Ludwig knew what it took to run a bank, but, apparently, he didn’t realize what it took to run a country. Aragon was seriously understaffed and Valantín relied much on Angelica to help him. Since the bombing, Angelica rarely slept and had been eating while working, or even skipping meals.

He had talked to her staff,  letting them know that it would be in everyone’s best interest to allow her some downtime. She needed a chance to unwind and relax. While most of them did not agree that she should do so with him, he did manage to set up a late dinner in her private rooms.

All he had to do was to wait for her to arrive.

Which gave him entirely too much time to think.

She was a force to be reckoned with. She wasn’t someone that could be easily taken over. He quickly came to the realization that their week together with her being compliant and soft and submissive wasn’t normally who she was.

And that made him realize why she enjoyed submitting in bed. It was the one place she could be seen as less than who she was. It was the only place she could allow others the upper hand.

If anything, that made him want her even more. And so, he waited for her with the cold dinner. He knew that his fiery, strong-willed woman would need a break. If she didn’t, at some point she would fall apart.

He would let her fall apart all over him. That was the gift he would offer her.

And then, in the public eye, she could be as strong as her people needed her to be.

“I am so glad you called, Siobhan.” Angelica walked out onto the terrace, allowing the last rays of the sun to warm her face. She was exhausted, attempting to be this strong person when all she wished to do was curl up in a corner and forget it all. “I’m happy to hear your voice. I feel like it has been ages.”

Siobhan laughed. “You sound tired.”

“I am tired,” Angelica sighed. “But how is married life? The honeymoon still a honeymoon?”

“As much as can be expected,” her sister replied. “Though I would much rather still be on my honeymoon. At least we were unreachable. Well, almost.”

“I understand,” Angelica said, thinking of how she would like to be back at Ludwig’s house, where it all started. There she didn’t have the weight of the world pressing down on them. “It’s hard, isn’t it?”

“I’m just glad I have someone to talk to,” Siobhan sighed into the phone. “Angus is not the best listener and he actually fell asleep while I was discussing the new color for the carpet last night. I mean, I know it was boring but he could pretend to enjoy the conversation.”

Angelica giggled, wondering if someday she would have the same sort of relationship with a man she loved. “Perhaps if you had been wearing a nightgown…”

“Oh no,” Siobhan laughed. “Then he wouldn’t have let me talk at all. You will learn to pick and choose your battles with your husband. No battle is ever won with lingerie, I can promise you.”

“You are so lucky,” Angelica said, meaning it. She didn’t just mean the fact that Siobhan was the long-lost princess, but more so that she had found her love and was living a life that most would want, without the money.

“Give it time,” Siobhan replied. “Soon you’ll be the lovesick fool and I’ll be the old married woman.”

“I’m glad that you’re part of our family,” Angelica blurted out, realizing she meant it. She and Valantín were close, but there was something about having another woman to discuss meaningless topics with.

“Me too,” Siobhan said softly. “I’ll see you soon.”

Angelica hung up the phone and felt a spark of warmth in her chest from their conversation. She had been so wrong to think that Siobhan was going to ruin their lives.

The sun had already set in a big red ball, coloring the night sky with tinges of purples and oranges until the midnight blue covered everything when Angelica went to her rooms intent on continuing her work.

But she was met by a nonchalant Ludwig lounging in her ante-room and a cold dinner set on a table on the balcony.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, before she could think.

Having him around, patiently waiting for her, and ready to help her with whatever he could, just made her feel guilty because she couldn’t give him what he needed. He was the type of man who demanded, needed more from a woman then what she was capable of giving. She couldn’t come out with their relationship while the country was in such turmoil. At least, not yet.

But the stubborn man refused to go.

He rose from the divan where he was stretched out reading Aragon’s economic news and approached her slowly. “Waiting for you. What else?”

“Is that the best use of your time?” Angelica didn’t mean to say it in that tone, not in that way. She turned and began undoing her braid because if she didn’t find something to do she would grab him and kiss him. He was looking fresh and delectable on a long-sleeve white T-shirt that stretched across his broad chest and washed blue jeans.

Ludwig moved closer, stopping when he was only a hair’s breadth away. “We both know what’s happening here,” he said, his voice dipping to an almost low growl, pulling away the scarf around her neck and letting it drop to the floor.

She felt his breath hitting her mouth, a teasingly light caress that made every thought she had focus on his lips. She couldn’t stop herself. Already she could taste his kiss on her mouth, almost feel it. Her eyelashes fluttered. “We do?”

“Ja, we do.” His beautiful gaze studied hers and his voice came out gruff but his fingers didn’t stop moving and he began to open the buttons of her blouse. “We’re crazy about each other and this is making you nervous. You have no idea what to do with this new Angelica you discovered inside yourself. You want to embrace her, but you’re afraid.”

Angelica’s breath caught with his words. “Am I?”

“Terrified.” His lips drew closer, brushing lightly along her mouth as he continued. Her nerves reached out for his touch, and her mind focused on every breath, every sound. “I can feel your sexual energy calling to me right now. It has been that way since I stepped on your office this afternoon. I know you try to cool it by working, but it doesn’t work, does it? Tell me, Angelica, when I am not here at night, do you touch yourself?”

“No,” she began to protest, not liking the embarrassing reminder of her wantonness. But warmth traveled through her blood, curling low in her pelvis. “I don’t—”

Her blouse floated down to the floor followed by her bra.

“Then it’s time I teach you how to please yourself, because this energy between us is potent. Primitive, even. It needs to be released.” He unzipped her skirt and pushed it down, his hands barely skimming her hips. “For example, now…my body is burning to possess you again and yours is eager to submit to me. Do you deny it, Angelica?”

“Ludwig, I…” Everything about this man excited her. It didn’t make any sense in her world, but she didn’t want it to.

He continued the assault on her senses by picking up a brush and running it through her hair, leisurely. From behind, he whispered in her ear, “Just look how hard your nipples are and I haven’t even touched them. I’ll bet your panties are soaked as well, so wet from the thoughts you’ve been having of me buried there.”

He’s right. Her nipples were hard. She didn’t have to look down to see it.

He put the brush back on her vanity table and circled back to her front. “I’ve accepted it, your body has accepted it, why won’t your brain?” Why won’t your heart?

She closed her eyes, hoping he’d take it as an invitation to take off her panties. Am I overanalyzing the situation because I’m scared? She could practically feel the rough texture of his fingers on her sex. Emotions like these don’t happen to regular, everyday people—can’t. Or else the entire world would be fornicating all the time.

“Just say the word and I’ll have you feeling exactly what your body is demanding to feel, relentlessly giving you the pleasure you’re trying to deny yourself, even as you crave it.” His voice was hoarse, thickening his accent. “In fact, I’ll bet it will feel so good, you know you’ll get lost in it, so you’ll beg me to stop before it carries you away, but I won’t. Nein, once inside you, I won’t stop—ever.”

She gasped, taking in his bold words and unable to eke out an answer through her suddenly dry throat.

His sultry voice continued, fanning warm breath over her cheek and neck as he drew closer to whisper directly into her ear. “You’ll be crying out unsure if it’s pain or pleasure you’re feeling. Oh, but, ja, you’ll know as soon as you come, covering my cock with that sweet cream of yours.”

Angelica couldn’t have formed a sentence if she wanted to. Still he didn’t fully touch her, as if waiting for her permission.

What’s one more night? Her lids drifted open over her eyes lazily just in time to see him step out of his jeans and she let her gaze roam over him.

His face was ruthless but sexy, his hair fell to his chin in choppy dark-blond ribbons. Rope after rope of bronzed muscle offered a feast for her eyes. And from his belly button, a faint dusting of light-brown hair led straight onto a huge, long, thick—and sublimely aroused—cock.

Her mouth dried. A sharp ache pounded through her.

Every nerve ending in her body reached for him, pleading for attention. A sharp need to touch and to be touched, to taste and to be tasted—and why not?—to love and to be loved.

She’d always wanted to have a man, a relationship. She’d always been curious about the passion she’d heard so much about. He had given her that. But she’d also always wanted a man who would love her, who wouldn’t leave her when the passion-fire burned out.

She ached inside so badly.

Ached to be closer to him, as close as possible. To be totally possessed by him. To have some part of him that would become part of her and could never, ever be taken from her.

She sighed and heard herself say, “Sí, por favor.”

At her words, Ludwig felt a surge of victory inside him as he leaned to take her mouth in a kiss. A long, sweet kiss, a kiss made to drug her senses, to mark her as his. He cupped her breasts, rolling her nipples between his fingers.

“Ludwig,” she said his name with a gasp, and it drove him wild.

And he kissed her harder, then he knelt before her and put one of her legs on his shoulder.

Ludwig pulled her thighs apart, parted her gently, sliding a fingertip along her opening, stroking first one then two fingers up inside her.

A low humming noise coming from her drove him wild. As if with his tongue, he could spell out her desires, as if with his fingers he could draw her pleasure.

Only when he’d stroked her to flames, when her whimpering grew into cries of delight, did he rise and pull her back against him, pressing her hands down on the table, spreading her wider so she was the perfect height to accept him. “You’re so beautiful, Kätzchen.”

With a mighty thrust he conquered her and a loud groan left him as her tight wetness closed around him.

Angelica gasped at the fullness of him, still surprised each time that he could force himself so deep.  

“Ludwig,” she whispered his name, urging him on when he wrapped her hair around his hand twice, held her head to the side so he could kiss her.

“Mein Gott, I love when you say my name like that.” Ludwig grunted, losing himself in her, his hips powering against her buttocks with bruising strength, jerking his arm to slam her hips hard against him a few last times.

And then he ran his palm over her round ass and slapped it.

She yelped, her hands twisted onto the table edge, clutching as she tried to hold on the pleasure.

Her parted lips begged him for more, for release. “Oh, sí. Más.”

“I don’t think I can get enough of you.” He moved, spurred on by the thrusting image of her body before him.

When he slapped her again, her back arched. Her breasts reflected back to him from the mirror, teasing him with their bobbing movements.

She’d craved this and not known it. Had been dying inside for want of this and not realizing it. “Ludwig.”

“Look at us.” Reaching a hand down her body, he stroked her clit as he thrust harder in tandem with his slaps on her ass.

His voice was charged with passion and somehow it wrung an instant heated response from her.

“You’re mine,” he uttered, as he slammed against her, plunging harder, deeper. “Mine. You belong to me. No man will ever have you as I’ve had you this night.”

No, no man would ever lay claim to her in the way that Ludwig von Kröeneberg had. Angelica trembled with violent gratification, her body tensing as she spasmed in pure pleasure. It was sharper, faster, and more intense this time.  

Their bodies built with the tension he created with his claiming. She wanted more of him, needed more him as if she’d never had him.

He took her then, the fast, furious pace driving her into a vortex of ecstasy.

She panted, moaned, when he pinched and rubbed her clit, until she was yelling his name in ecstasy.

He put his mouth over hers and swallowed her cries of pleasure.

When she opened her eyes, he was still hard and pulsing within her.

He took her to bed and began all over again.

Unending.

He taught her a whole new meaning to the word stamina. He took her slowly, gently. Then increased the speed and intensity of his touch and his thrusts depending on her need of the moment. He arranged and angled their bodies so that his lower pelvis stroked her sensitive clit with each downward arc of his hips. So that his shaft stroked her in all the right places.

He knew he was pushing her past her limits, but he would drive her up, soar with her to heights of elation she’d never known. And ease her fall back to earth.

She hadn’t realized a man could exert such control over his own body. That he could delay his own release so long and so well. Despite his earlier assurances, the utter self-revelation about her own capacities and appetites became too much.

When she attempted to shy away from such excesses, such ecstatic decadence, he took her by the wrists, held her to the bed and ruthlessly drove her. Until she arched up to meet him again and again, crying out his name, her whole body trembling.

His sole intention had been to get her to understand that she could be a woman. He could see the toll her job was taking on her. This woman had more heart than even she thought. The way she cared about people. It kind of blew him away little bit. “I can never get enough of you. I tell myself one more time. Just once. And it’s never enough. It’ll never be enough.”

His harsh breaths sounded against her ear, his cock hard and pulsing within her. His scent, his taste, the feel of his weight upon her, it was so all-consuming.

Slow now, slow, rising like the steam, falling like the water, floating on thick, wet clouds of pleasure. She looked into his eyes.

Here are the answers. She had only to accept what she already knew, only to hold what her heart already wanted.

You. She let herself go. I’ve been waiting for you.

Until she came and came. Until she absolutely could not come anymore. Until she couldn’t move.

Having fallen back to the bed, she lay panting, her body covered in fast cooling sweat. And she had no idea how many times she’d come. Numbers and pleasure not compatible as shuddering with him on that final fall, she carried love. For the first time, she had a true notion of what it meant to be taken. To be possessed.

When he pulled her into his arms, she pressed her face to his shoulder and kissed it.

Lost in her, he held her another moment, just held. Then he tipped her face back, touched his lips to hers.

But Ludwig kept inside himself those three words that would never be enough.