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She squirmed, tugging at my hair. Her juices smeared her mound and dripped down her crack. With a growl, I followed the path with my tongue. She shook above me, her mouth open on a wild cry. Fucking gorgeous. I gripped her thigh and pinned it flat to hold her still. “Hang on, Princess. Let’s get you there.” I thrust two fingers all the way inside her and worked my tongue furiously over her clit.

She arched, her breathless, broken string of ah-ah-ahs a sweet accompaniment to the juices flooding my tongue.

I spoke as I licked, praising her and eating her and watching her tits heave and her cute little fangs sink into her plump bottom lip. “Good girl, Princess, making all this nectar for your king. Open wider, sweetheart.” I pushed her legs up, spreading her until her entrance gaped and her clit stood up like a shiny rosebud. “That’s what I want, beautiful. Let me see that gorgeous pussy. I want you to come on my face. Can you do that for me like a good girl?” Unable to resist, I dipped to her tiny pink asshole and licked there too.

Her hips shot off the bed. “Oh my…” Her words climbed to a tangled, breathless scream as she flew apart. Her body stiffened. I gripped her ass in both hands and worked my tongue as fast as possible over her clit. I took her through it as she shrieked and bucked and soaked my face.

When the tension left her limbs, I slowed things down, tonguing her with barely-there kisses. Eventually, I climbed back up her body and took her mouth, giving her a taste of herself. I angled my hips away so she wouldn’t feel my dick, which was ready to rip through my pants. When I made her mine for good, it wasn’t going to be in a borrowed bed in some tumbledown tower house. I had a reputation for irreverence when it came to royal traditions. It was partly true.

Maybe mostly true.

But in this I was resolute. In some cases, all those trappings and ceremonies mattered. This was one of them. If I took a halfling to wife, the people needed to accept her as queen. Anything less could be ruinous. The stakes were so much higher than anyone knew.

I lifted my head. She stared up at me, her mouth swollen and her eyes hazy with desire. Then her expression shifted. The first inklings of panic gathered.

“Don’t,” I said, placing a damp finger over her lips. “I don’t want an answer right now. Think about what I said. Think about the kind of life you want.”

Some of her earlier fire flared back to life. “You mean the life you want.”

Slowly, deliberately, I straightened her stockings and pulled her skirts down her legs. She shivered, little aftershocks rippling through her. I helped her sit up, and she blushed furiously when I used the sheet to wipe her come off my face. I tossed it aside and stood, extending my hand in a courtly gesture like I hadn’t just devoured her cunt.

She let me pull her to her feet, and I steadied her and kissed her knuckles. “Perhaps, Princess, but the past few minutes lead me to believe we want the same things.”

Chapter Fifteen

VARICK

I leaned against the wall in the Rose Room with my arms folded over my chest.

Waiting.

The only sound was the occasional sputtering of a candle.

Memories tugged at me. They were everywhere—the bed, the floor, the top of the stairs. I used to think they might fade. After so many years, I assumed they would grow foggy, or at least overlap. Tangle together. But each one remained distinct and whole. All the times I’d been with Laurent, in this place where the outside world couldn’t reach us.

The very first memory was the best one.

“You’re not scared, are you, Varick? You can tell me if you are.”

“No, my prince. I’m not scared of anything.”

He’d faced me on the pillow, dark-haired and beautiful. “You can’t lie to me. I’ll always know.”

“I’m— Maybe I am scared…a little.”

His smile was as beautiful as the rest of him. “There’s no reason to be. Let me show you.”

And he did. And after, when we lay on our sides in the big bed, our faces inches apart and sweat cooling on our skin, he made us swear a vow. “We’ll always have each other’s backs. Not just here, but everywhere. And we can tell each other anything. No matter what.”

He meant it. When duty lifted him even higher above me, I could still tell him anything. And he told me things he didn’t share with anyone else. In the secret room at the top of the stairs, we showed the hidden parts of ourselves to each other.

But there were words he’d never said. Words I wanted to hear more than anything.

The door downstairs clicked, pulling me from my memories and into the present. Laurent’s footsteps rang out. He appeared a second later, dressed in black with crimson night-blooming roses embroidered on his jacket. His hair was damp. He was as beautiful now as he’d been at sixteen.

We stared at each other. I didn’t move from the wall.

“Well?” he asked.

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