Page 109 of The Twisted Throne

His eyes were shadowed, but she met them as he added a thirdfinger, working her body in slow strokes that drove her to madness.

“For once, Princess, I want you to do what I tell you,” he said. “I want you to listen. Will you listen?”

His thumb rubbed over her clit, and Ahnna gasped out, “Yes.”

“I want you to come for me.” He bent over her, kissing her once. “I want to watch you come with my fingers in you.”

She nodded, incapable of words as his thumb rubbed in slow circles around her clit, her body rising to climax on his words alone. Sitting back, he toyed with her, eyes drinking her in as he unbuckled his belt with his free hand, pulling free his cock. It was as big as the rest of him, and he ran his hand over it as he fucked her with his fingers. “I want you in me,” she pleaded.

He shook his head, expression dark and merciless as he stroked her faster. Ahnna writhed beneath him, her body strung taut as she stood at the very edge of release.

Then her climax crested.

She sobbed his name as pleasure rolled over her, her body clenching around his fingers. Wave after wave, until she collapsed backward, her body feeling boneless and spent.

Until her eyes met his.

James gripped her knees, the fingers of his right hand glistening in the sunlight as he lowered his head, tongue sliding into her. Tasting her. Lifting his face, he murmured, “Good girl, Princess,” then sucked her clit into his mouth.

It should have been too much, her body already spent. Maybe it was too much, yet that somehow was exactly what she wanted. Ahnna buried her fingers in his hair, holding him against her as he consumed her, barely feeling the rocks and debris digging into her back. “I want you in me,” she begged. “Please, James.”

He growled against her, rearing up, shoulders illuminated by the sun. “You want this?”

“Yes,” she gasped, reaching for him. Needing the feel of him against her. “I want this.”

Taking hold of his cock, he pressed it against her, and Ahnna moaned as he eased inside her, the feel of him making her shake.

She wrapped her legs around him as he leaned over her, pulling him deeper, his groan turning her body liquid as he pulled back and thrust again, harder this time. Then again and again, the tide of a second climax rising in her body. “Harder,” she whispered, desperate to have all of him. “Make me yours.”

James froze, and Ahnna realized in an instant that her words had been a mistake. Had snapped him back to the harsh reality of what they were to each other.

And what they were not.

He pulled out of her. Back from her. And the expression on his face as he said, “But you’re not mine. And never will be,” shattered Ahnna’s heart.

“James…” She reached a hand for him, but he jerked away. Picked up a rock and threw it against the cellar wall as he screamed, “Fuck!”

Ahnna sat up, pulling her knees to her chest as she watched him pace back and forth across the small space, trousers pulled up but his still-hard cock straining against the fabric.

“I’ve lost my mind,” he muttered. “Lost my fucking mind to have done this.”

“It’s fine,” she said, despite knowing that it was very much not fine. “No one—”

“It’s not fine,” he shouted. “It was a mistake!”

Ahnna flinched, squeezing her legs tighter to her chest, his words a knife to her heart because she knew they were true.

“I can’t make mistakes, Ahnna.” He was still pacing, for all the world like a wolf caged against its will. “I’m the king’shalf-Cardiffian bastard who is reviled by the queen. It is only my father’s goodwill and that of my siblings that keep me from being treated like Lestara. I cannot make mistakes. I cannot be anything less than perfect, or I will lose everything.”

She knew how that felt, knew the need to hold oneself to a higher standard than everyone else lest everything fall to pieces, and it explained so much about him. Explained his rigid self-control and his need to follow the rules, to do everything by the book.

Her lips parted, but before she could speak, James said, “You asked me before if it bothered me, how my sister and the others treat Lestara.” He stopped pacing, pressing his hands to his face for a heartbeat and then dropping them to look at her. “I lied to you when I answered. I hate it. Not how they treat her, specifically, for Lestara earned her lot, but how Harendellians treat people from Cardiff. How Harendell’s laws allow civilians to murder Cardiffians without consequence just because of their beliefs.” His voice shook. “Do you know how many times I’ve seen innocent Cardiffians burned alive and had to stand there and donothing?”

She bit her lip, because knowing the laws allowed such things and seeing it with one’s own eyes were very different things.

James wasn’t finished, though, emotion having overwhelmed his usual taciturnity. “And I don’t understand why. Have never been able to understand it.” He began pacing again. “My father used to send me to Cardiff for weeks at a time when I was a boy to spend time with my uncles. To learn their ways out of respect for my mother, and there’s not a goddamned thing about astromancy that anyone in Harendell has reason to fear. Stories in the stars? Fortune-telling? Potions that are nothing more than herbs and muttered words? It’s nothing to fear, yet I’ve had to keep thosevisits a secret all my life lest anyone question my belief in the true faith.”

James spent time in Cardiff? Not only knew his mother’s family, but had lived with them for weeks at a time? Had learned aboutastromancy? A thousand questions rose to her lips, but she bit down on them lest her voice silence his. Lest she lose this one chance to learn more about the enigma that was James.

---