Fated, Mated and Bound

He was standing close enough that she could feel the heat radiating off him, the specific temperature of a man running hot from frustration who had just been given something to direct that energy toward. His eyes moved from her face to the neckline and back.

"Where did you get this dress?"

"I've had it for a while."

"And who saw you in it?"

"Just the transport driver and Victor-"

He moved his lips to the side of her neck. Not asking. Not building toward-simply claiming, his mouth finding the sensitive place under her jaw with the accuracy of a man who had been thinking about exactly that spot. He sucked the skin there and she heard herself make a sound that she had not planned to make, the sharp involuntary exhale of someone whose body has been caught off guard.

"If you wear this dress again," he murmured against her neck, his teeth grazing very lightly, "it will be in my bedroom where I can take it off you myself."

His hands were at her waist, pulling her flush, and she felt the hard evidence of what six months of waiting had done to his patience pressed firmly into her through the fabric between them. She gripped his shirt.

He reached for his phone without releasing her. "Victor."

"Yes, Your Majesty?" Victor sounded entirely unsurprised.

"Tell the group I'll take their proposal under advisement and that I'm otherwise engaged until tomorrow at noon."

A pause. "Understood, sir".

She blinked. "Noon?"

He put the phone on the nearest surface without looking at it. His arms came under her thighs and she was lifted before she had fully processed the motion, her legs going around his waist by instinct, the coral silk folding around both of them.

"I thought we were having dinner," she said.

"Later," he said. And carried her out of the study.