by Ella Fields
I laughed. “Oh yes, he punished her severely for it.”
Raiden’s expression turned granite. “How?”
I licked my teeth, then sighed. “He had his best soldiers fight her. Twenty-eight males compelled to follow his every order, even if it went against their base instincts. Every bone in her body was broken, and she lost sight in her right eye for months.”
Raiden said nothing for the longest time, and I fought the urge to fidget. “And they had to,” he guessed. “Or they’d die.”
That didn’t need answering.
He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Please tell me you weren’t forced to watch at least.”
My smile was grim, my heart a weighted beast in my chest as uninvited memories tried to resurface. I smacked them down and locked the door on the darkness. “My father does nothing in half measures.” I looped another stem, my fingers shaking. “It would behoove you to remember that.”
His eyes pressed, but I refused to look at him. He knew it was not a threat but a warning that should he step out of line, we would both pay the consequences.
When I’d finished with the chain, I stood and brushed dirt and grass from my skirts.
Van huffed, a low grumble escaping as he yawned, exposing teeth sharp enough to shred a hand to ribbons.
In my peripheral, I saw Raiden tense and leap to his feet as I rounded the beast and took his snout in my hands.
His tail, spiked with a tuft of fur at the tip, thumped onto the ground, almost knocking Raiden off his feet. “Don’t be rude.”
Van’s eyes zeroed in on me, bottomless and knowing. “Okay.” I tapped his nose. “But you don’t need to like someone to show respect.” That was something my mother would tout time and time again.
Raiden chuckled, a scratchy and deep sound.
Van’s gaze slipped to my wrist, his eyes almost crossing as he eyed the ten-foot-long wildflower chain. “Lie down.”
With a shuffle that shook the ground, he did, and I lifted the chain of flowers above his nose for him to slurp into his mouth.
“He likes to suck on them,” I explained to Raiden as we watched Van’s jaw rotate and his eyes glaze over. At his silence, I turned around to find he wasn’t watching the beast.
He was watching me with an intensity that eclipsed the sun and threatened to awaken the stars.
“Come here, silk.” He crooked a finger, and I felt the tug of his magic coil tight around my abdomen, luring my body to sway closer.
My hands met his chest, and his arms wound around my waist, pressing my body flush to his.
His head bent down, and I rose onto my toes, unsure of how this was happening with so much ease. Without so much as a question, our mouths joined.
A caress for each lip, a nip for every lick, we crashed and we slow danced beneath the clouds drifting over our heads.
His hand fused with my cheek, his thumb ghosting over the corner of my mouth as his forehead rested upon mine. “I have vastly underestimated you in every fascinating way.”
And as I gazed up into his eyes, my chest filling with bubbling air, I recognized that I might have done the same. “Types are overrated anyway.”
He chuckled, and then his lips were stroking mine once more as he stepped back toward a smattering of rocks and lowered me over one that laid closest to the ground.
Van groaned softly, but otherwise stayed exactly where I’d willed him to while Raiden lifted my skirts and I tugged at his tunic, desperate to touch his hot chest again.
The rough surface meeting my back was extinguished by the gentle slide of his hands roaming up my thighs and spreading them wide. When his mouth found me, wet and ready and greedy for his tongue, I mewled, the sound drifting like a song on the wind, carried to the bordering peaks.
He groaned, his nose rubbing against me and his hands tight around my thighs. “So fucking exquisite.”
My own roamed his hair, the short strands unable to be tugged but still luxurious beneath my fingers. Another rumble soaked my heated flesh, and then his finger was inside me as his tongue coaxed me to peaks higher than the mountain beneath us.
“Prince,” I breathed, desperate to have him fill me, but desperate to have him stroke me one last time and render me a dazzled mess.
“Come undone for me, silk,” he said with a languid drag of his tongue as his finger hooked. Then I was shattering, my moans and curses cut short by his lips as I felt him climb over me. Felt him because although my eyes were open, I failed to see anything but shimmering clouds blurring with blue skies.
He moved my leg over his back as he pressed himself to my opening. “Look at me.”
I blinked a dozen times, and the beauty of his face slowly came into focus. “From this day forward, you will see nothing but me and feel nothing but me every time you come undone.”
“So demanding,” I said, my voice all breath as I tried to spear myself on him by rocking my hips.
His grin was sensuous sin, and I reached for his face, wanting to lick his plush lips. “You’d better get used to it.”
One thrust and his head rolled back. His neck corded, muscles spasming, and his Adam’s apple exposed as he bellowed curses for the entire kingdom to hear.
I laid enraptured, full and hypnotized by all he was as my heart beat furiously.
When he looked down at me, his eyes were fevered, his expression painted with both pain and pleasure. My fingers drifted all on their own, tracing the hard and soft edges of his face. When they reached his lush mouth, his eyes softened, and he kissed them. “It feels different,” he said. “Being inside you feels different to any other time.”
Nodding, I agreed, my head barely feeling the hard surface beneath it. “Fun. They were fun. But this is…”
“Forever,” he said, lowering his lips to mine. “This feels endless.”
He kissed me with a fervor that matched the dance of his hips; his thick, swelling length filling me so completely that I gasped with every thrust. Slow and coaxing, the rhythm of his mouth matched his cock, reducing my body and all that I was to a puddle of pleasure-riddled compliance.
I liked control. But I liked what Raiden did to me far better.
As though there really were a pot of magical gold at the end of a rainbow, he took me there, over and over again, blinding colors blurring as indescribable feelings coursed through me.
“One more,” he said.
We were now on the grass, and I was in his lap with my legs banded behind his back and my arms around his neck, holding every part of him as close to me as possible. Our clothing hung from our limbs, my skirts torn and stained around my waist.
“We couldn’t possibly,” I said, yet I kept moving over him, unwilling to separate myself from his body and the sensations it evoked.
He’d already filled me with his seed, twice, after making me lose myself three times.
Our kind could recuperate fast but never had Berron been able to stay inside me, half erect, and kiss me until he was steel pushing at all my pleasure points once more.
He tugged my lip into his mouth, dragging his teeth over the swollen flesh when he released it. “You can, and you will. Breathe with me.” He shifted his hands to my rear as he picked me up, keeping my hips against his to remain inside me as he laid me down on the grass some ways away from Van, who was now sleeping.
I reached for his muscular arms, that tattoo. He took my hands in his, spreading them above my head as my feet climbed his back. “I cannot leave now. You realize this, right?”
I laughed, but then he hit that spot and stars started appearing, his canines dragging across the skin of my neck. “No,” I breathed. “You can’t.”
He grinded his hips into mine. “Feeling my seed inside you, mingling with what I’ve expelled from you… I have to. I need to mark you.”
In answer, I moved my head back, too far gone to realize that I was allowing a male to mark me for the first time. A sign that wouldn’t always be seen, but rather, it would be felt by any
others who approached me. They would know I was taken and not to be touched, but it wasn’t permanent. It lasted mere months before the male would need to mark again, unless he was done with that female, or she was done with him.
His teeth pierced my skin, just enough to puncture, his body, his scent, his touch, all of him—I spiraled into an abyss from which I feared I’d never return. He followed me instantly, roaring into my ear as he shook over me and filled me to the point of overflow.
I wasn’t sure how I was going to look at another male again after that, let alone seek one out for pleasure after the mark had worn off.
I needn’t have bothered so much as thinking it.
Two days later, Raiden was to leave Allureldin.
I’d contemplated not saying goodbye, unwilling to play the besotted female. I changed my mind at the last minute, fearing I’d be too late after he’d left me in bed that morning with only a lingering kiss to my forehead while I’d slept.
In the hallway outside my rooms, so caught up in my desperation, I rounded the corner and slammed into a steel-infused wall. Not a wall, I realized as I rubbed my aching nose, but a chest.
Zadicus gripped my shoulders, steadying me. “Apologies, Princess.”
“Darkness be damned, you asshole,” I groaned out, then remembered I had to run.
But he snatched my wrist as I made to leave. “Where are you off to in such a hurry so early?”
“That’s none of your business,” I said, pulling my wrist. “Let go.”
He wouldn’t relinquish his hold. His brows lowered, nostrils flaring slightly as he sniffed.
“What are you doing here anyway?” I asked, tugging to no avail. He showed no sign of strain as I pulled with all my might.
“Business meeting with your father,” he muttered, narrowed eyes burning into my neck.
I frowned, then Zad stepped closer, pushed my hair aside, and hissed, “He marked you?”
I’d almost forgotten about the mark, but I didn’t care. I wanted to scream at him, stab him, kick him, anything just to move already. “Release me,” I gritted between my teeth. “Now.”
“It’s…” He swallowed. “Distasteful,” he finally said, venom coating the word.
“I’m to be his wife,” I reminded him. “And you’re really starting to piss me off.”
Zad’s golden eyes lifted from my neck to meet my gaze, swirling with what looked to be rage.
The air became charged, likely from my panic over potentially missing Raiden, and the hand he’d wrapped around my wrist trembled before he dropped it and stalked away.
I blinked at where he’d stood, then shook the odd encounter off with a slew of curses.
I chased the rising sun through the back hallways of the castle and exploded out onto the courtyard, crossing it to the gardens. Accidentally knocking a groundskeeper to his rump, I growled and kept running, my breath fogging in the fading night as I came to a screeching stop before the stables and found Raiden’s carriage gone from where it had been parked beside them.
My throat constricted, and I pulled at my hair, turning in a circle over the hay-dusted ground.
“I told you I was done underestimating you.”
My gaze swung to where Raiden emerged from behind a stable door, his riding pants and jacket hugging his impressive physique.
I scowled, and then his words registered. I forgot about being annoyed and threw myself at him instead. He laughed as he tripped back inside the stable, and I peppered his face with kisses. “Don’t play with me.”
“But it’s the most fun I’ve ever had.” He was tugging up my nightgown, and then I was against the wooden wall, riding crops and saddles clanging against it as he untucked himself and slid inside my body.
“Don’t forget about me,” I whispered to his worshipping mouth, my hands tight on his flexing forearms.
“Never.”
Time taunted with every memory, every cell inside me that no longer belonged solely to me. Raiden’s absence was a sickness that threatened to take hold and tear me asunder as each moon and sun faded.
I decided I’d write him, then scrapped each letter, feeling as though my words were nothing but romantic drivel that passing messengers would likely only snicker at.
Over dinner one night, tankards and goblets gleaming beneath floating firelight, my father shared the news that our nuptials would be moved forward.
That we were due to vow in a little over a month.
The news both rocked and calmed me. I clung to it, feeling so very unlike myself as I harbored how deeply the prince had affected me in our short time together.
Truin would joke about how I looked different, all the while eyeing my neck knowingly even though she couldn’t see the tiny pricks left by Raiden’s canines thanks to my hair. Berron pushed me harder at training, snarling instead of laughing, yet when he saw me smile or attempt to make light of something, his own smile was real.
Three weeks before the dawn ceremony was due to arrive, I was searching for new books to read amongst the secret selection my mother and grandmother had collected from all over the continent. Tales of sweeping romance and adventure bound into worn, rich-colored covers.
My father would have them burned if he knew of their existence. Libraries were for knowledge, and reading was supposed to be a chore, not an enjoyable way to pass the time by visiting another time entirely.
It was a great risk for Yarnt, our librarian of a hundred and forty years, to undertake, but he did so without blinking an eye behind those ginormous wire-rimmed spectacles of his.
And so it was there, deep within the darkest corner of the library and hidden inside rows of mildew-scented books, that my prince returned to me.
“You rob me of breath.”
The book slipped from my fingers, tumbling upside down, pages likely crumpling upon the old oak floor as I spun around, my heart clawing at my chest. “Prince.”
He was leaning against the end of the shelves with an affectionate glint to his eyes and a tiny curl to his lips.
Gathering my breath back inside me, I went to him. He met me halfway, picking me up and hugging me to him so hard that I lost my ability to breathe all over again.
“Lavender,” he said, inhaling deeply.
“Hmm?” I asked against his neck.
He chuckled as he scrunched a hand into my hair. “Your scent. Lavender and vanilla. I’ve kept some with me everywhere I go since we passed a field of it on the journey back home.”
He set me down and plucked a squashed piece of lavender from his pocket.
My lips parted as I stared down at it.
He slipped it away. “I long for the day I won’t need to do so.” He tugged me close, a hand at my cheek as his eyes ate their fill of my face. “But I fear even when I’m with you, in those brief moments I’m not, I’ll long to be.”
“You’re bad news, Prince,” I said, though the words lacked conviction. “Such sweet words for such a sour princess.”
He chuckled and lifted my chin for his lips to rest over mine. “You think yourself sour?”
I fluttered my lashes, then inched his bottom lip between my lips. “I’m probably far worse.”
He hummed, a throaty sound that had my stomach clenching. His arm tightened around me, a hand raising my skirts to slip between my legs. Against my lips, he rasped, “Then why is it that every place my mouth travels, all I taste is sugar?”
I laughed, and so did he, and then we both groaned as he eased a finger inside me, and I was pressed into a row of books, his tongue stroking mine in desperate sweeps.
He had enough patience to torture me to orgasm, his eyes alight and absorbing every reaction flitting over my face, and then I was lifted and impaled.
With his hands bruising my thighs, he pounded into me, the world spinning as we struggled to keep our lips on each other’s while hunger sang and climbed within our veins. It hummed and gathered, then roared in my ears as Raiden mumbled incoherent things against my mouth, and we
came crashing apart.
As our breaths tumbled from us in harsh bursts, we clung together, hearts pounding in a similar thudding beat against our flushed skin.
“I cannot leave now.”
“Didn’t you hear?” I almost purred as his tongue laved at my neck. “The ceremony has been moved ahead.”
Raiden froze. “It’s what?”
A sated laugh slipped from me. I grabbed his face, brushing my fingers over his furrowed brows. “In just one full moon, we will be vowed.”
He swallowed, and then slowly, a smile moved into place. “Then I shall stay here until then.”
But his reaction puzzled me, and so I asked, “You weren’t aware?”
He shook his head, hands moving to my rear and squeezing. “No.” His lips pinched, then he rolled them, and another easy smile appeared. “But it matters not.”
“My father said he’d spoken to your parents.”
He nodded, looking at the rows of books beside us. “Perhaps I was already journeying here, and they couldn’t deliver the message.”
“Perhaps,” I murmured.
A throat clearing had my head snapping to the end of the darkened aisle.
Yarnt stood there in the shadows, his expression unreadable but able to be understood all the same. Laughter snuck out as I tapped Raiden’s shoulders.
He looked at Yarnt and stilled.
“Relax,” I said. “He’s the librarian.”
He didn’t relax, and instead, he moved me out of view before setting me down and righting my skirts. “I can feel you dripping down my thighs,” I whispered.
He laughed. “Shhh.”
I nipped at his chin when he rose and tugged my linen dress back into place. “So sticky and warm, and I’m afraid that now…” I scraped my teeth over his chin to whisper against his mouth, “I’ll feel bare without so much of you inside me.”
He gave a low snarl, and his hands became concrete, pressing into my hips. He scowled. “You’re determined to ruin me, aren’t you?”
I grinned, grabbing his hand and tugging him back through the library. “We’ve yet to explore the guest rooms.”
His voice knocked me from better times.
Naïve, magical, life-changing times.
