Page 114 of Pawn of the Cruel Princess
The hot, broad head of his cock nudges my folds, nosing into the slippery wetness, and I stiffen all over. Every nerve in my sex is glowing, alive and alight.
He slams into me, crashing through the fragile agony of my soul, shattering it with a rush of sensation. Violent, merciless, he fucks, and fucks, and fucks me, until all my torment about this day is gone, and there’s only him, rutting into me with a brutal force I didn’t know he was capable of.
With my cheek and chest against the soft bedding, and my bound hands stretched out, I let myself be his thrall. His hands splay over my ass, gripping so hard it hurts. I love it, I need it—I need his fingers to erase the sting of my father’s whip. I need his fierce grunts to blot out the screams of the servants, echoing and echoing in my head.
Ducayne pulls out of me with a taut roar and throws me onto my back. A sharp tug brings me to the edge of the bed, while he grips one of my thighs and buries himself in my soaking heat. His hips surge, slamming home again and again. The flex of his body is power, passion, and peril, because I can’t look away, and in his dark eyes I see the words shining, blazing.
I love you.
“You will never scare me away,” he says, hoarse and breathless. “You will never do anything so terrible that I cannot excuse it. I will never betray you.”
He descends on me, his mouth to mine, a fierce kiss that sucks me in. His hand travels my breasts, and then closes around my throat.
My air is gone. And in that moment of heartstopping tension, with the blood pounding in my ears and my mouth opening convulsively to his kiss, the most intense orgasm of my life shears through my body.
I am paralyzed, every muscle constricted while the pleasure pierces my belly, my chest, my spine—washes in tingling waves through my legs.
Ducayne releases my throat, and I haul in a great lungful of air.
He leans into me, thrusting deep, groaning, half-sobbing while his cock pulses. He comes for so long that I wonder, I wish, I hope we can hover in this perfect moment forever.
But then I hear a trickle of water, and I gasp through the fading ecstasy, “Ducayne, the tub is overflowing.”
“Shit,” he says fervently. Pushes in a little deeper and throbs once more.
Then he pulls out and runs to turn off the water, while I lie spent on the bed and breathe, relaxed and alive.
We had filthy sex in a house full of corpses.
Wicked, and wrong, and twisted.
But I am the Princess of Torture, devotee of the death god, and Ducayne is enthralled, devoted to me beyond right and reason.
I know it now, because I felt safe with him, even when he bound my wrists.
He returns and scoops my limp body off the bed. “Come, Princess. Our bath is ready.”
Ducayne and I leave the palace in the cool of the evening, dressed in servant’s attire. We load our two horses with bags of extra clothing and supplies, and we carry satchels with money and jewels tucked into secret pockets. My satchel also holds the travel papers Ducayne retrieved from beneath the loose hearthstone in Cowen’s room. There’s a sheaf of papers for a man: Miles Doriant, oddities merchant, as well as a woman, Nell Doriant, weaver.
My face is a problem. As the Second Princess, I’m recognizable—my likeness and Vienne’s hang in most of the mayoral offices of towns and cities across Thannira—small portraits, flanking my father’s large one. Some inns, taverns, and mercantile offices also have royal portraits on the wall. And while my image is nowhere near as popular as Vienne’s, it is sold in the streets of the Royal Seat, where vendors embroider it on cloth bags or paint it on collectible teacups.
I thought about asking Stefa to alter my features, but I could think of no incentive for her to do so, unless we promised her freedom. And then we would have to take her with us so she could restore my appearance later. And we can’t take her along, since we only have travel papers for two.
I did the best I could to alter my features with cosmetics, and I’m wearing a large hood that casts a deep shadow over my face. Beneath that, a headwrap covers my silvery blonde hair. It will have to do.
The roads are still thick with mud, and in some places covered with water, but we manage to pick our way through. The worst place is the bridge to the road that leads down the bluffs and through the dunes to Oleyra. The bridge is half gone, broken and partly washed away. We have to lead the horses cautiously across the narrow bit that’s left.
After that, we mount and ride again. The more distance opens between us and the beach palace, the more freely I can breathe, and the easier it is to forget that we left the bodies, justleftthem all there to rot, to be munched by shell-rats and flies and beetles.
When I think about it, I want to vomit.
But we had no choice. This is our chance to escape everything. The weight of it quakes inside me, echoing in my head.
One chance. The chance of a lifetime. The only one I’ll get.
“I think it’s safe to tell you now,” says Ducayne abruptly.
I turn to glare at him. “Tell me what, thrall?”
