove deep into my mouth, our kiss fueled with a need that went beyond the layers of my skin, beyond the blood in my veins, digging deep into the heart of my soul.

Mouth sliding lower, he returned to my taut nipple, biting and sucking until I was a helpless, mewling puddle of unrequited lust. He moved lower, lying between my legs, fingers sweeping over my sensitive skin.

I inhaled a sharp breath. My legs quivered as he ran his hands along the inside of my thighs, and I whimpered, desperate for him to touch me.

“Always so impatient.” His voice rough, he was staring at me like a man contemplating the entire sum of his mortality.

“Ronan, please.”

“I love hearing you beg, Little Lion.” He flashed me a cocky half-grin and then lowered his head, sweeping his tongue where I needed him so much. A surge rushed through me as he flicked the bundle of nerves between my legs. I cried out, burying my hands in his hair.

“Do you like that, Thorne?”

“Oh gods, yes.” I gasped as he moved back and forth, nipping and licking and biting, until I became a life raft, tossing in a tumultuous sea.

Hips lifting off the carpet, I pleaded for more and he increased his pace, his tongue making rough circles against my clit. He groaned and slipped a finger inside. Coaxing and insistent, he drove me to the edge, my fingers gripped in the carpet beneath me. As I cried out his name, I plummeted into nothing and everything as a wave of pleasure, bright and sparkling and brimming with hope, ripped through me.

Ronan pulled back and stretched out over me, capturing my mouth with his. He tasted like sex and the sheen of my longing.

“You have no idea how much I’ve been wanting to do that,” he said, voice thick. Stars danced in my vision, and I pulled him down to me. “I’m never going to stop wanting the taste of your sweet, wet pussy on my tongue.”

“I could live with that,” I said, breathless, and he let out a low chuckle, his mouth against mine.

He stood, pulling me up with him. The assessing sweep of his gaze was full of yearning and heat. “You are perfect, Thorne.”

My eyes roamed across his body, taking in every hard line and chiseled crevice. Impatient and hungry, he yanked me toward him, lifting me up as I wrapped my legs around his waist.

He walked me to the bed, laying me down.

“I think it’s time we gave you eleven new gifts fit for a princess,” he said. “Because I think we can officially declare the chastity one void.”

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