His tone was low with earnest, his voice soft as he said, “I care Minerva, because quite frankly….” He swallowed hard, appearing for all the world almost human in that single moment. “I never cared about any woman in any manner, depth, or capacity… until the moment that I met you.”
His words rocked through her, a rogue wave that knocked the breath from her lungs. It was the kind of thing she couldn’t be sure she’d heard correctly. It took her a second to process. But when she did, its effect ploughed through her, sucking away the vast majority of her anger to replace it with a mixture of stark confusion and unbridled hope.
He seemed impossibly unsure for a moment, and in that dilemma of bewilderment, the world looked on. It held its collective breath as he raised his right hand to curl his finger beneath her chin. The touch was so soft, she barely felt it. It was like holding your hand over a candle’s flame, a gentle warmth that was sheer moments from getting burned.
He moved in, tall and overwhelming, and what was left of her doubt slithered away, leaving her unshielded and defenseless before him.
“Despite the fact that you threw everything composed of iron within a hundred foot radius at me, I cared instantly,” he told her in that urgent whisper. “You needn’t have attacked me to see me defeated, Minerva. I would have knelt before you anyway. I was already fallen.”
That silent shock spread, its long white fingers coursing through Minerva’s veins so that all she could do was stand paralyzed by the confession he was giving her.
He brushed his thumb across her cheekbone to send electricity shooting down her spine. It crackled like white fire, bringing every one of her nerve endings to delicious life. He moved closer, and his power came with him, tightening around her like a silken vice.
“And if you think for a single moment that I’m going to allow the only woman I’ve ever cared for get away from me, then,” he shook his head. “You know very little about the Unseelie King after all.”
Time slowed and the silence stretched, punctuated only by the sound of her breathing, ragged and shallow. Stars swam in the corners of her vision. Her heart pounded a bruising rhythm against the inside of her ribs.
“So I’ll ask you one final time, Minerva Trystaine. What can I do to help you accept your place at my side?”
He was so close now that when he whispered this question, it brushed across her lips like a lover’s caress. He glanced at those lips, so close to his own, and Minerva felt the world tilt beneath her. She licked them absently.
The flames at the centers of Caliban’s unholy eyes leapt to life as if doused with gasoline. They went from flickers to bonfires, and she could almost hear it: whoosh.
“I’m – I’m sorry,” she whispered, knowing she was the one making them burn, and wondering if it hurt as much as she knew it must.
Caliban’s gaze slid back up to hers; leaving a sizzling trail in its wake. She could almost feel it burn her.
“You should be.”
A single pulse passed before he firmly grasped her upper arms, shoving her into the wall behind her. His lips crashed down onto hers with terrible, desperate need.
Minerva’s world finally toppled over and her senses went spinning off its edge as his hard body trapped her against the bookshelf’s divider. She lost her balance, her legs gave out, and all reason went flying in every direction, like leaves in a gale force wind. Caliban shoved his free hand through her hair, fisting it hard to send tingling pain through her while his mouth once more invaded hers. Every ounce of her was humming to delicious, wanton life when the king then snaked his arm around her waist, and her feet left the ground.
He was holding her up, clasping her to him with a grip that bordered on desperation. He kissed her as if she’d made him go mad – and the thought was fuel to a spark that had already been waiting, smoldering somewhere deep inside her.
The burning from his gaze was searing her insides now, spreading like wildfire to the far reaches of her body. Her fingers were curled tight into the lapels of his suit coat, clutching at them in temporary insanity. She couldn’t breathe, and she didn’t want to. Her head felt light, her lips tortured.
His grip crushed her and he spun with them, carrying her as if she weighed nothing. A moment later, Minerva felt the cushion of a plush, soft surface beneath her. She didn’t know where she was, and she couldn’t have cared less. There were warning bells sounding somewhere in an unimportant distance; they were easy to ignore.
The hand in her hair loosened its fierce grip to move to her throat, encircling her neck gently, but possessively, a clear sign of control. His thumb caressed her pulse for a moment before his fingers slid further down to wrap around the top of her shirt. He gripped it firmly, and Minerva felt his muscles tighten as he clearly prepared to rip the thin material off of her.
She experienced a sudden flash of panic and tried to pull away in that fleeting instant, but Caliban broke the kiss instead to raise himself up on one arm.
In that moment, she stared up into eyes like hell and lost her will completely. Whatever she’d thought of saying floated away like a curl of smoke that had once been her courage. Caliban smiled. It was a smile so perfectly profane, she understood then and there why he was called the Unholy King. She took a quick breath, perhaps to scream, or perhaps because she knew very well what was coming.
But Caliban silenced any sound she might have otherwise made when he once more claimed her sore, swollen lips with his own, showing no reprieve, no tenderness in his demands – and tore the shirt from her body.
*****
He was flooded with magic, had been drunk on it since Minerva had cast those release spells on the rubies. His eyes were burning, and the pain was filling his head with madness. But it was nothing compared to the insanity that Minerva had sent roiling through his bloodstream when she’d done no more than bite her lip.
He’d only come to the library wanting to speak with her. He’d wanted to get everything out in the open, wipe the slate clean and start fresh. And then he’d walked in to find her standing near the window, her tall, slim form outlined by the waning light of the land beyond, and he’d seen her as she truly was. As his queen, regal and graceful, innocent and powerful. Whatever he’d originally planned took a quick back seat to the awakening sensations within him.
She’d been bleeding, and she’d been angry with him; that anger surrounded her like an aura, red and jagged. He became wary, and his eyes lit up like warning beacons. But she was so lovely… an angel in blue jeans, her dove-white hair in perfectly unkempt locks that curled at her waist. He awakened in other ways, humming to life like an engine.
The fairy had told her what her fae name meant. Caliban took the opening and seized it in an iron fist. In his mind, he willed her to accept it. To accept him. To take her place at his side. He cornered her in the library, like a massive cat stalking its prey, and in that single moment when it appeared she might actually let him into her existence, he found his control slipping. He stole the kiss he’d been yearning to steal from her for several painful days.
Her anger flared around her; he felt it like whips of flame, batting at his outer defenses, struggling with his power with a near equal intensity. She pulled away. She defied him, and Caliban fought a losing battle with his need. Every ounce of his physical form begged him to seize what was rightfully his. He struggled internally with a fire that was consuming him. His head hurt. His eyes hurt. His body ached like mad.
His palace responded to his needs, providing him the strongest alcohol in the fae realms, and he downed it with vigor, commanding it to sink into his bloodstream and cool it off. But it didn’t work. Nothing worked, and he sensed an oncoming war with Minerva that would rock the foundations of the Unseelie Realm.
He had to have her. Now. Even if that meant using his magic against his queen. He could spend the rest of his immortal life making it up to her – in that mad-with-lust moment, he didn’t fucking care. So long as she gave in to him here, so long as she ope
ned for him now, he could bloody well die tomorrow.
But then she faced him with her fury, and in her righteous innocence, the truth escaped those pouty, parted lips. Little by little, the mystery of her rage unwound itself before his eyes.
She didn’t like being told what to do. Which was so very like a queen.
But more significantly, she didn’t like sharing the king’s bed with other women.
It was a realization that struck him like a ton of iron bricks: She was jealous.
Perhaps she had no idea why he took so many women to bed. Maybe she was unaware that an unseelie fae regained his power in such a manner. It didn’t matter. Because the end result was that she hated sharing him. That was his ultimate undoing. She wanted him.
And that was all that he had wanted from the very start.
Her unwitting confession had a profound effect on Caliban. The power swimming through him roared to untamed life and flayed at his mind until his will lay subjugated and beaten – and before he realized what he was doing, he was confessing to her as well.
Everything he was, all that he ever would be, every ounce of his simmering soul, he poured out before her. He cared for her. And he had never cared for another woman before in all his very long life.
Minerva at last quieted. He felt her magic go still and then retreat. Her anger rainbowed from red to blue, she quaked and trembled, and he moved in. Like a guiding star on a cold night, he locked on to the beckoning desire in her eyes. Before his studying gaze, the thin veil of her barely-kept control dissipated to reveal to him the truth – the belied heat in her heart that burned so strong, it rivaled his own.
Cal broke then, cracking in two and shattering before the woman he had barely met, but had known a lifetime. He claimed her lips a second time, and became a slave to the building, aching passion in him that hurt too deeply and tortured like darkness.
He tasted her in that darkness, drinking her in like a man dying but for the sustenance she alone could give him. He clasped her to him with arms of steel, desperate to feel her against him, then held her aloft as her exquisite body gave way beneath her. She melted into him, weakening beneath the onslaught of his power and control, and he lifted her, turning with her into a portal that he opened with no more than passing will.
He took them into that portal, and it sped them through time and space to a location he had never before taken anyone. The portal closed behind him as he led Minerva to the ground, not once releasing her from his kiss.
She went willingly, her hair brushing against his cheek as they descended, her body arching against his in natural yearning. Her warmth was a teasing promise that he was helpless to deny, and his hand moved down her body to the hem of her white shirt, his muscles tensing, preparing to rip it away.
She hesitated beneath him suddenly, no doubt sensing what he was about to do. Her hands pushed at his chest, even as her fingers clutched at his clothes. But there was nothing a predator chased harder than prey that ran from him, and her sudden defiance acted only as a fuel for the conflagration already consuming him.
He chuckled darkly against her lips before he broke their kiss and rose up, meeting her lust-filled gaze.
She was as crazed as he was. He smiled in cruel victory.
In one clean movement, he tore the fabric from her body and reclaimed her lips. She gasped into his mouth, and he swallowed the sound as his hands now spread across the smooth, bare flesh of her torso. She was small enough that his fingers spanned the width of her waist before they slid to the waistband of her jeans. He needed to feel more of her.
The monster in him roared its desire to rip them from her body as well, but the material was rough and thick, and he knew better. He wrestled with his demons, and with rigid control he could scarcely believe he possessed, he braced one arm on the ground at her side and lifted himself up one final time, breaking the kiss once more.
Minerva gasped beneath him, her chest rising and falling in quick succession as she sucked in rapid, shallow breaths. Her cheeks were flushed, as were the sensuous, soft mounds of her breasts where they rose temptingly above the thin lace of her delicate bra.
He went still above her, his gaze a fire brand that blazed a trail of heated need across her skin as he took her in. The breath caught in his lungs and his throat tightened. Shimmering locks of platinum white were spread across the thick carpet of clover beneath her, its strands blessing the very ground they rested upon. Her indigo eyes were lit by a candle’s flame of simmering blue at their centers, casting her heavy-lidded gaze into glowing contrast as she looked up at him from beneath long, thick lashes. Her swollen, red lips were parted in earnest, beckoning further torment.
Caliban’s gut clenched, his body throbbed, and he made a pained, growling sound before he gave in to the madness, gripped the sides of her jeans, and tore the buttons from their casings. They popped and went flying, but Caliban didn’t pause before he was yanking the top of her pants down over the rise of her hips. She lifted herself for him, helping him to rid her of the barrier between them.
Allowing his animal instinct to take over, Caliban shed his own clothing with harsh and ripping speed that destroyed most of it. Her heavy-lidded gaze stopped on the marks upon his flesh, and recognition flashed in her eyes. But he allowed her no time to dwell on the scars, for a split second later, he was looming over her once more like an untamed beast, his hungry mouth blazing a trail over her neck and collarbone – as his fingers pressed through her soft, blonde curls below, parting them and delving lower, following the beacon of her heat until he was gliding over the moist, ready entrance to her pulsing core.
She made a small sound, vividly desperate, and arched against him, her body in control now, her mind having surrendered wholly to its needs. But he slowed there, threatening entrance, expertly teasing and slipping so easily across the slick evidence of her mounting desire.
Caliban felt her arms encircle him. A second later, he inhaled sharply as her fingernails found purchase in the muscles of his back. He chuckled low against her skin, tore away the flimsy material of her bra to expose her breasts, and clutched her right nipple between his teeth in warning.
She gasped and cried out with the sudden sensation, but her nails continued to dig. Grinning to himself in dark triumph, Caliban gripped her throat with his free hand, clutching it gently but firmly, and clamped his mouth down over her breast, sucking hard before he bit down with just enough pressure to cause pain but not break the skin.
Minerva screamed and bucked beneath him. He felt the flood of wetness coat his roving fingers between her swollen lips, welcoming him in spite of her cries. His cock throbbed relentlessly, hard as the iron that could kill him, opening up a mean streak in him. He didn’t let up in his assault, shoving two of his fingers hard and deep inside her, and using his thumb to press with cruel precision on the hood of her clitoris.
Minerva bucked and began thrashing against him, gritting her perfect white teeth in pain-filled ecstasy. She was so tight around him, so small and hot, his pulse raged and he grimaced in his own special pain. But it was a good pain, promising a pleasure unlike any he’d ever known.
He slowly released her tortured nipple and smiled again, the very devil himself. Then he proved his hellish intent by rising above her, a demon above a sacrifice, and pulled his skilled fingers from between her legs.
She calmed a little, moaning in confused need, her head tossing to the side in a beautiful display of passion. He positioned himself at the entrance to her molten core, then used the hand around her throat to grip her chin and force her head still. He squeezed until she opened her firmly shut eyes.
Minerva’s breaths were broken in gasps, her tortured, perfect breasts rising and falling like temptation itself, but she looked up at him as he quietly commanded, and his gaze caught hers firmly in its burning trap.
That was all he needed; it was all he was waiting for. With one powerful thrust, he breached the walls of her womanhood and plunged deep, deep inside.
Now Minerva’s scream echoed off the far reaches, her head tossed back, her neck arched, and her body came up off the ground. He met her half-way, leaning into her, his torso against hers, his arms braced strong on either side – in control, in command.
He remained there, lodged firmly inside where she gripped him like a vice, and time slowed down as he placed the most tender kiss in history upon her forehead.
Another beat passed.
And Caliban lowered his gaze, his eyes roared to fiery blazes, and he pulled back just enough to thrust powerfully back into his bride. She cried out again, a sound less harsh this time, but her legs bent, and her hands clutched, and her eyes were squeezed tightly shut against that tidal wave of agonized bliss.
Suddenly, her nails released their death grip on his back to move up to his face, where they once more shoved through his thick, black hair and grasped it hard.
Caliban drove into her again, allowing her to pull him toward her so that he could find her lips again. This time, he brushed against them softly, deftly, a tenderness that was in complete opposition to the powerful force with which his body ploughed into hers over and over. She moved with him, like rain upon a stone, melting around him, malleable and open and pure.
And he drank her in.
He stole from her all that he’d ever wanted from anyone, that undeniable pleasure, that ultimate release. He took it from her as if it had always been his to take. And in doing so, as his pulse and pace quickened, and his heart pounded, and the world around them blurred into insignificance compared to the mounting heat within them, he gave the same to her.
Minerva’s legs wrapped completely around him now, her heels digging into his sides as his fingers curled like claws into the ground on either side of her, and his pounding became furious. At last, every muscle in Minerva’s long, lithe body flexed and held tight, and her head flew back as she wailed into the waiting space around them.
Her body convulsed around his with her climax, sending Caliban into his own final frenzy. He raised his head, shut his eyes against the world, and bellowed in exquisite, terrible pain as he released his fire into his queen, searing her from the inside, claiming her absolutely and forever.
In the Arms of the King Page 8
