Royal Babies: Claiming His Secret Royal Heir / Pregnant with a Royal Baby! / Secret Child, Royal Scandal. SUSAN MEIER

all the things he wanted to say, but didn’t quite know how. So instead he did what he had promised himself he wouldn’t do and he kissed her—right there in the middle of the rainforest, with the smell of the monsoon in the air, and the pounding of the waterfall in the distance. He kissed her as if his life and soul depended on it.

      Her resistance was brief—a nanosecond of surprise—and then, as if she too were tired of words, of this walk down a memory lane that was lined with sadness, her resistance melted away and her lips parted beneath his.

      He tasted the sweet chili tang left by the sandwiches and heard her soft moan. Their surroundings receded. The call of a hornbill, the rustle of the monkeys in the trees above all melted away and left only them, encased in a net of yearning and need and desire.