by Winter James
“Do what?”
“Call them. The guards. Have me taken to the prison.” Her eyes meet mine again. “I’m guilty. You know I am. Your laptop is right there, I stole it, I took it from you—” Her voice rises and rises, and yes, I should. I should call the guards. I should have them drag Tessa out even if she screams and fights but I don’t think she’s going to scream and fight. I think she would go along with it, and that doesn’t make any fucking sense. What is an American girl like her doing in my palace, stealing from me? If I send her to the prisons then I will never know. They’ll eat her alive.
And fuck that. I’m the only one who gets to devour her.
“I don’t need guards to deal with you.” I let her go and she backs up against the bed, but I’m not letting her go free. She watches me with wide eyes while I slap the top of the computer back down into place. Email? What the fuck was she emailing? Too many questions, and I’m not going to make her answer them here. But I will make her answer, because the burning desire to know is so hot it could melt our skin and bring the palace down around us. The laptop is featherlight, which leaves a hand free to take her roughly by the arm. God, I want to do so many things to her that have nothing to do with talking.
The hallway is still blessedly empty when I pull her out into the middle of it. I can feel her desire to resist, the way she almost pulls back against me but doesn’t. We make a sharp turn back toward the staircase that leads up and up and up. She’s not expecting it and stumbles, making me take more of her weight.
“Where are you taking me?” Tessa must sense now that we’re not going out to the back, where I could throw her in any number of official vehicles and have her behind bars inside an hour.
“Where you’ve wanted to be all along,” I tell her, and I make good on my promise.
Chapter Nine
Tessa
I just need a minute to get things together. I had a minute, though, didn’t I? I had several minutes with that damn laptop and I didn’t do anything with them except sit on my bed and feel guilty for thinking about pressing send on a single email.
Now it’s too late to do any of that. It’s too late to do anything except follow Prince Sebastian back upstairs. It’s not the way I thought we’d go. I thought we’d go out to the back of the palace, where cars come to drop people off and I assume take them away again. There should have been a car waiting for me. A car and a prison cell, or something worse than a prison cell. I’m nothing but my own heartbeat and the tight pressure around my upper arm.
Even getting dragged through the palace, I can’t help but see him. How gorgeous he is. How obscenely, stupidly hot he is. I’ve never seen a jaw like that on another human, so sharp it could cut diamonds. I’ve never seen dark eyes with that particular constellation of gold flecks. He’s a prince—he should smell good. But breathing him in is like breathing in something forbidden and intoxicating and I’m lightheaded by the time he hauls me past the two guards who let me into his room earlier. Neither of them give any indication that they’re seeing this, except I catch the redness in the second one’s cheeks. I shouldn’t have dragged him into this, but what was my other option? They have to stand here all night, and I...
I had to try and save myself.
It’s only when we’re past the foyer and past the living room and into the four walls of his bedroom, only when the door slams shut behind me, that I realize the jail cell might have been the better option.
Sebastian stalks across the room and tosses his laptop onto the desk like it doesn’t matter at all. I probably matter less than the laptop. He can get a million laptops just like this one, and he can get a million more of me, too. I’m just a maid. A spy. A woman like all the other women that have to be parading in front of him at all hours of the day and night. Fear washes up against my ankles like cold water and pulls goose bumps out of the rest of my skin.
He comes back across the room, his stride easy but a tension in his shoulders obvious. If I hold very still, he might not see me. If I don’t breathe, he might be like a predator in the jungle—ready to ignore anything that doesn’t move.
He is not like that. He’s more dangerous than any animal I could encounter in any jungle in the world. His muscles betray how strong he is. How easy it would be to kill me now. That would count as justice here in Belleza and nobody would bat an eye. My own throat chokes off my air supply at that thought. If he killed me now, he would be well within his rights as prince and then I would be gone without a trace.
I can’t stop tracking him with my eyes.
He stops several feet away, far enough to take me in with his gaze but close enough that I have no room to run. “Well? Are you going to confess, or should I drag it out of you?”
Yes, do it. Do it now before I die of the anticipation. “I committed treason.”
This loses me half the space I have before, and the fact of him—it scrambles my brain. The Prince of Belleza in low-slung sweatpants that still manage to look like they cost a thousand dollars. He sleeps in a t-shirt, or else he threw this one on when he got out of bed. If he wasn’t wearing the shirt I already would have died. I might die now because I can’t stop registering, over and over, exactly how sexy he is. My body wants him. My body has a death wish.
He waits, eyes on mine. I knew it wouldn’t be that simple.
For the first time since I found myself in that basement the full enormity of the situation barrels into me, a shock coming too late and at seventy miles an hour. My resolve to be cool about this, at least as cool as I can be, snaps. I got kidnapped. Someone stole me and sold me and gave me only terrible choices. The blood flees from my face, and Prince Sebastian reacts to it—if you could call it a reaction. He doesn’t come any closer but his dark eyes see through me.
He reaches out and takes my jaw in his fingers, tipping my head up to meet his eyes.
And waits.
“I stole your laptop because someone told me to. I only wanted to visit. I’ve been backpacking around Europe for weeks, and everything was going fine, until—until—” Until I decided to stay at that fucking hostel, even though something seemed off about it. Until I decided to take a shower instead of getting the hell out of there when I had the chance. I have seen horror movies. I am always the one throwing popcorn at the screen and looking disgusted when the woman protagonist goes to investigate the creepy sound in the basement. I knew all that, and I ignored it because I was tired. The whole story pours out of me. The man at the desk. That chair in the basement. The phone they pressed into my hand. “He gave me directions and he said he would s-sell me if I didn’t follow through. Or he said that you would kill me.” My voice catches. “And now I think he was probably right.”
Prince Sebastian could do it now. It would only take a sharp twist of his big hands to break my neck. It would be nothing to him, and then there would be nothing for me. I try to accept it. I’ve gotten this far in life even with both my parents dead and nobody to rely on but me. And if this is it, well, I’ve done better than some people I know. I squeeze my eyes shut and wait for the final blow even as my heart beats wildly, wanting to stay alive for one more second, and another, and another.
I’m prepared for death but I get a kiss instead.
My eyes fly open in case it’s not real, because there’s no way it can be real, but it is. He takes my thumb into his mouth, and sucking gently, and I remember the time he told me to lick his desk, I remember when he pushed his thumb into my mouth. It feels like we’ve come full circle, like this is some inevitable path leading back to him.
He drags me closer, and then kisses me on the mouth.
Prince Sebastian kisses me hard, roughly, like it’s part of the punishment he gave me before. I’m a living firework, a firework caught in his hands, and I know I am supposed to be afraid but I sink into him like he’s the last lifeboat in a wide, roiling ocean.
“Sell you,” he whispers against my mouth. “Unbelievable. It’s an affront for so many reasons. Because women c
an’t be sold. Because it’s wrong and sick and debauched. But most of all, sweet Tessa, it’s an affront because you’re mine. You were always mine, even before I met you.”
He kisses me again, harder, and I’m immediately mortified by the sound I make. It’s completely against my will and when Sebastian hears it he pulls away with a low laugh. “Let me see you.”
I thought there was no more embarrassing position to be in than bent over his desk with my panties shoved down, but it turns out there is. That position is having to take off my palace-issued nightgown in front of him. I hesitate, but let me see you isn’t really a request coming from his mouth. It’s an order. So I take the flimsy cotton hem and lift it over my head.
Sebastian comes close then, knocking the bunched-up fabric from my hands with shocking gentleness. He’s not the kind of guy who does things gently. He’s not the kind of guy who kneels in front of you and puts his fingers in the elastic of your panties and tugs them down inch by inch but he does it. It’s nothing like what happened in his office. My skin wants more of him, my heart wants more of him. Sebastian nudges my legs apart with an elbow and then I am pure need, all of it concentrated on the things he’s doing with his tongue. It feels so good it must be illegal. It feels so good my knees threaten to give out, but he holds me up with his hands cupped under my ass. How has he gone from punishing me to licking me like he’s never tasted anything so delicious before and never will again? He delves deeper with that tongue of his and then all the questions are gone from my mind. Done. Done.
I’m on the edge when he stops, pulls his head away, and I want to fall to the ground and cry. But he’s only stopped so he can strip off his own clothes and lead me to the bed. The bed I’ve struggled to make since I got here. The bed I’ve fantasized about. It looks different in the middle of the night, in the moonlight. Sheets, twisted up like he couldn’t sleep. Pillows askew. Prince Sebastian, I realize suddenly, has been tidying up the bed before he leaves in the morning. He never lets the maids see the way he sleeps.
I freeze at the edge of his bed, his hand on the small of my back. “It’s only a bed, Tessa.”
“It’s not that.” I can’t breathe, and I was already lightheaded. If it gets any worse I’ll dissipate into the air and float away like a ghost. “I don’t—I don’t think I can—”
He picks me up in his arms and lays me down on the rumpled sheets. “There. You did it.”
Sebastian runs his hands over my naked skin, pausing to trace the curves of my breasts and follow the lines of my ribs to the sensitive sides of me. He earns himself a rolling shiver as the silence descends between us. It could be a comfortable silence, if I were anybody else. But I’m not. I’m Tessa Boucher, and I can’t do this.
I can’t be a disappointment to him.
The prince of Belleza leans his head down to kiss my collarbone and I’ve never been so aware of another person. I’ve already had to spread my legs to accommodate his frame. I’ve already had to open my hips so that his can fit in the space there. I’m already wet for him. But I’m not ready. At least—I’m not ready for the man he was in his office. He could be that man again in a flash. It would take no time at all.
The kisses are a distraction, and the more heat he presses to my skin, the less I can find the words. I just want to feel him. Feel his fingers rolling my nipples one by one until I’m arching off the bed. Feel those same fingers tease between my legs. And then something hard and thick replaces the fingers and shit, shit—
“I can’t,” I gasp.
Sebastian’s eyes meet mine, the lines of his face carved in moonlight. “You can’t or you won’t? Do you want this, darling? Tell me the truth now.”
A hot flush covers every inch of me. Embarrassment and want, all tied up together in an unruly bow. “I can’t. Because I’ve never done it before. I’m a virgin.”
I’m expecting him to be horrified. To pull away. For his face to transform into blank disinterest. What prince could possibly want a virgin? I have zero experience when it comes to sex matters. I’m only good at surviving in the world because I had to be. I got good at it by never making myself vulnerable like that.
Heat sparks in Sebastian’s eyes. “Do you want to be?”
“I—” No, whispers a little voice in the back of my mind. Virginity feels like a burden I can’t put down. The only way to get rid of it is for someone else to take it from me. Why not a prince? Why not the man with my life in his hands? I could get tipsy on his power. Drunk. And I’m not supposed to want it but I do. “No.”
He bends to kiss me again and it’s softer this time. On the knife’s edge of gentle. When he lifts his head again a cloud falls over the moon and I can only see the shadows across his features. “You stole something from me, Tessa. I think it’s only fair I take something from you.”
Desire follows his words like a tsunami. I should have seen it coming but I don’t anticipate the way I grab for him, fingernails meeting skin. “It’s fair, it’s fair,” I say against his shoulder, almost sobbing with it.
He pushes inside of me, slowly, carefully, and I don’t think about fairness anymore.
It’s tight, so tight, and I arch toward him, trying to make more room. There’s no more room to make. He’s big and hard, harder than I thought, and there’s something so painfully exciting about being taken this way that the sounds escape from me for too long before I realize I’m making them. He is relentless, taking and taking to the point of pain and then covering my mouth with his to muffle the shocked cry when he breaks through.
“Fuck,” he says. “Fuck.”
Sebastian’s control falls away like all of our discarded clothing and now he’s not doing anything so tame as taking my virginity he is fucking me with long, powerful strokes. It hurts and it’s good. Hurt. Good. The two of them combine together until I don’t know which is hurt and which is the winding, accelerating pleasure down deep at the center of me where nobody has ever touched before and maybe—maybe—
It consumes me, that pleasure, crushing me in its hands and then releasing me into an oncoming train’s worth of oh my god what is this feeling, what is he doing, I never thought I never thought. I’m in bed with an animal, I’m in bed with a predator, and I am in love with the catch. The strike. With him.
I come with a surprised whimper. Fast. Hard. My hips rocking in a rhythm that feels beyond me. Beyond everything. And then it’s close again, shuddering and panting and somehow wanting more. It might kill me to have more of this.
Sebastian curses and pulls out of me and I’m left hanging in midair, a trapeze artist who’s missed her mark. I can’t get myself back down to reality, only the terrible absence of him. He fumbles in a bedside table for something, the drawer slams, something glints in the moonlight. Something rips. And then his hands are on me again, thank god, thank god.
“Tell me you belong to me,” he growls. “Tell me you’ll do anything to earn my forgiveness. Tell me you’re mine. Mine.”
“I’m yours,” I say, panting.
He turns me over and pushes my face into the pillow, pulls my hips up off the bed, and it could be rough and frantic. I can feel the makings of that kind of sex right now in his hands. But he presses one kiss to the sensitive place at the back of my thigh, then the other. Sebastian folds himself over me, blocking out the moon. And when he works his way inside me again I could cry from how good it is, how good it is with the prince who shouldn’t have noticed me at all.
I have my first orgasm with my face pressed into a pillow, shuddering and shaking underneath him. He tenses next. It feels deliberate, the strokes, like his focus has never been more complete. Like he’s never thought about anything as hard as he is thinking about fucking me. He has never done anything as important as fuck me right now. He shoves in hard, deep, deeper than he’s gone, and then he makes a noise that’s more animal than man and comes.
I have so many questions, so many things I need to know about him and about the future—what now, what now? But exha
ustion brings its hammer down across my shoulders so fast I’d think I was drugged if I didn’t know better. I unfold myself from underneath Sebastian, toward a dry spot on one of his countless pillows, and lay down.
I’m just going to catch my breath.
He’ll probably want me to go back to my room, or to the prison...somewhere else. Well, if he does, he’ll have to carry me. Because there’s no way my legs are going to work now. No way any of me is going to work now. Maybe not ever again.
The bed shifts next to me, the blankets rearranging themselves—no, it’s not the blankets. He doesn’t have magic blankets, jesus. It’s Sebastian moving the blankets. A gust of air moves over my skin as he shakes the sheets into position over me and adds the duvet I’ve pulled up every morning since I got here. I’ve pulled it up just so over his bed. Just right. I did a good job, except for the part where I was a spy and committed treason.
“Just give me a minute,” I murmur into the billion thread-count sheets. “I know you want me to get out of here and I’ll go, but I just need a minute to get my mouth to work.”
A hand comes down on my hip, stroking through the sheets and blanket. There’s a close warmth, like he’s lying next to me, but that can’t be true because he never would. He wouldn’t, right? “No, darling.” He sounds as lust-drugged as me.
“Only a few moments.”
“Tessa,” he says, and his voice is another layer of blanket, light as air.
“Yeah?” I try to work myself into some semblance of awareness, of readiness to go wherever he wants me to go. I fail, then fail again.
“Go to sleep.”
Chapter Ten
Tessa
There’s no panic like the panic of waking up in a prince’s bed when you are supposed to be his maid.
At first it’s hard to wake up because of the sheets. The sheets are so nice. They’re the nicest sheets I’ve ever slept on, and somehow the sheets-blanket combo is lightweight while still holding in a perfect amount of warmth. This is a thousand steps up from the Econo Lodge.
