Vows to a King

Chapter Nine

CHAPTER NINE

W HEN A DONIS STUMBLED into his palace wing past midnight, it was to find his private suite, their private suite , and the extremely large kingly bed, disappointingly empty. Like the city itself, some interfering busybody, apparently also incurably romantic, had decorated the room like a bride itself.

The air was thick with the scent of jasmines and roses, arranged in lavish bouquets through the room. Through the large, open French doors, the sound of the waves endlessly crashing against the cliffs matched his hungry mood.

Where the hell was his new bride?

You didn’t pay attention to her all day. And yet you stomp about like a child now , that innately fair voice whispered inside his head.

It had been necessary, he reminded himself yet again, to keep her at a distance, to snuff out the very real thread beginning to weave between them. She had been so incandescent—her passion so achingly honest, that he’d forgotten he didn’t do emotional intimacy. That the deepest wound he’d been dealt still pulsed with pain. And given a chance, she too would find him not enough someday, she too would only cause him pain.

But now that the endless day was over and the inky darkness of night had surrounded him, he wanted her under him. Away from his father and the crowds and without the crown on his head, he wanted her, as a man would want the most thrilling woman he’d ever met.

He wanted her unraveled for him, wanted to spend himself on her lush curves so badly that he would forget that he was nothing but a poser, a fake.

How like a bloody king to seek her out when it pleased him, he thought, but even the voice calling out his hypocrisy couldn’t stop him.

He continued stomping through the endless, expansive rooms, even searched behind those stupid marble columns and thick velvet curtains as if she could be playing queenly hide-and-seek with him on their wedding night.

Their wedding night…

He pushed a hand through his hair as the phrase brought on memories of her expressions from the day. There had been anger, relief, pain, and disappointment in her gaze. That he had been the author of all of them didn’t sit well with him.

Not that the day had been the least bit about either of them. For a man who had thought he would never marry though, he did feel a sort of disappointment that it had been so utterly somber. Nor was he completely sure why he felt this sudden urgency to seek her out now.

Of course there was the ever-present lust pounding through him, urging him to plant himself deep inside her. Made even more potent by the adrenaline running through his veins since the air show. Not that it had satisfied the dark urges roiling through him. Only one thing, he knew, would at this point. Touch and connection and losing himself in the voluptuous valleys of his new queen.

And this, he knew, she needed it too.

Pushing the heavy double doors that felt like sentinels silently ordering him to stay out of her private space, he entered the pretty decorated salon. It was a replica of the smaller suite he had stood in on that first night. Some tight constriction in his chest that he had been walking around with eased to find the familiar sight of piles of books and discarded chocolate wrappers strewn about.

He maneuvered through a host of sofas and footstools and walls covered in breathtaking local art, instead of the heavy paintings of ancestors he didn’t want to think about, to reach the recessed part of the room.

With the flick of his hand, Adonis dismissed the young maid who had been half-asleep on the armchair.

Was the young woman to have acted as buffer between him and Jemima? Was his peace-loving queen pissed off that he had neglected her all day?

With every step he took toward the bed, her shape took form and something else with it. Jemima was half sitting, half lying down on the bed in a baby-pink wrapper that fell off one shoulder. Baring gleaming golden skin for his eyes.

The thick reading glasses she wore dangled precariously at the edge of her cute button nose. But even in exhausted slumber he could see the dark circles etched under her eyes, and her left hand was stretched to rest on the head of a boy child of about four or five.

Shock punched through Adonis, leaving him sweaty and cold. In the boy’s sleeping face with its thick lashes and button nose, he could see the resemblances to the woman who couldn’t let go of him even in sleep.

Horrifying speculations abounded in his head, causing a sudden frightening buzz. He rubbed his temple and was about to shake her awake when her amber eyes came alert.

She jerked up into a seating position as if someone had poked her and rubbed her knuckles under her eyes. At whatever she saw in his face, she suddenly pulled the sleeping boy toward her until his head lay in her lap. The protectiveness in the gesture, as if he were a monster, infuriated Adonis and filled his head with wilder theories about the boy’s parentage that made his blood run cold.

“Your Majesty, what did you need of me?” she said, her voice husky with sleep.

Even in his horrified state, it pinged over his skin, filling him with heart-pounding awareness of what he did want with her, of her.

“The child…” he said, not even glancing down at the small face. He had a feeling it would haunt him for nights to come if his speculations were true. “Who is he?”

Jemima frowned and then sighed, as if it were no big deal for her to have a child in her bed. “I will answer that question if you didn’t ask it as if I were in an inquisition. After you so rudely disrupted my sleep.”

He gritted his jaw. “This is not the time to test me, Princess. Just answer the question.”

“I’m not one of your subjects to be dazzled by everything you say and do, Your Majesty. And I’ve had enough of you and your stunts and your…”

With gentle movements, she lay the child back against the pillows and tucked him under the duvet. She threw her legs off the bed with sudden vigor, drawing his gaze to the rucked hem of her nightgown that bared thick, toned thighs.

Adonis could no more look away from the sight of her heaving breasts and the golden cleavage they made than he could stop breathing. All he wanted was to bury his face there and not come up for air.

Coming to her feet, making sure to walk far toward the door, away from the sleeping child, she folded her arms at her middle. “Please…leave. I’m not myself.”

“Is he your son, Jemima?” Adonis whispered, feeling like a drunk fool. “Is that why you went through the elaborate plan of beseeching me to make you my queen? Is he yours and my brother’s son?”

Her head jerked toward him with such alacrity that he wouldn’t be surprised if it hurt her in the morning.

“What?” She looked horrified. Taking his face in, she sobered. “No, of course not. I told you. Adamos and I didn’t have that kind of relationship. Wow, you really think I would trick you like that?”

Air rushed into his lungs as if he had been pulled out of a drowning flood. He rubbed the heel of his palm over his eyes, relief shaking him from inside out.

A confrontation with his father had always made him needy and weak, and today had been the highlight of their miserable, nonexistent relationship. The last thing he could do was to take it out on the one innocent in all this. He turned to leave, only to be blocked by a five-foot-two queen, her arms thrown about in a dramatic fashion, her chest rising and falling. With a splash of pink washing up her ample chest and cheeks, she could drive any man to the edge and he…already dwelled there.

“Leaving without answering my question, Your Majesty?” Jemima said, the softness of sleep gone from her eyes.

“Who is he then?” Adonis asked, the blankness of relief giving way to new questions. Although, whatever her answer, it would only take another shot to bring him to his knees. Because, clearly, his freshly minted queen was attached to the boy.

Jealousy scoured his insides with its sharp, green nails, and this too was new and strange.

“My brother, Zayn. My half brother, to be precise. Apparently, my mother, beaten down by my father, took a secret lover.” She said it all by rote, as if any emotion on the topic had already been bled through. “That he isn’t my father’s son became apparent to me when he started saying he would banish Zayn to some far-off boarding school. He tries to behave like he doesn’t exist. Until he realized that I adore my brother and that he can be used as a weapon to control me. If not for Zayn,” she said, lifting her chin, resolve blazing across her face, and Adonis braced himself for free fall, for the thud and the splat of his poor heart, “I would not have begged you to marry me. I’d have run far away from you, the palace, the damned kingdom, and my father. But in the law’s eyes and the world’s, Zayn is my father’s child and he threatened to take him away from me any moment.”

Understanding dawned in Adonis, but he couldn’t find it in himself to be angry with her for hiding her true purpose. Especially when he knew the kind of neglect the boy could suffer at her father’s hands. Neglect, which would be the best he could hope for.

“He could still send your brother away if you didn’t follow his commands, couldn’t he? If you didn’t finesse me or control me or manipulate me per his wishes?”

She blanched but didn’t deny it. “I hoped as the King of Thalassos, you could order him to keep the boy with me to be brought up in the royal household, as part of this family.

“Our family.”

Adonis had to admire her strategic thinking. “You’re counting on the fact that your father would love the idea of having that continued extra connection to the royal family?”

She nodded. “Once I got to know you, it became clear that you wouldn’t begrudge an innocent boy your love and protection.”

He snorted. “Managing me yet again, Princess?”

“I dare not even think that, Your Majesty. Self-delusion isn’t my favorite vice.”

“And what is the meaning of bringing him to your suite tonight, Princess?” He cocked his head when she blushed, although certain other parts of him also started saluting her. “I imagine there’s a statement you’re trying to make but I’m not sure I see it. Given you have kept a huge secret from me.”

“I am angry with you,” she stated easily, shedding the reserved entreaty for blazing fury. And Adonis wondered, yet again, how easily she gave him her trust, the intimacy of sharing her emotions. “For a host of things I couldn’t even begin to talk about. And I have no wish to share a bed with you tonight.”

“You do know that producing a child does not require a bed, don’t you?”

She gasped. “Of course, I know that…” She closed her mouth and opened it again. “I simply refuse to be thrown about like a child’s toy by your stunts.”

“My stunts?” he said, even as understanding began to dawn.

“You might call it a tribute to your brother, and Thalassos might foolishly rejoice in seeing their new king splash about in the sky, making a spectacle of his anger, of his pain, and even of its promised golden future.” Eyes bright with unshed tears, an inferno of emotions crossing her face, his wife looked like the very volcano that had made Thalassos rich with fertile soil that could nurture and grow the wildest of weeds. And that was how he had always felt amidst the carefully manicured garden that was his family—a wild, robust weed that wasn’t of use to anyone.

“But I will not take part in your self-destruction, Your Majesty. I did not find it moving at all.”

As if to mock her defiant assertion, her tears fell one by one, onto smooth, round cheeks.

Adonis decided he didn’t like the sight of her tears at all. No, he actively hated them and he vowed to be rid of them, as much as possible.

This whole…caring about someone else and accommodating his actions toward that end felt…both strange and alluring to him, like a new challenge. Even, a purpose.

It terrified him, this purpose, as much as it lured him. After all, he was a man who thrived on pushing his body to its extreme limits. And now, a part of him wanted to try it with his heart, even as his head blared warnings. Wanted to grab everything that stood before him with both hands and full heart, even as the young boy inside him raged in protest, begging to protect himself from that pain again.

In the end, the pull she had on him won out, at least for the moment. After all, he had treated her horribly on what should have been a special day.

Covering the distance between them, he wiped her tears with his knuckles and sensed the great volcano of tension she held inside. The fact that she had sought solace in that little boy’s body made his chest tight. As if she had known that she couldn’t get it from him.

Acting on an impulse that he didn’t understand or was ready for, he pressed his mouth to her temple. The scent of sweet vanilla filled his nostrils, his lungs, and all the cold, far-off reaches of his body, replacing the chill he had felt earlier with silken warmth.

He wrapped his arms around her and instantly, she fell into him, her silent, hiccupping sobs bathing him. “Jemima…” He didn’t even care that her name sounded like an entreaty on his lips. “I did not do it to cause you pain. I do it to ease mine.” Even speaking the words was cathartic, but then, he had never verbalized the urge to scream at what destiny had landed him into. Of how hard it was to fight such brutal cruelty. “I was in a rage and when one of those rages takes me, the only way to wrestle control over myself is to challenge the upper edges of what my body can do, to drown myself deep into the adrenaline released by an act of tremendous risk. When the fear and the excitement and the gratitude from it floods me, I’m centered again. I am also unused to thinking that someone would worry over me so.”

Hands on his chest, she pushed at him so suddenly that he nearly stumbled to the floor. Only the fact that she was small and he was all muscle stopped him from landing on his ass. A sight he was sure his fierce queen would have thoroughly enjoyed.

Her tears were gone and the anger was back. “I did not think the Devil Prince Adonis Vasilikos could suffer from self-pity and victimizing himself. How dare you say that no one would worry about you, Adonis? Your mother loves you,” she said. “And your foolishly impressed subjects love you. Even the stubborn, relentlessly proper staff at this damned palace have begun to love you. To risk so much in a fit of anger…you should be ashamed of yourself. I refuse to tie myself, my future, my children to a man who thinks so little of his life.”

“It might look risky to you, but I was in control the entire time,” Adonis said, surprised by the fact that he was offering an explanation at all. Untried as he was in relationships, her concern stole under his skin like a small worm digging its way in. “I have made billions out of what I do in the form of outrageous, spine-tingling, death-defying stunts, Princess. However reckless I feel, I’d never risk my life in such a wasteful way. Not when the Queen risked so much to raise me as her own.”

The roiling confusion in her eyes didn’t abate as she muttered to herself. “I can’t compete with that kind of excitement. A flesh and blood woman would have been better.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, anger edging into his own words now. “I do not expect you to somehow provide me with that kind of adrenaline.” Even as he said it, a new kind of anticipation thrummed through his veins. “Unless you’re offering to try?” he said, grabbing her hips.

Her tearstained eyes rose to his and her throat worked. Another thing he was beginning to adore about his new queen—she did not back down from a challenge, just like him.

“What are you suggesting? If I do something for you…” She licked her lower lip and he suppressed a groan. “Will you stay away from such risky stunts in the future?”

“Why does it bother you so?” he said, clasping her shoulders, genuinely curious. “If you want, I can have my team prepare a report that shows you the risk statistics of every stunt I have ever done. It is as much a part of me as the hills are a part of Thalassos.”

Something softened in her eyes but she pushed back out of his hold and walked around him, her steps both halting and urgent. “When my father decreed that I should somehow persuade you into this marriage, I did so with the least amount of hope. And yet, with each minute that I talked with you, each endless hour we pored over those trade documents, each time you gave me credit for every small thing I did, you gave me hope, Adonis, when I didn’t have any in so many years. Hope for a good relationship. Hope for a loving father for my children, for our children. I even dared hope that you might take on an active role in my brother’s life, for I have seen the kindness in you. Then you treat me like a dummy, a stand-in, at the wedding ceremony.”

“Jemima—”

“I could still forgive the last, knowing how hard this…day must have been for you. Knowing what I know now. But I don’t know if I can forgive you for snatching away that hope by taking these risks.”

Anguish swirled in her eyes. “It’s the cruelest thing you could ever do to me and if you touch me, if you kiss me, if you give me a baby,” she said, a bitter laugh falling from her lips, “I cannot keep myself separate from you. I cannot remain my own. And then if something happened to you and I was back under my father’s thumb…” that the idea terrified her was clear from her expression, “I won’t have the strength to look after the innocents around me. All these years of bracing myself for the next calamity and you’ve already rendered me weak.”

He felt as if she had pushed him into a burning building. He had the memory to supply the fear that came with it. His breath tightened like a vise in his throat, and with only one step toward her, there could be salvation or utter destruction. “Love was not a part of our agreement, Princess,” he said, filling his words with cold steel.

“I’m not talking about falling in love with you. Even I am not that foolish. But I could still get attached to you, to this relationship, to the father of my children. And I can’t bear it if…”

It was exactly what he had hoped she’d feel for him, manipulative bastard that he was. That she could actually see facets of his true nature…only made her words sweeter.

Her honesty demanded he give her something in return. “And if I promise to give this matter serious thought? You have to understand,” he said, clasping her cheek, “that these…actions have been a part of me for so long. I do not know what I am without them, Jemima. But I see that my life now has much more value than it ever had before, whatever my father’s ramblings.”

“Is that a vow you’re making me?” she said, her eyes so bright that they gleamed like precious jewels. “That you will consider it?” she added, as if she knew that he would offer up that correction.

He nodded.

“And about these ramblings of the King that I overheard this morning and how they—”

Adonis cut her off with a hand over her mouth, not all surprised at her smooth segue. The woman was as cunning as she was generous. “The last thing I want to discuss at the end of this bloody long day is my father, wife. How about we get back to the topic of you offering me something in return for me giving up an essential part of my life?”

Her shoulders straightened, her spine arced. Pushing her luscious breasts up into his chest, she looked like a princess of the tribe her ancestors were from, readying herself for battle. She took his hand, cast a glance over her shoulder at her sleeping brother, and tugged him from the suite.

Anticipation and excitement and such naked desire fueled Adonis’s limbs that he didn’t remember the adrenaline that had coursed through him as he had made the vertical leap through the sky just that morning.

And he wondered, if maybe, this day was the beginning of something new, something good in his cursed life.

* * *

They had barely reached his cavernous room when the overhead chandeliers, three of them, flicked on and Adonis’s gravelly command filled the room. “On your knees then, Princess.”

Challenge rippled through the room, hitting Jemima in waves that threatened to bring her under. Behind her, the large bed with its dark navy sheets loomed.

Standing at the foot of it, she could smell the earthy, cedar scent of him that made her want to strip every piece of clothing from her flesh and roll around in it.

Liquid yearning gave her the courage to want more though. And why roll around in sheets scented with his musk rather than taste it on her tongue?

This was her life now, abundant with a man, a bloody king, who made it clear that he wanted her.

She’d long been curious about every kind of sexual act, but nothing more than this one he was suggesting.

The power dynamic in the act had always made her tingly with pleasure when she’d read erotic novels. But nothing, not even the most salacious tome, could come close to experiencing it live with this man.

All her adolescent longings and naive wishes morphed into something else when it came to her new husband. Oh, what she wouldn’t give to bring this man to his knees, this man who had known every high and chased every challenge, with her mouth?

Keeping her gaze twined with his, she sank to her knees in what was hopefully a smooth gesture. She shrugged off the wrapper she had on and instantly her nipples peaked against her silky negligee, goose bumps rising on every inch of her skin. Though it had nothing to do with the fact that her husband apparently liked his room quite cold.

It stuck her then that the man lived like an ascetic, a monk, even. Constantly testing his willpower and his self-control, and flooding himself in adrenaline only when he dictated it.

A new thirst formed in her, of building a future where he did not have to conduct himself with such iron-clad control, where she could be his landing place, his place of comfort.

For now, she would begin with being the one who made him lose a fraction of that control.

“If you do not want to do this, wife,” he said, coming close enough that she could lean her forehead against his muscled thigh, “you could just say so. I could make this easier on both of us. I could simply spread your thighs and plunge into you without any of this drama or foreplay or challenge. Especially since you’ve already claimed that your inexperience bothers you and makes this uneven between us.”

She looked up at him, at the flaring nostrils, the dark pupils pushing out the gleaming blue. A savage satisfaction filled her.

He was desperate for this, not that he would ever betray it. She licked her lips, her mouth as dry as the desert. “I am the Devil Prince’s wife. I do not back down from a challenge. The world might call this relationship whatever it pleases, but between you and me, this will be a relationship of equals, my king. So enough of distracting me and give me that majestic weapon you keep under those pants.”

He threw his head back and laughed. The open V of his shirt made the corded tendons in his neck something to watch. Before her courage left her, Jemima busied her hands with his trousers.

Instant tension tightened his muscles as she unzipped his trousers, loosening them around his tapered hips, and his hard, throbbing length fell into her hands. Her hungry core clenched and spasmed as she traced one thick vein on the underside. When she gave him a firm stroke, pre-cum beaded at the tip.

Mouth falling open, he grunted when she gave him a couple more squeezes and then bent and licked the drop. He hissed and cursed and sank his fingers into her hair. “Take me deeper, wife. I need to brand your throat.”

Jemima’s fascination for him increased a thousandfold at the rough need in his voice. He’d been right when he said he would not coddle her for anything in the world.

As he talked her through, in deep, rumbling tones, how to keep breathing, while his shaft slowly inched deeper and deeper, hitting the back of her throat, Jemima thought she might love him just a little for that.

On and on, she sucked him and his own commands increased in both need and intensity. His fingers tightened in her hair while her nails dug into the hair-roughened columns of his thighs. And he used her mouth the way he wanted. The way she wanted him to, to fuel his ravaging need.

She braced herself for whatever he would give her when abruptly, he pulled himself out of her mouth. The world barely made sense until she was on her back in the large bed and lavishly frescoed ceilings with dancing cherubs greeted her gaze.

“What are you doing?” Jemima whispered, the sheets cool against her heated skin. Every inch of her tingled, as if she were the capital city on Christmas Eve.

Climbing onto the bed, Adonis planted his large, calloused hands on her inner thighs and pushed them apart as indecently as possible, making a place for his impossibly wide shoulders between them.

Eyes gleaming, he pushed up the hem of her negligee. Her core wept with fresh damp desire as he gazed at the small landing strip the palace beautician had left on her sex. One fingertip traced her endlessly. He licked his sensuous lips, as if she had been readied just for him.

“Saving my seed for where it belongs,” he said, putting a large hand on top of her pelvis. Her belly rolled in delight.

She faked a pout to cover the nerves tightening up inside her.

Christos , she wanted his mouth on her there, and him inside her, but the eagerness with which she wanted this, with which she wanted this whole life with him, scared her. “I would’ve swallowed every drop of what you gave me, you know,” she said, adding a teasing tone to her words. Who said Jemima Vasilikos could not do coy? “Now you’ll complain that I didn’t see it through all the way.”

His mouth split into a rakish grin that made her heartbeat stutter. The fact that his breath coasted over her lower lips had nothing on what his smile could do to her. Especially when it touched those blazing blue eyes of his.

Suddenly, she knew she could get addicted to wanting to make this man smile like that, just for her. For the world, he could be the Devil Prince but for her, he would be just a man.

“Since I plan to use you every which way tonight, Princess, you will be sore in the next couple of days. Then you’ll have more chance to apply yourself. You can practice swallowing as much as you like. Now,” he nipped at her inner thigh with his teeth and Jemima jerked at the pain providing a sweet contrast to the pleasure she wanted, “let me taste you and ready you for my mighty sword.”

His eyes crinkled at the corners and Jemima, pushing herself upon onto her elbows, watched him.

His dark hair ruffled, blond scruff on his jaw, his lips damp, he looked like her most feverish fantasy come true. “I didn’t think kings could prostrate themselves in such a way, Your Majesty.”

“This king does, for his queen,” he quipped, before rubbing the scruff against the sensitive skin of her inner thigh. “Now stop distracting me from my honey pot.”

Jemima laughed and within seconds, that sound transformed into a serrated groan as he rested the flat head of his tongue against her center and then swiped down like a cat.

He played with her clit for barely a breath before he swept his clever finger over her folds inside and out. And then finally, thrust it into her tight channel. Her elbows were shaky as a newborn calf’s legs, and Jemima fell back into the bed and gave in to her other senses.

With her eyes closed, every pinch and twist and lick of his lips over her core hit her like a tsunami. Sensation built and built as if she were nothing but a flood of water rising up and hitting itself against a dam. And she so desperately wanted to break the dam and fall over.

“Put your hands in my hair and steer my head whichever way you need,” he said, his words reverberating through her core to touch some deep, forbidden place inside of her that she didn’t know existed. “I’m yours to use as you wish, Jemima. Only yours.”

His blue eyes met her and she melted. Digging her fingers into his thick hair, she did as he said. She tugged and pulled, pressed and arched her hips up, chasing the rhythm he set, amplifying it to what she needed, on and on. Pain teased and sizzled at the edge of the aching fullness when he added a fourth finger and rocked them inside her.

“I have to get you ready for me,” he said, almost sounding sorry.

Fisting her hands into the sheets, Jemima licked her sweat-drenched lips and said, “Please, Adonis. Send me over. Whatever you give me, I take it willingly.”

And then there was no need for words. His mouth was on her clit, making the most scandalous sounds she had ever heard.

When he drew that bundle of nerves into his mouth and sucked at it with his lips, she exploded. More colorfully and brightly than the Parade Day fireworks in the sky.

Pleasure rippled and spread through her and outward in concentric circles, making her core contract and expand in hungry spasms. On and on her orgasm went as he continued licking at her, and Jemima knew she would never be the same again.