She ran her thumb over his mouth again, her eyes drawn to the gesture. “Think about it, Will,” she said slowly. “I can’t exactly date like a normal girl.”
“You’ve never dated?” He studied her face, his body hurting with the pain of not folding around her and wrapping her up in his strength.
“Oh, I’ve dated. Suitable men, with chaperones on hand to ensure nothing more than hand-holding takes place.”
“Hand-holding. You’re twenty four years old.”
“I’m a princess of a conservative country.”
He was going to step away again. She could feel it in the tiny little shifts in his body. She couldn’t bear it if he did.
“Kiss me.”
He shook his head. “Don’t, Lilah. You don’t know what you’re asking of me.”
“A kiss.”
She stood fully on the tips of her toes now, and brought her lips so close to his that they were almost touching.
“Off the record,” she promised, leaning closer. She felt his arousal against her belly and groaned as the primal lust fired her blood.
“It’s so wrong.”
“Let’s see.” And now she pressed her lips to his, waiting for the instincts to kick in, waiting to feel what she should do next.
With a guttural sound, Will wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her to him like glue, and deepened the kiss hungrily. His tongue thrashed punishingly against hers. His mouth possessed hers completely. His kiss was hard and demanding and Lilah felt an awakening blossoming in her soul, and it was all because of this man.
“Will,” she said the word into his mouth, running her hands down his back. His kiss was fire in her gut. Her touch was flame on his flesh. He touched her as though she held some mysterious miracle in her being – one that he couldn’t wait to possess. He pressed against her; she moved at his touch. Her back was against the timber of the bench. He was lifting her, holding her, guiding her to sit on the bench. But he didn’t take his mouth from hers. He wasn’t prepared to relinquish the kiss. He needed her. He needed this.
She wrapped her legs around his waist, locking her ankles behind his back. He dropped his mouth, kissing her décolletage now, tasting her and smelling her and wanting her more fiercely than he’d known possible.
The realisation was ice-water to his desire. It was scissors to the tension and a flood of reality on their desire.
He straightened and stared at Lilah.
It didn’t go away. The pulse of attraction. She pulled her lower lip between her teeth and he felt a need that was insatiable barrel through him, demanding attention.
But he was too stricken to obey it.
He hadn’t even wanted Maddie with this ferocity of need. He felt as though, if he didn’t make love to Lilah instantly, he would combust: that he might burn into a million tiny pieces of devastation. What a betrayal to his beautiful, lost wife.
Lilah was panting, her cheeks flushed and her hair messy. Her lips were swollen. He shook his head and cupped her cheeks. “That was a mistake.”
It surprised him that she nodded. It wounded him, too.
“It can’t happen again,” he added for good measure. Again, pain lanced him when she seemed to affirm the statement with a small lift of her chin.
“There is danger here,” she agreed after a long moment.
“Yeah?”
She lifted trembling fingers to her lips. “My soul for a kiss.”
“Huh?” God, the contact had turned him into some kind of illiterate cave man.
“Another kiss like that and you would own my soul.” She caught the need for more and packaged it away, deep into her heart. He had been right. One single kiss was a slippery slope to feelings and wants that couldn’t be indulged. She was a princess. A descendant of The First Sheikh. And she could conquer these feelings because she had to. “Let’s go fishing.”
* * *