Kathleen Creighton - Romancing The Crown - Leila and Gage

The throbbing between her legs became heavier. She arched and squirmed sinuously as, under the water, her hands slid over her body, unconsciously following the same paths as the images in her mind. But, oh, what a difference there was between her own curves, and the hard planes and sculpted hollows of the male body she remembered…the body that invaded her thoughts, quickening her pulse and heating her cheeks at the most unexpected and inappropriate times. Cade’s body. And now, her husband’s.

My husband…will he desire me now? Now that I am his wife? Will he kiss me again the way he did that night on the terrace?

Her heart gave a sickening lurch, as though it were trying to turn upside down inside her chest. Trembling like someone just risen from a sickbed, Leila climbed out of the bathtub and wrapped herself in a thick, soft towel. She dried herself quickly, ignoring the shivers, then bravely tossed aside the towel and naked, faced her blurred reflection in the steam-fogged mirror. With her lips pursed in a thoughtful pout, she turned this way and that, trying to see herself from all angles. Yes…her breasts were full and yet still firm, with the nipples tightened now into hard, tawny buds…hips also full, but, she thought, not too wide…slender waist and firm, flat stomach…thighs wellmuscled—probably from horseback riding—and her buttocks, what she could see of them, round and smooth, and, she hoped, not too big.

Almost as an afterthought, with a defiant little flourish, she pulled out the combs and pins that held her hair high atop her head and let it tumble, thick and dark, down her back and over her shoulders. As she watched it her breathing quickened. Her lips parted and a rosy flush spread across her cheeks. The eyes that looked back at her in the mirror seemed to kindle and glow, as if from a fire somewhere in their depths.

He kissed me. He desired me then, I know he did .

Confidence welled up in her like a fountain, and her thirsty soul found it more intoxicating, more erotic than wine. He desired me once, and I will make him desire me again .

Buoyed on a magic carpet of restored self-confidence and new resolve, Leila brushed her teeth and her hair and rubbed her skin with scented oil until it felt soft and smooth as silk. She put on a modest but alluring gown in a soft, shimmery blue-green—the color of the water in a shallow cove near the palace where she and her sisters liked to swim and sunbathe. Somewhere along the line she noticed that the butterflies had come back, although now it did not seem at all an unpleasant sensation.

I am ready, she thought as she paced nervously, glancing from time to time at the clock on Cade’s bedside table. Ready for my husband…

It was half past midnight when she heard the creak and scuffle of footsteps outside Cade’s bedroom door. Her heart skittered and bolted like the squirrel she had seen that afternoon in the lane as she watched the doorknob slowly turn and the door swish inward, silent and stealthy as a thief in the night, to frame the tall, imposing figure of her husband.

For a moment he hesitated, looking as if he wasn’t sure whether he’d got the right room. Then he stepped through the doorway and carefully closed the door behind him. All the while his eyes never left her face, and they reflected the glow of the lamps she’d turned on low beside the bed so that they seemed to catch fire and flare hot as he looked at her.

Her stomach gave a lurch as the magic carpet of confidence she’d been riding on went into a steep crash dive.

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