by Kati Wilde
Andrew fiddles with his papers, seems at a loss for words—but when finally he speaks, I can hear the thickening of his voice, as if affected by strong emotion. “And when you met him again? Did he live up to your father’s hopes…and your own?”
I laugh at the absurdity of the question. “Have you seen what he has done for Kapria? He has far surpassed our hopes.”
He glances at Maximilian, but I don’t have the courage to do the same. “So have you been pining for him these twelve years?”
There’s a lighter, teasing note in his voice, but I feel the seriousness of the question behind it all the same. “Of course not,” I tell him, attempting the same light note. “He didn’t inspire me to sit at home, waiting for him to come and sweep me into his arms. I got to work serving Kapria, instead.”
“By all accounts, you’ve served the kingdom well.” He smiles—then abruptly sits back, eyes flying wide.
Maximilian’s suddenly in front of me, his eyes like burning coals amid the stark, granite beauty of his face. Then the world shifts and tilts as he hauls me out of the chair, sweeping me up to cradle my body against his chest.
Without a word to the interviewer, he strides for the door. Off balance despite the firm support of his arms, I can only witness in amazement as we abandon a stunned Andrew—then pass a surprised Geoffrey and Ursula. Whatever they see in Maximilian’s expression sends them back a step, and instead of falling in behind us, they simply watch Maximilian continue carrying me down the corridor.
Suddenly I know where we are going. And the hot anticipation of finally being in his bed still smolders within me, but there’s more, molten anger that roils just beneath my heart—and the pain that chokes my throat with a jagged lump of suppressed emotion.
Maximilian pushes through the doors to his private quarters. But instead of carrying me through to a bedchamber, suddenly he sets me down and crowds me back against a wall. His face is a pale mask of tension as he looms over me, bending his head—but not to kiss me. His eyes are a blazing fire as his gaze searches mine.
Hoarsely he asks, “Is it true? What you told him. Is it true?”
The painful lump in my throat grows. “What part?”
Still rigid with tension, he doesn’t look away from my face, giving me nowhere to hide. “The part where you loved me since you were sixteen.”
“Yes,” I whisper—then the relief and joy that sweeps over his expression is like a pin piercing the balloon of all the painful emotions that have been swelling inside me these past few weeks. For the past twelve years. But instead of popping open in an explosion of anger, it leaks out in sudden, uncontrollable tears. “Even though I was nothing to you.”
He freezes at the sight of my tears, voice filled with alarm. “Victoria?”
“All this time.” My breath is suddenly hitching, and I fight against the sobs that struggle to burst free. “I was nothing to you. And I’m not a sixteen year old girl anymore. You were the world to me—but even after we were betrothed, I didn’t expect to be your sun and your moon. Yet I should have been something! But in twelve years, you barely gave me a passing thought.” And as the enormity of that truth crashes into me, the first sob rips from my throat. “And what kind of marriage will this be, when I’ve been nothing to you for so long? How many years until I’m nothing again? After I’ve popped out an heir and a spare?”
Face white, he shakes his head. “You aren’t nothing to me, Victoria. You never were. You’re everything.”
“Am I?” I lift my gaze to his, not even trying to wipe away the tears sliding down my cheeks. “In those twelve years, how many times did you think of me? How many times did you wonder what I was doing, what I was thinking? Because it’s obvious you never bothered to find out.”
“I was supposed to be told—”
“No, Maximilian,” I say softly. The enormous pain in my chest still grows, but a calm has suddenly joined it, soothing my shuddering breaths. As if I’d needed that eruption before I could move on. “You are a king. You set the tone and the direction of everything in your domain. So you told them one time to keep tabs on me. But after that? Years passed. And they weren’t interested in knowing what I was doing because you never showed any interest. But if you’d asked about me even once a year, then they’d have paid closer attention.”
His eyes close as if in pain. Because he knows that’s true. And his voice is raw as he says, “I did think of you, Victoria. And when I heard nothing from Jeannette, I assumed you were doing all the carefree things that young women in your position do. I was happy for you.”
“Happy for me…because you thought I was a socialite?” I stare at him in disbelief. “I’ve never wanted that kind of life.”
“I just didn’t want you burdened with a queen’s responsibilities when you were so young. Because I knew how heavy they were.” He meets my gaze again. “But you shouldered those burdens anyway, serving Kapria all this time.”
“That wasn’t a burden to me.” Renewed tears burn in my throat. “Why did you never ask me what I wanted?”
A bleak expression passes over his face. “I thought I was doing what was best.”
“And you decided what was best without consulting me?” A painful laugh hitches my chest. “Of course you did. You’re a king. You can make decisions for everyone without asking what they want. But even my father asked me before agreeing to our betrothal. He made sure it was my decision. He didn’t just give me to you. He asked me if it was what I wanted. And it was.” A sobbing breath shudders free. “Marrying you was everything I could possibly want.”
“Was?” He’s utterly still. “But it isn’t now?”
“I don’t know if it is anymore,” I whisper brokenly.
A rough denial seems ripped from him and he pushes closer, catching my face in his big hands, his eyes tortured. “But you love me.”
“I do.” So much that it keeps breaking my heart open. “But that’s not all that a marriage is. And I have spent twelve years imagining what being your queen would be like. I’ve worked so hard, so I could step into that role.”
“I know how much you have done,” he says gruffly. “I know that about you now.”
“But the role I pictured for myself, and the role you have planned for me—they couldn’t be any more different!” For a moment I can’t continue, the pain closing my throat again. “I thought a queen would be a partner to help you share your burdens. But you see a wife as yet another responsibility, a new burden to bear now that Kapria is not so heavy on your shoulders. You aren’t looking for a partner. You’re looking for a bedmate and a breeder. And although I want to be with you, to have children with you…in a marriage, I want to be more than that.”
“Then you’ll be more than that. You are more than that,” he adds fiercely. “And whatever you want your role as queen to be, that is what it will be.”
“Truly?” I want to hope but I don’t know if I can. “Because you seem to hate the thought of burdening me with anything. Why would I believe you would share them, and decide what’s best for me again?”
“Because if means you will be my queen, I will do anything. Anything,” he vows through clenched teeth.
“For Kapria?” Of course he would.
“For me.” A rough laugh breaks from him. “I want you for me, Victoria. But if I have to, I’ll share you with my kingdom. Even if I resent every single goddamn second that Kapria takes you away from me.”
“You resent what?” I shake my head, trying to understand. “What are you saying?”
“That you were right,” he says softly now, brushing the tears from my cheeks with a sweep of his thumbs. “All these years that we were betrothed, I only thought of you as the woman who would give me my heirs. Because I was only thinking of you in the way a king thinks of his future queen. And that’s all I was: a king. I wanted to be everything my father wasn’t. He only thought of himself, and so I only let myself think of Kapria, of my duties and obligations. I was never selfish. I
never looked at anything as mine. Until you. And suddenly I was more than a king. I was a man who wanted Victoria Dietrich more than I’ve wanted anything.”
I stare at him through a sheen of tears, too overwhelmed by the emotions clogging my throat to speak.
Tenderly he lifts my left hand to his mouth, brushes his lips over the glittering diamond. “Do I want to keep you in my bed and pregnant? I’d love to. But only if I’m in that bed, too. I’d lock you away in a tower, but only if I was there with you. But since I have to be king, too…I’ll share everything I am with you, just so that I can keep you beside me as much as I can.” His voice hoarsens again, his gaze burning into mine. “So will you marry this selfish man and be the kind of queen you’ve always wanted to be?”
My tears spill over again. “I will.”
“Wise choice,” he murmurs against my mouth. “Because if you’d said no, I’d have locked us together in a tower, anyway.”
A laugh rolls through me, and I feel his smile against my own before he claims my lips. His tongue coaxes them apart with a possessive lick even as he sweeps me up into his arms again. Lost in his kiss and the blissful happiness racing through me, I don’t see any of the rooms that we pass through. I don’t feel anything but Maximilian until he eases me down onto a blue silk bedspread. Stepping back, he abruptly yanks my skirt down the length of my legs, letting it drop the floor.
“Next time, I’ll do this part right,” he says gruffly, grips the hem of my shirt and tugs it up over my head. “I’ll slowly peel your clothes off”—my bra is next, the fastenings disregarded and the whole thing dragged over my head in a tangle of lace and elastic—“and kiss every single inch of skin”—he hooks his fingers beneath the waistband of my panties and pulls them down—“and lick until you know it’s all mine.”
Completely bare, with my hair tangled around my head after being rolled this way and that when he stripped me naked, I lie on the bed with my knees bent, my thighs pressed shyly together, and a blush heating my face. I desperately resist the urge to cover my breasts with my hands when he simply stands there with my panties dangling from his fingers, staring at me.
His voice is thick with arousal as he says, “I’ve never seen all of you before.”
Because we’ve always been in semi-public places before. Cars, conference rooms, gardens. My blush deepens. “You’ve seen the parts that count.”
“All of it counts.” Stark hunger lines his face as his visual journey reaches the shadowed triangle between my thighs. He steps forward but I quickly scramble onto my knees, bracing my hand against his chest and bringing him to a halt.
“Not so fast, Your Majesty,” I tell him, flicking open a button at his throat. “It’s my turn.”
Unlike him, I intend to take my time, savoring every hardened muscle and stretch of skin that I reveal. Slowly my fingers slide down to the second button.
Before I can unfasten it, they all suddenly all go flying when Maximilian tears his shirt open. He tosses it aside, then the vicious rip of his zipper joins the clatter of falling buttons.
“‘Your Majesty’ again?” His voice is low and silky, a tone that I’ve never heard from him before but sends delicious prickles of awareness racing across my skin. As if there’s a dangerous predator standing in front of me…but I want to be eaten.
And he was right about all of it counting. Because I’m seen parts of him during those long scenic drives. I’ve run my hands down the torso packed with muscle. I’ve licked the corrugated ridges of his abdomen. And I’ve seen his cock, stroked the thick curving length and sipped pearly beads of cum from the broad crown.
But completely naked, he’s something else altogether. A temple of sculpted strength and power, with thighs like stone pillars and shoulders broad enough to support the sky.
My gaze settles on the colossal rise of his cock. Desire pools between my legs, and I’m pierced by a deep, empty ache as I imagine taking that massive length inside me. But first, I need to lick and claim. Moistening my lips, I reach for him.
Maximilian snags my wrists. My gaze flies up to meet his and encounter that dangerously predatory, heavy-lidded stare. “Taking your turn again?”
“Yes,” I reply breathlessly. Trying to.
“And a king might let you have one.” Hauling me forward by my wrists, he wraps his other arm around my waist. “But wanting you has turned me into a selfish bastard.”
I gasp as I’m shoved backward—not hard, but with enough force to make me lose my balance. My shoulders hit the mattress, and in the next second I’m pinned to the bed with Maximilian above me. His left hand clamps my wrists together again and pushes them up and over my head. He kneels between my thighs, forcing them wide apart, and leans over with his big body braced above mine. His immense cock juts out between us, angling downward as if burdened by its own weight, the broad tip almost touching my lower belly.
For a long moment, his eyes simply devour the sight of me splayed helplessly beneath him. With my arms locked over my head, I can’t look down at myself but I know what he must see, because every inch of my skin is alight, every sensation pitched at an acute intensity. My face is flushed, my lips parted and swollen. My every breath heaves an ocean of air through my chest, my full breasts swaying to the stormy rhythm, my nipples standing taut and proud.
A groan rumbles from his chest as his gaze settles between my legs. Exposed by the wide spread of my thighs, my most intimate flesh is completely revealed to him.
“Look at you, so wet and ready beneath me. And all fucking mine,” he says, all the silk gone from his voice, replaced by gravel, and I shudder as his big hand possessively cups my pussy. His roughened fingers begin stroking through the drenched folds. “I’m going to make this sweet little cunt as hot and slick as it needs to be in order to take every inch of my cock. Because you’re so fucking tight,” he grits out and two of his long fingers push deep.
I cry out, my back arching as the hollow, empty ache inside me narrows into a sharp twinge of pain. My inner muscles clench hard, as if resisting the intrusion, then his thumb begins rubbing over my clit and the pain slides away into another ache, one that’s deep and full and delicious.
“Just like that, Victoria. Christ, you’re so damn beautiful.” Regret and arousal roughen the words, but the kiss that follows is a gentle caress against my lips. “And I hate hurting you. But just this one time.”
“I know.” I pant my reply, still adjusting to the thrill of having part of him inside me, then catch my breath when his fingers begin slowly thrusting.
His gaze locked on my face, he studies my reaction. “Tell me when it starts feeling good.”
“It’s not bad,” I gasp. I don’t know what it is yet. It hurts and it doesn’t, feels pleasurable and it doesn’t.
“Not bad isn’t the same as good.” His thumb rolls over my clit, and his eyes narrow with satisfaction when I suck in a shuddering breath, seeking that same touch with a rock of my hips. “And good is only barely there. I want your pussy begging for it. I want you coming so hard that you’ll be soft and slippery enough to take my cock without me hurting you again. Maybe you’ll have to come a few times.”
That hurt is only a dull memory now, and the tension inside me keeps shifting and changing with every thrust of his hand and circle of his thumb. He appears to be in more pain than I am. I can see the strain that holding back has put on him, stark need carving sharp lines into his angular features.
All to make certain I enjoy this. On a ragged little laugh, I say, “Tell me again how selfish you are?”
A soft growl rumbles from him. “You want me to start with the way I’ve got you laid out with your pussy open for the taking, and my hand pinning you down? All so I can fuck you good and hard. But this first time for us, I ought to be soft and slow and laying you on rose petals.”
I shake my head, whimpering in frustration as he withdraws his fingers and begins gliding them through my folds again. Teasing. “Deciding what’s best for me again?
Because I don’t want petals.”
“And that’s what I’m telling you. This isn’t about what you want.” His voice is harsh as his fingers dip inside me again. “I want to feel your pussy stretch around me as you take me in. I want you wet enough that it’ll be the hottest fucking slide that I can imagine. Maybe it won’t be an easy slide, with you so goddamn tight. But that’s all right. I’ll just fight my way in with you squirming beneath me like you are now.”
Squirming because it’s all changed. Because his voice is filling me up even deeper than his fingers are, and I can imagine all of it. “It feels good now,” I pant. “It’s feeling so good.”
“You think I can’t hear that is? And feel it? You were wet before but now you’re soaked.” Another rough groan escapes him as he strokes through my drenched heat, and I can hear it, too, even over the pounding of my heart. “That’s so I can get in you balls-deep and know those sweet juices are slicking up every inch of my cock. Though maybe I’ll have to get you on your hands and knees before I can get that deep.”
Oh god. I bite my lip against a scream of frustration when he abandons my clit to tease his fingers through my swollen folds, gliding over all that wetness. Desperate for more, to touch myself if I have to, I try to tug my arms out of his grip, but the hand pinning my wrists only tightens.
“I pictured you on your knees so many times, Victoria. Ever since that photo of you in that ski suit. All I could think of is getting you bare and fucking into you from behind. Sometimes with you pushing back at me with your greedy cunt trying to take as much of my cock as it can, sometimes with me holding you still so I can ride you so fucking hard.”
“So hard,” I echo on desperate little sob, writhing against his teasing fingers.
“Your pussy wants to be filled up now, doesn’t it?”
“Please.”
I cry out when his fingers push into me, each slow thrust gently caressing my sensitive inner walls, but it’s the new, firmer stroke over my clit that begins shoving me toward the brink. Back bowing up off the bed, I struggle for breath, for sense, but only find his voice urging me on.
