23. The Prince of Thorns
The Prince of Thorns
Athrum of satisfaction courses through me at her obedient little smile. “Perfect.” I smirk, then stand off to the side of the bed. “Now, kneel and suck my cock.”
It’s cute, the immediate flash of defiance in her eyes. That pitiful thrall the Winter Prince sent me would have slobbered on me from dawn to dusk had I let her.
No, that didn’t interest me at all.
Not like my real Rose.
Keeping my eyes locked with hers, I draw the laces from my tunic and drop it to the ground, then unlace my pants and step out. My cock is already impossibly hard, as it always is around her.
Her gaze turns appreciative, and she stands.
“Naked, please,” I tell her, holding up a palm.
She drops her nightdress in a pool at her feet, and I take in every inch of her perfect body: the heavy swell of her breasts, nipples pink and perked, the lush dip of her hips. There isn’t a mark on her.
No one will ever touch her again.
She saunters toward me, looks at my cock, then back at my face. “What if I’ve reconsidered?”
I stroke the nape of her neck softly, just enough to leave her wanting more. “I could force you to watch me fuck one of the depraved fae of Cryptgarden. You’d love that.”
Stop or I’ll die. The memory of her voice in my mind is still so loud. The last time I was with someone other than her…
Or him.
“That would be just as painful for you as it is for me,” Rosalina says. “No one else’s body makes yours feel like mine does.”
Unfortunately, she’s right.
“Okay, Prince of Thorns,” she says, looping her arms around my shoulders. “Let’s make a deal.”
“My queen,” I purr. “Already negotiating.”
“I’ll obey your commands, but every time you give me one, I get to say, ‘I love you.’”
“A lie.” I trail my tongue along her throat. “But if imagining I’m him is what it takes to have your body, then lie all you want.”
“Deal.”
“Princess.” I press on the crown of her head. “On. Your. Knees.”
She drops to the ground and looks up at me with those bright, brown eyes. My cock twitches. Fuck, all these weeks of having her so close and not touching her have been torture. To give in now…
It’s dangerous.
But I can’t resist.
Her soft hands grip my thigh, and she runs her tongue along my shaft, teasing.
“Enough,” I growl, grabbing the back of her head and shoving my cock down her throat.
She lets out a surprised gulp before eagerly swallowing me. I give a low groan, immense pleasure coursing through my body. God, she’s so fucking good.
I pick up my tempo, roughly fucking her throat, and she matches my pace, nails digging into my thighs to hold herself steady. “Just like that,” I sigh.
My cock spears the back of her throat, and she falls back, coughing.
“Too much for you?” I ask.
She throws her wayward hair over her face and stares at me. “I love you.”
I turn away from her dangerous game. I should send her away. She’s a threat to my power.
And the only way to secure my rule.
The one thing in this world that matches my fire’s need to burn, to control…is her.
How much I want her.
“Cas, what next?”
She says my name like a prayer.
“Get on the bed.”
She does, and I crawl over her.
I let my hand trail to her throat, just tight enough to remind her who she belongs to. Her back arches, that perfect body trembling, already on edge from pleasuring me.
“Are you enjoying this, little rose?” I murmur. My mouth ghosts over her jaw, down her neck. I want her desperate for me.
Her moan resembles yes, but that’s not enough. I still her with a look, and her breath hitches as if she’s seen something divine. Or terrifying. Same difference.
“Say it,” I command, tone dropping to a growl. “Tell me how good I am to you. Tell me who I am to you.”
She hesitates for a second. And gods, that second is agony.
Then she gives in.
“You’re,” she gasps as I roll my hips against hers, pulling another helpless sound from her throat, “you’re my mate.”
“More.”
“You’re beautiful,” she breathes, eyes fluttering shut. “Powerful. You make me feel like I’m—”
“Yours,” I finish for her, sinking my teeth into the pulse at her neck, just enough to sting. It leaves a mark on her. She whimpers, clinging to me, melting beneath the pain-pleasure edge.
“Yes,” she moans. “Yours.”
That’s it. That’s exactly it.
“I know,” I whisper against her skin. “Say it again. Say it like you mean it.”
And when she does, when her voice breaks on the word yours, when her fingers dig into my back like I’m the only thing anchoring her to this world, I give her everything she’s asking for.
And everything she doesn’t know she should fear.
I sink my cock inside her.
She cries out, teeth biting into my shoulder.
She feels like everything I’ve ever wanted. Everything I need. She’s the sun burning away every shadow lashed around my heart. Rose—
“Cas, Cas, Cas,” she cries, grabbing my face, searching for something she won’t find.
Someone she’ll never find again.
I begin to move, savoring the sweet feeling of her wet heat. Magic coils beneath my skin, electric, barely leashed.
“I love you,” she says again.
“You’re mine,” I remind her, trying not to lose myself too deeply in her.
She gasps, her body arching into mine, and her fingers clutch the back of my neck.
“You feel that?” I murmur, brushing my lips against her temple. “That’s me, little rose. Inside you. Around you. Under your skin.”
She nods. Her lips part to speak, but I catch her chin between my fingers and tilt her head, forcing her to meet my gaze.
“Say it,” I command again. “Say what I am.”
“You’re…” She falters, dazed and aching, and it makes me smile. “You’re my prince.”
“Mm-hmm.” I drag my mouth across hers, slow, possessive. Not a kiss, not yet. Just a promise. “Not a prince. Not who you remember. The prince. Say it.”
“The Prince of Thorns,” she breathes.
“That’s it, Princess. I will keep you like this forever.”
A gasp shudders out from between her lips.
“Do you want that, Rosalina?”
She nods.
“Say that too. Say you want to belong to me.”
Her leg hooks over my hip, drawing me deeper. “Yours. I want to belong to you.”
I believe her.
Because I know that is a part of her truth. A piece of her heart that is mine. I just have to make her all mine. Burn out all traces of her other mates.
She uses her leg to flip us, and I let her, simply because the sight of her body above mine is divine. I caress her breast, then drag a hand down, rubbing her clit. She moans, sighing into the touch. Her inner walls clutch around me.
“Yes, like that.” She presses a palm to my chest, right over where my heart should be.
“Caspian,” she whispers. Not my prince. Not the Prince of Thorns. Just Caspian. “Come back to me.”
I still.
The green fire snarls in my veins. The shadows twitch like agitated crows. Thorns break out from the ground and curl closer.
I could bind her wrists. Or better yet her mouth, so she stops saying such things.
Snarling, I grip her hips and rut harder into her. It doesn’t matter what she says. I need to make her forget everyone but me.
But she looks at me like I’ve already lost.
“This is who I was always meant to be,” I snarl, catching her wrist and pulling her flush against me. “The Green Flame freed me. I will make you the queen he never could.”
“No,” she says, voice shaking. “It changed you.”
She tries to pull away. I don’t let her. Vines of shadow lash out and circle her waist, not tightly yet. A warning.
“You will love this version of me,” I whisper, dragging my fingers up her arm. “You don’t have to fix me. You will join me.”
Her face twists into a glare, and I still my movement, save my cock twitching inside her.
“You are nothing but your father’s puppet,” she says. “Caspian was brave. I want the man who used to laugh. The one who told me his dreams. The one who kissed me like he wasn’t sure he deserved to.”
In the deepest dark of the Below, when I thought I would never see light again, all I could think of was you.
Something in me stutters. The flame inside flickers.
She sees something and dares to hope.
She places her hand over mine.
I want to tear it away.
I want to let it in. Save me, Rose.
My mouth finds hers. I kiss her like she’s air and I’ve been drowning in fire. She kisses me back like she’s trying to put the flames out.
And for one moment, one terrible moment, I remember who I was.
And I hate it.
I pull away from her, the green fire roaring again.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” I whisper.
Her eyes shine. “I’ll do it again,” she says. “I’ll keep doing it. Until you remember.”
I let the shadows dissipate. “Leave.”
She doesn’t, her body still intertwined with mine. “I’m not finished.”
A smile curves up my face. I’m done with games, and it seems so is she. “I can’t promise to be gentle with you. But I can promise that you’ll come so hard, you’ll feel it for days.”
Her thighs tremble around me, and she stares me down as she mouths, I love you.
She dared to try and fix me. She kissed me like I was him, like I was still that boy with trembling hands and a voice that cracked when he said her name.
I hate her for that.
I love her for it.
It hurts worse than any blade, any torture I’ve ever endured.
“You think you can heal me?” I growl, slamming her back against the bed, my hand braced beside her head, thorns breaking through the mattress. “That your soft words and sad eyes will unmake what I’ve become?”
She stares at me, lips parted, chest rising with each breath. She doesn’t answer.
She doesn’t need to.
Because I already know, and it makes me furious.
“You want the man I was?” I snarl. “Then take what’s left of him.”
I kiss her, rough and hungry, like it’s a punishment, like I can shove all the confusion and grief back down with the taste of her. She gasps against my mouth, but she doesn’t push me away. Her grip tightens, claws into my skin, and I drag her harder against me.
We make love like it’s war.
Every movement is a battle between what I am and what I was. Between what I want and what I’ve become. My shadows crawl over her skin, thorns curling around us.
My hands knead her soft breasts, twisting her nipples as her nails claw down my back.
“Caspian!” She cries out my name, the old one, and I freeze, just for a moment.
Rose, I’m not.
I’m not him.
Unable to stop touching her, I bring her to the edge over and over until she’s shaking, breathless, tears glistening on her cheeks. She’s hurting. And I’m the reason. And still…her body answers mine.
She’s so wet, my cock easily slides in and out. My fingers are sloppy as I circle her clit.
She feels good. She feels like home. And I ruin her anyway.
When she shatters beneath me, I hold her too tightly. I press my mouth to her throat and breathe her in and pretend I can keep her as she is, soft and trembling and mine.
And why can’t I?
“Come inside me, Cas,” she gasps, still shaking from her high.
Ahh, she’d love that, wouldn’t she?
To be sent to her precious Winter Prince. And while the thought of sending her to him, used and spent and covered in me, has some sort of pleasure…
I want to keep her more.
“I’m never letting you leave.” I slip my cock, near ready to burst, out and step away.
Keldarion will never have her again.