Vows to a King

Chapter Six

CHAPTER SIX

T WO WEEKS AFTER his return from Monaco—and two days away from coronation, Adonis sat back in his chair and looked out into the expanse of his study that stretched into an open courtyard.

Beyond it was the sparkling blue waters of the Aegean, meeting the sky in a seamless blend of colors.

In the distance, the rugged cliffs of Thalassos rose majestically, dotted with ancient olive groves that swayed gently in the breeze.

Unlike the large, luxurious study that had been occupied by his father for decades and lately Adamos—an overdecorated oval hall that boxed him in from all sides, with haughty ancestors looking down from every wall—this view calmed Adonis.

White marble columns with intricate carvings of vines and mythical creatures framed the courtyard, creating a sense of both openness and whimsy, with a dash of history thrown in.

The space was the perfect blend of Thalassos’s rich, natural history and its advent into modern times. If he could drag it.

Like his personal suite in a newly renovated wing of the palace, and his set of public office rooms, that he use this space as his private study had been Jemima’s suggestion.

He was nothing like his brother or father, and the idea of being constrained by the same solid walls that had once felt like a prison, made him utterly restless. Even with his own team’s arrival, it had taken him a few days to get used to the constant barrage of demands and details coming straight at him.

For so long, he’d been alone, whether in personal life or business, and had done as he pleased.

It had been Jemima who had assembled his own team and the palace teams together, sketching out a daily and weekly agenda for him with the aggression and authority of a clever military general. Then she had instituted several checks and balances to protect his time, cutting off everyone’s access to him but for the most important matters.

Despite her attempts, the crown council had already brought up several pending issues that awaited his decision, some of them truly critical. The matters betrayed the truth of her words about Adamos being distracted in the last few months.

It was only with her insider knowledge and pertinent but exhaustive information on those issues that he had been able to make a decision. Neither had he hidden the fact that she had enabled him to make it. He wanted the crown council and Thalassos to know that she was his partner.

The fact that she was so much more equipped—better than anyone else to rule Thalassos—hadn’t stopped her from attending to his needs first, from the most trivial to the important. She seemed to possess some kind of sensor that told her of not only his moods but also how to handle him. Despite the fact that he had pushed her away when she’d made the mistake of trying to understand him.

The woman confounded him, in more than one way. She rejected the one real offer he had made for their future and then made herself indispensable to him. He had thought her a partner, but now he was left to wonder whether she didn’t trust that they could make this work or if she was still her father’s pawn, her actions dictated by his cunning motives.

Shooting to his feet in frustration, Adonis stared down at the summary notes of the trade agreement renewal with their neighboring country that he’d been reading for the last two hours without a word sinking in.

Frustration rattled through him at his inability to parse the simplest of legalese. All he had to show for the two hours was a pounding headache behind his right eye that reminded him how ill-fitted he was for this role.

Something he spied in the depths of King Aristos’s exact blue eyes. In a cruel twist of fate, his father kept calling him by his brother’s name when Adonis visited him every night. Why he insisted on putting himself through the torment, he didn’t know. But a part of him wanted his father to know that the son he had never wanted, the boy he’d shamed and ignored and neglected with such casual cruelty, was about to be crowned King.

Once, it would have been Adonis’s wildest dream to have the right to rule Thalassos, to continue the legacy of the Vasilikos dynasty in service to it. But now that the hour was upon him, he…wasn’t sure he was equipped for it.

A part of him, he thought, would forever remain that child who didn’t quite belong anywhere.

Giving in to one vice, he was pouring himself fine Thalassan wine into a cut crystal glass when he sensed her presence.

Comfort and desire prickled through him instantly, and he felt annoyance at how easily she was sinking under his skin.

Jemima Nasar, it seemed, was a creature of habit, for she visited him every night since she had installed him here. Even though they spent several hours together going about their duties together during the interminable day. And every night, her approach was wary and calculated, as if he were a barely restrained predator that somehow happened to be her responsibility.

He sipped the wine and walked around the serene fountain at the center of the courtyard. Its water cascaded gently over smooth stones, flowing into a shallow reflecting pool. Lily pads floated on the surface of the pool, their delicate flowers adding a burst of color, along with koi fish darting below.

“Was adding the pool to this courtyard your idea?” he said. There was something extremely arousing about the efficiency and expediency with which the woman was stitching herself into his life.

He saw her startled reflection in the pool and smiled to himself. Today, she was dressed in a peach-toned silk dress. The severe cut did wonders for her hourglass figure. While it didn’t bare any skin—which he would have preferred infinitely, despite his pettiness that he wouldn’t touch her—it was a huge improvement on the dark, somber colors she wore to mourn his brother.

This was her Let’s-Try-to-Pacify-the-Devil-Prince outfit, he knew.

Giddy anticipation swirled through him at the thought of her clad in a towel or a robe, shuffling through her wardrobe, wondering how far she should venture in dressing to please him. Not that she would admit to it.

A chunky emerald necklace—one of his engagement presents to her—glinted at her throat, almost like a collar. He loved that idea even more. Although the fact that she would be outraged at the idea of being collared by someone like him only added to his perverse satisfaction.

“Why…do you ask that?” she said, straightening her stance, as if readying for battle.

“You’re already an expert at managing me and my moods, Princess. Installing some kind of serenity pool in the hopes of calming me, or even better taming me, though, seems a little naive of you. What I have seen of you so far suggests eminent practicality.”

She scrunched her little button nose at that. So she didn’t like being called practical, did she? “I wish I could claim the credit for the idea but it goes to the architect who designed the courtyard.” She walked around the pool in the opposite direction from him, but slowly heading toward him. He had a feeling she was bracing herself for the collision. “Although, yes, the Queen insisted that I give him my input. Studying interior design and architecture was one of my dreams from a different life.”

The wistfulness she buried under the casual words tugged at him. What else had she dreamed of and given up on because of her father’s greed for power?

In the two weeks since he’d returned, he’d not seen her resentful of her duties even for a moment. While she might not have wanted the crown, the woman was a born queen—something his father had recognized and obtained for his golden son.

“I’m sure Thalassos has benefited from your lost dreams,” he added, more to provoke her than anything else.

Her laughter boomed in the cavernous courtyard, as majestic and real as the peaks of the snow-laden hills he could see in the distance. It swept through him like a river, charging up every cell into primal desire. “If only you could employ a pinch of that diplomacy with the crown council, Your Highness.”

“I’m not interested in seducing the crown council,” he said. “I’m sure my tastes run too scandalous for them even if I could get them to bend over.”

Pink bloomed on her cheeks and he drank it up like it was nectar. Pursing her lips in that way he was coming to recognize as her wrestling herself under control, she made a tsking sound. “Beware, Prince. Say such things and I might think them true.”

“About the pool, Princess?” he said, annoyed by her refusal to accept the pull between them.

“I have no intention of taming you. Or even thinking that you need to be tamed. Whatever the crown council might whine about, King Aristos, and in his absence Prince Adamos, have brought us to the current crisis with the trade renewal treaty. Two men who have been constantly lauded would be great kings, that is. It is important to remind them and our dear neighbor that you’re dealing with a major loss and these are inherited problems.”

The imaginary anvil that seemed to constantly press down on his chest lifted just a little. He knew, firsthand, that Jemima wouldn’t offer him empty platitudes. “I didn’t see it that way.”

“How can you with the entire palace laying the problem at your feet without letting you breathe?”

“I’m not sure I deserve such a fierce champion, Princess,” he said, fighting the feeling of having someone in his corner. Which was a novelty in itself, but he couldn’t get used to it.

She was an ally, yes, but not a friend, he reminded himself with a cynicism that was all too familiar. He had been friendless for a long time—his father and his face had seen to that.

“I think everyone deserves a champion. Even moody, brooding kings who are as volatile as the volcano that made Thalassos so fertile.”

Two more steps and they would be upon each other. Adonis thought he might burst from the pulsing need he felt to taste her and touch her and consume her whole.

Would the constant inner conflict he felt at being in the palace be soothed by it, by her? Was that why he felt so drawn to her? “I’m curious, Princess. Do you visit me every evening to see my cranky, threadbare temper or to remind me that soon-to-be kings shouldn’t so easily lose it?”

“If I told you the truth, Your Highness, you would not believe it.”

“Enough with that address,” he snapped, just as he reached her.

She looked up, and once again, he was hit by the allure of her simple beauty which came from utter acceptance of herself, he thought. Like the Aegean that surrounded the tiny island kingdom he called home, like the hills dotting its perimeter…there was something timeless and earthy and utterly enchanting about Jemima Nasar.

“As soon as you stop calling me Princess in that infuriatingly mocking tone then. I’ve never been princess of anything.”

“And if I stop it, will you grant me the truth behind your visits, Jemima?”

She smiled then and it touched her eyes. And he thought it was her first real smile of today and that it was his. “I come here because I want to be of help. I know how overwhelming the constant demands of people dancing attendance on you can get. But I also come because I’m curious about you. I always have been.”

“Because I’m the most beautiful man in the world?” he said, a bitter edge to his tone. “Or because I’m the most devilish and you would like a taste of the scandalous and the forbidden?”

* * *

“Are you forbidden to me still, Prince Adonis?” Jemima asked, her breath hovering in her throat.

It felt like one of those moments in life where one leapt off the cliff into the unknown or was forever left behind thinking what-ifs.

And Jemima was finally ready to leap.

For two weeks, she’d made this same trek from her far-off wing in the palace—Adonis had ordered that his fiancée move closer to him, out of reach of her father—to this courtyard which had morphed into his study. She had known, instinctively, how he would chafe at being cloistered inside solid walls for hours and days on end.

His escapades, as a rambunctious child and then as a teenager, were legends among the palace staff, often repeated with fondness and amusement. Yet, she hadn’t seen that spark in him, that devilish humor much, since his return.

A part of her also resented that she only got this close to this stunning, intriguing man under these extreme conditions. And she wanted to change that. She wanted to know him.

Her father’s autocratic commands ever since he had realized she had a working brain had turned her into a coward. But now, enough of her dithering, of not shooting the best shot she had been given after years of subservience.

She covered the last step and placed her palm on his chest. Clad in a fitted button-down shirt, he was warm and solid under her wandering fingers. “Does my question scare the man whom nothing scares?”

His fingers steepled her wrist in a firm grip but he didn’t push her touch away. “No, pethi mou . I’m not forbidden to you. But that’s not the same as having me, is it?”

The taunt landed with silky smooth precision, taking a chip off of her courage. “No, it’s not.” She sighed. “You were right that I judged you and your decisions based on nothing but your reputation. On reflection though, half of that is because of my own hang-ups. It’s easy to lose oneself in the games and politics that abound within these walls.”

“And what is it that you want of me, Jemima?”

“Another chance. A fresh start. For just you and me.”

“To begin what?”

“I meant what I said to my father and his cronies. I want friendship and trust and whatever else we can muster up between us. Especially the last for ourselves, for everything else will be tested and devoured by Thalassos. Including our ability to be parents.”

A soft, utterly beautiful smile hovered on his lips. He released her wrist and she opened her mouth in protest.

Jemima felt his fingers land on her hips like she was the main character in some slow-moving, live action film. With a searing burn that should leave deep fingerprints on her willing flesh. Tilting onto her toes, she tipped forward, eager for more contact, more of his hands on her flesh, more of him.

She’d been granted a feast and she wasn’t going to simply stand on the sidelines and salivate.

The tips of her breasts brushed his hard chest and breath whooshed out of her, as if she were a child’s balloon deflating during the festivities of the National Day Parade.

“I’m not the brightest when it comes to words, Princess. My headache after two hours of reading those legal documents confirms it. So please clarify your intentions for me. Also, ‘whatever else we can muster up between us’ sounds…” he scrunched that blade of a nose in distaste and Jemima wondered if she could get away with calling him adorable, “…tedious and dry and uninspired. You should know that I thrive on challenge.”

“I want to see if there’s passion between us, Adonis,” she said, grabbing the bull by the horns. “And if that can be the thing that adds another brick to our foundation. Because that cannot be dictated by the crown or the council or the cynical media. It would be all ours. Only ours. And honestly, the idea of owning some small part of this arrangement makes me—”

His mouth sealed over hers, stealing her breath, her thoughts, and her conflicting emotions. In those first moments, Jemima clung to him like a limpet. And perhaps sensing her stiffness, the Prince softened the press of his lips immediately.

Slowly, she relaxed and her other senses rushed into focus, bringing more awareness and keener yearnings.

For a hard, leanly muscled man, he had the softest lips. The taste of wine and something darker he had indulged in dribbled down from him to her lips, into her throat and further below to her chest, to pool into liquid sensation at her center.

One touch of his lips and she could feel her entire world tilt and shake, rearranging itself into one with more color and light and sensation.

No wonder she hadn’t forgotten that first kiss, and her only kiss, all these years later. Even as a naive, utterly inexperienced eighteen-year-old, she had sensed the pull between them. Not that she had any more experience now, she thought, as he moved those sinuous lips over hers in a slow dance. But she had the bone-deep conviction that this was right.

One of the few right things in a life full of nasty twists and turns.

His fingers edged around her waist, claiming more and more ground, but Jemima sensed him withholding, treating her as if she were a porcelain figurine. As if he wasn’t sure she wanted this.

If she was doing this, she was going all in.

Sinking her fingers into the nape of his neck, she dragged her breasts against his rock-hard chest. Their raw groans rent the air. “Kiss me properly, please. As you want, Adonis. Not this tedious, dry version you have decided is my worth,” she said, meeting his gaze.

His smile was a delight when she tasted it with her tongue and that was the last coherent thought she had.

Adonis sipped at her lips like she tasted better than the finest Thalassan wine, nibbled like she was his favorite treat, and when she dug her teeth into the lush sweep of his lower lip, he devoured her as if she were a feast to a starving man.

Even the shattering of his wine flute on the tiles couldn’t fracture the urgency that beat at them.

Jemima gasped when he lifted her and brought her to the chaise longue where she’d found him fast asleep one night. As if she were a sweet, light feminine thing made of feathers instead of the sturdy, dependable accessory she had turned herself into for her father and his brother.

The burgundy leather was soft against her fingers as she gripped it while Adonis knelt over her, caging her.

For just a second, as she read the naked hunger pulling at his features, she felt a sudden attack of bashfulness about her body. Round and plump, she was no man’s fantasy of a woman but she had always loved her body for all that it had given her.

“No,” Adonis said, pressing a finger between her brows. “Do not let the world intrude on this moment, Princess. Like you said, this is for us.” He leaned down and touched his forehead to hers, his warm, wine-scented breath coasting over her lips. “And I need this, need to see you unravel so badly.”

“It’s not the world interfering, Prince,” she said, clasping his cheek. He leaned into the touch like some great cat, willing to be petted, and more than desire lashed through her.

“Touch me. Wherever and however, you want. All the madness that’s swirling around me right now, and the grief that haunts me…” Blue eyes searched hers. “I need escape, Jemima.”

His whispered command filled her with liquid longing to the brim.

She’d never counted it as such but her father first and then Adamos at his turn, had deprived her of even the simple comfort of touch.

That Adonis not only needed it, but demanded it openly felt like her most secret yearning given color and shape and the wings to fly.

Without curbing her greed or worrying about betraying it, she ran her hand over his shoulders, neck and back, finally settling them over his chest. The buttons popped open on his shirt when she tugged. A sigh escaped her when she discovered warm, taut skin. Christos, the man was hewn in rock, every inch of him cut and lean, as if a master sculptor had removed all the excess.

Jemima explored the planes of his chest and back with increasing fervor, eager to feel it against her own body. Already, the idea of rubbing her curves against all that muscle filled her with unbearable heat.

The whole time, Adonis bent his head as if he were being granted a benediction.

“Tell me what interferes with the need I sense in you and I will banish it to the ends of the earth.”

“I think you’re getting the hang of this whole king thing, Prince.”

He grinned but the solemnity didn’t leave his gaze. “I want no doubts between us, Jemima. Not when it comes to this.”

She looked into his electric blue eyes and made another leap. Being forced to be vulnerable had made her grow an abundance of prickles but being asked to bare it so that he could soothe it away…was a new experience. And she had a feeling this man would never mock her for her own shortcomings—real or imagined or forced on her by the world.

Feeling more than possessive, she grazed her nails over one flat nipple and then lower. The rippling contractions of his abdominal muscles, the soft graze of the sparse chest hair…everything about him was a study in sensuality. “You’re perfection, Your Highness. A Greek god among us mortals. And I’m not beautiful or sophisticated or experienced, measured by any standard or scale.”

He leaned further down and Jemima felt cool air brush her bare skin before she heard the rip of her flimsy silk dress.

She could feel her heavy breasts rise and fall, the nipples eagerly peaking under the nude lace bra. Her belly was soft and round, like the rest of her, a testament to her snacking late at night and comfort eating.

Of course when she had first been engaged to Adamos, the palace team had added a nutritionist and a trainer and a weight loss expert to her team. Jemima had never been so angry in her whole life. “I like my body just as it is,” she said now, feeling compelled to defend herself. “But the world is tiresome, constantly telling me that I could and should look thinner and better. Whiskey and chocolates… I’ll never give them up.”

She heard his soft laugh at the end.

“Open your eyes, Jemima.”

Her eyes flew open to find him studying her with naked desire etched on his face. Spine arching into his touch, she eagerly followed the lazy trails his fingers drew over her belly and lower. Her flesh quivered under his nakedly admiring gaze.

“Give me your hand.”

She did.

“Do you trust me in this?”

She nodded and added, “I do. In the end, it has been that easy.” If she sounded baffled, he seemed to understand that too. For he gave her a swift nod. The same sense of awe she felt was reflected in his expression.

Her breath came in sharp pants as he brought her hand to move down his chest, past that concrete slab of his abdomen and then to rest against his…crotch.

His length was hard and throbbing already. She gasped as it grew impossibly harder under her curious fingers. Desire pooled at her core, making her lace panties damp. Emboldened by his sharp exhale, she clasped him fully and squeezed.

A pained grunt fell from his luscious mouth. “You cannot doubt my body’s reaction to you, Princess. You rendered me so even all those years ago with one kiss.” Something flashed in his eyes and she sensed his reluctance and then resolve. “Remember that time when I came to meet Adamos in Paris two, three years ago?”

It was the one trip where she’d been allowed to accompany the Crown Prince, not that Adamos had liked the idea. But the Queen had insisted that they start presenting a united front to the world.

“At that charity gala,” Adonis continued, his gaze far off, “you wore a rust-colored dress that hugged your curves. I was so jealous of Adamos and disgusted by myself. I turned hard as stone when you slipped on the steps and I had to catch you. One brush against you and I was nothing but pure want. It was another nail in the coffin of not returning to Thalassos.” A sound that was nearly beastly emanated from his throat, snatching him from her in this moment. “I coveted the relationship he had with my father, maybe even his crown, and then his fiancée.”

“No, come back to me, Adonis,” she whispered, pushing onto her elbow and kissing his jaw. The blond scruff on his cheeks tickled her lips. “Adamos’s death has nothing to do with you. Surely you know that.”

When he didn’t respond, her chest ached and her courage flared. With her breasts rubbing against his arm in a wanton gesture, she captured his lips with hers. Then swept her tongue inside the warm cavern of his mouth.

His fingers tightened on her flesh. And in a matter of breaths, she got the hungry Adonis back.

She arched deeper into his touch when he pushed her bra down and cupped her breasts. “You’re gorgeous, Princess.” The hard nipples prodded and poked at his palm, eager for attention.

Then it was his tongue dancing and swiping and licking at the peak before he sucked her breast into his mouth.

Pleasure shot through every nerve ending as if she had been electrocuted and she was nothing but spiraling sensations and cavernous need. The more he stroked and nipped and licked, the more the flames grew and the emptier her core felt. She wanted the climb to the peak but God, she craved the free fall at his hands desperately.

The rasp of a zipper barely registered and soon, she had his shaft in her hands. Her eyes widened and an unbearable ache unspooled in her pelvis as she ran her fingers over the thick, veiny length of him. Then there was the perfect V of muscles leading to the throbbing length. Her throat worked as she tried to form the words. “I’ve never been allowed to explore a simple want or desire or my sexuality in any way. Which means I don’t have the expertise I like to have in everything I do, Prince.”

His answer was a quick nip of her lower lip. “All that matters is that you want this as much as I do, Princess.”

She nodded vigorously. “And you do?”

“Everything about my reputation is not true, Jemima,” he said, tweaking her nose. “Being a daredevil is my brand, yes, and that attracts a certain kind of attention. I don’t push it away when it gives me free publicity. Like the expectations placed on you, the media fuels as much as it feeds the public.”

“And they have always been extra interested in you because you were always a rebel.”

The smooth, olive-toned skin of his shoulders glinted in the soft lighting when he shrugged. “The myth becomes bigger and juicier than the man. But enough of me, Princess,” he said, whispering the words into the arch of her neck where her pulse was begging to explode. “And just a kiss won’t do if you want to explore this.”

“I want more, Adonis. All of it.”

His grin this time was all Devil Prince, his perfect white teeth flashing at her. With his designer cut ruffled by her possessive fingers, his sinuous lips dark pink and glistening wet, he looked utterly debauched. That it was at her hands…added an extra zing.

“We should wait to be married for all of it, Princess. I don’t want the damned crown council questioning our child’s legitimacy.”

She nodded, thankful for his common sense when she had none. “I…went off birth control that night you agreed to my proposal.”

“We need a better story to tell our children and grandchildren than that, ne ?”

Dear God, was the man a closet romantic? Was anything the world knew about the Devil Prince actually true? “Why? Does it hurt the Devil Prince’s masculinity if it is said that he was rescued by his wife and queen-to-be from an untenable solution?”

His laughter was genuine and breathtaking for that. “No, yineka mou . I have a feeling my masculinity will be thriving in your hands.”

She laughed then, a strange sort of awe filling her. A grasping greed filled her. The more he gave her, the more she wanted of him. “Did you know that it is customary that Thalassan princes give their brides-to-be an engagement present of their choice? There’s a story about how Queen Isadora didn’t use hers for a long time.”

A sudden flash of anguish shone in his eyes before he chased it off with a slow smile. His fingers danced on her belly. “I love the greed I see in your eyes. Clearly, there’s something you want from me, Princess.”

Jemima didn’t miss the thread of mockery that entered the last few words. But she forged on, refusing to let his mistrust of her ruin the moment. “Give me one thing the world doesn’t know about you. Anything. Even as trivial as your favorite dessert.”

He looked thunderstruck for so long that Jemima felt foolish. When he shook it off, he searched her eyes. “You’re a strange woman, Jemima Nasar,” he finally quipped. His defined chest rose and fell with his decision. “I have been celibate for six years. Which is why all this rubbing and writhing is driving me crazy.”

Shock robbed her of thought or speech for long moments. “But…they…the tabloids…” Meeting his eyes, she pushed the doubts away. “May I know the reason?”

“Some other time. Right now, I want us both to have one gloriously high point amidst the circus we’ve been thrust into.”

“That sounds perfect,” she said, backing off. He’d already given her so much more than she’d expected in this relationship, and she didn’t mean just the drugging kisses. She trailed her fingers down his stomach, and then traced the veins on his shaft. “Tell me how to give you what you need. I… I want to satisfy you.”

“Oh, Princess.” He pulled her fingers over his thick shaft, the tendons in his neck showing taut when she rubbed her thumb pad over the soft head. “Keep stroking me, ne ?”

She nodded and applied herself like a diligent student eager to please her master. Touching him, stroking his hard length, hearing grunts and groans fall from his lips only pushed her up to the edge.

Slowly, his fingers pushed past the hem of her dress, mapping and tracing her thick thighs and finally landing on her pulsing and wet and agonizingly needy core.

“All that uptight efficiency and beneath it,” his whisper was a gravelly torment as he traced her folds with reverence, “you’re melting for me, Princess?”

Jemima had no answer.

A very deliberate swipe of his fingers from her clit to her slit had her jerking her spine and squeezing his cock harder. He half groaned and half laughed, a serrated sound that tore through the thin threads of her frayed control.

“I’m reminded of my science lessons, Jemima,” he whispered at her temple, his lean body somehow half prostrate over hers and yet, not giving her any of his weight. “Something about equal and opposite reactions.”

Then he, with excruciating slowness that threatened to spin her out of her own skin, fed one long finger into her channel. Every nerve ending she possessed flared with a brilliant light when he added another finger and then went exploring inside her until he found the perfect spot.

Electric sensation made her lift her hips.

When he plunged his fingers in and out, hitting and pressing at that spot, she followed the rhythm, her entire body dancing at the edge of that cliff. All the while he told her what a good girl she was to take him like that and how wet and tight she was and how incredibly hard the sight and sound and feel of her wanton response made him. The rogue even said she was a damn queen already, the way her body sang for him.

And the proof was in her hands, she noted with a feral satisfaction.

Even with her wrist cramping, she kept stroking his shaft, determined to bring him over with her.

Moans and groans and unintelligible sounds rushed from her mouth and her pulsing flesh, adding to the lilting cadence of the fountain. She protested when he pulled her hand off his cock. Laughing, he replaced it with her other, and then covered it with his own free hand.

They stroked and caressed each other, to the background of their rasping breaths and hitching moans.

Jemima spiraled first, thrown into a maelstrom of pleasure, shattered and broken, her muscles contracting and milking his fingers in rhythmic pulls that made her eyes roll back in her head. A bone-deep satisfaction and languor suffused her but she couldn’t let it keep her from watching him.

As if he was thinking the exact thing, Adonis said in a gravelly voice, “Give me your eyes, Jemima. Stay with me.”

The black of his eyes ate the blue, and taut lines pulled at his mouth. His fingers covering hers pulled at his shaft in fast, brutal strokes. Then he roared, throwing his head back, his olive skin shining with sweat, his lips slackening, his tapered hips pumping greedily. It was a stunning sight. And would remain only hers for the rest of their lives, Jemima decided with a possessive instinct she’d never known before.

Hot spurts of his release coated her skin. She spread her fingers over his panting chest, loving the hard thud of his heart under her fingers. “You look exquisite, Princess, painted in shades of me,” he said, rubbing his release into the curve of her breast.

Jemima felt branded, owned, possessed.

In the dark gleam of his eyes, she saw the same intense instincts that flowed through her at how hotly they had exploded together.

Reaching down, his mouth found hers in a fast, hungry kiss and Jemima knew that the Devil Prince was already carving a place for himself in her life, her thoughts, and maybe even her untried heart.