A Kiss of Fire (A Kiss of Magic #2)(63)

That was all this was, she argued with herself. Frustration. Physical frustration. It was toying with her thoughts.

“Would you like to go for a ride?”

Ariana gasped. She had not even noticed Sin enter the room. The request was thoughtful as he looked her over from head to toe. His mother was right. He looked at her as a starving man looks at a meal behind enclosed glass.

“I—” She cut herself off as she took a moment to take him in as well. She looked him over from his raven black hair to his broad chest to his tight, trim waist, his lean hips and his strong, muscular thighs. He wore a loose black shirt and skintight black breeches. His shining black boots reached his knees and his sleeves cuffed at his wrists without lace. The shirt was open at the neck, revealing little sprigs of hair at the point of the ‘v’ neckline. He was a day behind on shaving and looked handsomely scruffy. His hair looked mussed, as if he had been running his fingers through it in successive strokes.

That was the moment she admitted to herself that she wanted him unlike anything she had ever wanted before. That she wanted to toss away her concerns and worries and just be a woman with him. She just wanted to feel his hands on her body, to feel his mouth worshipping her skin as she knew he would do. To feel him hard and unyielding inside of her.

“Yes,” she breathed.

“All right then, let’s go. We should get you a cloak.”

“Excuse me Fatima. And,”—she turned to take the woman’s hands in hers and squeezed them— “thank you.”

Sin didn’t know what he had walked in on with Ariana and his mother, but he had felt that scorching once over she had given him right to the bottoms of his soles.

He led her out into the hall, trying to guess what she and his mother might have been talking about. At a loss, he could only mull it over in confused silence. They got to her room and when they walked in she turned back and closed the door behind them. It perplexed him because they were simply coming to get a cloak for their ride. Perhaps she wanted to talk to him…to tell him once more all the reasons she didn’t want him.

Well, he wasn’t in the mood to hear it all again. He hadn’t slept at all last night, had instead spent the night in his study staring blankly at ledgers and then into a fire as he rolled a glass of useless liquor in his hands. It never helped. He didn’t know why he continued to try it. Nothing was strong enough to shut her out.

He had paced and cursed. Paced and thought about her smell and her taste and the feel of her body against his. Paced and tried not to feel everything he was feeling.

He grabbed her cloak from the hook on the wall and reached for the door. She stepped in his way and the sweet, exotic smell of her drifted up into his senses. He gritted his teeth.

“I’m tired,” she said.

He blinked in confusion.

“You don’t want to go for a ride?”

She gave him a mysterious little smile than made his belly clench with want.

“Not in the way you mean, no.”

The hint at the double entendre made him freeze in place. His hand clenched around the cloak he held.

“In what way?” he said hoarsely.

She reached out and took hold of the cloak. She drew it free of his death grip and dropped it carelessly to the floor. She moved forward several inches, until their bodies met and meshed. Sin had to stifle a groan.

“Ariana, I’m not in the mood for games,” he said his voice as ground up as gravel.

“Isn’t this what you wanted? For me to come to you?”

Sin went stock-still. Surely he had heard her wrong? He must be mistaking her meaning. Just last night she had been adamant about keeping her distance. What had changed between now and then? Nothing. Nothing could possibly have changed. They were still who they were, each at an incredible impasse of wills.

“Tell me something,” she said when she was met with stony silence. “Am I simply a phase? Something you will grow tired of the moment you finally have me? Is my inaccessibility my chief lure?”

“Your inaccessibility is my chief frustration. There is nothing alluring about it,” he said, his tone hard. “What is this all about?”

“I’ve been speaking with your mother,” she said, reaching up to trail soft fingers down his unshaven cheek. “She made me realize a few things. Things I think you have been trying to tell me…but I wasn’t listening.”

“What things?” he asked, struggling to keep hope from blossoming in his chest.

“That I mean more to you than a simple conquest.”

His eyes widened then his brows snapped down in a frown. “If I haven’t made that clear by now, then I’ve been going about this whole business all wrong,” he said. “You are far more than a simple conquest. If I wanted a conquest…I would start a war…invade a country. Not kidnap a woman for my bed.”

“But…according to your laws, I would be nothing more than a royal concubine. I could never stomach the idea of—“

“A concubine! Ariana I do not want a concubine! I want a wife!”

“But I cannot become your wife until I produce your heir.”

His frown deepened. She had a point. According to tradition she could not become his wife until she had birthed him a son.

“Do you mean…if I were to make you my wife regardless of my country’s traditions, you would consider having me?”