Free His Majesty's Child by Sharon Kendrick

and shatter around her and she cried out in an orgasm that had her vulnerable and helpless and trembling in his arms.
    Dimly, she was aware of his own drawn-out moan of completion, and the way his muscular body shuddered inside her as she struggled to hold onto her composure—a strong cocktail of painful feelings threatening to override the warm satiation of her body. And unable to prevent the slow slide of tears down her cheeks as she contemplated what she had just done.
    Reality returning with the slowing beats of his heart, Casimiro bent his head and kissed her—his face drawing back a little as he tasted salt on her lips. With a frown, he stared down into her brimming eyes as some rogue thought came drifting into his mind from nowhere. Emerald stars , he thought. But it was gone again in an instant.
    â€˜Tears?’ he murmured as he wiped one away with the tip of his finger. But he could not wipe the smile of satisfaction from his lips. He had her exactly where he wanted her—all warm and soft and sated beneath him. She was greedy for him—and that sexual weakness would allow him to call all the shots. ‘And here was me thinking that sexual pleasure was supposed to make you smile.’
    Sexual pleasure? Melissa could have hit him. But howcould you hit a man when you were still joined intimately with him—his body still quietly pulsating inside your own? When she’d made herself so vulnerable in front of him that she felt as if he’d torn off a whole layer of skin and exposed her raw heart to the world? And she suspected that any hand she raised to strike him might instead be distracted by the lean musculature of his torso. So that she might be tempted instead to curl her fingers into the whorls of dark hair which arrowed down his chest so enticingly.
    Melissa stared up at the shifting shadows of his aristocratic face.
    â€˜Now what?’ she questioned unsteadily.

CHAPTER FIVE
    â€˜B EN , Ben…’ Too late, Melissa reached for the pot of organic rasp berry yoghurt her son was waving in the air—just in time to see it spill in a pink and lumpy cascade onto his dark curls. ‘Oh, Ben !’ she cried in horror.
    â€˜Den!’ came his ecstatic response, because he hadn’t yet got to grips with the letter B, and he fixed his mother with a gappy, happy grin.
    Melissa plucked him out of his high chair and sent an agonised glance at the clock which was ticking on the wall. Only fifteen minutes before Casimiro was due to get here and the little boy she’d dressed so carefully was covered in gunge and smelling like a fruit sundae. His woefully inadequate bib was now sodden and she rued her decision to feed him this close to the King’s arrival—but she hadn’t bargained on him deciding that he was hungry and deciding that he was going to have a screaming paddy if he didn’t have some pudding.
    And if you hadn’t been gazing at yourself in the mirror—you might have realised that he was about to dress himself in yoghurt .
    Trying to calm the worryingly baleful expression in his wide amber eyes, she began to remove the ruined clothing. She’d been having a last minute look at herselfonly because she’d been so busy—frantically trying to make Ben look like the best-dressed and most well-adjusted baby in the world. So that she’d barely had time to do anything about her own appearance. And realising too late that she looked awful. Just the way she always seemed to look awful when Casimiro was around.
    But this wasn’t supposed to be about her!
    She stripped Ben off and gave him a rapid bath in a few inches of tepid and soapy water before putting his nappy back on—but by now he had begun to grow furious.
    â€˜Shh, darling. Shh,’ she soothed as he jerked his head away from his second-best T-shirt. But all her pacifying was to no avail and she was soon engaged in a classic mother and baby battle. Normally, she