Why was she standing so close to him?
He looked her up and down again, this time much more slowly. His nostrils flared. ‘Getting some ideas down about what we can do with the stables while the ideas are fresh in my mind. I’d like to have my office facing the garden on the ground floor.’
Her arm brushing against his, Alessia peered at the sheets. He’d sketched the floor plan in remarkable detail. How could he remember it so clearly? she wondered, awed too at how well he’d recalled the proportions of each room.
Why this should make her heart swell and ripple even more she couldn’t begin to guess.
And why she’d leaned so close into him she couldn’t begin to guess either.
Trying hard to cover the emotions thrashing through her, Alessia shifted away from him then turned round so her back was to the table, raised herself onto her toes and used her hands as purchase to lift herself onto it.
They were almost eye level.
If she moved her foot an inch to the left, it would brush against the calf of his leg.
‘You are keen to get out of the castle,’ she managed to tease. Or tried. She couldn’t seem to breathe properly.
His eyes locked onto hers. ‘I don’t like my business belonging to everyone else.’
Somewhere in the dim recess of her mind, she understood what he meant. The family’s personal wing of the castle was busy. Alessia had her own offices but they tended to blur with her private quarters, clerical as well as domestic staff in and out, her family’s clerical staff often popping in to ask her questions or get her input. Everything was fluid, communication between the family’s respective teams high, everyone working and pulling together for the same aim—the monarchy’s success.
Right then, she couldn’t have cared less about the monarchy’s success. Right then, the only thing Alessia could focus on was the hooded desire flowing from Gabriel’s eyes, entwining with the buzz in her veins, and the feel of his calf beneath her toes...
Large hands gripped the bottom of her thighs just above the knees. Jaw clenched, Gabriel brought his face close to hers and bore his gaze into her. ‘What are you doing, Lessie?’
‘I don’t know,’ she whispered, staring right back at him.
Hadshekicked her shoes off so she could rub her toes against his leg?
Her head was swimming. She knew she should push his hands away but the sensations and heat licking her from the outside in were too strong. Erotic fantasies were filling her, a yearn for Gabriel’s strong fingers to dip below the hem of her white, floaty skirt and slide up her thighs to where the heat throbbed the most.
Another image filled her: Gabriel lifting the strawberry-coloured bandeau top she’d paired the skirt with over her breasts and taking her nipples into his mouth.
Was that why she’d chosen to wear a top that needed no bra? she wondered hazily.
‘Alessia, talk to me.’
His voice was thick, and as she gazed helplessly into his eyes, the pupils swirled and pulsed into black holes she could feel herself being pulled into.
‘I... I don’t want to talk,’ she whispered hoarsely, unable to stop herself falling into the limitless depths.
Gabriel tightened his grip on Alessia’s thighs and tried his damnedest to tighten his control. He could feel her desire with all of his senses, feeding the thick arousal that had become a living part of him, unleashing unbound since she’d walked into the dining room, as beautiful and as sexy a sight as he had ever seen. The heat of her quivering skin burned into his flesh, its scent sinking into his airwaves. Hunger, pure, unfiltered, flashed from her melting velvet eyes into his. It was there too in the breathless pitch of her husky voice. Smouldering.
God, he wanted her, with every fibre of his being, but he would not be the one to make the first move. It had to come from her.
He drew his face even closer to hers and forced the words out. ‘Alessia, what do you want?’
Her hands suddenly clasped his cheeks. Her breaths coming in short, ragged bursts, the minty taste of her warm breath flowed into his senses, making him grip even tighter as desire throbbed and burned its way relentlessly through him.
It was the control she could see him hanging onto by a thread that unlocked the last of Alessia’s mental chain. She could feel Gabriel’s hunger for her as deeply as she felt her own but he chose to starve than do anything without her explicit, wholehearted consent because he knew the mental agonies she’d been going through and, more importantly, he understood them.
He would rather put himself through the agony of denial than risk hurting her again, and her heart filled with such emotion it felt like it could burst out of her.
It was impossible to secure her heart against him.Impossible.Her heart and her body were intricately linked when it came to Gabriel and if she couldn’t give one without the other then so be it. She’d committed herself to him for life, and the feelings he evoked in her were never going to subside.
What was the point in fighting the woman inside her any longer?
She was crazy for him.