by Ann Jacobs
“My son is right. Rise. I owe you more than I can repay.” Tears flowed down the king’s cheeks as he looked at Arik’s face. “Thank you.” Grasping Arik by both shoulders, he kissed first one cheek and then the other. “I appreciate what you’ve done for me.”
Arik placed his hands on his father’s shoulders. “Not for you, Father. For our subjects. And for my princess.” At that thought, his mood softened. “Perhaps for you, a little, because you having brought her to me has given me happiness I never expected to experience when I returned from Eastphalia. Now I can begin taking over some of your duties so you can enjoy your old age.”
* * * * *
Later, after all the team had left with their gear and the king had returned to his own tower, Arik turned to Emerald as she stood gazing out the tower window. When he spoke she had no doubt what was on his mind. “It has been six weeks. But it feels more like six years since we enjoyed more than a very careful, very gentle fucking. Now I intend to enjoy my precious slave, in every possible way.”
Her heart leapt in her breast. “Shall I call Hikaru?” She recalled the night before their mating, when she’d seen Arik in this same spot, backlit by the soft lighting in the room and bathed by the light of Obsidion’s three golden moons, and when she did, her cunt clenched with anticipation.
“Yes. Tonight we will try out the fucking swing. And I will initiate your last virgin hole.”
“Yes, Master.” Emerald moved away to the communicator, glancing up at a gleaming, black-leather and chrome fucking machine hung from the high ceiling on sturdy hooks. She’d been dreaming of this night ever since slaves had hung the swing while Arik had still been confined to bed.
A light tap on the door brought her out of her reverie. Hikaru stepped inside when she opened it, his arms loaded with the supplies she’d ordered. As always when he entered the royal bedchamber, he set down his load and prostrated himself at her feet. That still irritated her, but she’d learned to expect it—after all, Hikaru had spent many years now since his fate as a royal eunuch slave had been sealed, and she realized habits that old were hard to break.
“Rise, slave,” she said as sternly as she’d heard Arik do so many times. “I need to have you make me ready for our Master.”
Hikaru scrambled to his feet and ran a comb through her short auburn curls that Arik so loved touching. Then he accompanied her to the bidet in her bathing chamber and administered the most thorough cleansing she’d ever had. While her cunt tingled and her asshole puckered from its unfamiliar dousing, she watched him hurry to set up the fucking swing.
She imagined Arik stepping up behind that swing, lubricating her ass and finally doing what he had been promising since the day after their mating. While he’d convalesced he’d often tortured her by fingering her rear hole, whispering about how he intended to deflower it. Now! She was finally going to find out what she’d been missing.
“The swing is secured, my lady.” As if to prove it, Hikaru gave the seat a hard jerk.
Her pulse raced. Her prince’s halting footsteps echoed from the other side of the tower, the sounds urging her to hurry and position herself facedown, ass in the air. “Help me,” she told Hikaru. “Secure my arms and legs so I don’t fall out of this swing.”
Emerald had never felt more open, more vulnerable. Her body was suspended on two leather straps, her legs spread wide and secured with padded cuffs to braided leather ropes. When she moved her ankles, pulleys on the ropes raised them, opening her even more. His touch impersonal, Hikaru brought her arms behind her back, cuffed her wrists and tied her at the elbows. Gods help her, she was now completely and deliciously helpless.
“I see you’re at your Master’s mercy.” Emerald recognized the gravelly timbre of Arik’s voice, knew without looking that he was still naked. No more full bodysuit and hood like the one he’d worn the day of their first mating. She felt the heat of his strong, muscular body, the male musk that surrounded them. “Hikaru, blindfold her now.”
“Yes, my lord prince.” The eunuch knelt before her and secured a satin-lined leather blindfold over her eyes, tying the soft streamers at the back of her head.
Darkness isolated her but she had no fear. Her Master would bring her exquisite pleasure, never pain. He used his hands to cup her breasts, catch the rings in her nipples, tug them ever so gently. “Oh, yes,” she hissed, loving the contrast of his big gentle hands on her breasts, the bionic one feeling as real, its touch as sensuous as the real one. “Fuck me, Master, please.”
His sharp intake of breath told her he was close. It wouldn’t be long. As always, though, her prince would move at his own pace. He’d taunt her until she burned for release, provide it, and then arouse her to orgasm again and again before giving her what she wanted above all else.
His perfect cock. In her cunt. In her mouth. In the last place it could go to seal his full possession.
Hikaru’s soft lips nibbled her clit. Then he stepped away, moving to her head to stroke her short curls. Her Master’s hot breath tickled her clit. “Please, Master, fuck me.”
His huge cock head slid along her dripping slit. “I can’t resist fucking your delightfully wet cunt first, my princess.” At the same time Arik sank into her cunt, Hikaru moved beside her and rotated the large lubricated butt plug she’d barely been able to insert immediately after he’d cleansed her. Her muscles protested, but soon she was clenching both monster invaders with more pleasure than pain.
Her slippery cunt sucked Arik’s huge cock noisily when he withdrew. When he pushed back in, his balls made slapping sounds against her clit. Deprived of sight, all her other senses seemed enhanced. The smells of sex—clean, slightly salty, a little bit musky—intensified with every stroke of his cock in her spasming cunt. She became more aware of sensation—the velvety hardness of his rigid cock as he fucked her, the brush of his scarred torso and nipples against her back and thighs and of the tough leather straps that supported the weight of her torso. Warm breath and soft hands—Hikaru’s—stroked her ass cheeks, moving now and then to keep her aware of the lubricated plug as it stretched her to take Arik’s cock.
“Yes. Don’t stop.” Sensations bombarded her. The hot spurts of her Master’s ejaculate set off another climax. It left her panting yet wanting more. Much more. When he withdrew his cock, she felt empty, but only for a moment until Hikaru worked something cold and hard into her still-spasming cunt and set it to vibrating, ever so slowly.
She felt the plug come out of her ass, heard the popping sound it made. Cold, slippery lubricant made her asshole contract, but when she felt her Master’s huge, well-lubricated cock pressing against that narrow opening she squirmed with more anticipation than fear. Her mouth opened, as though she could take him there as well.
Hikaru must have been waiting for the opportunity, because he slid a penis-shaped gag into her mouth and secured it. Arik’s whispered words, repeated many times as she’d lain in his arms in the dark of night while he healed, echoed in her ears. I’m going to tie you up so you’ll be completely at my mercy. When you’re helpless, I’ll fuck your cunt and your mouth and your pretty ass, and if the gods will give me a way to do it, I’ll fuck all three at the same time. And you’ll love every minute of it.
He’d found a way. Fresh, intense arousal warmed Emerald’s belly, curled through her body. She relaxed as he’d said she must, and took intense pleasure in his final conquering of her body, her soul. When he entered her fully and began to move, she saw stars—no…diamonds.
Later they lay together on the bed, legs tangled, his fingers ruffling her hair while he whispered to her of love…of sex. “I hurt for Hikaru and the others.” She recalled the eunuch’s stoic look as he’d untied her and washed the smells and dampness of sex from her body and Arik’s. “You’d never let them do that to our sons, would you?”
Arik turned her to face him, his expression fierce. “Once I become king I will outlaw the making of eunuchs on Obsidion. Not just royal sons. I’ll not be responsib
le for any man being unable to fully enjoy his lovers’ bodies. I vow that on my life. On our love.”
Epilogue
One year later, in the royal palace of Obsidion
At the sound of footsteps on the tower stair, Emerald handed their eleven-week-old son to his nurse and shooed them both from the room. Yesterday she and Arik had celebrated the anniversary of their mating with the king and members of the royal court. Today they were on the way to her sister’s mating ceremony. Afterward, she intended to have her own private celebration with the prince who’d made almost all her fantasies come true.
The matchmaker had done right by them. Though others might think Meredith had made an awful mistake in matching her with Arik, Emerald had never doubted from the first that they were soul mates. When Arik had offered to go to Pak Song and have himself turned into a cyborg so he could appear as he had before—the perfect prince for his perfect princess—she’d realized he loved her, too.
Too much to let him do it. She loved her mate for what lay within him—no matter how the gods had wrecked the outer wrapper. She was glad she’d persuaded him to compromise, keep his own body parts but let the surgeons repair the damaged facial nerves that kept him in constant pain and replace the hook with his modern, bionic right hand.
Not for her, because she loved him as he was, he’d let the surgeons fit him with a prosthetic eye and cheekbone to repair the ruined side of his face, so he wouldn’t look quite so fearsome to his subjects. She was glad he’d opted not to get bionic eyes, for as long as he could see well with his left eye, she hadn’t wanted him to trade it, not even for the flawless X-ray vision he could have had with the bilateral bionic replacements the cyborg maker had tried to sell him on.
What they both appreciated about the repair to his face was that he didn’t hurt anymore. Not that his improved appearance didn’t make life easier for Arik as well as for those who looked upon him. That had become important these past few months, since the king had ceded most of his royal duties to his son.
“You look stunning, Master,” she told him when he joined her on the stairs, his emerald-green uniform the perfect complement her green-velvet court gown. “I do believe we’ll outshine the celebrants today.”
He laughed. “It’s only right. After all, the crown prince and princess must outshine mere subjects. Besides, I couldn’t let my princess grab all the attention, or risk that she might look at me and faint again today.”
Emerald let him tuck her arm through his and they began to descend the long, curved stair. “I wouldn’t talk about fainting if I were you.”
Her fainting the first time she’d seen him had become almost their only subject of contention. Arik seemed determined never to let her forget she’d passed dead away the first time she’d seen his face. But she had him now. Every time he mentioned her squeamishness, she reminded him how he’d collapsed in a heap on the birthing-room floor when little Arik made his entrance into the world.
“I won’t, then. Why don’t we make a pact to forget about fainting?” He squeezed her hand as they headed across the courtyard where the litter awaited to take them to her sister’s mating.
She looked up at him, the unlikely prince of all her fantasies. Meredith had done well, indeed. The matchmaker had truly found Emerald a diamond in the rough. Her perfect Master.
The End
About the Author
Ann Jacobs is a sucker for lusty Alpha heroes and happy endings, which makes Ellora’s Cave an ideal publisher for her work. Romantica®, to her, is the perfect combination of sex, sensuality, deep emotional involvement and lifelong commitment—the elusive fantasy women often dream about but seldom achieve.
First published in 1996, Jacobs has sold over forty books and novellas, some of which have earned awards including the Passionate Plume (best novella, 2006), the Desert Rose (best hot and spicy romance, 2004) and More Than Magic (best erotic romance, 2004). She has been a double finalist in separate categories of the EPPIES and From the Heart RWA Chapter’s contest. Three of her books have been translated and sold in several European countries.
A CPA and former hospital financial manager, Jacobs now writes full-time, with the help of Mr. Blue, the family cat who sometimes likes to perch on the back of her desk chair and lend his sage advice. He sometimes even contributes a few random letters when he decides he wants to try out the keyboard. She loves to hear from readers, and to put faces with names at signings and conventions.
Ann welcomes comments from readers. You can find her website and email address on her author bio page at www.ellorascave.com.
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Also by Ann Jacobs
A Gift of Gold
A Mutual Favor
Another Love
Awakenings
Black Gold: Dallas Heat
Black Gold: Entrapped
Black Gold: Firestorm
Black Gold: Forever Enslaved
Black Gold: Love Slave
Club Rio Brava 1: Loving Control
Club Rio Brava 2: Switching Control
Club Rio Brava 3: Unexpected Control
Club Rio Brava 4: Learning Control
Colors of Love
Colors of Magic
Commitment
D’Argent Honor 1: Vampire Justice
D’Argent Honor 2: Eternally His
D’Argent Honor 3: Eternal Surrender
D’Argent Honor 4: Eternal Victory
D’Argent Honor: Eternal Triangle
Dark Side of the Moon
Gates of Hell
Gridiron Lovers 1: Naked Bootleg
Gridiron Lovers 2: Forward Pass
Gridiron Lovers 3: Hot in the Clutch
Gridiron Lovers 4: Coach Me
Gridiron Lovers: Hot for the Reunion
Haunted
He Calls Her Jasmine
Heart of the West 1: Roped
Heart of the West 2: Hitched
Heart of the West 3: Lassoed
Her Very Special Robot
Illusions
Lawyers in Love: Bittersweet Homecoming
Lawyers in Love: Eye of the Storm
Lawyers in Love: Gettin’ It On
Lawyers in Love: In His Own Defense
Lawyers in Love: Mastered
Necessary Roughness 1: Sackmaster
Necessary Roughness 2: End Run
Necessary Roughness 3: Best Reception
Out of Bounds
Pleasure Partners 1: His Pleasure Mistress
Pleasure Partners 2: Pleasure Slave
Pleasure Partners 3: Enslaving the Master
Pleasure Partners 4: Imperfect Partners
Tip of the Iceberg
Topaz Dream
Wrong Place, Wrong Time?
Zayed’s Gift
Print books by Ann Jacobs
A Mutual Favor
A Shining Future
Another Love
Bound by Love
Controlled by Love
Dallas Heat
Enchained anthology
Eternally His
Firestorm
Forbidden Fantasies anthology
Full Circle
Haunted
Heart of the West
Home Field Advantage
Lords of Pleasure
Men in Motion
Out of Bounds
Sandstorms
Sex, Love and a Bit of Magic anthology
The Defenders
The Prosecutors
Discover for yourself why readers can’t get enough of the multiple award-winning publisher Ellora’s Cave. Whether you prefer e-books or paperbacks, be sure to visit EC on the web at www.ellorascave.com for an erotic reading experience that will leave you breathless.
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