Chapter Nine #2
Her life with Venediktos had been expected and inevitable, and she hadn’t wanted to change any of it. She would have been perfectly content if it had carried on the way it was until they were very old.
But now she knew that she was capable of a whole world of emotions and sensations that she hadn’t known existed. She didn’t know if it was possible to go back from that.
Aikaterini thought that maybe it was only possible to do this in one direction.
Yet she also understood that Kyriakos was extraordinary.
Because much as she’d been predisposed to dislike him—or that was what she’d told herself anyway, to disguise her fascination with him—she knew that this handoff of the Princess was not always a pleasant endeavor.
She’d read all the accounts they had tried to keep from her as well as the ones they’d made sure she was familiar with.
She’d read the diaries of a Princess from centuries ago who had been passed from one Prince to another and had written extensively of the cruelties visited upon her by her new husband.
He had held her down that first night, had dismissed her complaints, and had only given her respite when she was with child.
Unsurprisingly, she had not mourned his death—and she had gone on to be a fierce regent for her son.
Kyriakos had been the opposite of that long-ago brute of a Prince. He had been gentle. Patient. So patient that it still made her blood heat to think of it.
And she understood now that it was not necessary for sex to be pleasurable for everyone involved. That many women claimed it was never particularly pleasurable for them, which she found astonishing. Aikaterini had taken to the internet since that first night, determined to see what she had missed.
The answer had been, to her shame, that she hadn’t been looking for those details before.
She hadn’t understood what they meant when she’d seen them and had glossed over much of it, because it didn’t suit her idea of what it was supposed to be.
It didn’t match what she knew about her own relationship.
It was rather galling, really.
She’d read the information she needed, she supposed. She’d always viewed clinical discussions of male parts into female parts as something clinical. A procedure that she and Venediktos would eventually perform, and then babies would come.
And now that she’d experienced that kind of procedure, repeatedly, she did not feel the least bit clinical about it. Instead, she felt intimately connected to Kyriakos, to her future children, to everything life had to offer—and in a different way than she ever had before.
As if she’d never understood her heart before.
Maybe she was grieving that, too.
The door opened, and she looked up, feeling shocked and hot and deeply glad when Kyriakos appeared.
“You were nowhere to be found,” he announced as he walked inside. “Even the stewards could not account for your whereabouts. I assumed it was an international incident, of course.” His mouth curved. “So I decided to check on you first, before calling in the Royal Guard.”
She found herself smiling, suddenly awash with a kind of giddiness. And she kept expecting this effect to wear off, but it didn’t.
If anything, it was stronger now.
He moved over to the couch and sat down. He frowned as if he was considering something—but then he picked her up and settled her on his lap instead, and it was a matter of wonder to her that she could find such a big, dangerous man such a deep, physical comfort to her.
Kyriakos looked at the portrait she was still holding in her hands, and then he gazed at her, that dark hazel intensity of his enveloping her.
“I’m trying to come to terms with reality,” she told him.
She liked the wideness of his muscled shoulder. And how she could rest her head there.
“I believe that’s called the project of a whole life, Princess.”
She didn’t think, she nipped his chin. And he smiled down at her.
“I don’t think he was deliberately deceiving me.” When Kyriakos’s gaze seemed to sharpen, she shrugged. “I did wonder if it was possible, but the more I thought about it, the more I really, truly don’t think so. I don’t know that he was a particularly physical person in any regard.”
“I don’t think so, either,” Kyriakos said then, though it sounded to her as if he was surprised. As if he hadn’t thought about that before.
“Some people just aren’t.”
She played with the buttons on his very proper and princely shirt and marveled, the way she always did, at how hot he was to even the barest touch. And how sculpted. Everywhere.
And how it turned out that she, to her very great surprise, was remarkably physical indeed.
All of these emotions and realizations seemed to press in on her from all sides. She didn’t like it very much, so Aikaterini lifted her head and kissed him instead.
And kissing this man was always an adventure.
Because his answering kiss was ferocious.
That easily, the fire was raging as if it had never gone out.
They were tearing at each other’s mouths as if they hadn’t had each other completely naked in the shower this morning. And then it was hard to tell whose hands were where—
But Aikaterini knew full well that she was the one who moved to sit astride him. She was the one who yanked up her dress and then pulled her panties to one side so he could free himself from his trousers, then slam his cock deep inside of her.
So deep. So hard.
Such a tight, perfect fit.
She came immediately, like a deep, hard punch that turned to fire and then rolled out.
Everywhere.
Kyriakos kept moving inside of her as she shook all around him, his hands gripping her hips.
He had taught her all of this. He had taught her not only to say the word cock, but to learn how to worship his. With her mouth. With her hands.
With almost every part of her body in one way or another.
And it turned out that this was a new religion that she could believe in wholeheartedly.
He was looking up at her as he moved her body in counterpoint to his. And the look on his face was so raw, so intense, that it set off another wildfire shattering inside her.
Yet he still kept going, stubborn and beautiful, and the intensity between them only grew.
Every day, it grew and grew.
Finally, she arched back into another implosion. He slammed into her and in three jerky thrusts scalded her deep inside.
So hot that it made her come yet once more.
“Steady, Princess,” he whispered when she cried out, not caring who might hear them in the hall outside.
But she was floating out there in the stars again. She was full up on starshine and this particular joy she might almost have gone her whole life without experiencing.
Her forehead was against his and every part of her felt limp, but she could feel him all around her. He was still so deep inside her.
And it was amazing that it took this man and his massive body to make her feel whole.
To make her feel more like herself than she ever had before.
“I love you,” she whispered.
And it took a minute or two before she became dimly aware that he was having a reaction.
It was the way he stiffened below her. Then, moments later, how he lifted her up and off of him, then set her aside.
She was boneless and spinning, and she let her dress settle back around her as it would. Then she blinked at him, confused, but still shimmering with sensation.
It took her longer than that to realize that something was wrong as he stood and sorted out his trousers. Then crossed over to the windows and stood there, looking out with his hands on his hips.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, baffled.
“You don’t love me,” he said, shortly. “I’m flattered, but you’ve never had sex before, Aikaterini. It can turn the head.”
“How patronizing.” But she laughed, because it was so—she shook her head. “The first time I had a chocolate soufflé, I was capable of discerning that I liked it above all other desserts. No one questioned me on this. It was assumed that I was perfectly able to make up my own mind on the subject.”