Page 370 of Bad Prince
I press myself flush against her, every hard line of my body molding to her soft curves until there’s nothing left between us but heat and need.
Her legs come up instantly, wrapping tight around my waist like they were made to be there.
I spin us, backing her against the nearest padded wall with a solid thud, one hand cupping her perfect ass to hold her up while the other keeps that braid fisted. My hips roll forward, pressing myself right against her core, and the delicious friction rips a raw groan from deep in my throat.
She answers with one of her own—soft, needy, trembling—her fingers digging into my shoulders as our lips tangle again, hotter, slower, like we’re both trying to pour every unsaid I love you and I’ve missed you and I’m never letting you go straight into each other’s souls. She smells like citrus and warm skin and that faint trace of gym rubber that somehow only makes her more intoxicating, more real, more mine.
“Vale—” she breathes against my mouth, the sound breaking on a shudder.
I groan louder, the sound vibrating between us, because this is it. This is finally giving in. No more distance. No more almosts. Just her, wrapped around me, trembling and perfect and mine.
My eyes snap open. The dream still clinging to me like smoke. The accounting textbook lay open on the floor. The numbers were still waiting.
Sweat soaks my hair, my neck, the pillow under my head.
I’m hard. Aching. Furious.
“Fuck.”
The word rips out, raw.
I slam my fist into the couch cushion once. Twice. Three times—hard enough the table shakes.
Stella.
Still her.
Always her.
I stand up, chest heaving, staring out into the night beyond the window.
She’s not here.
She never was.
Just a dream.
I drag a hand down my face, groan low in my throat.
I wanted her.
I still want her.
And the worst part?
She knows it.
She’s always known it.
And tonight my subconscious decided to remind me—in Technicolor, surround sound, no mercy—that choosing myself doesn’t mean the want ever really goes quiet.
It just waits.
Patient.
Starving.
Ready to snap the second I let my guard down.
