Page 75 of The Thing About My Prince

She doesn’t flinch, just holds my gaze with those eyes that are a softer blue now. Not sharp and piercing and all get-that-story, meet-that-deadline, but slightly unfocussed, a little foggy, like she’s allowing herself to get lost in the moment. There’s that free spirit again.

Cupping her smooth cheek in my hand, I lean in.

Her lips are parted, ready for me, before I’ve even reached them.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

LEXI

How the hell am I supposed to resist this?

Well, clearly I’m not resisting it. Not even trying to resist it.

I am fully kissing Oliver right back. Giving myself to the sensation of him sucking and teasing my lips, of his tongue on mine, of the sweet taste of the chocolate mousse we had for dessert still lingering on him, of that fresh scent of his skin that makes him smell like he just stepped out of the ocean.

When we tear our lips apart to come up for air, Oliver tips his forehead against mine and pinches my chin. “You’re fucking amazing, Lexi. You know that?”

“I know that I don’t do things like this.” I rest my hand on his arm. “I need you to know this is not who I am.”

“What isn’t you? Making a man weak at the knees with these magic lips and this magic tongue?”

“Kissing the person I’m interviewing. I’ve never crossed this line. Never hovered anywhere near it. Never even thought about doing it. Would think it was shockingly unprofessional if anyone else told me they’d done it.”

“Well, I think I kind of like unprofessional Lexi.” He runs his fingers down the side of my neck, across my collarbone, and down the center of my chest, making my skin prickle with pleasure under his touch. He doesn’t stop until he hits the top button of my shirt.

“How about we make it a little more shocking?” He undoes the button, and my nipples instantly harden.

“Oliver, we can’t. It’s—” Whatever I was about to say flies out of my head when his lips meet the side of my neck, melting me into a puddle of goo that’s incapable of forming words.

His mouth and tongue on my skin set every inch of it thrumming with life. Like sunlight, he brings a bloom of warmth between my thighs and, dear God, who knew arousal could hit with the force of a flash flood?

“Would you like me to stop?” His words stroke the ultra-sensitive spot where my neck meets my shoulder as his hands move down to the next button.

“No.” I let him pull me down the bed and roll me onto my back as he leans over me. “I don’t want you to stop. I want you to very much keep going. But it doesn’t mean that’s a wise decision. Or that it’s right.”

“Oooh.” He kisses his way lower, toward my cleavage, his lips making contact with every new patch of skin revealed by each undone button. “Is the bad boy prince leading you astray?”

“I don’t think you’re as bad as you allow people to believe.” I push my fingers into the thick mass of sandy hair. God, I’ve been desperate to touch it since I met him that first day in his apartment.

He opens the final button. “How bad would you like me to be right now?” His breath tickles my belly before looking up at me, his eyes and voice heavy with desire.

My hands fall from his hair to his cheeks and encourage him up my body until his face hovers over mine.

“We shouldn’t do this,” I whisper.

But I’m going to. I know it’s wrong but, against all my principles, something compels me forward anyway.

“I know,” he whispers back, then drops his mouth to mine.

My lips part to greet the softness of his, and the stroke of his tongue sends heat flowing through me, like thick lava that runs through my veins and pools at my core.

I shiver when he brushes his fingers up my sides, his mouth never losing contact with mine, and reaches underneath me to unclasp my bra.

The release of tension feels like it’s not only my breasts that have been set free, but also some part of me that I’ve kept fastened for years. A part of me that’s always focused on the career goal, only ever done things that move me toward it, that would never in a million years do anything to jeopardize it.

And yet, here I am—topless, lying under the British prince I’m supposed to be interviewing but am, very clearly, about to have sex with.

Oliver peels his lips away and tips his chin to his chest as he looks between us and down my body.