She pulled the paperwork from his hands and stepped back, shaking her head slightly as if trying to shrug off a physical blow. The sight of it was too much so he reached for her and tugged her back to him,intohim, and for a shocked moment they stood like that—breaths held, hearts mid-beat.
And then he made the mistake of looking down into her eyes. Lush lashes framed hazel eyes, rich with a complexity of colours, arrowing straight to his own arousal. They moved simultaneously, coming together, lips finding each other’s. Aleksander didn’t know what he wanted more—the taste of her, the feel of her or the scent of her; he knew only that he wanted it all.
Her kiss soothed the feral beast that had lived within him for the last two days. The paperwork dropped from her hands as she reached for the fabric of his shirt, curling her fingers and the cotton into her fists, pulling him to her, his heart pounding at the contact. His fingers splayed through the hair above her ear, cradling her head, angling her so that he could deepen the kiss, so that his tongue could thrust. Open-mouthed, she welcomed him, her fingers curling tightly in his own hair, her nails scraping deliciously over skin that was overheated and sensitive.
He laid his hand above her breast, the pounding of her heart beneath his palm powerful and impossibly fast, an aphrodisiac all of its own. It was as if their desire feasted upon each other, exponentially increasing with no end in sight. He felt as if he were being driven out of his own skin and the loss of such control was both heady and impossibly frustrating. In an attempt to leash it, he dominated the kiss, crowding her with his shoulders and body, only to feel her push back just as strongly. Deep within him an animalistic part of him roared in satisfaction at finding his equal.
The taste of her drove him wild, and he forgot everything. Where he was, who he was, who she was. The moment she hooked her calf around his leg, bringing their bodies closer, the heat of her fitting perfectly against the hard length of his need, he groaned, low and deep. Unthinking, he picked her up, spun them around and, holding her to him, he swept an arm out, clearing the desk, before placing her on it. She looked up at him, eyes wild and glazed with desire and need, making room for him between her legs as a pen pot rolled beneath the desk and sheets of paper fluttered to the floor.
One hand slipped behind her, bringing her forward against the evidence of his desire for her, the gasp that fell from her lips music to his ears. Flexing his hips, her pupils exploded, shards of jade and ochre drowned in black, and she arched her back, pressing the delicate juncture of her thighs against him even harder.
‘Again,’ he commanded, the exquisiteness of her pleasure igniting his own irrevocably. For a second she looked unsure, so he pulled her harder against the ridge of his arousal and her head fell back, her eyes unfocused beyond need and pleasure. The cry that came from her lips was an appetiser of the feast to come and he wanted more. Keeping her pressed to him, his fingers bunched the material of her skirt at her thighs. Hot, needy and incessant, his pulse poundedmore, more, morethrough every beat around his body. His fingers slipped beneath the hemline, inching up smooth skin to the crease of her hip, as his thumb dropped dangerously close to where he so desperately wanted to put his mouth.
Henna’s breath was coming in short sharp pants, full of need and want, each one a delicious scratch against his chest. He’d never felt this before. As if he couldn’t get enough, as if he needed it more than air. He inhaled more and more of her into him, chasing a high that had no end in sight. His chest burned with a need beyond the point of pain and the only thing that cut through the haze of the fiercest arousal he’d ever had was the chiming of the mantel clock above the fireplace. With each toll, he was pulled back closer and closer to the present, until he realised exactly where he was, who he was—and who was waiting for him in a restaurant three miles away.
He cursed out loud. Exhaling heavily, he pressed his heated forehead to hers. ‘I have to cancel Tuva.’
‘What?’ she asked, the hazy desire clearing from her gaze.
‘The...date,’ he finished, distaste like ash on his tongue.
‘No! You can’t.’
‘What?’
The look in his eyes turned from molten lava to glacial.
Her heart pounding in her chest, Henna couldn’t get her thoughts straight. ‘I... This...’ Her lips were swollen by the passion of their kiss. A passion that had marked her skin and dampened her thighs and...
Aleksander had a woman waiting for him in a restaurant who might be his wife one day.
She felt sick.
‘It shouldn’t have happened. I...have to...’ She slipped off the desk.
‘Henna—’
She ran from the room just as the first tear started to fall.
CHAPTER FIVE
FORWHATFELTlike the hundredth time that day Aleksander slammed the desk phone back into its cradle. Nothing was going as planned. Marit had returned two days ago and, while she was taking on more royal duties, she simply wasn’t as up to speed as he needed her to be.
Following his meeting with Anita Bergqvist, his Principal Private Secretary, she had provided him with several CVs of supposedly suitable candidates for the role of his personal assistant, but he’d found each one wanting. One was too young, the other too old and yes, he knew he sounded like Goldilocks. He told himself that he was managing to make do with the interim assistant Anita had loaned him until he found someone he could trust.
But he knew that he was spinning too many plates. He was running between obligations, patching them up with interim solutions and barely hanging on. And the world was watching Svardia’s new King, praying—he imagined—for him to make a mistake for their entertainment alone. He wasn’t stupid, he knew he needed to find an assistant that he could trust, but whether he liked to admit it or not, losing Lars had cost him. Time, effort, efficiency. Aleksander didn’t like making the same mistake twice and putting his trust in someone else was too damn much to ask. Because the last time someone had betrayed his trust, made a decision that he could never have imagined making himself, it had left him utterly destroyed. He had survived only by numbing himself to all emotion and he would never open himself up to that kind of pain again.
Surprisingly, the only time he hadn’t felt that internal warring was when he’d finally arrived for dinner with Tuva. He’d been intent on making his apologies and excusing himself, but she had surprised him with her frank response. Tuva had been exactly as he remembered her, direct and efficient. She had laid her cards on the table and he had followed suit. She too was in need of a marriage that wouldn’t challenge her emotionally and they had decided to take some time to consider their options and reconvene in the days preceding Freya’s engagement ball.
She was, he thought, looking out of his window, perfect. Until he realised that he was searching the palace grounds for Henna, who he hadn’t seen in the three days since...since the encounter he was refusing to think about. That he was working predominantly out of his assistant’s office next door proved only that he had enough sense of self-preservationnotto work on the same desk he would have thoroughly satiated both himself and Henna given half the chance.
Which only turned his thoughts back to that evening and infuriated him even more. He simply hadn’t expected it, that was at least half of his problem. And for someone always two steps ahead it was warning enough. Yes, he’d known that he was attracted to her—Aleksander didn’t make a habit of lying to himself. He liked and respected her, and beyond that she was utterly beautiful. But the kiss had gone from sensual to searing in less than a second and he felt as if something fundamental had changed deep within him. It was the single most erotic experience he’d ever encountered, enough to make him mindless in a way that went far beyond something as simple as lust. Even now he wanted to take a cold shower just thinking about it. That alone proved how dangerous she really was.
But he couldn’t fault her. Henna had been right. The kiss shouldn’t have happened. Not only because Tuva had been waiting for him, but because he would never be able to offer Henna what she needed. And she would never be what he needed. She threatened his emotional equilibrium too much.
As the phone rang he realised that he was running late again, serving to prove his point. Snatching it up, he listened to a stream of apologies from the assistant Anita Bergqvist had provided for him. He’d managed to arrange for two meetings with two very different world leaders at exactly the same time and had then painted himself even more into a corner by cancelling on them both at the last minute in a panic.
Aleksander slammed the phone downagain, cursing loudly and not caring this time who heard him. He bracketed his temples with his thumb and forefinger and stared at the travel plans he’d intended to ask the assistant to make to get him to Öström, a pit opening in his gut.