by Kati Wilde
“Christ, look at you. You’ll be under me just like this, Victoria, except it’ll be my cock pumping so deep into you and making you come. Fuck, and your pussy’s just getting tighter, pulling me in.” His mouth hovers over mine, as if ready to capture the ecstasy that’s threatening to erupt on my every gasping moan. “I bet your pussy will suck up all my cum, too. Because when I get into you, Victoria, there’s nothing that’ll get me out before I’m done. I’ll fill you with so much cum that I’ll be overflowing your cunt when I’m—”
He breaks off when my inner muscles clench hard, then groans like a tortured man. “This is what I wanted.”
For me to come. And the orgasm tears through me like an avalanche, starting with my pussy clamping down on his fingers, then ecstasy breaking free in a tumbling rush, picking up speed and sensation as it roars past every quaking muscle, the devastation barely contained within my skin. I’m crushed beneath it, then abruptly flung out across a precipice.
His kiss catches me on the way down, gentler than I expect, because I can still feel the taut restraint holding his aroused body in check. But he doesn’t move to fill me up with his cock, though he has to be in agony and my body is more than ready for him now.
Instead he lifts his head and looks down at me, his eyes still burning and his voice like gravel. As he speaks, his wet fingers glide upward and over my belly, my stomach muscles quivering in their wake, then trace a slow circle around my navel. “When you imagined your role as queen, did you want children right away or want to wait? Your preference will also become mine.”
Taken aback by the unexpectedness of the question, a moment passes before I realize the full import of what he just offered. He’s consulting me, and letting me choose the kind of queen I will be…?
Just as he promised.
My heart nearly bursts with love for him, followed by a surge of heat as I realize why he’s asking. Boldly I tell him, “I want you to fill me up with cum, Your Majesty.”
“I will,” he says gruffly, but doesn’t. Instead he finally releases my hands to cup my jaw and tenderly stroke his thumb across my lips. “I will never let you go, Victoria. And if you ever run away, there’s nowhere in the world that I won’t follow.”
A wistful little smile curves my mouth. Because that’s lovely, but… “In twelve years, you never even went twenty miles to Gentian.”
Regret shadows his eyes. “And you deserved better. But that was then. And now I travel twice that distance just to be alone with you for forty minutes.”
Wonder fills me. “Is that why you went to Vespa with me?”
“It wasn’t for the chicken dinner. What did you think was my reason for going?”
So that we could pretend to be a loving couple. But I don’t want to think about that part of our engagement now.
“No.” His eyes darken dangerously, and suddenly my arms are pinned again. Maximilian looms over me, his jaw clenched. “There it is again. You’re running away.”
I’m not even moving. “What?”
“Fuck.” Frustration boils off him—but agony lurks in his gaze and desolation edges the steel of his voice. “I know you’ve been hurting. I thought it must have been this thing about whether you’ll just be a breeder or a queen, and not being sure about marrying me. But we resolved that. So I didn’t think I’d see this look on your face again. So what is it? Tell me what’s making you so unhappy, and I’ll fix it.”
My heart aching, I turn my head to escape that desperate, searching gaze. I’m almost ashamed by the answer he’s seeking. For so long, the only thing I wanted was to marry Maximilian. And now I’ve been given everything I wanted, but I’m still unhappy and hurting.
Either I’m the world’s most ungrateful bitch…or I didn’t know what I really wanted. Because I told myself that I didn’t expect Maximilian to love me, but it still ripped me apart when it was only pretend. So I do want his love.
But I can’t ask for that. He would try to give me anything I wished for, but love can’t be granted with a wish. And he hasn’t had time to fall in love with me.
Yet.
That realization slips through me like a healing balm. He hasn’t had time to fall in love…yet. But we have mutual respect and admiration. Shared obligations and duties and interests. Explosive sexual attraction.
So I just need to do what I have always done: work toward a goal, and wait for him. But this time the goal won’t be marrying him or becoming a queen. Instead I want to win his heart. Maybe it’ll take months, or even years. But his love would be worth the wait.
As long as it’s not fake. Because when it is, it tears me apart.
“There is one thing you can do,” I finally tell him, my voice thick. “Don’t pretend to love me anymore.”
Despite my calm resolution and my certainty that I’ll eventually gain his love, it’s still difficult to meet his gaze—fearing he’ll see the pain inside of me and know how vulnerable not having his heart makes me.
But instead of pity, I only see a dark frown laced with confusion, as if he didn’t understand what I said.
“You don’t want me to pretend anymore?” Now disbelief joins the puzzlement.
Probably because I was the one who suggested that tactic in the first place. Throat aching, I nod. “I know we agreed to, for Kapria’s sake. But when we’re in public, you should only be as you really are. We are friends enough by now, I think, that no one could see the difference between fake love and real companionship.”
His eyes narrow. His big body bends closer to mine, and he grips his thick cock at the base. Drawing back, he angles his shaft and drags the broad crown the length of my slit, parting my swollen pussy lips and gliding his cockhead up and down my acutely sensitized flesh.
Over the sound of my needy moan, he asks silkily, “We are friends?”
“With benefits!” I gasp, shuddering with pleasure and need before adding breathlessly, “Which will make it even harder for anyone watching us to tell the difference. But we will know. And it won’t…” I trail off on a ragged breath, closing my eyes before forcing out the rest in a strained whisper. “It won’t hurt anymore.”
Instantly he stops the teasing caress of his cock. “Victoria.”
My name is a quiet demand to meet his gaze. No puzzlement or disbelief clouds his expression now, his dark eyes clear and direct.
“I have never pretended to love you. In public and private, everything I’ve said and done with you was because I truly felt it. Everything I said in that interview was true, too. I saw you at your house and by the time we arrived at the palace, I knew.”
The painful ache within me softens, my love for him drawing out all the poison that had been seeping into my soul ever since we’d agreed to pretend for the cameras.
“You don’t have to pretend now, either,” I tell him gently, though I understand why he did. He doesn’t want to see me hurt and wants to find a way to fix it. “It’s sweet and generous, but unnecessary.”
As if taken aback, he stares down at me for a long second. “You don’t believe that I love you?”
“It’s too fast to believe. You didn’t even know me.”
He scowls, his expression darkening. “And you fell in love during a speech. Yet you don’t say that was too fast. Neither did Andrew Bush.”
“Because twelve years have passed, which proves that it is steady and true. But in that same time, millions of other teenage girls fell in love and out again. If not for the betrothal, without the hope that kept my love alive, I might have moved on, too.” Though I’m not certain I could have ever completely moved on; he would have always owned a part of my heart. “And you must know that what I feel now isn’t the same as I did then. The more I learned of you, the more my love has changed and grown. That girl’s love is a mere spark compared to what I feel now.”
“What I know is that I’m not a teenage girl. And what I feel is a hell of a lot more than a spark.” He snarls the word and that dangerous light enters his gaze again
. “I’ll prove it to you, then. Even if it takes me twelve fucking years to do it.”
He surges forward, plunging the full length of his cock into me—then holds himself deep, so incredibly deep, our bodies locked together and utterly still. My mind reeling with shock and pleasure, I’m arched in a tight bow beneath him, my pussy desperately clenching around that thick shaft as I struggle to adjust to his massive size. There’s no pain, only unyielding pressure as my interior walls are stretched to the limit and scorched by the heat of his erection.
Above me, Maximilian’s powerful body is like a sculpture, his every muscle a stone carved in sharp relief. His dark eyes are glazed over and unseeing, as if the same shock and pleasure that paralyzed me still holds him in its luscious grip.
Then a shudder wracks his body. The echo of that quake inside me sends a spasm of greedy lust through my inner muscles. A choked cry fills my throat as my pussy clutches his cock even tighter, and Maximilian groans, a deep and tortured sound that rumbles from his chest.
The glassy sheen in his eyes begins to clear and he looks down at me, his voice a thick rasp. “I knew that being inside you would feel amazing. But I didn’t know that you’d feel this fucking amazing. Better than anything I imagined.”
A tremulous laugh ripples through me. “I think it’s you who feels amazing inside me.”
His gaze sharpens into a determined gleam. “Or it’s because I love you.”
The words steal my breath, then his body steals every response as he moves, drawing back and leaving an empty burning ache before driving into me again. Another cry escapes me, then his mouth finds mine in a hot, open kiss. I don’t know when he let go of my wrists but I can’t stop touching him, clutching at his shoulders, spearing my fingers into his short hair. His big hand grips my ass and he angles my hips upward, and the next stroke is even deeper when he fucks back into me—then again, and again, setting a hard rhythm that sends me spiraling toward mindless ecstasy, my entire world narrowing to Maximilian and the feel of his thick cock pumping relentlessly into the slick, tightening grip of my pussy.
Then he slows…and slows. I frantically urge him faster again, but he lifts his head and, with one strong hand gripping my hip and preventing me from rocking up against him, begins to stroke the full length of his cock into me, each thrust an excruciatingly endless glide from base of his shaft to the bulging crown.
It’s exquisite torture for me—and for him. Tension shakes through his entire body, tendons straining. Sweat beads over his skin and runs in rivulets down ridges of muscle.
“Look at me, Victoria.” His eyes are burning coals, his voice resonating from the depths of his broad chest, as if there was a hollow space beneath his heart that housed both agony and hope. “Can’t you see that I love you?”
Sheer joy and wonder overfill my heart, clogging my throat. Because there’s no pretense here. His emotions lay exposed, as naked as our bodies. And I know what’s blazing out at me.
I see that he’s in love with me.
On a muffled sob, I reach for him. His kiss is a revelation now, full of all the love that I couldn’t sense before. I don’t know how or why he fell so quickly, but it’s everything I ever wanted—and better than I dreamed.
His mouth devours mine as he begins thrusting faster into me, my body and heart caught in a maelstrom of exultation and pleasure. And when I began to come, I don’t know if the ecstasy that crashes through my body really is so much deeper and sharper than before—or if my heart is so much bigger now that my entire being feels every sensation so much more intensely.
Or maybe I come harder simply because he loves me.
Crying out his name, I cling to my king as my paroxysms of pleasure squeeze the thick shaft inside me—and hold him closer as he hunches over with another tortured groan, pounding deeper, his strokes suddenly erratic. His mouth is open and hot against mine, his chest a bellows dragging in ragged heaving breaths. Strong fingers digging into my soft thigh, he shoves my knee higher, opening my legs wider and grinding against the sopping wetness of my pussy until he’s in me so deep that there can’t be any more of my cunt to claim.
Abruptly he throws back his head, jaw clenched, and seems locked in an epic struggle against his own body, his torso utterly rigid and unmoving, his knees planted against the mattress and the flex of his thighs and buttocks continuing to pump his cock in and out of my heated depths. Then a violent quake hits him and inside me his cock feels bigger now, hotter, and with a groan of defeat he goes utterly still. His mouth captures mine as he comes, thrusting shallowly as his shaft pulses against my inner walls.
With a laughing groan, he buries his face against my neck. “Your pussy’s too amazing, especially when you come. I couldn’t hold out.”
I laugh, sliding my hands over his sweat-slicked shoulders. “Next time.”
“Which will be very soon.” Maximilian punctuates that promise with a rock of his hips that leaves me gasping with sweet pleasure. Then he lifts his head and tenderly kisses my mouth. “If your pussy is up to it.”
“Maybe a warm bath first,” I say softly. “And I love you.”
“So you believe I’m not pretending?” His voice is gruff.
I cup his face in my hands. “I believe it.”
“Good.” This time his kiss and swift and hard. “But I’ll still keep fucking your doubts away.”
I laugh, delighted by the idea. “You can fuck them away whenever you like, Your Majesty. But before you do…” My hand slips between us to curl around his cock, still erect and glistening with our cum. “…can I finally have my turn, or are you still feeling selfish? Because I want to stake a claim with my tongue.”
And this time, the king wasn’t feeling selfish at all.
Maximilian
I fuck Victoria’s doubts away throughout that afternoon, the next week, and the next month. She claims not a single doubt remains, not since that first time. But I won’t take any chances. We barely get enough time together to show her how much I love her, so I take my opportunities where I can, and if that means keeping her body overwhelmed by her need for me, I’ll do it. Because losing her would fucking destroy me, and I won’t feel secure until she’s bound to me in marriage—and standing beside me as my queen.
But I also know damn well that doesn’t always count for anything. My mother was a queen, married to a king whom she loved…and the cruel bastard fucked everything up, hurting her so bad that she couldn’t bear to stay.
I won’t ever do that to Victoria.
…except I did, for twelve years. Not deliberately. But making her feel like an invisible nothing all the same.
She’s forgiven me for it, I know. To her the past is done with; all that matters is our future. But the way she looked at me with tears swimming in her eyes, all that anger and pain bursting out of her like a festering boil, is something I’ll never forget. And I never should forget it. With my carelessness, I wounded her heart—and carelessness is a passive, inactive thing, but it can still harm. Caring means making the effort. Even if that effort is simply being mindful of what I say and do for her…and being mindful of what I don’t do and say to her.
That’s a vow I make long before our wedding day.
That morning arrives after the longest fucking night I’ve known in a while. And despite all the reasons that the ceremony, the procession from the chapel to the palace, and the wedding reception afterward is important—despite all that it symbolizes to the citizens of my kingdom and helps raise Kapria’s profile around the world—every selfish part of me just wants it to be over. I want to skip to the part where Victoria’s mine, and she’s sleeping beside me every night.
But I contain my impatience as I’m pressed and polished and buffed from my head to my toes. Across the city, in a hotel suite on a floor reserved solely for the bride and her bridal party, Victoria’s likely undergoing a much more complicated ordeal. The wedding ceremony begins at noon—an hour away—and I’m just now dressing for it, whereas her firs
t stylist was scheduled to arrive at seven in the morning.
Nearby, I see Geoffrey check his phone. “Still on schedule?”
He and Ursula have been in constant contact, so that if there’s any delay we’ll immediately be able to adjust our timeline.
But with no hiccups, in ten minutes I’ll leave the palace on foot. The church is only a twenty minute walk away, in the southwest corner of the royal grounds. Around the same time that I arrive at the chapel, Victoria’s car will begin the drive across the city, and it’s all coordinated so that she arrives at the chapel’s front steps immediately before noon.
And why the fuck is it taking him so long to answer? A knot of tension twists in my gut. “Geoffrey!” I bark. “Are they still on schedule?”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” he confirms. “Still on schedule.”
The tension doesn’t completely release. I scowl at him and he gives me a bland look. “I had to wait for Ursula’s reply, Your Majesty.”
I hate waiting. For anything. I don’t know how Victoria waited so long for me, except that she’s the most perfect being ever created.
With the most perfect cunt. Sweet and hot and when I get her alone again, it will belong to a queen. Whenever her pussy gets so damn slick and greedy, she won’t need to beg anymore. She’ll just command me to taste it, to fuck it. And I’ll serve at her whim.
That thought helps get me through the next ten minutes, which each seem like an eternity determined to keep me away from her. Finally it’s time to go. I glance at Geoffrey. I don’t even need to ask.
“Still on schedule,” he says.
Anticipation fills my chest. “Notify Karl,” I tell him. The palace grounds are open to the public today so all of Kapria can celebrate in the wedding. Enormous tents are set up on the lawns, offering refreshments and, after the wedding ceremony is over, champagne and cake. Even now, though the walls of the palace, I can hear the large gathering crowd. My path the the chapel has been kept clear—not out of fear of an attack, but simply to make certain I’m not delayed—but as soon as I start my walk, Karl’s security team will discreetly secure every step of the way.
