Page 68 of The Thing About My Prince

Instinctively I reach up to push it off her face. “You okay?”

She’s as breathless as I am, and I imagine her heart must be racing even faster than mine from the shock.

“Yeah, yeah.” She rests her hands on my chest and throws back her head to blow out a longphew.

“But are you?” She looks down the length of our bodies to check out how we’ve landed—her on top of me, my legs dangling over the arm of the sofa. “I seem to have crushed you.”

“I’m totally fine.” The sensation of Lexi lying on top of me makes me finer than I could have imagined. And there’s an embarrassing hardening in my groin that’s going to make her realize any second exactly how very fine I am.

“Thank you for saving me.” When those blue, blue eyes meet mine, that feeling returns—the surging in my chest, the unique sense that there’s something that connects us, something more than her contract to write the book, something more than each of us needing the other to secure our futures. It’s outside of us, like a tightening string that pulls us together because that’s where we’re supposed to be.

“I’m happy I was here.” My pulse ratchets up another notch. Now not from the shock of the fall, but from an undeniable desire to touch her.

She makes no attempt to move, just lies there gazing down at me, and it’s like she’s the greatest gift that’s landed right in my lap.

I reach up and tuck her hair behind her ear, exactly as I did in the bathroom. But this time I know with absolute certainty it won’t stop there.

The electricity in the air between us says we both know we’re about to kiss. Her gaze is on my mouth, giving mine permission to settle on hers.

She pokes out her tongue just enough to moisten her lips.

And I swear to God, I can feel her heart beating against mine.

I allow my hand to slide from her ear to her cheek and ease her face toward me as I lift a little to meet her.

This is crossing all kinds of professional lines, and if it were to go wrong, it would create a nightmare working relationship. I watch her every move to be sure this is what she wants.

Her eyes drift shut as she leans her head into my hand and parts her shiny lips.

Holy fuck, I’m really going to kiss Lexi Lane this time.

I brush my mouth over hers as gently as she did with mine in the garden, testing the waters, making absolutely sure.

My hardening dick shifts, and there’s no way she didn’t feel it.

Then she takes my top lip between hers, and I’m gone.

Leaning back to rest my head on the cushion, I pull her down with me, kissing my way along her bottom lip and then the top, before daring to run my tongue along them.

She responds by tipping her head and parting her lips wider, letting our tongues meet. It’s a smoldering exploration, a slow-burning flame, and the most sensual fucking kiss of my entire life.

I slide one hand into her hair, the other down her back to that pert round arse I’ve admired so much these last few days, and hold her tight against my rock-hard erection.

She tips her hips into me, and the signal that she wants this as much as I do floods me with relief.

“Oliver,” my mother shouts in the distance.

Lexi’s head pops up and looks down at me, her expression rigid with panic. “Shit.”

“Oliver! Where are you?” She’s louder now, closer.

Lexi scrambles off me with such speed that she slides onto the floor with a thud.

“You okay?” I sit up and reach for her.

She gets to her knees. “Apparently I’m determined to fall today.”

I gaze at her pinkening, glowing face as she tosses her hair back, and can’t help but think I might have fallen too.