She watched him with as much enthusiasm as if he were an approaching shark. It shouldn’t have been quite so entertaining, he supposed, but her various forms of defiance...delighted him. If that was what that sudden bright thing inside him was. He hardly recognized it.
“How many have there been?” she asked. When he didn’t speak, when he only closed the distance between them, she swallowed in a way that belied that light tone she used. “Princesses that you’ve turned into queens? Am I the last in a long line? A parade?”
He didn’t answer her. He liked the question too much, and what it told him of her, and she seemed to realize that. She danced back from him, then dropped abruptly, dunking her head beneath the water. For a moment she was a shimmer, the inky darkness of her hair obscuring her limbs from his view, and then she shot up again.
And the beast in him roared.
Her T-shirt was soaked through, showing him every contour of those glorious breasts, every mouthwatering detail. And better still, her hair had finally tumbled out of its braid and the dark mass of it coursed over her, framing her and presenting her like some kind of slick mermaid fantasy.
His mermaid fantasy, which Kavian hadn’t realized he had until that moment.
She was swiping water from her face and she let out a sharp, high noise when she opened her eyes and found him there, much closer to her than he’d been when she submerged—which he also found entertaining.
He slid his hands over her hips, those sweetly rounded hips that had been seared into his memory, so deep that the tactile memories had kept him awake some nights. And then he pulled her toward him with his pulse a wild thunder in his veins, almost in pain, his need for her was so intense.
She gulped, but she didn’t say a word, not even when he lowered his head and put his mouth just there, almost against her lips. Almost. He felt the fine tremors move through her, like an orchestra of want—a music that only she could hear. But Kavian could feel it. He felt the heat of her, let her scent—honey and rain—move in him like a blessing.
“I don’t think I can kiss a man who kept seventeen women,” she said, and he could feel each word against his mouth the same way he could feel the taut points of her nipples against his own chest, and neither was even close to enough. “I don’t think I can reconcile myself to it, whether you emptied your harem or not.”
“Then by all means, do not sully yourself,” he said against the lush seduction of her mouth. “You can stand there and suffer. I do not mind at all.”
And then he slid his hands up into the thick, wet glory of her hair, indulging himself. He dragged that smart mouth of hers the remaining millimeter toward his, and then finally, finally, he took her mouth with his.
CHAPTER FOUR
HIS KISS WAS like a bomb.
It detonated inside her, she burst into a shower of light and all the need and want and haunting desire that had been chasing her across the months she’d run from him slammed into her.
Amaya clung to him. She didn’t think. She didn’t want to think.
She kissed him back.
Just like six months ago, his kiss stormed through her. He wasn’t gentle. He wasn’t particularly kind. His kiss was carnal and dark, a blistering-hot invitation to a wickedness she’d experienced but once and still only vaguely understood.
But she wanted it. Oh, the things she wanted when this man took hold of her as if he had every right to her. As if her presence was all the surrender he required.
His hands moved from her hair to slide sleek against her skin, and she shuddered against him as he fit his hard palms to her breasts the same way he had done earlier to her cheek. But this was nothing like tender. This was pure, uncontainable wildness.
And it thrilled her, low and hot, dark and deep.
Amaya had never considered her breasts one way or the other. They were small, incapable of creating cleavage without help, and she’d have thought they weren’t the least bit sensual or enticing. But that low growl in Kavian’s throat, the one she felt inside her as he continued to take her mouth as if he truly did own her, made her think otherwise for the first time in her life.
Made her feel something like beautiful and cherished, all at once, which was as bright as another flame. And as dangerous.
When he pulled his mouth from hers, she let out a moaning noise she knew she’d later regret, which she almost regretted even as it happened—but in that moment, she didn’t care. She couldn’t.