A Whisper of Disgrace(37)
‘I know,’ he said. ‘And I’d be happy with pretty much anything you’d care to do to me right now.’
‘Oh, Kulal.’
‘Oh, Rosa,’ he murmured back, and lowered his head to kiss her. He thought that her lips felt cool and tasted of the peppermint tea she’d brought back to bed when they’d first woken. Her arms tightened around him and the desire he felt grew stronger—his heart beating out a crazy rhythm as he pushed one hard thigh against the fleshy softness of hers. He thought how perfect she was in his arms, how their lovemaking just got better and better and pretty much took his breath away every time. And he thought how their honeymoon had surprised him in all kinds of ways.
At first, they had barely left the apartment—with only the occasional trip to a theatre or a restaurant punctuating their lazy days and long nights of sexual exploration. For the first time in his life he had cleared his diary and turned off his phone—because he never took a holiday. Never. He told himself that it would be a useful experiment to see if his charitable foundation could function well without him, but deep down he knew that wasn’t the real reason. The truth was that he didn’t want to leave Rosa’s side. He couldn’t get enough of her; he couldn’t seem to keep his hands off her. And when they had ventured out, he had felt like a tourist in his adopted city. She’d made him do things he would normally never have dreamt of doing, like climbing as far as it was possible up the Eiffel Tower—with his bodyguards trailing behind them. And when he had remonstrated that he did not wish to join in with other sightseers, she had halted his objections simply by kissing him.
‘You’re never too cool to see the whole of Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower,’ she’d giggled against his lips. And later that week they had taken a riverboat down the Seine and she had looked up the name of all the bridges in her guidebook and recited them to him. They’d sat and drunk coffee incognito at the famous Café de Flore and made two similarly unrecorded trips to the theatre. In fact, they’d managed to avoid a single press photographer capturing any honeymoon images and to Kulal this had felt like a small triumph—especially when he’d realised that she actually hadn’t been interested in being photographed with him.
He’d even taken her shopping—something he’d never done before, although he’d picked up plenty of inflated bills in his time. But with Rosa it was different. She didn’t seem bothered about the cost of things and he enjoyed dressing his new wife with clothes which befitted a princess. Just as he enjoyed buying—and removing—the outrageous scraps of silken underwear which could barely contain her luscious curves.
He still couldn’t get his head around it. What was the appeal of lying next to her and just watching her—as if the sight of the slow inhalation and exhalation of her breath was the single most fascinating spectacle in the world? Usually he absented himself pretty early, because he didn’t like women hanging around him in the morning. He liked his space and his privacy. He liked the feeling of being alone—the way he’d always been.
But not with Rosa—and he was still trying to work out why.
Was it because she gave herself to him so completely? Because she was all his and only his—like a newly minted coin which had been held by no other person? With her, he felt primeval. Something possessive and powerful gripped him whenever he held her, something which battered at his senses like a raging storm. Perhaps that was the ancient power of the marriage vows—that no matter how carelessly the words had been spoken, they still managed to convey a profound significance to the couple involved.
He moved his head down between her thighs, hearing her breathless little gasp of anticipation as he began to lick her. He revelled in the taste of her sweet-sharp stickiness and the way that his fingers sank into her soft hips—just as he revelled in her orgasm as she bucked helplessly beneath his tongue. He stayed there for a while, his lips pressed hard against her until at last she grew still and then he moved over her, and into her. He closed his eyes as he lost himself in her slick heat. Allowed the urgent rhythm to spiral them both up to a place so high that the slow and incredible fall back to earth left him breathless, and spent.
He must have fallen asleep, because when he opened his eyes it was to the smell of strong coffee and the sight of Rosa sitting on the window seat in a silken robe the colour of claret, with the glory of Paris framing her like an Impressionist painting.
‘I’ve made you some coffee,’ she said.