Page 13 of Royally Knocked Up (Princes of Passion #1)

HAILEY

A ll night long, Hailey felt as if she was trembling.

She was sure Enzo must be able to see it.

It was something like fear, what she was feeling — except that it wasn’t fear at all, because if it had been, her body would have been closing down, tightening up, drawing away.

Instead, every time she stopped paying attention, she found herself growing warm, listing toward Enzo, unfolding for him.

It was as if she had just completed a strenuous workout. Her muscles had been pushed to the brink, that was what it felt like. Trying to do anything now was more than she could manage.

Every time Enzo touched her — and he seemed so determined to go on touching her — it felt as if she might shatter. His fingers against her cheek sent electricity through her that made it impossible to move away from him.

He was a mark , for God’s sake. She couldn’t be doing this. She had to get herself under control.

As midnight approached, Enzo paid the bill and the two of them stood up to leave the club. He placed his hand low on her back in a way that was protective, but also a bit possessive. Hailey found herself struggling to breathe.

It was lucky that they had decided to take a taxi instead of Hailey’s car, because she didn’t think she could have kept a clear head to drive them back to the resort, and the alcohol had nothing to do with that fact.

She and Enzo sat in the backseat together.

His hand came to rest on her bare knee, then gradually moved to her thigh, and this time, Hailey did not pull away from him.

In the dark of the taxi, in the light of the moon, it almost felt as though these things didn’t count. It was as if a cloak had been drawn over the two of them, shielding them from all the reasons why they shouldn’t be getting close to one another.

As she had that thought, it was like a weight had been lifted from Hailey’s shoulders.

Maybe it was the rationalization she had just come up with. Maybe it was the alcohol. She didn’t know, and she wasn’t sure she ever would know.

But somehow, in that moment, she gave herself permission to stop holding back, and she leaned into Enzo’s body.

He must have felt the difference in her, because he looked down at her, eyes widening slightly as he took her in — and then his arm wrapped around her shoulders.

She thought — he’s going to kiss me now — and for the first time since all this had begun, she felt no urge at all to put a stop to it. She felt no warning desire to pull away. When he kissed her, she would kiss him back, and let the chips fall where they may.

But he didn’t kiss her.

Not then.

He just went on looking at her.

No one had ever looked at her like that before, Hailey thought.

There was something intensely intimate about it.

She had never been looked at as if someone could see right to the core of her.

She felt as if she was already naked, and there was no chance this night was going to end any other way.

The moment she had relaxed into him, something had shifted between them.

They had boarded a train together, and there was no getting off.

The taxi pulled up in front of the resort. They got out, and Hailey felt pathetically grateful for the fact that they lived in an age when a person paid for rides with a credit card, so there would be no messy handling of cash and waiting for change. They could just get out and go.

They stepped into the shadows as the car pulled away, and she thought, now. Now is when he’ll kiss me.

But he didn’t.

He stood with his back to her for a long moment, and she almost worried that the spell had broken somehow — that just when she had finally decided to give in to this, he would come to his senses and realize that they were risking too much, that they shouldn’t be doing any of this —

But he turned back toward her and held out his hand.

Helplessly, she took it.

She had meant to play it cool. She had meant to come up with some sort of clever line in this moment. Your room or mine?

But words failed her, and she allowed herself to be led along after him.

She allowed herself to forget entirely the strength that she so prided herself on, and when he opened the door to his room and guided her inside, it felt obvious to her that they had always been heading here.

There would have been no point in having a conversation about it.

He followed her in. He shut the door behind him.

He did not turn on the light, and Hailey wondered whether his instinct had been the same as hers — whether he also felt that the darkness was giving them the permission they needed to do the things they had both been longing to do.

She didn’t have to wonder for long.

He turned to face her again, his eyes blazing with something so primal that she recognized it at once in spite of the fact that she had never seen it before.

And this time — at last, after all her waiting — he did kiss her.

It was exactly as she had dreamed it would be. The passion of it washed over her like a tide, driving all thoughts out of her mind. She knew that they shouldn’t be doing this, but that knowledge had all but disappeared.

He backed her into the wall. Her arms came up and wrapped around his neck as she returned his kiss with fervor.

No kiss had ever felt like this in her life — it was as if they had spent the whole time they’d known one another in some sort of orbit, gravity pulling them closer and closer, their awareness of one another growing more and more powerful with each day that passed.

It was as if this collision had been inevitable.

He pulled away. She wanted to cling to him, to pull him back to her, but she knew better than to do that. Maybe he had finally come to his senses.

But no. He was smiling at her, looking giddy and youthful in a way she had never seen him. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time,” he confessed.

“You should have.”

“But how could I have? Every time I thought of it, every time you and I came close to one another, you pulled away from me. Truth be told, I thought you wanted nothing to do with me.”

She shook her head. “You didn’t think that,” she corrected, blushing when she realized that she was short of breath.

“I know you didn’t think that. You knew how close I came to giving in to this.

How many times I barely stopped myself in time.

I know you, Enzo. I see the confidence you have, how sure of yourself you are.

I think you knew that we would find ourselves here eventually. ”

“I hoped we would,” he said softly.

He brought his hand up to touch her cheek, just as he had when they were out at the club. This time, Hailey did not stiffen under his touch. She leaned into him instead, letting her eyes close.

“We should take this to the bedroom,” he told her quietly, and she found that she couldn’t disagree with him.

Still, she was taken by surprise when he bent down and swept her off her feet into his arms. She gasped. “Enzo!”

“Do you know how many times I’ve imagined this moment?” he asked her huskily, his face so close to his that she could smell what she thought must be his aftershave. “Do you know how many times I’ve pictured exactly how I would want it to go?”

“What happens next?” she asked breathlessly.

He grinned. “I take you to bed.”

He walked down the hall to the bedroom. Hailey had been in here many times, but she had never seen his bedroom before, and even stepping through the door felt like crossing a line, moving to a new level they hadn’t touched before now.

His bed was the same as hers, a fact that took her by surprise. She had imagined that it would be much more luxurious.

But it was perfect. It was exactly what she would have chosen — just a bed, with nothing fancy to distract her from the warmth of his body or the pure indulgence of the fact that, finally, it was just the two of them giving in to one another.

He laid her gently on the mattress. She’d wondered what it would be like. Would he toss her down and pounce on her, laughing? She had imagined it that way, when she’d allowed herself to fantasize. Surely that was the kind of man he would be. He wouldn’t take any of this very seriously.

But she had been wrong.

He lay down beside her.

For several long moments, he didn’t say anything.

There was no frantic ripping-off of clothes. There was no eager rush, as she had imagined there would be when they finally let this happen.

He just lay there, looking at her.

After a long, exquisite, drawn-out moment, during which Hailey wondered if she was even breathing, he touched her lower lip — gently, as if it was a berry that he was testing to see whether or not it was ripe.

She felt her lungs expand.

“Has anyone ever told you,” he asked — conversationally, as if he was asking her about the weather — “how beautiful you are?

Of course they had. It was a line that had been used on her a dozen times. How many times had she heard it?

And yet, it had never sounded the way it did right now, coming from him.

This time, she believed it.

“Don’t try to sweet-talk me,” she managed, but in fact she hoped that he would never stop.

As much as she had longed to be here with him in this exact situation, she thought she wouldn’t mind if this was as far as things went between the two of them.

For him to lie here with her, looking at her as if she was a priceless work of art and telling her that he thought she was beautiful — that was all she needed.

That was enough magic to last her for the rest of her life, she thought.

He had her believing that right up to the moment when he bent to kiss her again — and then Hailey knew wholeheartedly that words could never be enough. That nothing he said would ever satisfy the hunger within her.

She fisted her hands in his shirt so that he wouldn’t be able to pull away from her this time, thinking of what it had felt like to make out with boys when she was a teenager.

It was the fact that she was doing something forbidden that had made it all so alluring back then, not the boys themselves. She had been breaking the rules.

She was breaking the rules now. But the difference, the key difference, was that this time she was breaking them with one of the sexiest and most emotionally and intellectually stimulating people she had ever known.

He rose up to his knees and took off his shirt, and in the darkness she could make out the angular planes of his body. It was shadowy enough that she couldn’t get a good, detailed look at him.

She didn’t need to.

She caught his wrist in her hand and pulled him close again, reveling in the feeling of his body, warm against hers, and began to explore him with her hands. The tips of her fingers skated across his skin, getting to know every inch of him.

This first time might be their last time, she knew, and she was determined to make the most of every single moment of it just in case she never found herself here again.