Chapter Thirty-One
Thirty-one
The room felt charged, like lightning might flash across the ceiling. The hair at the back of my neck lifted at the look in his eye.
“I asked you to stay in the palace.”
“I’m not one of your soldiers.”
His voice was low, and I became suddenly, viscerally aware that the room was small and we were alone. Or maybe that wasn’t a matter of architecture, but desire.
He smiled, and as he was looking down at me, his hand slid around my waist, long fingers across my abdomen.
My breath caught, and my body shuddered.
“You said you want freedom most of all, and I want to be the kind of person that hopes you get your freedom. But right now, I’m the type of person that just wants you here. That just wants to touch you, to assure myself that you’re here and safe. That we’re both alive.”
I’d learned many things over the last few weeks. “There are many ways to be free,” I said, and put a hand on his chest. Hard muscle tensed beneath my fingers and his heartbeat quickened. “I want something beautiful. I need something beautiful.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Good. Because there are things I’d like to do to you. With you,” he amended. “And the list is very, very long.”
He pushed me back against the door, fingers entwined with mine. He raised my hands over my head, pressed them against the door, and devoured my mouth. I couldn’t move my hands but found I didn’t care. I trusted him enough now to let him touch, ravage, protect.
At least within the confines of this room. This palace-within-a-palace. This small storybook kingdom.
He captured my hands in one of his, slid the other beneath my skirt, up my thigh, then pulled me against him. He was hard as iron, and our breaths shuddered out at the same time.
“Have you thought of me, Fox? Since that night in the palace?”
“How could I not?”
He abandoned my skirts, his free hand rising to my breast. He cupped it with long, skillful fingers, ran a thumb over the nipple, already taut and sensitive.
I dropped my head back to the door, moaned from the sensation.
This wasn’t the first time I’d been touched.
But I hadn’t felt this crazed need before, like a thousand years of hunger, of want, rising to the surface.
I pulled one of my hands free, touched his face, gripped his hair, pulled him harder against me. He groaned with satisfaction.
“I want to touch you. To taste you again.”
I could only nod—for once, ceding control.
He released my other hand and kissed me once more, tongue flicking across mine to tease, to heighten.
Then he fell to his knees in front of me, like a man preparing to worship one of the gods.
I might have wondered how this was happening, how I’d found myself standing like a goddess before this beautiful man, his gaze on me as he slowly pushed up the dress he’d given me, then ripped away the undergarments someone in the palace had so carefully sewn.
Then he dropped his gaze and stared at the crux of my thighs like I was a rare wildflower he’d never seen blossom before. Then his lips brushed my shin. His mouth was so soft as he moved slowly upward, as if reluctant to miss a bit of me.
I sighed and closed my eyes, the breath leaving my body. Need built until my legs shook.
“What do you want?” he asked, and nipped at my thigh.
“You.”
He chuckled, the sound low and gravelly. “You have me, on my knees.”
I looked down at him. “Your mouth. On me.”
“Oh, it will be my absolute pleasure.” And then his hands were on my hips and his mouth was on me, tongue flicking the delicate bud at the center of my body, and I felt like I was on fire, like desire was a physical thing, a flame that would burn me from the inside.
I slid a hand into his hair, pulled his head closer against me.
He groaned with satisfaction as his tongue moved faster.
The heat built, joining the sensation that had my knees shaking.
If I hadn’t been pressed against the door, I might have also fallen to my knees.
But his hands kept me pinned there, kept me from turning away from the powerful pleasure. Kept me from denying it to myself.
And then pleasure burst, and cold and heat curled together and swept across my body. I gasped for breath as he continued to lap until pleasure covered me again.
My legs trembled, and I nearly hit the ground.
But for the second time today, he swept me into his arms, carried me into the sleeping room and its bed, which was covered in sumptuous bedclothes.
He put me down gently, then yanked off his coat and pulled his shirt over his head.
My breath shuddered again as I stared at his chest, the dips and curves of perfect skin, the diagonal muscles at the sides of his hips, and the hair across his abdomen that led to the erection clearly outlined beneath his trousers.
I reached out and skimmed my fingertips across it. I was a thief, and it had been a long time since I’d wanted something quite so badly.
He took my hand and grinned down at me. “If you keep looking at me like that, and touching me like that, I won’t last. And I intend, Little Fox, to last.”
I found the bow of my bodice strings and pulled them loose as he removed his boots and leggings. I pulled the dress over my head, and stripped away the undergarments beneath. And then we were naked, thief and prince.
He ran a hand down his abdomen to his intimidating erection, pulled his hand along the shaft.
I’d never seen anything so erotic. His gaze had dropped to my breasts, tongue flicking out to wet his lips as he stared, and then he reached out, erection high between us, and cupped one breast, running a thumb across the nipple, which had me balancing on the knife’s edge between pain and desire.
My sigh was haggard, want drawing tight as a bowstring again.
He moved forward and his tongue replaced his fingers, suckling each nipple until I was squirming beneath him, sensation rising again toward that gorgeous crest that was just out of reach.
“I need you,” I said.
He lifted, braced himself above me, and looked down at me with the sexiest smile I’d ever seen. Thrilled. Arrogant. Anticipatory. “Say my name, Fox.”
I smiled up at him, then put a hand between us, cupped him, and he moved against my palm. This was power, I thought, to have the pleasure of a beautiful man literally in hand.
“Fox,” he said, and tensed above me; I risked a glance at his face. His eyes were closed tight as he fought for control.
“Yes, Your Highness?”
He growled, shifted his weight to one arm, captured my hand in the other, and lifted it above my head. I swallowed down lust I hadn’t expected from a movement, a loss of freedom, that should have sent me running for the door.
“Ah,” he said, his eyes narrowing with satisfaction. “Perhaps you like it when I take control.”
He captured my other hand, joined it with the first. It was a storm the moment before lightning touched down, when every nerve was awake and awaiting. Even the ember tuned to this new kind of pleasure, pulsing warm in time with my pounding heart.
“Nik.”
He lowered his face to mine and kissed me, my taste still lingering on his lips. “I can’t be easy. Not now. I’ve wanted you for too long.”
“I’m not delicate.” I slid my tongue around his. “And I don’t do easy.”
He positioned himself and slipped slowly inside, allowing my body to adjust to his width, and then we were joined, and he paused for a moment, lowering his forehead to mine.
“Thank the gods,” he said, like a man who’d finally reached a long-desired destination.
But need was powerful, and I rotated my hips beneath him, reveled in the catch of his breath.
He began to move, rocking his body as he shifted his hips.
He lifted my leg around his waist, allowing him to go deeper.
I arched my back against him and he groaned again, thrust faster, the friction of our bodies igniting another fire between us.
Sweat slicked his chest as he drove harder, his other arm corded as it bore his weight.
The fire spread as his tempo increased, each motion licking pleasure across my sensitive core. And I could feel my body edging closer to the brink.
“Come for me,” he said, and nipped at my lip. “Take your pleasure, Fox.”
“Nik!” I said, the word a prayer, as my body shook from the bliss that spread across it again. His rhythm grew faster, fiercer, his body gleaming in the candlelight.
“Fox,” he finally said, fingers squeezing at my hip as pleasure swamped him, his body contracting against mine.
And then we were panting and he kissed me again, this time soft and gentle. “Mine,” he said, and closed his eyes.