When he’d stood at the edge of the stage, battered by the screams of thousands, arm around John, he believed he’d earned it. When he’d fired the manager the instant he had some leverage and hired Devonte instead, he thought he’d been making amends.
When he sang into the camera for every video and showed off his tattoos during every televised performance, while never once trying to contact her, he assured himself that he was doing everything he could to win her back.
And then he’d stepped into her kingdom thinking she was the one who needed to change.
He knuckled the pang growing painful in the middle of his chest.
He needed her here with him, right now. He needed to lock the door and keep her away from him.
He would tell her that he was writing again. He’d already scheduled studio time for when he got back. He would tell her that he had her to thank for the newly flowing lyrics and melodies.
He would tell her that he’d been wrong.
Fuck.
After a lifetime of believing he’d been pretty near perfect, he was wrong, and he’d tell her. He was actually the selfish, self-involved man-child she’d accused him of being. He was wrong for showing up here with his preconceived notions of her and he was wrong—and, let’s face it, a coward—to go ten years without telling her he thought of her daily.
He was wrong to have believed that anything—his music, his career, John—was more important than her.
He startled to standing when the bedroom door opened and although all the things he had to tell her were on the tip of his cowardly tongue, he stopped short. Saw the look on her face—anger, distress, even a little fear—as she aimed herself at him in a rustle of silk then pressed her face against his crisp, white shirt. Her arms burrowed under his suit jacket and clung to him like he was a tree keeping her grounded during a storm.
Stunned, he slid his hands over her silk-covered back and embraced her, gathered her tight against him. “Sofia?”
She raised her lips to him. “Kiss me,” she demanded, that little line of stubbornness between her brows. He didn’t know who she was defying. But it wasn’t him.
“Of course,” he said, rubbing his big hands over the delicate muscles of her, over her back, shoulders, arms that carried so much. He would reassure her. He would keep her safe. “As many kisses as you want.”
If anything, that made the line dig in deeper and, fuck, he didn’t want to be the reason for her distress, so he gathered her face in his hands and kissed her with all of the devotion he had.
He wanted it sweet. He wanted to soothe her. But his kiss caused a wounded sound in her throat, and that, that had to end right fucking now so he pushed his tongue into her mouth, strived to heal whatever was hurting with slow, wet plunges.
His hand slid over the glistening, creamy-tan silk, silk turned erotically warm with her heat, and over one pebbled nipple. That’s right, she was naked under this silk. Restraint was already slipping when she pulled back with a wet suck and looked into his eyes. Hers were as sultry as just-turned earth after a summer rain.
“I want to make love with the lights on,” she said, and holy fuck, if that didn’t almost send him to his knees. “Get out your cock so I can see it.”
And...unh...down to his knees he went.
She huffed in surprise and excitement, and Aish nuzzled through the silk into the apex of her. “You first, Sofia,” he murmured, cupping her small, firm ass to hold her, to allow him to breathe and nose and kiss at the heart of her where she’d sworn she was naked for him. “I’m dying to see this pretty pussy. Please, princesa, por favor, let me see your gorgeous cunt. I need it.”
And her hands clenching into his hair, the sugar-salt bloom of the smell of her beneath her skirt, told him she was as desperate as he was.
But when she stepped back from him, she was the princesa he’d just called her, regal and restrained, with all the control she’d learned from being a representative for her people when her parents were dicks, from being dismissed as a party girl when she was actually a self-made millionaire, from having to deal with a media circus when she was just trying to create a better future for her kingdom.
Princesa Sofia Maria Isabel de Esperanza y Santos began to raise her skirt. He loved naked bodies, loved each stripper and groupie and socialite and movie star who’d slowly taken off their clothes to show him theirs. But not one of those experiences had him like this, down on his knees and panting as his princess raised her gilded skirt to show him delicate bare feet, a part of her that highlighted how small she was, even though she always seemed gigantic. She showed him the fine bones of her ankles and the glistening line of her shin. When she revealed her knees, he tried to duck down and kiss them, but she nudged him back, tsk-tsked him for being so impatient and Jesus fucking Christ he really needed to find out if she liked roleplay. These were the first knees he’d ever found irresistible. Then her thighs—smooth, tanned thighs—which meant she’d been hanging out poolside at some point and fuck every minute someone else got to look at those thighs. He wanted to snatch up those minutes like they were Matchbox cars he was too selfish to share.
When he realized he’d been staring at the gentle slopes of her inner thighs with his fingers clawing into his pants, when he realized she’d paused pulling up her skirt, he looked up at her. She was staring down, down at his crotch, where his cock was being obscene between his white-knuckled hands.
“Eso parece que duele,” she said and
