by Angel Payne
When he countered that with a growly chuckle, delighted shock joined my lust. “My little surprise party, you have redefined ‘the important stuff’.”
I bit my lip, feigning innocence. “Why, whatever do you mean?”
Another sound, low and rumbling, punched from him. It was full of leashed intent, like a predator baiting its prey—until he whipped his hands up again, meshing fingers into mine. Palm-to-palm, he forced my arms all the way up, over my head.
“You know what I mean, tupulai.” He grated the hot syllables into my temple, my cheek, my jaw. “You know I mean…exactly this.”
I sighed heavily. Being pinned beneath him like this…dear God, yes…
His mouth traced over the same path, leaving a wake of fire through my whole body, until igniting the throbbing tissues between my legs. By the time he rose back up, aligning our faces once more, I was a panting mess of arousal.
“Yes,” I finally rasped. “I do know.”
He curled a knowing grin. “You want to be locked like this, for me. Trapped like this, by me.”
“Yes.” I could barely choke it now, but his approving growl was all the reinforcement I needed. And oh yeah, there was the effect it had on his cock, swelling and hardening against my cleft. And the musk of his desire. And the spice of sweat along his neck… “Yes. Damn!”
He answered with a fervent kiss to my neck. “Now tell it to me again, as you would a man who dared to capture you. And master you.”
Fucking. God.
The man didn’t just have a window to my soul.
He had a direct-access pass to my most illicit fantasies.
“Yes…Sir.” I hardly recognized my own voice, and reveled in that. Getting pulled outside myself, commanded to become someone else, was like pulling shackles off my naughtiest desire. As soon as the words were free, my breasts ached, my sex tautened, my clit throbbed—and dammit if Shiraz didn’t know all of that by simply raking that hot cobalt stare across my face.
“Perfect.” He twisted our hands tighter. His heartbeat thundered in through the pulse in his wrists. As his thrusts intensified, he swept up and over me, taking my mouth in a consuming kiss. Relentlessly, he spread my jaw until it ached. “So damn perfect,” he grated when we parted.
“Yes!” I prayed he’d order me to say more. The words took me away. Made me reach beyond myself. Helped me fly.
“Yes…what?” he prompted. Thank fuck.
“Yes, Sir.”
He snarled softly. “Is that all?”
Screw the direct line to my psyche. He’d just rewired himself to my pussy.
“I…I meant, yes, Sir. It’s damn perfect.”
His gaze dragged open. He looked down on me, his bronze god features afire and his broad sculpted shoulders coiled, and I understood why sacrificial virgins were paralyzed when offered to the immortals. He could have pulled my heart from my chest and eaten it front of me, and I would have died an ecstatic woman.
Ecstatic.
Damn good word, especially right now.
“Perfect,” Shiraz echoed, lunging in so hard, my soaked panties were stretched tight against my intimate center. “Tell me, sweet surprise. Describe it.”
I attempted a steadying breath. Riiigght. Not happening any time in the next century. “My…my blood is like fire. My skin…feels so tight. And…and my pussy…”
“I feel it.” He ground in with more passion, his face defined by harsh lines. He was a work of art, like a lush watercolor and a granite statue mixed into the same incredible masterpiece. “Throbbing now. So hot now. Your clit wants to come for me, yes?”
“Oh, my God!”
“Not a proper answer.” He enforced the scolding by backing off on his pressure. My body protested at once, bucking to keep him locked against me.
“Shiraz! Dammit…please…”
“Please what?”
Please fuck me. The real way. But that wouldn’t get me anywhere. I already knew it, sure as the dark control in his gaze and the merciless lock of his hold. That wasn’t my call to make right now—and I adored him for it. Might even, in a little while, thank him for it. Right now, I only wanted to seethe at him for it, so I did. The bastard only smirked, relishing every second of my frustration.
“Make my clit come.” Fine. If he wanted begging, I’d give him begging. “I—I need to come.”
Finally, he shoved his straining bulge back against me. As our bodies slammed, I burst with a rickety moan. He joined me. His thrusts intensified, though his execution turned as rocky as our breaths. He was driven in need but unthinking in form, like a starving beast given a virgin to devour…and deflower. His face was lost in passion, white teeth clenched, noble forehead pursed, as he concentrated on each hard, sliding stroke.
“Beg me again,” he ordered. “Beg me…respectfully.”
I shivered in force. Dissolved in full.
Suddenly, the direct hack at my fantasies didn’t feel like so much of a joke.
How did he know?
How the hell did he know what I’d craved for so long? All the dirty, depraved detail of it? And yet, how did he know how to make it all so sound magnificent, so regal…
So exactly like everything he’d craved too?
And at this moment, did I even care?
“Please, Sir. I’m begging you. Please, please make me come.”
I had my answer as soon as I gave him his “respect”. I didn’t give a crap how he knew, only that he did—and knew exactly what to do with all of it.
“Make you come…how?”
Yeah. Knew exactly what to do…
Just
like
that.
“With—with your cock.”
“Slamming at your pussy, like this?”
“Yes.” Shaking gasp. “Yes please. Slamming at my pussy.”
“Even if I rub it raw?”
“Yes. Even if you—oh, God!”
“Lucina?”
“Yes, dammit. Even if you—shit!”
He rammed harder, making me cry out—and expose myself more. Dammit, he was doing it. Yanking out the Lucy so few had seen, shaking with need, weak with wanting, naked with vulnerability. She looked up at him, was even reflected to me in the bold, blue flames of his eyes—and I silently screamed at her to retreat, to come back inside where it was safe, but the pain made that impossible. It demanded I stay right here, present and aware and marveling at every magical move he made. My bruised pussy demanded I feel every thrust of this fuck—and in a blinding, dazzling burst of lightning, every force of my climax.
Before my scream could hit the air, he devoured the sound with his lips. I emptied my elation into him, surrendering every sated moan and desperate cry, intensifying when he began answering with violent groans of his own—corresponding to the desperate, urgent thrusts of his body. I dragged my eyes open in time to view his passion in full glory, pinching his forehead and clenching his jaw, before it drained into a dazed kind of peace.
He expelled a long breath.
I inhaled a wistful sigh.
Then again. And again.
Then more silent synchronicity.
And sadness? Yeah, perhaps a little, but not for regret of what we’d done. I ached because we’d never be able to do it again, especially the right way. Not that there was a damn thing wrong with that way—I sucked in another breath, struggling to remember the last time a sexual experience had been so intense for me—making me wonder, if only for a second, what things could be like if we were truly naked, horizontal, and in a real bed with each other.
“Lucina? What is it?”
Shit. The fervency of his tone made me realize I’d let my longing show through. Hell, had just dropped my guard in general. I bit my cheek to abstain from the obligatory “nothing”, since even a prince from a postage stamp island could see through that bullshit. Instead I answered, “Just spinning down from the high, gorgeous.” New curiosity. I went ahead and let him see it. “How do you say ‘gorgeous’
in Arcadian?”
His brows crunched. Bewilderment was another good look for him. On that note, a brown paper bag would be a good look for him. “We do not really have such a word.”
“Now you do. It’s pronounced sheeeer-ahhzzz.”
His eyes narrowed. “You should be thrown into the dungeon for that.”
“Promises, promises.”
He had no idea how close we danced to the truth. Did he?
“I enjoy it when you invent names for me in your own language.”
He backed it up by gently rubbing his nose atop mine. Every inch of me softened all over again. “Why?”
“Because it means you shall really remember me. Now what?” he prompted, as I snuck in another laugh.
“Gorgeous, you are not easily forgotten.”
“Oh? And how is that?”
I averted my gaze. The force of his deepened. Time to change the subject. “What was that word you just kept using? Tup…”
“Tupulai.” He corrected my pronunciation in his hotter-than-hell accent, taking the syllables toop-ah-lie to the top of my favorites list (sorry, mar-gahr-ee-tah) At the same time, his voice thickened and his body shifted, betraying the impact of the memories—just as I’d hoped. My anticipation hadn’t included my own heated recall of what we’d just done…not that I was particularly complaining about it. “The closest translation in English is ‘little piece of trouble’.”
“Trouble? What the…?” Though my deliberate trail-off, along with a sassy head wag, pretty much validated his point. He said so with a short chuckle before leaning and brushing his lips back over mine.
“It is intended fondly.” Another brush, with a tiny slide of his tongue over my bottom lip. “Very fondly.” Then a growl, not so gentle—utterly perfect. “It fits you well. Very well.”
Shivers.
Dangerous ones.
Dear hell, what this beautiful, purposeful prince did to me…
And kept doing, as he dipped his head even lower. Then lower…before I stopped him with a wriggle of my hips, determined to be cute and girlish about it. This conversation needed to stay light. The reconstruction project on my heart, already begun in earnest, couldn’t handle things any other way.
“You know what? That does fit,” I quipped. “I’m trouble. With a capital T. So be careful if you don’t want to get completely corrupted.”
Perfect. I’d kept it light but warned him off at the same time. With luck, he’d pick up the snark and run with it. But did I mean that? Weren’t his intensity and focus what my body had first reacted to? Wasn’t his power, dealt with such deliberation, what had turned me into aroused mush? Like what it did right now…
“Tupulai?”
“Yes, Sir?”
“I am the equivalent of your politicians, yes? So perhaps I already know a few things about corruption.”
Forget the shivers.
Now, he brought the fire.
God, I yearned to be burned.
My lips parted, almost begging again for more of those nasty words. He didn’t give me the chance, swiftly stuffing the pad of his thumb into my mouth. I opened more, giving him access to darker regions—yet lighting up a thousand other places in my psyche. Naughty, kinky places…
“You feel that?” he charged. “Singed. Searing. On fire. Because of you, Lucina Fava. Because of what you have done to me.” He worked the pad of his thumb along the flat of my tongue. “By the Creator, what I still want you to do to me.”
My breath hitched. My lungs were pierced as if with needles, struggling to funnel new air to my body. My eyelids dragged, heavy with arousal, but I forced myself to keep looking at him. If I didn’t, I’d fantasize about that finger turning into other body parts. Who the hell was I kidding? I’d already gone there. It was clear he had too. Our stares locked and glued, bound by the new fantasy. I flicked my tongue to his fingertip. He hissed then swallowed.
Okay, this shit had to end. Right here.
Through sheer determination, I pulled back. Between the harsh pumps of my breaths, finally got out, “What Ambyr should be doing to you.”
I backed it with a firm stare, though in the end, couldn’t compete with the impact of his—especially when the sea gods conspired with him, sending a gust of wind into the room. The blast flapped the filmy curtains then lifted his hair, turning him into something worthy of a Peter Jackson epic. Beautiful. Primal. I jotted a mental note. Lodge official complaint with Mother Nature. I’d dutifully chosen an earth-saving hybrid over the red Mustang of my dreams, and gotten rewarded with a windblown sex god I couldn’t touch again?
Okay, not any more than how much I still touched him. Or was he touching me? And wasn’t that just semantics, considering how our bodies were still positioned? God, how perfect he felt, with his crotch still fitted against mine, his ridged abdomen molded against my belly, his shoulders still blocking most of my view?
Along with his glare.
Oh, yeah. That.
“So that is the way of it now?” he funneled the look into visual form. “I am Ambyr’s problem once again?”
Seethe. Then a glower to match his, though infused with my own touches. Pissed-off and bewildered. “Problem? Really? That’s your takeaway, buddy?”
“Take…away.”
And just like that, the windswept god turned into an adorable child mulling a new vocabulary word. Also just like that, I forgot to be irked with him. Instead, I longed to soothe his confusion. And what a lovely wave of fresh conflict that jump started…
Shit.
This was not going the right way. I supposed to be pulling down the mental menu of tactful post-orgasm buh-byes, not wondering how to ease the furrows pinching his forehead. Though I had to admit, the quotation marks in his flesh simply seemed another facet of his beauty, like his thick eyelashes and straight nose. But while God had put him together so flawlessly, all those aspects had traits of uniqueness. Features I could lay here and explore for hours, given the chance…
Not. Happening.
Pack it up, missie. Pack him up.
Good plan.
One I’d carry out—just as soon as I took care of those furrows. Only the furrows. I meant it; I really did, no matter how warm and firm his skin was, as I lifted fingertips to the space between his eyebrows. I meant it, even as I trailed my touch down, eliciting a shaking breath from him—
Just as I inhaled sharply.
Synched once more.
To each other.
With each other.
No. People didn’t just “synch”. That bullshit was for things like Merchant & Ivory movies with actresses who tossed “bloody hells” the way I slung the f word, rocking the corset-and-pantaloons look with their creamy breasts and tiny waists. My breasts had been called a number of things, but never creamy. And the last time my waist and “tiny” were in the same sentence, I was twelve.
But dear God, how I wanted to let out a good “bloody hell” as the man dipped his stare down, all the way to where our bodies were still tangled.
Instead I rasped, “Shiraz…”
He lifted his head. “What, tupulai?”
Bloody fucking hell.
“I’m damn certain Ambyr will consider you the best ‘problem’ she’s ever had.”
It was a lob into the unknown. I still wasn’t sure exactly where he and Ambyr were at, and was damn sure Miss Manners was on the tsk-tsk side of mentioning a man’s potential fiancée while he was still lodged between one’s legs, dressed or not. But necessity didn’t always take stage cues well. The truth of it was symbolized with piercing precision by the stronger gust in the room now.
The blast felt angry—another spot-on parallel, if the cast of Shiraz’s face was any proof. Yeah, I’d only met the man hours ago, but would stake hard cash his jutted jaw and magma glare were his you-said-the-wrong-damn-thing look.
Which meant I should’ve been setting off victory flares, right? This was what I’d been after. A way, some way, to wrap this up before our
cool-off turned into a new heat-up—and we were doing more things that wouldn’t be great ideas in anyone’s book. Things I wouldn’t be able to forget come morning…
Yes. The affirmation should’ve lightened my mind as he eased away from my body. Instead, as he lurched all the way to his feet, all I felt was heavy, chilled, and alone. On a logical level, the reaction made sense. It’d been too long since my last orgasm from anyone or thing other than Sam—aka SAMM, the Sexy-Ass Magic Machine, streamlined with my fantasies about the other Sam, as in Heughan, whom I’d never actually fuck because I’d faint from ecstasy first—and I was beyond jetlagged, meaning my emotional defenses were low. That damn wind didn’t help things, rushing in to plaster his T-shirt against the ripples of his torso and his hair against the bold cliffs of his forehead—but none of that was why my pussy throbbed worse than before.
That had everything to do with the wet spot at the front of his jeans.
I know—ew—but something about the knowledge that I’d put it there, that he’d been so heated from the semblance of fucking me that he’d lost control from it, made me literally dizzy. And so damn horny. Yeah, this fast. Yeah, all over again.
He wheeled away—the sight of his taut ass atop those lean thighs didn’t help the rebellious clit, thank you very much—and stalked toward the door. If I were lucky, he’d keep going. I had to keep telling myself that. How he’d make it to his own part of the Palais rocking that wet spot was not my concern. Right now, all this place could be was a facility in which to catch sleep and a shower before the plane left for home. And before all that, a quick check-in with Sam to rub out the edge in my blood, courtesy of the prince who couldn’t get out of here fast enough.
But he didn’t leave.
Instead, scuffed to a stop next to the door, scooped up a phone mounted on the wall next to it, and punched in a pair of numbers to the panel. I’d wondered about the device when walking in, figuring Arcadia’s infrastructure was still so new that they still needed land lines, but the way Shiraz spat a few lines in Arcadian made me rethink the premise. An intercom? Whoever he’d called, he absolutely knew—and wasn’t afraid to growl at like a bear with an ulcer.
