Page 14 of Praise Me: Princess
“Ohhh,” I draw out, taking a seat on the blanket. “Okay, then.”
He continues to frown at me for almost a full five seconds, before jerking his chin at the spot beside me. “What am I supposed to do here? Sit crisscross applesauce like I’m in kindergarten?”
“Yes. Or you can lie on your side. Like this.” I demonstrate, lying down and turning onto my right side, tucking my stacked hands beneath my cheek.
Conrad makes a muffled sound and sets down the basket, lowering himself to the ground, his gaze traveling over the swell of my hip and down the length of my thigh. With his eyes returning to settle on my face, he stretches out onto his left side, facing me with his head propped on a fist. “How’s this?”
“You’re doing marvelously, Commander.”
He hums, studying me closely. “Let’s say you end up hitting it off with this prince.” His tone could not be sourer. “What then?”
“Then we marry, and I set about learning how to be a wife.” I fidget with a loose string on the blanket. “I know very little about that role. I’ve never even watched my mother be a wife, as my father died young.”
“Does the idea of being a wife scare you?”
“Certain things.”
“Such as?”
I chew my lip a moment. “This is such a silly reason to be nervous, but imagine having to buy gifts for someone everysingle Valentine’s Day and birthday and Christmas. That’s three gifts a year! How does one keep coming up with ideas?”
“This is why they invented gift cards.”
“That’s not very romantic,” I say, wrinkling my nose.
“Noted,” he mutters under his breath. “What else scares you about being a wife?”
“Well…” I hedge. “The obvious stuff. Wedding night. Intimacy.”
“You’ve never been intimate with a man,” he states.
“You didn’t have to sound so positive of that fact.”
Conrad gives me a level look. “In the car, when I told you I couldn’t lie on you without reacting, you had no idea what I meant.”
Don’t look at his penis.
Too late. I looked right at it.
“That gave me away, did it?” I ask, sounding more than a little breathless.
“Afraid so.” He seems to be judging the distance between us and deeming it too far, his body scooting an entire foot closer to mine on the blanket, the fronts of our bodies nearly touching, and my sex contracts in response. “You wouldn’t be able to lie on top of me without reacting, either, Princess.”
My skin grows hot to the touch. “A woman’s reaction is far less obvious,” I say, lowering my voice as if we’re sharing secrets. “How would you know I’m reacting?”
“I’d know.”
Change the subject. “How?” I whisper.
Keeping his gaze locked with mine, the commander rolls onto his back—a thick machine of a man covered in dappled sunlight. “It’s better to show you.” He reaches over to delve his fingers into my loosely braided hair. “Practice being a wife with me, Greta.”
A warm breeze rolls over me, but instead of cooling my body, it’s like blowing on a fire. The flames are fanned. I know very well that my relationship with the commander is unconventional. It has been since last night when I slept in his arms. The indiscretions only started to pile up when I wrapped my legs around him in the back of the SUV and felt his hunger against the seam of my riding pants. I should redraw the lines of propriety…but I don’t want to. No, I ache to leave them blurred.
“A wife would lay on top of her husband?”
“You would if you were my wife,” he says, the pitch of his voice deepening, those long fingers massaging my scalp firmly. “Or you would lie beneath me. No clothes on. And you wouldn’t lie still, either, Princess. You’d be moving. I’d be moving.” His hand drags out of my hair, fingertips traveling down my arm, leaving goosebumps behind. Stopping at my hip. Squeezing. “Come here, baby.”
I’m not sure who moves first or how I move, only that I’m brought up against his powerful body, an exhale shivering out of me at the full contact, his right hand hooking beneath my knee to draw it up, up and over his hip, my face burying in his shoulder as I slide into a straddle on top of my bodyguard, his palms splaying and riding up the outside of my thighs. Up and down, up and down, while I try not to moan over the might of his body, how perfectly he’s been constructed of muscle and flesh.