Chapter Five #2
He kissed her, because he wanted her. Because he had wanted her all this time. She clung to him, her fingers pushed through his hair as she deepened the kiss, as she parted her lips and slid her tongue against his, as she arched her body against him, her breasts firm against his chest.
“Please,” she whispered. “I didn’t promise him a virgin bride. I don’t want to go to his bed untouched. I want to have you. One night. Please.”
He gripped her hips and growled. “No.”
“Andrei—”
“Why should we light ourselves on fire only to burn? Don’t you see, this is going to kill us both.”
“I don’t care,” she said. “You’re right.
I was being frustrating before. Because I was trying to dance around the issue.
I was trying to say it without saying it.
Hot and cold, acting like your sister, acting like a jealous lover, acting like a spiteful ex.
When the truth is I just want you, Andrei.
With everything that I have, everything I am, I want you. ”
“You don’t know what you want,” he said. “You’re far too innocent to know what you’re asking for.”
“You,” she said. “Inside me. I want you to show me what passion is. I want you to show me what desire is. I want you to be the one to take my virginity. I don’t want to give it to him.
Shouldn’t I give it to you? The man that I cared about for most of my life, the man who has protected me for all this time. It belongs to you.”
But she could never belong to him, and that was the great and terrible truth. She could never be his, not truly.
But did it matter? Did it matter if she could be his for a moment. For a night. Would he take that and give her a lifetime of suffering?
He felt like he was standing on the edge of a cliff, balancing on the sharp edge of a sword.
One wrong move and he would cut himself in half, but he was going to be cut in half anyway.
She was going to marry another man. She was going to belong to someone else forever.
That man would always have his hands on her.
Would always have her body beneath his, because what man wouldn’t?
So tonight, tonight she could belong to him. She could belong to him first.
Her kiss had been sweeter than anything he could’ve possibly imagined, and he wanted more. He wanted all of her.
He could have her.
And ever and always, all the days of her life, of her marriage, her skin would be branded with his hands.
Always, she would have the memory of his cock surging inside her.
Just thinking of that made his blood run hot.
Molten like lava, his need for her as deadly and destructive as any natural disaster.
Nothing would make it better. Nothing. So he could suffer all of his life not knowing what it was to touch her, to taste her, to have her, or he could claim this. Just this once.
It was like drowning. Like dying. Like not knowing if he would ever reach the surface or if he was swimming to his death.
It was like his greatest fear, and his salvation rolled into one.
He growled, wrapped his arm around her neck, pushed his fingers through her hair and pulled her in for a rough kiss. He cupped her chin, holding her face tightly in his hand as he held her mouth open for him, tasting her long and deep, making her stand frozen like that as he gorged himself on her.
She was a revelation. A great and glorious beauty he couldn’t get enough of.
He was so hungry for her he couldn’t bear it.
His heart was hammering so hard he thought it might go completely through the front of his chest, leaving nothing but a bloody hole behind, and that would be a fitting tribute. For Emerald, he would give up his heart, his soul, his body.
He had already done so.
“We can’t,” she whispered. “Not out here. Not where someone could see.”
He would do that too. Go down below, risk the entire ocean closing in upon them. As long as he was inside her it didn’t matter. If they were his last moments on earth, then he would die happy.
He took her hand and led her down the stairs.
Let her lead him the short way to her cabin, her windows vast and open, facing the sea.
What a fitting way for this to end.
The ocean stretched before them. His greatest enemy. How perfect that it would be witness to this. He had gone down with a ship once before.
And now here he would again.
He sat down on the edge of the bed, looked at her. “Strip for me,” he said.
This would be her first time, and he would make sure that she was well acquainted with pleasure.
He would make sure that this was the best sex she could ever possibly have in her life.
No other man would ever be able to please her the way that he did because he had years of fantasies inside him.
Years of thinking about her, and her alone.
The curves of her body, the way that her face would look when it reached the peak of pleasure, the sounds that she would make.
No one would have all that desire inside them for her, and no one would ever be able to make her feel the things that he did. He knew that for sure.
But as for this moment, the one where she unveiled that body to him, he would sit, and he would take that pleasure for his own.
She looked at him, her eyes never leaving his as she stripped off her top, a white, lacy bra underneath. Then she pushed her pants down her legs, kicked them to the side. Bridal white. Innocent white.
His.
She moved toward him, lifted her knee up and pressed it to the mattress next to his thigh. He lifted her up off the floor, bringing her close to him so that she was straddling him, his arm locked tightly around her waist.
Confession was supposed to be good for this, but the words burning in his chest didn’t feel like they would be good for either of them. And still. Time felt like a loaded gun pressed to his head, and so he needed to speak. If not now, he never would.
They were doomed either way.
“You know how long I’ve wanted this?” he growled, looking up at her. There was confidence in her eyes, but also so much… Hope. It was the hope that hurt the worst.
“No,” she whispered. “Tell me.”
“Always,” he said. “For so long. You have been mine from the moment I laid eyes on you, mine to protect. But then, that began to change. As you became a woman, I began to want you as a man. But I knew that I could never touch you. I knew that all I could ever do was protect you.”
She shook her head. “Tonight I don’t want you to protect me.
I want you to corrupt me.” She pressed her thumb against his lips, traced the outline of his mouth, and he closed his eyes, reveling in the sensation.
“I want you to do unspeakable things to me. Things that you think might shock me, because I don’t think they will.
Do you know how long I’ve fantasized about you?
You don’t, do you? Oh, Andrei, I have wanted you.
For so long. I have hated every woman you’ve ever taken to your bed.
Even if I didn’t see them, I knew that it was happening, and I hated them, as much as I envied them.
There was a woman. I met her in a bar when I was in university, and she talked about how good you were.
She talked about how you ate her. God, do you know how I fantasized about that? ”
He tightened his hold on her. “It won’t be like that between us.”
“Why not?”
“Because I want you more. I don’t know who that woman was. I wouldn’t be able to remember her face if you tried to describe her to me. I never wanted her. I only wanted sex. But you… I want you. I’m starving for you. And I will remember this for the rest of my life.”
She reached behind her back, unhooked her bra, let it fall free, revealing her pale, glorious breasts, her peach-colored nipples, tight with desire.
He had no control left in his body. He pressed his palm between her shoulder blades, brought her toward him, as he lowered his head to feast on her body.
Her curves. He sucked one nipple deep into his mouth until she cried out, then he moved to the other, his thumb teasing the first one, using all the slickness he left behind to ease the friction.
She was grinding her hips against him, against his hardness, and it was all he could do not to free himself then and there. But if he did that, it would be over too quickly. And he wanted to savor this.
Because she was perfect. And tonight she was his. There would be nothing in the future. He would close that off ruthlessly at the bedroom door. The only thing there was, was this need between them.
This desperate, unending need that had built over a course of years. As far as the past went, those were the only memories he would allow. The memories of how much they desired each other. How much they wanted each other.
He began to unbutton his shirt, and she moved her hands, hastening the removal of his clothes. She pressed her palms against his chest, her expression one of awe. “You know how badly I wanted to do this earlier? I wanted to touch you so much.”
“Do it,” he said. “Touch me however you like. Taste me however you like.” They had all night. But it was only one night, and so it had to be everything. Every fantasy. They had to gorge themselves on it until they were sick with it. Because it was all they had, so it had to be everything.
She moved away from him, for just a moment, pushed her underwear down her hips and discarded it on the floor, naked and perfect in front of him. Her skin was pale, her curves generous, the red thatch of curls between her thighs the answer to his every prayer.
How long had he stared at all the beautiful copper curls on her head and wondered about the rest of her? For far too long.
He was seized by the same hunger that had claimed him before, and he grabbed her hips, bringing all her luscious glory toward his mouth, lifting her up off the floor and laying back on the bed, bringing her down over his face.
She gasped, reaching forward and grabbing hold of the headboard as he parted her thighs ruthlessly and tasted all of her slick heat. “Andrei.”
“I will satisfy myself here,” he said against her. “And then, there will be more.”
He licked her, ate all of her sweetness, tasted her desire, his body so hard it hurt.
He moved his hands around to her glorious ass, holding her tightly against him as he ate even more deeply into her, as he felt her thighs begin to shake, as he felt her stomach contract sharply, as she cried out in sensual agony, as her release claimed her.
But he didn’t give any quarter. He didn’t stop. He kept going until she was shaking, sobbing, begging for relief. From the onslaught of pleasure that simply wouldn’t end.
He was in pain, but he gave thanks for it. If he was going to die, then this was how he wanted to do it.
It was torture he would submit himself to for all of eternity. Pleasuring her while he was left in a state of arousal that wouldn’t be satisfied.
It was his version of heaven and hell all at once.
“Please,” she whimpered, but this wasn’t just asking for him to stop. It was asking for more of him, and he could no longer resist.
He released his hold on her, and saw that he had left red fingerprints in her pale skin, on her thighs, her hips.
Had marked her perfectly.
She brushed her hair out of her face, damp with sweat, then she licked her lips as she moved forward, undoing his belt, the closure on his pants, and he was too far gone to make a game.
He helped her strip the rest of his clothes off, helped her reveal his aching arousal, and when she leaned in and took his cock into her mouth he gripped her hair and surrendered.
She sucked him in deep, before releasing him, sliding her tongue down the length of his shaft, and taking him back in again.
She licked him like he was the finest of sweets, and he arched his hips up hard, forcing her to take him as deep as she could.
He could play this game forever, except his control was too tenuous, and he was afraid that he was going to come down her throat. Something he would’ve loved to do someday. With more time. With more hours to spare.
But that was for lovers who had the luxury of years. Of recreation. He had nothing beyond a few spare hours to claim her. And he would do it thoroughly.
Irrevocably.
He moved her head away from him, her face confused, dazed and pleasured.
“Mine,” he growled, kissing her mouth as he laid her back onto the pillows, kissing her deep and long, pressing his body to hers, her breasts against his chest, her hips against his, the hard ridge of his arousal nestled against her slit.
It was a moment that he was going to pause and be in.
Her all against him, the scent of her, the taste of her on his tongue.
But then, he could savor no longer. He parted her thighs, guiding himself to the entrance of her body, testing her, and finding her willing but tight.
“Just a moment of pain,” he whispered against her mouth before he thrust in deep.
The roar that clouded his vision, his brain, his body was primal.
His. Lucian might marry her, might claim her, might have children with her, but she would never be his. Not in the way that she was Andrei’s.
He would always be the first man to have her. It was all he could take. All he could call his own, and so he would.
He began to move, the feel of her slick, tight body all around him enough to make him lose control instantly.
But he held on. This wouldn’t be the only time tonight.
He would have her until they were out of breath.
Until their voices were hoarse from screaming out their pleasure, but there would be only one first time.
He wanted it to go on for as long as it could.
His thrusts were measured, slow, all in the interest of drawing it out.
Of keeping them suspended in this moment, but then her nails dug into his shoulders, her back arched and she cried out his name.
His name. “Andrei,” she moaned. And he lost it.
Completely. His thrusts became hard, totally uncontrolled, and he began chasing his own release, completely unable to put it off any longer.
And when he shouted out her name, it was both a curse and a prayer.
Because it didn’t matter how many times he had her tonight. He was going to be haunted by Princess Emerald for the rest of his life.
And tomorrow he had to deliver her to another man.