Chapter 23 – Marcella
MARCELLA
The leaves and brush make a bed that’s not the most comfortable to lie on. My body sags into it regardless, and my eyes close. I blow out a heavy breath, feeling a hand over my heart, and realize...
“Your heart is pounding,” Rowan whispers.
A slow, easy smile curls up my lips. “Yep,” is all I can manage.
One of his hands stays flat on my breastbone while the other glides down my stomach to my pussy. He cups me, and I squirm against him, my hips swiveling to shirk him off, my clit too sensitive, but he’s not having it. He pushes two fingers into me, and despite myself, my back arches slightly.
“What are you doing?” I question, wanting him to stop but also not wanting him to stop. It’s the paradox I live in with this man.
His fingers answer for him as they pump in and out of me. I peek open an eye and catch him watching himself finger fuck me again.
“I don’t have time for this,” I state flatly. “I have to get back.”
“I don’t care,” he replies as he keeps going. “You work for me, and this is where I want you.”
“I don’t work for you.”
His sharp gaze snaps over to mine. “You’re a servant of the royal family, and I am the royal family. Therefore, as I’ve been saying, you’re mine. Mine to touch, mine to keep where I want, mine to make come if that’s what I choose.”
His barbarian, caveman shit would be hot in a strange, alpha, dominating way if it weren’t also absurd in the fact that I will never be his. Not in any real way. It’s not even that he wants that with me. This madness is not exactly a fledgling relationship.
It’s sex. Good sex, but still sex. Exactly what I said it was the night at the wedding.
He said the same bullshit to me that night and likely says it to every woman he sticks his dick into. I’m not special to him, and I have no illusions that I am.
“Rowan, we have to stop this. It can’t keep happening.”
He doesn’t stop. His fingers keep going, and despite the fact that I just came, my body’s already working itself back up. He has me on a hairpin trigger. He touches, I respond.
“I didn’t follow you out here to chase you and fuck you.” His voice is distant. Lost almost. His eyes locked on my pussy.
“Then why did you follow me?” I bite into my lip, trying not to moan.
“To watch you. To talk. I don’t know. I saw you going down the path, and I followed you. It was instinct.”
“It was curiosity because you still don’t trust me.” Nor should he, so I don’t blame him for that. My voice holds no bite to it. I don’t even know why I brought it up.
“I told you last night that I do.”
“Yes, but we both know that was a lie.”
He sighs and crouches between my spread legs so that he can see his fingers pumping in and out of me better. My pussy isn’t just open or exposed, it’s in his fucking face right there in daylight.
“Rowan, stop.” I try to push his hand away, but he catches my wrist and pins it to my side.
“Don’t push me away. Not again. Do you know how beautiful you are?”
The reverence in his voice catches me off guard.
“No,” I reply honestly and without much thought.
It’s not that I’m being self-deprecating or don’t think that my face is pretty enough.
It’s just something that I never thought about for myself.
One has to have a beautiful soul to be beautiful on the outside, and that’s not something I have.
I’ve killed people who may or may not have deserved to die the way I was told they did.
I’ll have to pay for that at some point, but I’m not beautiful.
My scars are my scars, but I know there’s nothing beautiful about them either.
“It bothers me how beautiful I think you are. How I can’t stop thinking about you. How you’ve become all I see when I close my eyes. I don’t like it, Marcella. I don’t like it at all.”
“It’s just my face—”
“No. It’s more than that. It’s more than your face or your body. I don’t get it. I feel as though I know you, and yet I don’t.”
I huff out an annoyed breath. Right. It’s sex. “That’s another reason why this has to stop. This is the last time.”
Rowan chuckles mirthlessly, but his fingers haven’t stopped, and his other hand releases my wrist and glides to my breasts, where he cups and squeezes them.
“I think we both know that’s not how this is gonna go. Maybe we fuck each other till we get it out of our systems. Maybe that’s all this is. Just fucking. But I don’t wanna stop. Not yet. Not until I have to. I care about the other stuff, yet it doesn’t seem to be a deterrent.”
"What other stuff?" I ask softly, wondering where his thoughts are. His face is chaotic and hard to read.
“I don’t know, Marcella. I’m going crazy with you.
I want you to the point of madness. Not just your body.
Your mind too. But you hold it all back, and you’re right, I don’t trust you.
I know what’s written in a background report.
I know what it says about your family, about your qualifications, but I don’t know anything about you.
You don’t talk about yourself. You don’t talk about your past, which we both know is extensive. You don’t tell me anything.”
Now it’s my turn to laugh, the sound harsh and sardonic, even as his fingers have me breathless. “You want to know about me? You actually care?”
He glares up at me from between my legs. “Yes, mia stella, I actually care. In case you haven’t realized it yet, I’m starting to care far more than I should.”
That trips me up, and my eyes close and my hands cover my face. Because I want what he’s saying to be true. It hits me like a sledgehammer, or a cane to the back as it is for me, but it’s there. I want what he’s saying to be real.
“I can’t talk to you about this while you’re doing that.”
Surprisingly, he stops, his fingers pulling out of me, though he doesn’t move his position or his hand from my chest, even if it’s now just resting flat against me.
“Go ahead,” he prompts.
“Rowan, I’m not somebody you want to get involved with. I don’t know if this is just sex to you, if you’re trying to fuck a servant and get that little piece of slumming-it fun out of your system, but I’m not the girl to do this with.”
“Why not?” he asks softly.
My lips form a straight line. I’m already revealing too much, and it’s likely because he’s crawling into places he shouldn’t be going, and I’m not talking about the fact that he’s inches from my pussy in broad daylight.
He’s been crawling there for months. Even in his absence, in the months where I didn’t see him, didn’t speak to him, I still thought of him.
It was impossible not to. I knew I would, especially once the plan began and they brought me to the palace to work.
I’m a servant, and he’s a prince. Cinderella to Prince Charming. Only there’s no glass slipper or happily ever after for us. We’re what happens when midnight never ends. There is no us in the light of day, out in the open for all to see.
The reality is, he’ll outgrow me soon enough.
He’s Prince Rowan after all.
He fucks his way from woman to woman without so much as a second thought.
So I let my hands fall to my sides, and I push myself up onto my elbows and stare at him.
Thankfully, he’s stopped pushing his cum back into me.
I think that’s what he was doing. My possessive prince.
It’s unfortunately as seriously hot as he is.
“I was born on August 26. I’m a Virgo in a lot of ways.
I’m practical, meticulous, and I usually have a strong desire to help.
Regardless of the personal cost to me. My favorite color is blue.
Not light blue. A deep, navy blue. My favorite food isn’t salad.
That was a lie. The truth is…” I trail off, staring up at the mantle of leaves overhead with sparkling rays of sunshine slicing through.
“I don’t know what my favorite food is. I don’t know what books I like to read.
I don’t know what movies or TV shows I’d want to watch.
That was never part of my life. I’m not sure who I am at this point other than a servant.
” I lower my head and meet his gaze. “That’s what I am.
Not exactly exciting, and definitely not sexy.
You might like the way my tits and my pussy look and feel, but you’re not going to get much else from me. ”
He takes his cum-covered fingers and presses them on my clit.
He pushes in hard. Hard enough to make me gasp and attempt to scoot back from the infiltration.
I get a warning look. Something that automatically stops me.
He rubs in deep circles, and just like that, his fingers aren’t playing, they’re moving with purpose.
He shifts and catches the back of my head, holding me up so that our eyes are locked. “Marcella, you are so much more than that.”
His lips catch mine, and he kisses me deeply. Fiercely. His tongue slices through my lips and swirls with my own before he pulls me up higher and presses our foreheads together.
“I don’t know a lot. But I’ll tell you what I do know.
You’re smart,” he murmurs against my lips, the speed of his fingers increasing, making me breathless, making it difficult to concentrate on what he’s saying, though I try.
“You’re fierce. You’re loyal—to whom I’m not exactly sure.
You’re determined. You’re a good liar, a little too good.
You come close to crying when you don’t think anyone is watching you, and you hate that you do.
You hate crying, which is why you fight it so hard.
You feel it makes you weak, and weak is the last thing you want to be.
Weakness pisses you off. You do like taking walks.
You like quiet. You like peace. You like roller coasters.
You get excited by the notion of fun and adventure because it’s all new to you and something you’ve never experienced before.
You like children and want friends. And you’re fearless. ”
My eyes pinch closed. “Shut up, Rowan. Just shut up and make me come and let me go!”
“There’s so much more to you than you realize about yourself. And I think that’s why I like you so much. I see you. I see all these things you work so hard to hide. But I don’t know your secrets, and that’s what worries me. That’s the part I don’t trust.”
My head falls back between my shoulder blades and a shudder racks through me. He picks up the pace of his fingers, and I let him. I don’t argue. I don’t even open my mouth to say anything else about it. I can’t. He has me completely overwhelmed, physically and emotionally.
There’s no getting around him. He’s everywhere inside me.
My orgasm builds, deep penetrating waves of pleasure that start in my core and have my legs straightening and my pussy clenching against his hand.
“That’s it, sweetheart. That’s it. Come for me. I want to watch you come for me."
I don’t have a choice. My body takes over, and I detonate.
My orgasm cycles through me, not as strong as the first one, but definitely powerful enough to make a bellowing cry come from my lips.
Rowan covers my mouth with his, tasting me, swallowing my moans of pleasure, and I kiss him back, allowing myself to feel this, to experience it.
The moment my body sags, his fingers pull away.
He wipes them on the bottom of his pant legs slung round his ankles, and something about that makes me laugh.
The state of our undress is ridiculous. We just fucked in the woods in the middle of the day.
Anybody could have taken this path. Anybody could have come and seen us.
We’re not that far from the main grounds, from the palace, and I don’t even know how loud I’ve been or how loud he was.
We get so wrapped up in each other that nothing else hits our radar.
He gives my boobs one last squeeze, and I slap his hand away. I get a dirty, flirty smile from him in return. The charming one. The one he gave me that first night at the wedding.
I stand, and he helps me get dressed, our eyes clinging to each other, our hands staying close. I don’t know what this is. I have no words for what it could be. I just know it’s not smart. I know it’s going to cost me. Maybe cost both of us.