He would be hers again, as he had been in the studio. In his bed. The man beneath the crown. Her Akeem. The Akeem he kept hidden from everybody but her. The man no one had noticed reaching for her when no one was looking.
He squeezed her hand as they chatted with some bigwig. He’d been by her side with every step, every introduction—every forkful of the delightful meal served at a table as long as her row of houses back home, covered in the crispest white tablecloth, the shiniest of tableware, seating an A-list of guests. He’d shown her with small gestures that, whatever disguise he was wearing, beneath he was the man in the studio. The man in his bed.
The man she loved.
A bell chimed and unseen hands flung the doors along the furthest wall open, bowing their heads.
The grand finale. Fireworks.
The crowds inside, who had already moved from the banqueting hall into another room of equal lavishness, now moved outside.
Akeem’s hand, with a firm hold on her elbow, guided her across the highly polished floor and out through the exit, down into the courtyard to the views of Taliedaa and the rolling hills of the desert under a night sky.
But he didn’t stop. He walked past the crowds and past the views of his kingdom, through an arch in a high red stone wall, and unlocked a gate. He pulled her through, into another courtyard, and locked the gate behind them.
High walls surrounded them on either side. But at the heart of the courtyard was a low pool, scattered with underwater lights resembling candles. At its sides, pink-tinged columns of differing heights lined the cream-and-red-tiles. Everything glowed in warm tones of red and pink.
She craned her neck and saw that above them was a clear night sky. A single light flew into the sky with a whistle, and exploded above them in sprays of gold.
‘Charlotte...’ He moved in front of her.
The air shifted and she shivered. ‘Akeem?’ She took a step forward. ‘You’re here—it’s you.’
‘Here and in the flesh, Charlotte,’ he confirmed.
Her eyes locked on to his lips, to those full brown lips making each syllable of her name sound...right.
And it was right—her name belonged in his mouth. Because she belonged to him. She always had. To this man—the man beneath the crown. The man who had disappeared until their wedding day.
Her husband.
They appeared to be opposites, pulled together by an unseen power to stand face to face in the same disguise... But underneath...? Underneath, they were the same. They were each other’s secret haven from the world outside. They always had been.
He dipped his head at the same time as she leant up. Their mouths met. The kiss was not perfunctory. Not the seal of commitment he’d offered to her in front of their guests. It was the kiss of a man kissing a woman. The same kiss that had met her in the studio—in his bed—when he’d surrendered to the past. To the intensity between them. To her.
And now he was surrendering again.
Hands grabbed and pulled at cloaks and veils until they lay discarded at their feet. They were primitive. Primal. They were them again. Everything they’d been that night in his bed.
She wanted him to roar again.
Now.
She cupped his face and kissed him deeper. Pushing her tongue into his mouth. Tasting him. Savouring him.
A trickling heat of a desire neither of them could deny burst between them.
Hard and unrelenting, his tongue probed, tasting her, skilfully dipping in and out the way his fingers had moved inside her in the cave. Releasing her wrists, Akeem slowed his kisses and moved to her neck. It was a slow assault of her senses as his hands moved over the sharp points of her hipbones and then flipped her around to face the wall.
‘I can’t wait,’ he murmured, his voice tight and husked. He pressed a kiss to the underside of her ear. ‘I need—’
‘I need you too.’ She placed her hands on top of his and guided them up her body to cover her breasts. ‘I don’t want to wait.’
He squeezed her breasts, pushing his hips into hers. The hard heat of him pressed into her and she moaned deeply as his mouth sucked at the sensitive part of her neck.
‘Akeem...’
His hands moved from her breasts, down her ribcage and lower. He smoothed his fingers over her stomach, pressing into the pressure building there.
‘Say it for me.’ His fingers moved over the seams of her core, through her dress. ‘Say please.’
‘Please, Akeem,’ she said.
Because it was his word, his face she saw when she said it, even with her face pressed against the wall. She pulled her hand away from his and reached behind her, finding the hard ridges of his thigh and then moving over to the hard heat of him. Stroking him. Up and down.
‘Please,’ she said again.
She stroked him faster, feeling him pulse beneath the black fabric of his trousers.
‘Please...’ She found his zip and caught the end of it, dragged it down. She eased her hand inside the opening and gently pulled him free.
‘Lottie...’ he moaned, and it fed her confidence. Fed her hunger to feel him hard inside her.
She smoothed her hand over the wet tip and closed her palm around his thickness. Smooth and hard. She pumped him.
‘Please, Akeem, make love to your wife,’ she said, and the words your wife made her heart race harder in her chest. They were a family now. By law. ‘Make love to me,’ she urged.
And he gripped the wrist of her hand that was working him, and the other one that lay on top of his hand working her, and dragged them both up her body, above her head, positioning them palm down on the wall on either side of her head.
‘Wife...’ he drawled against her cheek, and his hips pushed into her from behind, making her stomach press into the wall.
He flipped her hair over her shoulder and planted kisses to her nape as his hands trailed down her wrists to her elbows and back to her body, her waist. He grabbed her hips as his mouth moved with hard kisses down her spine.
On his knees, he reached for the hem of her dress and folded it upwards as he stood again, exposing her bare calves, her knees, her thighs. He rolled it all the way up until the dress sat on her hips, exposing her white lace-covered bottom.
His hands stopped, and she didn’t move as she felt his eyes burning over her. This was her offering to him. Her surrender to the intensity between them.
‘Wife...’ he murmured again, and then he was on her. His hands moved between the apex of her thighs as she turned her mouth up to him and he claimed it. Kissing her hard as his fingers moved aside her panties until he found the pulsing heart of her.
‘Mine!’ he roared into her mouth. ‘Wife!’