Chapter 31
He leaned down and captured a kiss, but it was soft, gentle, almost reverent.
It was wrong.
He wasn’t soft, he wasn’t gentle, and that wasn’t what I wanted from him.
I needed fire, passion, and heat.
I kissed him back, running my fingers through his hair as I adjusted my body to straddle his waist.
His arms wrapped around me, and his hands spread the warmth only he could give me over my back as he held my body to his.
Was this why I wanted him so much? Did my body know something that my mind didn’t?
I had heard that people’s instincts do not always make sense in the beginning, but they are right in the long run. Someone trusted a stranger, even though they were dirty and looked mean, and that person saved their life. Or another story of a girl refusing a date with a perfect gentleman who was in good standing with the community, just to find out later he had plans to drug and rape her. Instinct could be a powerful tool.
Could my body’s response to Lucian be a case like that? My mind had been screaming at me that this was wrong, but my body knew something my brain didn’t. Did something in me recognize that his motivations were not as simple or nefarious as I had assumed?
It made sense. I had always believed my father was a good man.
My mother had always told me my father was a good and honest man. But there were always things that didn’t add up: late-night meetings with people who terrified me, men with scars on their faces, calloused knuckles, and dressed in head-to-toe leather.
Men that my father should not have had any reason to associate with, let alone invite into our home.
If Lucian knew about them, if he knew Zeigler was circling and ready to take my fortune and leave me bloody and broken somewhere, did this make Lucian my savior?
His fortune was just as big, if not far greater, than my father’s. I wasn’t naive enough to think the money meant nothing, but I absolutely could believe that it hadn’t been his main reason for taking me.
If his intentions were strictly malicious, why bring me to his home?
He could have insisted I live in my parent’s estate with no staff, or if he wanted to keep an eye on me, he could have had me institutionalized.
He kept me here because he wanted to. He wanted me.
Why make every sexual encounter of ours, even ones that were meant to be punishments, pleasurable for me?
If the rumors were true, most men didn’t care if a woman found pleasure in sex. Most, apparently, didn’t think women were capable of feeling sexual pleasure or gratification.
Maybe I hadn’t given him enough credit, or maybe he hadn’t communicated properly before.
But what did I expect from a king?
Chivalry, charming conversation, and poetry were for princes and knights.
Kings did not have time for such frivolity.
He had shown me that he cared in his own way.
From the start, he’d never forced me, not really. He’d given me what my body was craving, and I’d needed it.
He made me feel alive.
He brought me pain and mixed it with pleasure so I could deal with it.
He taught me how to turn my inner turmoil into something fantastic.
Lucian Manwarring had thawed the ice around my heart and warmed my blood the only way he knew how—not by talking about it incessantly but by just doing it.
I decided to show him that I understood and could respond in kind. Maybe I’d regret it later, but something deep in my gut told me this was what I needed to do.
Deepening the kiss, letting him take over, tasting me, touching me, his hands exploring my body, I did the same.
I ran my hands from his hair down his thick neck to his firm chest, sliding my fingers under his suit jacket and feeling the broad width of his shoulders.
He had explored every inch of my body, places I didn’t even know someone could explore, and it was my turn.
My fingers pulled on the tie around his neck, and his lips moved down my jaw to the sensitive place just below my ear. Every time he kissed me there, my entire body tingled, and my panties got wet.
My hips rocked on his lap, and he grabbed my waist, adjusting me so I straddled only one of his thighs, giving me delicious pressure. I couldn’t see most men doing that. They wouldn’t care about me getting off as long as they got off.
With one swift movement, I unthreaded his tie from his collar and threw it behind me in the rest of the ruined room, and then I pulled my shirt off, tossing it behind me, before grabbing his hands and placing them on my breasts and kissing him again.
One by one, I undid his shirt buttons and let my fingers explore and map out every inch of his chest, everything from the impossibly soft hair to the hard muscles they covered.
“What are you doing, baby girl?” he growled as I moved down his lap to give myself room to kiss down his neck to his chest.
“I want to make you feel good, sir. I want to show you how much I appreciate you protecting me from Ziegler and how grateful I am.”
“Stop.” He grabbed my arm and pulled me back up so I could sit just above him, looking down into his dark brown eyes that looked even darker in the fading light.
“I’m sorry. Did I do anything wrong?”
“No, baby girl, but you never have to thank me for that. If you want to please me, do it because it’s what you want to do. Not out of obligation.”
His words touched something deep in my heart. A man using me would never say something like that to me.
I leaned down and whispered in his ear,“I want to taste you, to explore all of you without being rushed or punished. Let me learn how to make you feel as good as I feel.”
“Baby girl, you don’t need to?—”
“I want to, sir.” I sank my teeth into my bottom lip and gave him what I hoped was a pleading look. “Please?”
“Fuck.”
That was all he said before he stood, sweeping me up in his arms and leaving the room I had destroyed.
He brought me down the hall to another room, this one just as luxurious, with a large bed in the middle. He stopped only to kick the door closed and lock it.
“Do you really want to know what makes me feel good, baby girl?”
I nodded.
He threw me on the bed, making me squeal and giggle as I landed on the soft pillows.
“Feeling you come around my fingers, on my tongue, and on my cock. I love the way your tight little body squeezes me and the sweet sounds that pour out of your lips.” He crawled over me, caging me in under his body. “I love the way you taste and that look you give me when you need me to satisfy you.”
He grabbed the waistband of my skirt and tore it off my body, leaving me in nothing but the pink panties and bra that matched my hair.
“Take off your clothes,” I said.
“No, you take them off of me. You wanted to explore me, so do it.”
I lay flat on my back, looking up at him, but suddenly, I didn’t feel so brave.
“Come on, baby girl, take what you want.” He leaned in and whispered into my ear, “Show me that I chose the right woman to be my queen.”
That was enough to send a hot spike of lust through my body. I reached up and pulled his face down to mine, taking his lips before pushing his shirt down to his shoulders.
Without breaking our kiss, he shifted his weight so I could slide the shirt off of him. Then I worked on his belt buckle.
It took me a moment to find the little latch under the buckle, but soon, I was sliding that off of him as well. Keeping my hands on the outside of his pants, I ran my fingers over the hard ridge of his cock, petting it, loving the way it felt, knowing I had done this to him.
I pushed his shoulders back, so he sat up, kneeling over me, looking down at my pink lace-covered body.
“Watch me,” I said as I pulled down the cups of my bra.
“And what am I watching, baby girl?” He took his cock out and gave it a few slow strokes.
“I want to show you what you do to me,” I said as my hands moved down my stomach to my panties. I pulled my legs up to a forty-five-degree angle, then spread my knees and pushed my panties to the side, running my fingers through my wet folds.
“Are you that wet just for me, baby girl?” he asked, licking his lips.
“Yes, sir.”
“Take off your panties now. You are going to ride me.” He stood up from the bed, taking off his undershirt and kicking off his pants and shoes.
“I want to taste you first,” I whined, sliding the slip of fabric down my legs.
“Good, because you are going to ride my face first. If you want to put that hot little mouth on my cock while I do that, I’m not going to stop you.”
He lay down on the bed and pulled me over him, positioning me so I was on all fours on top of him, and he wasted no time before he had his hands on my hips, guiding me to his ravenous lips.
Instantly my head swam as he devoured me, but I was distracted by the sight of his hard cock, standing proud with a bead of moisture at the very tip of the red crown.
I leaned down and licked a strip from the base of his cock all the way to the tip before tasting the salty sweetness of his precum.
It was so hard to focus with the way he was licking and sucking between my legs. Part of me just wanted to arch my hips and push back into him, giving him better access. A larger part of me wanted to give him the same pleasure he gave me.
I wrapped my lips around his hard cock and twirled my tongue around it, exploring every inch of the mushroom-like head before moving my lips down his shaft and sucking it in inch by delicious inch. I held him in the back of my throat while suppressing my gag reflex, just letting the warm, wet sucking of my mouth work over his cock.
When he slapped my ass, I ground my hips into his face and moved my lips up and down his shaft, swallowing it all.
I thought that if I could focus on the act of pleasuring him, it would stave off some of my own pleasure. At least splitting my focus should have made it take longer to be completely overwhelmed with sensation. Apparently, it had the opposite effect.
Wrapping my lips around his cock and loving each little hum from his lips against my pussy made the entire experience somehow more erotic.
“I think I’m going to come,” I whimpered before giving him another lick. “I don’t think I can hold it back.”
His answer was to place his thumb against my asshole and trail a tight little circle over the rim, sending me straight into an intense orgasm that made me scream his name. His hands circled my waist, and he brought me down onto the bed next to him, both of us lying on our sides, with my back pressed to his chest. His hands roamed my body, letting me come down peacefully before he took one of my thighs and brought it back over his.
“That was incredible, Stella. I was shocked the first time I made you come for me. Not that I can make you come, but how you would go from so reserved, so polished and quiet, but once you got close to coming, you turned feral. There’s something primal and natural about the way you behave when you come apart. It is the sexiest thing I have ever seen.”
His hands roamed my body before one hand settled on my breast and the other between my thighs, drawing small circles over my clit.
“Fuck waiting until an appropriate time. I don’t want to deal with anyone thinking they have a chance in hell with you. Tell me you will be mine.”
His words were growled into my ear. It was a question and a demand while his fingers played my body like an instrument.
“I—” Everything was so overwhelming.
I couldn’t process what he was saying. All I knew was I was going to die if he didn’t make me come again and then take me hard. The pressure building in my core was unstable, and my thighs were shaking.
My entire body felt like I was on fire. I needed him inside me. I needed him to take away the pain and give me everything he had.
“Stella, will you marry me?”
“Yes!” I screamed as I went over the edge again.
The rest of the night, we made love. It wasn’t the same angry power struggle as before. It was deep, intimate, and satisfying in a way I didn’t know was possible.
I woke up the next morning bright, early, and alone.
I stretched out my sore muscles and tried to remember where I was.
It took a moment for the events of the night before to trickle back into my mind. It wasn’t until I became aware of an unfamiliar weight on my left hand and saw the large emerald-cut diamond set in platinum that I remembered…
I’d agreed to become Mrs. Manwarring.