Savage Mafia Prince: a Dangerous Royals romance

by Annika Martin

  “So many stings right here. Your calves will feel stiff for a day or two.”

  “My muscles already feel weird.”

  “Stand,” he says after my calves are half-caked with mud.

  I stand, and he dabs the mud onto my thighs, my ass. I’m freezing and I almost died a horrible death, but there’s something weirdly sensual about him painting me like this. He stands, holding the tin. “Raise your arms.”

  I comply and he paints my midsection with the cooling mud, strokes slow and sure. He gets every sting. I can feel his hands trembling. He says he’s fine, but he has to be freezing.

  “Get those clothes off, Kiro. I can finish.”

  He ignores me and moves around to my back, pushing aside my hair. His touch is strangely nourishing. He dabs mud on my neck, lastly my cheek. Then he gets the dry sleeping bag and wraps it around me.

  Only then does he peel off his own shirt.

  I sit, covered in the sleeping bag, but keeping my toes and fingers exposed to the fire.

  “Don’t let it catch fire,” he warns.

  “I won’t.”

  He strips off his pants. His body is shockingly covered in red. More stings than not.

  “You must feel like you’re on fire.”

  He says nothing. Yeah, he’s on fire. Because of me.

  He grabs the stick and stalks back over to make more of his mud stuff, his thighs and ass pale curves in the firelight, dotted with red.

  He dabs the new mud stuff all over himself, smearing it on his neck and chest in the firelight. He’s a warrior, ancient and fierce in the fire glow.

  This shit is way beyond competence porn. It’s no wonder he could beat the Fancher Institute system.

  “Let me get your back.”

  He squints, like he doesn’t entirely trust me in this.

  “I am a nurse.”

  Our hands brush as he gives me the small pot. He turns.

  I loop the sleeping bag around my shoulders in the chilly air, shivering as I paint the thick, cold mud over the lumps that cover his muscular back.

  I finish and he turns to me. Kiro has a way of staring shamelessly into my eyes long past the point where civilized men would look away.

  “What?” I ask.

  He wraps the sleeping bag around me. “Sit.”

  “You need to be in here with me!”

  His lips quirk.

  “For body heat. Come on—you need to be in here. It’s dangerous for you to be exposed to the air after being in that water.”

  And I want him with me. I want to huddle together. To hold him. To care for him the way he cared for me.

  He kneels in front of me. “I’m not like you.”

  I don’t know what he means. Is it a warning? A sad fact? He smoothes my hair, gets some tangles out, and then he sets his fingers on my chin, light as butterflies under the towering pines.

  How can a man so fierce be so tender?

  It’s all just so surreal, us out here alone in this utterly wild place. And then a horrible thought comes to me. “My phone!”

  He pulls away. This expression I can read—it’s unhappiness. He hates my phone. But it’s my only lifeline to…everything. Precisely why he hates it, I suppose.

  “It’s in my jacket pocket. I have to…” I start to peel out of the sleeping bag. The chilly air stings.

  He grabs my shoulders and forces me back down. “No.”

  “I need it, I just need it. I need to know it works, that’s all.” Emotion seizes me, like a fist around my chest at the thought of losing it, this one link I have to my life. “If I could just see that it works…that’s all. If it got wet, I could set it out to drain. I just need to know.” Fuck, am I going to start crying about my phone?

  “You no longer need your phone.”

  “My life is on it. Pictures. My family. My whole…” Tears heat my eyes. I feel like an idiot, but it represents everything. Not just my past, but not giving up getting away from him. Not giving up who I am.

  He holds the ends of the sleeping bag tight around me. “I’ll do it.”

  “You will?”

  His brow is furrowed. It seems his need to keep me from crying is stronger than his hatred of my phone. He stands. “In the pocket?”

  “Yes.”

  He retrieves the wet jacket.

  “Carefully.”

  He unzips the pocket and pulls out the baggies. One piece of my phone in each.

  “Is there water?”

  He holds them up. There’s a tiny bit of water in the bottom of one. “I should throw it in the fire.”

  “Please. No.”

  He regards it darkly. Of course he would’ve heard me talking to my editor. How could he not have? This is a man who knows everything that happens all around him. Fuck, he probably heard it every time I snapped a picture.

  I wouldn’t blame him if he stomped on it and threw it into the fire. Considering what he went through with that pack of rabid reporters.

  My phone is the thing I would use to destroy him. He knows it.

  “Please?”

  It’s such a sight, him naked with mud smeared on him like war paint. Hair tangled with it. His muscles huge, cock half-hard, or maybe that’s just the size of it. He’s brutally gorgeous—that’s the only way to put it. Holding this phone of mine, a greater foe than the wasps.

  “At least don’t tip it anymore.”

  His scowl darkens his face and makes him look all the hotter. A man shouldn’t look so beautiful when he’s scowling. “Do I look like I’m tipping it?”

  “No. Just…be careful.”

  “You want me to piece it together and turn it on?”

  “No—we’ll make sure it’s fully dry first. Take the pieces out carefully, let the water run out of them, and set them out on rocks with the plastic housing up. You know what I mean?”

  He gives me a dark look that tells me he does. He takes the pieces out like they’re precious jewels and sets them on the rock, not too near the fire, but not so far. Because I want him to. Need him to.

  “Your precious phone. You want to make sure it’s dry and warm even before you are.”

  “I just need it.”

  He grunts as he wipes the battery and sets it out. My only connection. My only lifeline.

  In a weird way, I think this phone thing is more painful to him than the wasp incident. It makes me love him a little.

  “Thank you, Kiro.”

  He comes and stands over me, fierce and fucking glorious. “I’ll always take care of you, whether you like it or not.”

  My blood races as he reaches down to where I hold the sleeping bag around my chest. He fits the sides together even more snugly. His abs are face level, lightly furred, but it’s his cock that’s consuming my attention. His cock is beautiful like him—dusky and rough, but probably soft to the touch.

  He takes my hair in his fingers. He grows harder as he touches me. Harder and huger. “You should make yourself ready for me.”

  “Wh-what?”

  “I want you to spend this time touching yourself and making yourself ready for me to fuck you instead of running this time. You understand?”

  “We’re back to that plan? The feeding and fucking bit?”

  He regards me as if I’ve lost my mind. Like, what else are we going to do?

  He disappears. I pull the sleeping bag around me. Is he fishing again? Were the wasps just another day at the office?

  I shiver in front of the fire, surrounded by our wet things draped over trees, covered in wasp-sting-curing mud, and Kiro is down there fishing naked with his bare hands.

  I’m a journalist who started life as a nurse. Not a lot of things surprise me. But Kiro does. No, scratch that—he doesn’t surprise me. He fills me with awe.

  I’ve never truly respected what he is—actually wild.

  A few minutes later, he stalks back with a fish in each hand. He’ll feed me, and then he’ll fuck me. That’s the plan here.

  He crouches in
front of the fire, working the fish with his knife, chopping off the head and tail and carefully slicing it in half. He places it on the grate I’d made him buy, and then he turns to me with his usual dark scowl. And I get butterflies in my stomach.

  Butterflies.

  “You like it cooked a great deal, I suppose,” he grumbles.

  “Don’t you? Aren’t you glad we got that grate?” I say inanely.

  He crouches there, naked and powerful and gorgeous, arranging the fish over the fire.

  “Right? How would you cook it otherwise?”

  Casually, he shifts the fish, poking at it. He pulls up the whole network of bones and tosses it aside, then does the same for the other.

  “I wouldn’t cook it,” he says finally.

  “What?” I ask. “You’d just rip into it like a bear? Like rarr-rarr with your teeth?” I’m joking around.

  He frowns. It’s here I realize that it’s precisely what he would do.

  “I don’t mean that like—”

  There’s no sound but the sizzling of the fish. “Yes, I rip into it like a bear. Very much like a bear.”

  I hurt his feelings. Fuck.

  He twists some weedy leafs between his fingers. Seasoning the fish.

  I realize the bandage I put on his shoulder gash is long gone. “I should look at your shoulder wound.”

  He gazes up at me like, really?

  “I’m just saying.”

  “You should be making yourself ready for me under there.”

  “What if I don’t? You can’t just be like, ‘I fed you, now I fuck you.’”

  He studies my face, expressionless and savage. “You’re mine now, Nurse Ann.” He says it like this all is a concept I’m not grasping.

  “Kiro—”

  He turns back to his task. “If you don’t make yourself ready, then I’ll make you ready.”

  He concentrates on the fish. I can smell it cooking. It smells good. I suppose I’m hungry, somewhere deep down, but all I can do is look at his cock. Big and wild and beautiful like him.

  And he’s painted in mud. This beautiful, feral youth. I look at him, and I feel awe. Gratitude. Heat.

  I look at him and I think, mine. Like he’s mine.

  He sets two chunks of fish to the side to cool while he cooks another two.

  He goes through the same process with this piece of fish.

  When he deems the fish done, he stacks the pieces on the pie-sized tin that goes in the set with the drinking tin. And stalks to me, gaze hot, massive chest rising and falling.

  The fish smells unbelievably good.

  “Stand.”

  I stand, wrapped up tightly in my sleeping bag.

  He sits down on the rock I was on and simply pulls me down onto his lap, nestling me into him. My arms are pinned inside the sleeping bag. But mostly I’m aware of the stone of his cock at my ass. I squeeze my thighs together, feeling it…really a lot.

  “I need my arms.”

  He puts his mouth to my ear. “I’ll feed you.”

  “I can hold the fish and feed myself.”

  He tightens his arm around me, keeping me cocooned in. “All you have to do is stay warm.”

  He holds the fish with one hand and rips off a morsel. “Open.”

  I turn my head. “I can feed myself.”

  He holds the piece in midair.

  “Dude, I’m not a giant doll. I can feed myself.”

  He puts a morsel nearer to my lips. “Open.”

  I hesitate, then I open. He puts it in.

  I chew. It’s delicious. And suddenly I want to cry. It’s crazy, but I just do. Nobody ever cared for me like this. Not for years, anyway.

  “What is it?” he asks softly.

  “I don’t know,” I sniffle. “I guess I always did want to try the paleo diet.”

  “You joke when you’re upset. Another.”

  He feeds me another.

  “Aren’t you eating?”

  “I will.”

  I open my mouth. He feeds me.

  It’s most delicious fish I’ve ever tasted, and suddenly I’m starving. I want more, and he feeds me more, his arm an iron band around my torso. “Is it good?”

  “Yes,” I gasp.

  He eats some himself. Grunts. He doesn’t give a fuck about the food.

  He feeds me more. “Nothing will hurt you as long as I’m alive.”

  I’m about to say he can’t make that promise, but he can. He almost died saving me today. Because I belong to him, a savage in the woods.

  The word “surreal” comes from French, meaning “beyond real.” I never understood the full weight of the word until now. With Kiro. So surreal.

  I’m a captive wrapped in a sleeping bag on the lap of a naked, half-wild man who’s covered in mud. He won’t let me go. He says I belong to him. He risked his life saving me today. He hunted for me, and now he’s feeding me. His cock is a stone at my ass crack. It feels good. I’m thinking about the French derivation of the word surreal.

  Fuck. Where am I even going with that?

  He brings his lips close to my hair. His voice is deep and rumbly. “Open,” he commands.

  I open my mouth, and he feeds me another morsel. He watches me chew, arranging my hair around my shoulder. Because he wants to watch me eat the food he made for me. Because I belong to him.

  The next piece is done. We eat it. Or more, he feeds it to me and himself. Eventually I feel full. “No more,” I say when he tries to feed me another.

  He continues to eat. “Are you making yourself ready for me under there?”

  “Excuse me? No.”

  “Why not?” He sounds annoyed. “I told you I would fuck you, didn’t I?”

  “That’s not how it works.”

  “You know nothing of how it works.” He puts down the fish and presses a finger to my lips. I turn my head.

  He grabs my hair and forces my head to turn back to him. “Suck it,” he says. “Make it clean.”

  “I’m not your finger cleaning crew,” I say.

  He touches my bottom lip with his pointer finger, holding me tightly. My belly feels animated with energy. Fuck—this is not turning me on. It can’t be.

  He traces a finger around my lips. “Open.”

  I stare into his amber gaze. His dark curls are caked with mud. It’s a fabulous look on him. Of course, everything’s a fabulous look on Kiro. He waits patiently, fingers at my lips. He’s willing to wait. He knows he’s in charge here.

  I keep my lips zipped, heart pounding. It’s not that I don’t want to let his fingers invade me. It’s not that I don’t want him.

  I want him too much. He’s too much—he’s too much man, too sexy. I’m too grateful. He’s too much in charge here. The balance of power is way too skewed.

  He brings his face to my cheek. I stiffen. Will he bite me again? He can do anything he wants to me out here.

  But instead, he presses his lips to my cheek. He kisses me softly. I didn’t even think he knew how to do that—to kiss not in a bruising, wild-man way.

  His voice feathers my ear with heat. “I know when you’re aroused. I hear it in the tone of your voice. I see it in the way your gaze changes, as if you see everything and nothing. The taste of your skin. And your scent…”

  I let out a shuddery breath.

  He presses his fingers along my lips, asking for entry. “Take me, Nurse Ann.”

  It’s the need in his voice that gets me. The need tells me he’s a little out of control, too. I open.

  He pushes his fingers in. “Suck.”

  I comply. His finger tastes mostly of…some spice. Thyme, I think. Maybe it grows wild. Maybe that’s what he used to season the fish. For me. He’d eat it raw, of course. And not in that sushi way.

  I feel controlled, invaded. Wildly turned on.

  “Take two.” He pushes in two, sliding them in, invading my mouth, exploring it, breath speeding. Then he puts in three. It’s a dress rehearsal to sucking his cock—we both know it
.

  I imagine him holding me down and shoving his thick, dusky cock into my mouth, taking his pleasure. And I would get a hand free and squeeze him at the root and make it feel really good. Has anybody ever sucked him really nicely and made him feel good like that?

  Panting, he pulls out his fingers and slides them down my neck, leaving a cool, wet trail.

  He pulls the sleeping bag sides from my grasp, exposing my naked body to the cold air.

  “Hey!”

  He ignores my protest and explores my body tenderly, pausing at my right breast. He traces a finger around the bottom of it, lifting it slightly as he goes.

  I’m quivering, a naked captive on a half shell, pulse banging like a jackhammer. His fingers are magic on me. He plays me like a strange instrument, but instead of sound, he’s creating wild electricity.

  The feeling is so intense, my skin feels tight. I think I can’t take any more of him touching me, but I don’t want him to stop.

  “I smell your arousal already.” He hooks his feet inside my ankles, nudging my legs apart, exposing my bare sex to the cool late-afternoon air.

  My heart pounds even harder.

  One hand has reached my belly. “You like when the air is on your pussy. I remember from the store. You came alive when I held you open. Do you remember?”

  “Um…”

  “You see that flat limestone slab over there?” he asks, touching my nipple worshipfully, reverently. The way he touches me isn’t just about turning me on, though it’s definitely turning me on. It’s as if he needs to be touching me, sliding his hand over me, skin to skin.

  “I didn’t know you’d be so soft here,” he says. “Your breasts are the softest things I’ve ever touched. And right here…” He scissors two fingers over a nipple, squeezing—hard.

  I gasp at the sting of it, and he stops.

  I’m panting.

  “Too much?”

  “Just enough!”

  “Put your head back. Show your neck.”

  I put my head back, unsure about this move. He puts his mouth over my jugular vein, kisses me there, utterly dominating me, enjoying me.

  He traces his rough fingers down my belly, lingers there.

  I squirm, but he doesn’t let me go. My pussy is bare to the endless wild, dark around us. Somewhere up above, the sun has come out. The forest floor is dappled with splashes of light.