His hand clamped down on her wrist. He yanked her back to him. The breath woofed out of her as she came up hard against his muscled torso. He grabbed her by the hair at the back of her head. Her mouth fell open. Before she could utter some version of the what the hell? that was ricocheting through her stuttering mind, he turned her face up and drove his mouth down onto hers.
There was nothing civilized about his kiss. He was rough, rampantly dominant, as he dug his hardened tongue into the soft crevices of her mouth, in and in and in, and it was such an invasive raw imitation of the sex act that desire roared through her like a runaway eight-thousand-pound freight train engine. Her inner muscles clamped down in involuntary need, and a high, thin whine broke out of her. She heard the desperate animal sound as if someone else had made it; it was that much beyond her control.
Tiago lifted his head. He was breathing hard as if he had just been sprinting, or as if he had just hurtled through the air in manic flight.
“Like that,” he said. The burning words came from the back of his throat and singed her nerve endings. “It’s going to be like that.”
So how did one recover from Tiago’s particular style of demolition and scrape together enough poise to meet with the senior officials of one of the oldest governments on Earth?
Along with Carling. Oh no, we mustn’t forget Carling.
Niniane sat on the bed and stared at the bedroom clock for several heartbeats. And in a half an hour, no less. Yes, apparently she and Tiago had squandered away that much time.
Well. Whatever else happened, she would meet her fate clean.
She dug through the shopping bags and grabbed items of underwear and outer clothing. There was certainly no point in agonizing over what to wear. It wasn’t like she had much from which to choose. She had two pairs of jeans, a polo shirt, a scooped neck tee, and a cashmere sweater. It was all Burberry Brit casual wear from Nordstrom and very nice, for what it was, but of course it wasn’t suitable. All of her suitable clothes were being held hostage by the people she was going to meet. That might not rank high on anybody’s list of affairs of state, but it ranked pretty high on the list of things she resented.
She went into the bathroom, closed the door and started the shower. When the water had warmed, she stripped off the peach lounge suit and stepped into the tub. She stretched and turned under the steaming cascade. It felt incredible to move freely and without pain. She could almost be grateful, except for that whole scaring-her-to-death thing when Carling—along with all of her people—had confronted Tiago.
Niniane knew herself pretty well. She read Elle and People magazines, not the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. She had half a dozen lipsticks in her purse, all of them varying shades of pink. She loved pretty clothes, chocolate truffles and a good Pinot Noir. Her genetic makeup, not her designer makeup, was the only thing that qualified her to be a potential head of anybody’s state. If the Dark Fae had a civil servant exam for the monarchy position, there was no way she could qualify even if they graded on a curve. She was not by any stretch of anybody’s imagination a weighty faerie, but she was an efficient one. It had taken her two minutes or less for her mind to gallop back to the object of her obsession.
It’s going to be like that, he had said. With such simple words and a single kiss, he shredded her sense of mission and all of the convictions she had held about herself like they were so much party-colored tissue paper.
She squirted a dollop of lilac-scented shampoo into one palm. As she worked it through her fine black hair, she let herself wonder what it would be like to walk into the upcoming meeting and announce she would not take the Dark Fae throne. She could do it too. She could drop everything to be with this man. The frenzied passion he roused in her was that overpowering.
What would be the result?
Someone else would become Dark Fae King or Queen. Hell, as far as she knew, it would be someone far more qualified than she was. But it wouldn’t be someone closer to the throne. There was no one closer. That throne had cast a shadow over her all of her life. Whoever became monarch would always know she was out in the world, the real heir with the unshakeable claim. It would undermine everything he tried to do. At the first test of his ability or crisis in government, it could shake him to his foundation.
The smartest thing for a capable ruler would be to solidify his power and rid himself of the threat, but then she already knew that. Walking away would not stop the attempts on her life. But would it gain her anything else?
She sagged against tiled wall. No.