One Reckless Decision: Majesty, Mistress...Missing Heir / Katrakis's Last Mistress / Princess From the Past. CAITLIN CREWS

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СКАЧАТЬ ago,” Jessa said. Was her tone the dry, sophisticated sort of tone she’d aimed for? She feared it was rather more bitter than that, and bit her lower lip slightly, wishing she could take it back.

      Tariq rubbed at his chin with one hand, still watching her closely, intently, as if he could see directly into her.

      “Who can say why certain things haunt a man?” He dropped his eyes. “After my uncle died, my life was no longer my own. My every breath and every thought was of necessity about my country. It was not enough simply to accept the crown. I had to learn how to wear it.” He shook his head slightly, as if he had not meant to say something so revealing. He frowned. “But as it became clear that I could not delay my own marriage further, I knew I could not marry with this history hanging over me. And so I resolved to find you. It is not a complicated story.”

      This time, when he looked at her, his dark green eyes were even more unreadable than before.

      “You expect me to believe that you…” She couldn’t bring herself to say it, it was too absurd. “There is no history hanging over us!”

      “You are the only woman who has ever left me,” he told her. His tone was soft, but there was a hard, watchful gleam in his gaze. “You left an impression.”

      “I did not leave you!” she gritted out. There was no way to explain why she had gone incommunicado for those days—she who had rarely been out of his sight for the wild, desperate weeks of their affair.

      “So you say.” He shrugged, but his attention never left her face. “Call it what you wish. You were the only one to do it.”

      “And this has led you to track me down all these years later,” Jessa said softly. She shook her head. “I cannot quite believe it.”

      The air around them changed. Tightened.

      “Can you not?” he asked, and there was something new in his voice—something she could not recognize though she knew in a sudden panic that she should. That her failure to recognize it was a serious misstep.

      Satisfaction, she thought with abrupt insight, but it was too late.

      He crossed the room, rounded the coffee table in a single step and pulled her into his arms.

      “Tariq—” she began, panicked, but she had no idea what she meant to say. All she could feel were his arms like steel bands around her, his chest like a wall of fire against hers. And all she could see was his hard face, lit with an emotion she could not name, serious as he looked down at her for a long, breathless moment.

      “Believe this,” he said, and fitted his mouth to hers.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      JESSA’S world spun, until she no longer knew if she stood or if she fell, and the mad thing was that she didn’t much care either way.

      Not as she wanted to. Not as she should.

      Tariq’s hard, hot mouth moved on hers and she forgot everything. She forgot all the reasons she should not touch him or go near him at all. She forgot why she needed to get rid of him as quickly as possible, so that he could never find out her secrets. So that he could not hurt her again as easily as he’d done before.

      None of that seemed to matter any longer. All she cared about was his mouth. All she wanted was more.

      He knew exactly how to kiss her, how best to make her head spin in dizzy circles. Long, drugging strokes as he tasted her, sampling her mouth with his, angling his head for a better, sweeter fit.

      “Yes,” she murmured, barely recognizing her own voice.

      Sensation chased sensation, almost too much to bear. His strong hands moved over her, one flexed into the thick mass of her hair at the nape of her neck while the other splayed across the small of her back, pressing her hips against his. His clever, arousing mouth moved slick and hot against hers. Fire. Heat. Awe. The potent mix of vibrant memory and new, stunning sensation. Touching him was the same, and yet so very different. He tasted like some heady mix of spices, strong and not quite sweet, and she was drunk on it, on him, in seconds.

      She could feel him everywhere, pumping through her veins, wrapped around each beat of her heart as it pounded a hectic rhythm against her chest. How had she lived without this for so long? She could not get close enough to him. She could not breathe without breathing him in. She could not stop touching him.

      She let her hands explore him, trailing down the length of his impossibly carved torso, like something sculpted in marble, though his skin seemed to blaze with heat beneath her hands. He was nothing as cold as stone. He was so big, bigger than she remembered, and huskier. His strong shoulders were far wider than his narrow hips, his muscles hard from some kind of daily use. She traced patterns across the breadth of his lean back, feeling his strength and his power in her palms.

      Tariq muttered something she could not understand. His hands stroked down the length of her back to cup her bottom, urging her closer until she was pressed tight against his thighs and the rock-hard maleness between them. She gasped. She felt her core melt and tremble against him. He sighed slightly, as if in relief. Jessa heard a distant crooning sound and realized, only dimly, that it came from her.

      And still, he kissed her. Again and again. As if he could not stop. As if he, too, remembered that it had always been this way between them—this dizzying, terrifying rush of lust and need and now. Jessa could not seem to shake the memories that scrolled through her mind, each more sensual than the last, or the shocking fact that this was real, that they were doing this, all these years later.

      She could not think. She could not imagine why she should think.

      She twined her arms around his neck, arching her back to press her swollen, tender breasts against the hard planes of his chest, tilting her head back to give him better access. He did not disappoint. He broke from her mouth, his breathing harsh, and kissed his way down her cheek, her neck. His mouth was like a hot brand against her skin.

      “More,” he whispered, and his hands went to the hem of her sweater, pulling it up past her hips, then pausing when he uncovered her breasts. He looked at them for a long moment, as if drinking them in. Then he caressed each puckered nipple and tight globe in turn, shaping them through the camisole she wore, while Jessa moaned in mindless, helpless pleasure. Her sex ached, and she could feel an answering heat behind her eyes. She felt burned alive, eaten whole. She wanted more than his hands. She wanted.

      Muttering a curse, Tariq stripped the sweater from her body, guiding her head through the opening with his strong, sure hands. He tossed it aside without glancing at it, and then paused for a moment to look down at her, his hard eyes gleaming in the gray morning light. The expression she read there made her belly clench, and pulse to a low, wild drum within.

      Jessa’s nipples stood at attention, tight and begging for his mouth. She could feel the hungry, restless heat in her core, begging for his mouth, his hand, his sex. Even her mouth was open slightly and softened, swollen from his kisses, begging for more of the same.

      Could actual begging be far behind? How soon before she was right where she swore she’d never be again—literally on her knees, perhaps? Clutching desperately at him as he walked away once more?

      The thought was like cold water. A slap. Jessa blinked, and sanity returned with an unwelcome thump, jarring her.

      She СКАЧАТЬ