by Thorne, Gigi
The footsteps stop.
The first touch is featherlight, on the curve of my neck at the delicate point before it becomes my shoulder, and I’m so primed and ready that I moan out loud. I pull myself upright from a shiver that rocks my entire body, and the next words out of my mouth are breathless. “Prince Bastian, you know I can’t hide anything on my bare shoulder.”
In response. he slips his fingertips down to trace the line of my shoulder blade, and then lower to the swell of my hipbones. He leaves a trail of heat in the wake of those fingertips. “I need to be thorough, little thief.” His fingers trace a path around to the ridges of my spine and then lower, lower, until he reaches the cleft of my ass. My heart beats wildly into my throat. He’s not going to go there. Not yet, not—
I push back against his hand with a frustrated groan, and the sound of it demolishes the last of his control.
Bastian takes both of my wrists in one hand and spins me around as easily as a ballerina on a music box. His blue eyes burn with unrestrained want and we are inches apart when he growls, “You’ve stolen more from me than jewels, little thief.”
I’m straining toward him but he holds me in place with the force of his grip. “I didn’t steal any jewels,” I insist, and then, because I am having an out-of-body experience, I spread my legs back apart and tilt my hips so that they press against the front of his tuxedo pants.
“You stole my attention,” he murmurs. “You stole all of my attention the moment I stopped you from robbing us blind.”
“You don’t seem blind right now.” He doesn’t. His eyes rake over me, hotter than coals, hotter than fire.
“I’m blind for everything but you. On this hellish day—”
He strokes his free hand down over my collarbone and then further to my breasts, where he circles each nipple with the pad of his thumb. By the time he makes his way around the second one I have to close my eyes against the sheer pleasure of it. “Hellish?” I gasp as he pinches one and the sensation moves like lightning down between my legs. “It seems like heaven to me.”
“And you say you’re not a thief.” Every word that comes out of his mouth stokes the flames of my desire. “Yet you’ve taken a piece of heaven for yourself.”
“You made me.” I can hardly force the words out. “As penance—”
I rock toward him again, and this time I’m rewarded with a brush of his cock against my hipbones. It’s still cloaked in his pants, so all I get is the hard, firm outline of it masked by a fabric so elegant I’m lucky even to be writhing against it, much less standing in a room with a man who could afford it. “That’s right, little thief. We don’t have much time.”
He backs me up until I’m pressed against the closet doors. My nipples are painfully tight, with the cool of the sleek modern door front a shock against my back.
“Show me,” he says into my ear. “Show me that you’re not a thief.” Then he crushes his mouth to mine.
His hand dips to my pussy and I spread my legs at the same moment that I part my lips to let him explore. My brain threatens to split apart under the assault of so much pleasure, and it zigzags wildly between the fingers spreading me open between my legs and the tongue testing mine. I try to thrust myself down onto his fingers but he pulls them away, holding them between us. I follow his gaze, panting.
“I’m beginning to think you love your penance, my little thief,” he says, and the light in his eyes shifts to something a little wilder. “Pay some more of it.”
He guides his fingers to my mouth and I open wide. “Suck.”
I do. Oh God, I do, and the taste of me on his skin nearly brings me to my knees. I’d fall, if he didn’t have my hands pinned above me against the paneling. Bastian groans when I swirl my tongue around the ridges of his knuckles. “And now you’ve stolen the rest,” he says, and the next instant I’m released just so he can press me down by the shoulders to my knees.
To my knees on the floor of his closet.
He unzips his pants and his cock springs out.
I thought Bastian was perfect before.
Now I know he’s a god.
I reach tentatively for him and he takes my hand in his and puts it directly on his shaft. He’s utterly perfect, every inch of him, all smooth skin pulsing beneath my grip as a bead of precum glistens at his tip. I lean forward and lick it away. He urges me on with a little noise in the back of his throat.
And when I suck the tip between my lips, the animal in him is unleashed.
With a growl, he thrusts forward, the tip banging against the back of my throat. Breathe, I remind myself. Breathe, breathe, and even while tears form at the corners of my eyes, I can’t get over the clean-water taste of him. One powerful thrust, two, three, and I swallow to stave off the choking feeling.
This undoes him.
He curses under his breath and pulls away, his face so fierce I think for a harrowing instant that I might have disappointed him. That I might have shattered this fantasy like a glass slipper.
“Up,” he says raggedly. “Up and onto the bench.”
I scramble for that bench like my life depends on it, and I’ve never once in my life had sex in anything other than the missionary position, but in this room?
Hell no.
I’m not on my hands and knees for more than a moment before Bastian’s hand is between my shoulder blades, stroking down. And this time he doesn’t stop at my cheeks. He dips straight down between my legs again, both hands spreading me open. “Please,” I beg. “Please.” I don’t know what I’m begging for, but I know there’s not much time and I need this.
I need this. I need him.
There’s a tearing sound—foil?—and then he groans my little thief and his wide crown nudges against my entrance.
He’s huge. There are no two ways about it. But I’m slick and ready, and at the first touch, I lean back into him, impaling myself on the head of his cock.
“Yes,” he hisses. “Yes. Pay your penance.”
This sends me into a frenzy unlike any I’ve ever entered in my life, unless you count the mad hustle to afford my rent every month. Bastian’s hands are hard on my hips, yanking me backward and I’m rocking onto him, urging him deeper, harder, please, please.
He thrusts inside in one stroke, bottoming out against a sensitive place so deep inside I almost pitch forward onto the bench. Instead I brace myself against it, gripping the edge, and let the pleasure wind and wind. I’m going to explode. I’m going to take the world with me. I’m lost in a vortex of heat and need and light and the unrelenting pressure of Bastian inside of me. He fills me completely. There is no room left in my body or my life for anything else and God, it’s a relief. I could cry. But I don’t, because all of my energy is focused on getting more, more, more.
“Stop.”
I freeze.
“Why?”
“So I can do this.”
He reaches around in front of me, and the moment his fingertips meet my clit, I detonate.
Prince Bastian pins me back against his hips and holds me in place while I come, clenching around him, and I can hardly hear, but I hear bits and pieces of what he says: that’s it, my little thief and come on my cock and ride it, ride it, don’t stop, don’t—
It comes to a shuddering end and that’s when he starts moving again, deep and powerful strokes. The pleasure begins building again, faster this time, and I’m honestly not sure if I can come again, but I don’t have a choice.
No choice but to come apart in his hands moments before he does, burying himself deep inside me.
Even with his guttural groan he comes with a royal kind of power, as if my body is subject to him.
And it is.
It is.
Oh, my God, it is.
At the end, the only sound is our breathing in the silent room.
And then someone knocks on the closet door.
9
Bastian
Adele moves quickly off the bench and her legs tremble as she
faces the door to the hallway, eyes wide. Her face is pink and flushed and a hint of a dried tear lingers at the corner of her eye from where I shoved myself rather relentlessly down her throat. I just came and I’m already getting hard again.
And yet.
More knocking, more insistently. “Prince Bastian?”
I recognize the voice. “Don’t worry,” I tell Adele, whose arms are crossed tightly over her chest, covering her pretty nipples. “It’s only the butler.”
I turn to answer the door and she scurries to the closest corner, trying to steady her breathing. My cock resists going back into my briefs and pants—anyone’s would in this scenario—but I force it nonetheless. Royal duty calls.
Harold is poised with his hand raised to knock again when I wrench open the door. “Yes?”
His expression is one of barely contained relief. “Prince Bastian, the royal processional is being delayed. Your family is—”
“I’ll be right there.”
I close the door in his face.
Damn the universe for making me wait so long to meet my little thief. She’s still pressed into the corner when I march back to the bench and pick up the pool of yellow fabric underneath it. “Time to get dressed.”
She moves to my side and takes the dress, a pretty little pout on her face.
“What, you don’t like your choice? Choose another.”
“No,” she says, lifting the gown over her head. “It’s only that I don’t feel I’ve paid enough penance for what I did.”
A grin so wicked that it’s all I can do not to shove her to her knees again crosses her face.
“I’ll find a way for you to pay what you owe.”
Adele delicately tugs the gown over her head, and I reach up to hold the collar open so it doesn’t muss her hair. The salon she works at is certainly top-notch, because despite our vigorous fucking, not a single lock is out of place. With the yellow gown’s scalloped sleeves resting on her shoulders and the boat neckline displaying a collarbone perfect enough to lick, Adele looks me in the eye. “I want that,” she says nakedly. “But I know it’s not—I know it’s not guaranteed.”
“Not guaranteed? Who do you think I am?” I take her face in my hand and tilt it up toward mine and lick her across the lips, lipstick be damned. “If I say I’ll make you pay, you can count on it, little thief.”
A tentative knock comes at the door. “Prince Bastian—”
“I’m coming.”
I march toward the door, a storm cloud rising in my chest. I want to spend all day here with Adele, not watching my sister marry a duke in the midst of a lot of unnecessary pomp and circumstance. I have my hand on the handle when I realize she’s not with me.
“Are you coming?”
“Won’t—” She swallows hard. “Won’t people see me coming out into the hall with you?”
I give her a wicked grin of my own. “My little thief, I hope they smell the scent of us together, too. Come on.”
She comes to my side, and for the first time today, I reach down and take her by the hand.
It’s a perfect fit.
Adele twines her fingers through mine and with a shock I see her as if looking through the looking glass. Ninety minutes ago she was a lowly assistant running errands in my palace, and now she looks....
....regal.
She stands perfectly straight, her chin raised, and if she’s worried about Harold seeing her it no longer shows on her face. Her dark hair shines at the back of her head, flawless, and the makeup is masterful—dark enough to show, but light enough that her features shine through. I can envision her by my side for more than this game we’ve been playing. I’m smacked in the chest with a vision of her sitting gently by an open window, reading in the palace library while she waits for me to come down for dinner. At ease.
Adele catches me staring. “What?”
“You’re utterly gorgeous, my little thief.”
She makes a little noise in the back of her throat, but a pleased pink rises to her cheeks. My heart thuds as I open the door and we step out into the hall. I told her I was all-powerful, but the world will wrench her away from me, won’t it? The world will take her back into the city and let the tide of common life sweep her away, and my family will stand on the shore, preventing me from going out to get her.
I can’t see a way around it. I consider the possibilities wildly for a moment, then shove the feeling down and away. I’m not going to get rattled. I’m a fucking prince. I’ll either solve this, or I’ll let her go gracefully back to her life.
We walk quickly down the hallway, but the closer we get to the grand staircase, the more my palms burn to touch her. I rest one hand on her waist, sliding it up to her hips, and we’re almost there when I can’t help it—I tweak one of her nipples right through her dress.
Adele moans out loud. Right there in the hallway. She doesn’t seem to be aware that Harold is trailing discreetly behind us, and I find I don’t care either.
My family will get what they want from me. They always do. As much as I buck against tradition, I’m always at the meetings and events where it counts, because I know the difference between being a spoiled prick and exerting a slight rebellion against the constraints of my position. I’ll always come back to the fold, because that’s my fucking duty, like it or not. I was born into this. Adele was born into that city life. And if today is the only day our paths will cross, well—
With a growl, I push her back into a dark alcove, and with a little gasp she allows me, somehow pressing further into my touch. I yank up her dress with harsh tugs, revealing her still-swollen pussy, and like a man possessed I drop to my knees in front of her.
She tastes like sweetness and our desire, and her hands fly to her dress to hold it up and away as I force her legs farther apart and lick along the length of her with one hot stroke. I can already taste more of her in those folds. “Make me pay,” she whimpers, pressing her ass against the wall so she can stay upright. “Make me pay, I’ll pay you forever, I swear it—”
I devour her until I have to come up for breath, and then I’m on my feet. She whimpers again at the loss of my tongue, but I silence her with a kiss hard enough to bruise. “Don’t whine, little thief. I’m giving you what you want.”
Then I lift her off her feet and push her back against the wall. I brace her there with one arm and undo my pants with the other, and then her legs are wrapping around my waist and I’m shoving in deep, and Christ, she’s so tight, made all the tighter by the way I fucked her before.
Adele is wild, clawing at my shoulders, sucking at the side of my neck, though even in this haze of pleasure, I can tell that she’s being careful not to leave any marks. She has no idea that she’s already marked me indelibly. She could bite me and it would be no less permanent.
I fuck her harder, pouring every ounce of my frustration, of my need for her, into every thrust. She takes it all, tightening and tightening until again she explodes on my cock, clamping down like she’ll never let go. Fuck it. I’m claiming her. I let her orgasm set me off and come hard, pumping my seed into her like I’m a drowning man and it’s the only thing that’ll save my life.
When I release her, Adele slides to the floor, breathing hard, a hand going to her face, her lips. She’s wearing a pleased, open expression that with a twist of my heart, I read as hope.
“We—” She bites her lip. “We should hurry.” She drops her dress and the hem flutters to the floor.
I pull it back up. “Show me.”
Adele spreads her legs, and there I am—trickling out of her, down on her thigh. Glistening royal seed.
Now she’s marked, too.
I adjust myself, burning with the closeness of her, and force us back out into the hallway. At the far end, Harold beckons, his face betraying none of what he’s witnessed. “Your mother is waiting to be escorted, Prince Bastian. You must hurry.”
10
Adele
“Hurry,” says the butler, and the las
t thing on earth I want to do is follow him out of the palace. The ceremony is being held at the national cathedral, which faces the palace gates, and stepping outside those gates might be the beginning of the end. It might be the end, in fact. Surely Prince Bastian isn’t going to take me to the ceremony. Not like this. Not with the fruits of our efforts leaking down the inside of my legs.
It gives me a hot kind of pleasure, thinking of it there as we rush the rest of the way down the hall and to the grand staircase. I see it reflected in Bastian’s eyes when he lets go of my hand to take my arm, escorting me down toward my waking life.
A life I don’t want to go back to.
Palace staff rush back and forth across the wide lobby, on their way to errands and meetings while the family is attending the ceremony. We go through the massive front doors and the sunlight crashes down on both of us. It illuminates little sparkles in my dress that I hadn’t noticed before, and they look...utterly magical. They won’t be obvious in the dimmed light of the cathedral, if that’s where I’m going to go, but outside they're aflame with the sunlight.
We start the walk to the palace gates. There’s a clutch of bodyguards at the gates themselves, forming a line, because beyond that it seems the entire country has turned out for the wedding. They’re crowded as close as they can get, all facing the cathedral and cheering, though the ceremony can’t have started yet.
Not without Prince Bastian.
We reach the bodyguards and one of them turns. “Prince Bastian,” he says, a knowing look in his eye. “Ready to go through?”
“Yes.” I shiver at the power in Bastian’s voice. He doesn’t bother to make an excuse, and that’s when I take a step back. To stay by his side is too much to hope for. This is where I should bow out, go quietly back to the bridal suite, and finish my work for the day.
“By my side, little thief,” Bastian says over his shoulder. “You can’t walk behind me through the crowd.”
“Are you—” He beckons me impatiently. “Are you sure about this?”
