“I don’t think I’m capable of romantic love. I’m just not wired that way,” he admitted, hoping his honesty wasn’t scuppering his efforts at courtship.
Courtship. Konstantin let out a humorless laugh. He now understood what that word meant. And it wasn’t just sending a bunch of meaningless gifts to a woman.
It was working to show her that their lives would be better joined than apart.
“What is funny?” she asked, her voice gentle, her lovely features open in a way they had not been since he ran into her in that bank.
“I finally realized what it means to court a woman.”
“Oh, and what does it mean?”
“You are going to find out,” he promised.
His brother wasn’t the only son of the Royal House of Merikov that knew how to court a woman.
“If my new art studio and the effort you make with our son is any indication, I’m going to enjoy it very much.”
Konstantin suddenly realized that this woman deserved every bit of the courtship he had not given her before. When he hadn’t been able to see her as anything but a temporary lover.
It would be no platonic courtship though. He would be a fool to give up the one area he’d always gotten right with her.
And Konstantin’s father hadn’t raised any fools.
Emma wasn’t sure what that expression on Kon’s face meant, but it intrigued her and sent a frisson of feminine awareness through her.
His gaze locked with hers, Kon pulled her hand to his lips and kissed her palm, flicking his tongue out to tease.
Need kindled by Emma’s first sight of him at the bank whooshed into a flash fire. An all-over body shudder sent that heat spiking through her every capillary. Emma’s nipples peaked into aching rigidity just that fast, her sex contracted with need, her lips parted ready for his kiss, her eyes slid shut as decadent anticipation rolled over her.
All from that single sensual caress of his tongue against her palm.
Memories of him turning her hands into erogenous zones, of tasting her entire body with that clever tongue, inundated her so that it was hard to separate the past from the present. Her body was starved for his touch, but she hadn’t known it.
She knew it now.
Could not miss how everything in her strained for his touch.
His big body moved, Emma’s heightened awareness telling her he was closer than he had been. Warm air puffed over her lips as he asked, “May I kiss you?”
“Yes.” Her brain screamed caution; her body wasn’t listening.
The kiss, when it came, was electrifying, everything she remembered and more somehow. His lips moved gently over hers at first, like he was relearning the taste and texture of her lips.
She responded in kind, molding her mouth to his. Emotions she thought long buried if not obliterated entirely erupted inside her, causing a maelstrom of feelings she no longer had a compass to navigate.
She hadn’t been kissed like this in more than five years, but it had been years and what had once been oh, so natural between them was now something different.
Something intense and dangerous.
She no longer trusted this man with her heart, but her body craved him so badly she felt she’d fly apart if they didn’t keep kissing.
Sensation poured through Emma, strong and urgent, setting every single nerve ending alight with anticipation.
With need.
With longing.
A longing that was familiar from a very different setting.