Player's Princess (A Royal Sports Romance)(145)

“Trust me, you don’t have to convince me.”

“It’s red,” he says.

“Yeah. Irish.”

He scoops me up in his arms and carries me, newlywed style, to the bed. The farther we move from the fire, the colder I get, until I’m shaking like a leaf as he lowers me to the bed. I sink into the featherbed and yank the thick blankets up to my chin.

He starts taking off his clothes, unbuttoning his shirt first. I tremble as I watch.

“I don’t know how far I want to go. You’ll stop if…”

“Yes,” he says. “In my country it is customary to sleep naked anyway. Move over.”

Still bunched up in the covers, I scoot back to give him room. He takes his shirt off first, and I gasp.

“Oh my God, what happened to you?”

The scar on his chest doesn’t look like he should have survived it. It runs from his collarbone diagonally left to right over his body, ending just above his hip.

“It’s more of a burn than a cut. It was a close thing, my great duel.”

If he’s nervous, he never shows it. He walks to a side chair and steps out of his trousers, long, muscular legs flexing. I tuck the covers up to my chin and watch, entranced by the way the firelight dances across his body, deepening the shadows between his bunching, corded muscle. I gasp and quickly quiet myself when I realize he’s not wearing anything under his trousers. He tucks his boots under the chair and throws his pants over the back, and walks over to the bed.

My jaw drops as I watch. He’s incredible, like a statue, and his cock is enormous. There isn’t a single hair anywhere on his body but his head. He lifts the covers back and I tug on them, covering my chest as I curl up in a ball.

He lies down beside me, turned a little my way, and relaxes. A patient look comes over his face, as if he’s waiting. I forget myself and bite my lip as I reach over and lay my hand on his chest. His broad body and thick muscles make my hand look tiny, my farmer’s tan dark against his pale skin. Instinctively I trace my fingers along the length of his scar, shivering as I do. He must have been cut deep. I can feel the little tucks in the edges of the scar where the the stitches held him closed.

“Did this hurt?” I ask dumbly.

“That which does not kill me makes me only stronger. It wasn’t the wound that pained me, but who delivered it.”

“Your own brother did this?”

He nods, and touches my hand. I half expect him to just shove it between his legs, but his rough fingers toy with mine, like it amuses him how little my hand is compared to his. He has big hands, with prominent calluses where his fingers meet his palm. I end up toying with his hand with my fingers, flicking the calluses with my nails. If he feels it, he doesn’t show it.

Kristoff moves closer to me on the bed. The big featherbed yields to his weight and almost dumps me on his lap. He finishes the job by slipping his arm under my waist to halfway lift me onto him. He flinches and blinks wide, a hint of a smile curling the edges of his lips.

“Your legs are cold.”

“I’m cold. I don’t understand how it’s summertime in the valley but it gets so cold up here at night.”

He rolls on his side and pulls me to him, and slips his arms out from the blankets to press them tightly around my body, trapping his warmth against me. I lay my leg on his and flex it, rubbing my thigh and calf on his leg.

The response is instantaneous. I must look surprised, he laughs when he sees my expression as I feel him stiffen. He pulls his arm back under the covers and his hands rest on my sides, just above my hip, like we’re dancing. One moves up my back, his fingers spreading like he wants to touch as much of me as he can. The other glides over my ass and squeezes.

I let out a little squeak and flop in the bed.

“I like it when you make this noise,” he growls, drawing me closer.

His chest presses against mine. His cock is fully hard now, throbbing against my stomach, pressed between us. My hands find more scars, on his shoulders, on his back.

“You’ve been hurt a lot,” I murmur, tracing the patterns.

I try to put together an image in my head of what the battle must have been like, reading the scars like a map. He was hit on the shoulder and it left a deep cut, and there’s a puckered, craterlike mark low and to the side on his back, like a stab wound.

Somebody stabbed him in the back, literally.

As he moves I keep the covers tucked up to my chin, suddenly losing my nerve to let him see me naked, even as I wrap my legs around him and roll my hips, grinding on him. He makes an almost pained sound.

In a quick motion he knots his fingers in my short red hair and pulls. It hurts just a little… But I like it. He pulls me down as he rises up over me, then lets go as I sink into the pillows. He lies half on top of me and yanks the covers down, and out of pure instinct I cover my breasts with my arms.

My tan only extents my arms, and it’s mostly freckles, freckles over my whole body. The rest of me is as white as a sheet, dotted with a million tiny little spots. He kisses me again, lightly on the lips, pulling back when I try to go for some tongue, smiling as if he thinks I’m unruly or something. The word patience forms silently on his lips, and he traces his fingertip back and forth over my collarbone.

I can feel myself uncoiling at his slightest touch. I grab his wrist and pull, trying to move his hand down, but he’s too strong. He goes from stroking my upper chest to my shoulder and neck, and it sends electric shivers down through my body, like my nerves are coming alive for the first time. Like waking up naked under warm sunlight.