In the moonlight, he had been the epitome of the tender lover. Here in the baths he made her want to bite and scratch.
She was surprised to realize how much she liked it both ways.
In the relatively short time that they’d known each other, he’d already shown her so much that had been a mystery to her.
It was almost unbelievable to her that there was anything she could give in return. But at the same time, as he gripped and held, kissing her neck and doing things to her sensitive breasts that threatened to push her over the edge, she sensed that she remained the steady one.
She was the calm at the center of his storm, and she could take whatever he threw at her.
He pleasured her as if it were a competitive sport, driving her mercilessly to and over the edge multiple times with his fingers and mouth before finally lifting her up to wrap her legs around his hips in a shameless straddle.
Holding her weight with one muscled arm, he positioned himself at her entrance with his other hand, teasing and caressing her before finally sliding in.
Her moans echoed around the humid room, their sound warped and changed by the water in the air, mingling with the rhythmic sound of their bodies contacting each other’s and their panting breaths.
The combination of it all, the sensual overload intertwined with their locking bodies, was enough to thrust her to climax yet again, ripping through her with enough force to carry him along for the journey, and their final primal groans happened in sync, before they both collapsed, sinking into the warm relief of the pool.
For a long time, neither of them spoke, both seeming to understand that with what had changed between them, words were just not quite enough.
Planned or not, they were well and truly partners now, committed to each other in a way neither of them had anticipated or agreed to.
And if it wasn’t exactly what either of them had wanted when they set out, if their baths session had just reaffirmed anything, it was the fact that they could certainly make it work, and even feel good doing it.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
MARRIAGE,ASRITA’Smother had explained to her, was a long twisting road, filled with unseen curves as well as massive hills and valleys—and that turned out to be true even for a fake turned not-so-fake one.
Jag took real residence in the palace alongside Rita, accompanied by an inordinate number of new security professionals. He insisted that it was simply that she was unused to the size and scope of his full retinue, but she could not recall ever seeing that many guards around him.
Along a similar vein, his arrival had also apparently necessitated an upgrade to the palace alarm system, which had been completed within the first week.
Sharing the palace, they had each fallen into individual daytime routines until their paths converged at the dinner table—which, due to Rita’s new sensibilities, had become much simpler affairs.
And then, more nights than not, they shared a bed, making love and falling asleep.
And they didn’t talk about any of it, not their arrangement, not their expectations, not their future.
But as much as she didn’t know what to make of it, she wasn’t exactly unhappy.
Jag was an attentive expecting partner, doting and involved, if not romantic, and if he was getting a little haggard and going a little overboard in terms of security, she had read that some expecting parents got that way.
He would settle down once the baby arrived. It was certainly making its presence known in every conceivable way.
Hovering on the cusp of fourteen weeks now, not only had her breasts increased in size—as most resources predicted—but her abdomen as well, the famous bump appearing rather shockingly around the twelve-week mark and having only grown since.
The same resources suggested that that was unexpected.
But she felt wonderful. Her current project—the plane Jag had promised—was flourishing, and she was alive, and steadily cared for in the company of other people in a way she had not been for a long time. As unlikely as it had all seemed in the beginning, she was going to have a family.
That was what was important. Not love, but a happy family in which no one expected anyone to be anyone that they weren’t.
Overall, though she still was plagued by occasional nausea, she generally felt like a flower in bloom.
A hothouse flower hidden away from the harsh light of day and the prying eyes of people, but a flower nonetheless.
In fact, the only drawback over the past few weeks had been the intensity with which Jag was treating the effort to hide her pregnancy.
He was leaving the palace less and less and had stopped taking outside meetings.