Page 26 of Vows to a King
“And they have always been extra interested in you because you were always a rebel.”
The smooth, olive-toned skin of his shoulders glinted in the soft lighting when he shrugged. “The myth becomes bigger and juicier than the man. But enough of me, Princess,” he said, whispering the words into the arch of her neck where her pulse was begging to explode. “And just a kiss won’t do if you want to explore this.”
“I want more, Adonis. All of it.”
His grin this time was all Devil Prince, his perfect white teeth flashing at her. With his designer cut ruffled by her possessive fingers, his sinuous lips dark pink and glistening wet, he looked utterly debauched. That it was at her hands…added an extra zing.
“We should wait to be married for all of it, Princess. I don’t want the damned crown council questioning our child’s legitimacy.”
She nodded, thankful for his common sense when she had none. “I…went off birth control that night you agreed to my proposal.”
“We need a better story to tell our children and grandchildren than that,ne?”
Dear God, was the man a closet romantic? Was anything the world knew about the Devil Prince actually true? “Why? Does it hurt the Devil Prince’s masculinity if it is said that he was rescued by his wife and queen-to-be from an untenable solution?”
His laughter was genuine and breathtaking for that. “No,yineka mou. I have a feeling my masculinity will be thriving in your hands.”
She laughed then, a strange sort of awe filling her. A grasping greed filled her. The more he gave her, the more she wanted of him. “Did you know that it is customary that Thalassan princes give their brides-to-be an engagement present of their choice? There’s a story about how Queen Isadora didn’t use hers for a long time.”
A sudden flash of anguish shone in his eyes before he chased it off with a slow smile. His fingers danced on her belly. “I love the greed I see in your eyes. Clearly, there’s something you want from me, Princess.”
Jemima didn’t miss the thread of mockery that entered the last few words. But she forged on, refusing to let his mistrust of her ruin the moment. “Give me one thing the world doesn’t know about you. Anything. Even as trivial as your favorite dessert.”
He looked thunderstruck for so long that Jemima felt foolish. When he shook it off, he searched her eyes. “You’re a strange woman, Jemima Nasar,” he finally quipped. His defined chest rose and fell with his decision. “I have been celibate for six years. Which is why all this rubbing and writhing is driving me crazy.”
Shock robbed her of thought or speech for long moments. “But…they…the tabloids…” Meeting his eyes, she pushed the doubts away. “May I know the reason?”
“Some other time. Right now, I want us both to have one gloriously high point amidst the circus we’ve been thrust into.”
“That sounds perfect,” she said, backing off. He’d already given her so much more than she’d expected in this relationship, and she didn’t mean just the drugging kisses. She trailed her fingers down his stomach, and then traced the veins on his shaft. “Tell me how to give you what you need. I… I want to satisfy you.”
“Oh, Princess.” He pulled her fingers over his thick shaft, the tendons in his neck showing taut when she rubbed her thumb pad over the soft head. “Keep stroking me,ne?”
She nodded and applied herself like a diligent student eager to please her master. Touching him, stroking his hard length, hearing grunts and groans fall from his lips only pushed her up to the edge.
Slowly, his fingers pushed past the hem of her dress, mapping and tracing her thick thighs and finally landing on her pulsing and wet and agonizingly needy core.
“All that uptight efficiency and beneath it,” his whisper was a gravelly torment as he traced her folds with reverence, “you’re melting for me, Princess?”
Jemima had no answer.
A very deliberate swipe of his fingers from her clit to her slit had her jerking her spine and squeezing his cock harder. He half groaned and half laughed, a serrated sound that tore through the thin threads of her frayed control.
“I’m reminded of my science lessons, Jemima,” he whispered at her temple, his lean body somehow half prostrate over hers and yet, not giving her any of his weight. “Something about equal and opposite reactions.”
Then he, with excruciating slowness that threatened to spin her out of her own skin, fed one long finger into her channel. Every nerve ending she possessed flared with a brilliant light when he added another finger and then went exploring inside her until he found the perfect spot.
Electric sensation made her lift her hips.
When he plunged his fingers in and out, hitting and pressing at that spot, she followed the rhythm, her entire body dancing at the edge of that cliff. All the while he told her what a good girl she was to take him like that and how wet and tight she was and how incredibly hard the sight and sound and feel of her wanton response made him. The rogue even said she was a damn queen already, the way her body sang for him.
And the proof was in her hands, she noted with a feral satisfaction.
Even with her wrist cramping, she kept stroking his shaft, determined to bring him over with her.
Moans and groans and unintelligible sounds rushed from her mouth and her pulsing flesh, adding to the lilting cadence of the fountain. She protested when he pulled her hand off his cock. Laughing, he replaced it with her other, and then covered it with his own free hand.
They stroked and caressed each other, to the background of their rasping breaths and hitching moans.
