Chapter Ten
MALACHI HAD HARBORED EVERY INTENTION OF ruining the archprincess tonight, though not in the way she thought.
Yes, making her come apart on the dais while sitting atop his lap, atop his throne, inside his palace, in his seat of power, was part of severing any claim Rishaud thought he had to her.
But he had other motives as well. When he’d inserted himself in the Aether princess’s path at her club, he wasn’t sure what he’d initially expected.
But it sure hadn’t been the sultry enchantress who’d sauntered up to him, damn near grabbed him by the dick, and asserted that she was going to ride his cock.
There was no coyness. No games. No angling for something he could give her beyond a spectacular and thorough fuck.
It’d made his dick stand up and pay attention, and it’d stayed hard since then, his mind stuck on her boldness and the utter authority with which she took what she’d wanted from him.
But then he’d seen her at her wedding, and that woman had been different.
She’d been less wild, more leashed, primmer and more proper and judgmental and so southern-like.
She’d remained that second woman since then, and it agitated the fuck out of him.
So when he tore off the dress, he hadn’t been thinking about Rishaud in the least. He’d rendered her naked while she sat on his lap, on his throne, with the singular focus of eviscerating the proper and perfect southern lady facade she donned for the world.
He wanted to shred that mask, dirty up her polished exterior, and completely ravish Kadeesha Mercier until she ended up exactly how she had been: wild and unleashed, grinding against him with reckless abandon and screaming his name without a care to what was proper.
But fucking hell, as she heaved atop him, her toned and plush body a comfortable weight he’d gladly let smother him, he found himself short of breath too.
His pulse roared in his ears. His blood thrummed in his veins.
Every fiber of him snarled that her one orgasm wasn’t enough.
He wanted to sink inside her to the hilt and drive them both insane until she was hoarse from screaming his name and her cum coated his lap …
He dragged in a slow breath through his mouth, not foolish enough to breathe in her sweet floral scent any further.
It had already been branded into his mind since Oleander House and it had kept him in a constant state of arousal ever since.
He locked that knowledge away deep and pulled on his own mask.
Hypocritical? Yes. But necessary all the same.
She was an Aether royal, after all. They were aligned against the same enemy for the moment, but when Rishaud was taken care of, he’d be snatching her throne from her and assimilating her court into his, the same as the rest of the Six Kingdoms. She was too fierce, too much of a fighter, to just roll over and let it happen.
Before she’d even expressed such, Malachi had already known as sure as he knew his name that she’d fight him to the death.
And he didn’t plan to die anytime soon. He planned to be around to live and bed beautiful women and fight for eons yet, matter of fact.
So while he could—and would—thoroughly enjoy having Kadeesha in any and every way she let him for the time he had her at his court, that was all it was going to be. Definitively.
She slapped his hand that still had shadows entwined through his fingers away from her clit finally.
He scowled when he thought he caught a breathless No more …
I can’t take it. He’d have to remedy that nonsense.
Later, though. For now … he spun her around so she straddled his waist and faced him, unable to see his court at her back.
Right now, in her postorgasm high, he wanted her eyes on him and him alone.
And it was magnificent to be king, because he always got what he wanted—in perpetuity.
Done messing around, he freed himself from his pants and entered her on a hard, merciless thrust that seated him magnificently deep within her.
She screamed his name—Malachi, the right version that he’d demanded she speak, and like the other times before, it seriously screwed with his head.
Hearing his name on her lips like a fervent psalm to a great Celestial, inhaling her scent until it crowded out all others in the room, tasting her sweetness on his tongue, feeling her warmth and stickiness still coating his hands and his legs where her orgasm had drenched him …
all of it drove him out of his skull and left him floating among some far-off, bliss-laden, delirium-inducing plane.
He fucked the Aether princess like her life depended on it, like his life depended on gifting them both a release.
Gripping her exquisite ass, he pumped brutal thrust after brutal thrust into her as he lifted her up and slammed her down over and over.
Like at the pleasure house she owned, the princess gave as good as she got.
He might’ve been in control this time, but she synced up with him perfectly, rolling her hips in maddening circles for every one of his upward strokes.
In fact, they fell into a torturous rhythm too well.
And Kadeesha’s pussy felt like he was a perfect fucking fit—he let shadows devour that thought because danger lay down that path.
We are not made for each other, his mind gritted out.
He cleared his thoughts of the extra noise, focused only on how good Kadeesha felt with her walls gripping his cock, squeezing the life out of him.
“Shit!” he rasped, furious about how divine she felt.
But he buried his fingers in her hair and dragged her head down, kissing her deeply and savagely while his strokes mirrored that energy.
He understood right then and there that he’d been wrong when initiating this.
This latest time of being inside her wouldn’t slake his need any more than the many rounds they’d screwed back at Oleander House.
He had barely been able to drag himself out of and away from her then.
Now, with her constantly right within arm’s reach and staying in his palace, he was deluding himself if he imagined he’d be doing anything except sinking inside her and driving them both senseless every chance he got while their arrangement lasted.
He heard those infernal words again that sounded like Please … can’t take any more … too much …
“Yes, the hell you can,” he barked, picking up his pace, driving into Kadeesha harder to stress a point.
She dug her nails into his back and screamed his name.
He snarled when molten fire shot into his back—her aether flames shooting from the fingers buried in his skin.
But he also realized he liked it. Got even harder inside her, relishing the line between pain and bliss.
Her walls contracted in a viselike grip and then she was trembling, shouting his name at a pitch that could shatter glass, and doing precisely what he wanted her to—making a mess all over him.
“Good. Fucking. Girl,” he grunted, his own voice unsteady.
Then she rocked against him while riding out her orgasm in a way that had him breathing her name into the side of her neck—burying his face there was the only thing keeping him from shouting it louder—and coming so hard inside of her the room spun.
It knocked him so off-kilter, so thoroughly twisted him up, that all he could do was lose himself in the orgasm and cling to Kadeesha.
Someone could’ve been standing right in front of him with a sword poised to take his head, and he would’ve been at their mercy.
No, he would’ve been at her mercy, because he would’ve stared down the danger and still been unable to extract himself from her to save his literal life.
It felt just that good with her unraveling atop him while he came inside her.
Even after the tremors wracking her body died down and his heart rate had mostly slowed, they didn’t move.
He wasn’t certain what she was thinking; perhaps she was too bone-tired to do anything else, too spent to leap off him and utter something scathing like he expected.
For his own part, Malachi simply didn’t give a shit at the moment to be anywhere other than languishing inside her.
He was entirely unhurried to change his position.
In fact … he manifested a cocoon of impenetrable darkness around them that sealed them off from the external world and its sights and sounds and activity completely.
He no longer cared to have an audience—the message would get to Rishaud via whatever disloyal courtiers Trystin had added to the revelry, after all.
Then, he stood, maneuvering so he remained as deep inside Kadeesha as he could get because the world could implode and he still wouldn’t be slipping out of her at the moment.
He only realized he said the last part out loud when she chuckled low and sultry and smug.
Though she didn’t object. She only asked, “Where are we going?”