by Anthology
“Second highest,” she corrected. “And honestly? I think kingship’s made you a little soft.”
“Soft?” He crossed the space between them in three quick strides, one hand seizing her around the waist, the other slipping down the neckline of her gown. Then he pinched the nipple he found there, making her gasp and press herself against him. He nuzzled the soft flesh at the side of her neck. “I’m not the one with expensive soaps and the best perfumes.” He kissed her throat, and she shivered under his mouth.
“Your king is asleep?” he asked.
She exhaled a breathy moan but managed a nod. Her eyelids fluttered. Her cheeks turned a high pink, the color she turned when he roused her the most. Her hair brushed her neck in little ringlets it must have taken her maid hours to create. Her lips were quickly bitten to a rush of pink color, and he longed to feel those lips wrapped around his cock.
“And the princess is away,” she said.
For it was not the princess, but the monarch’s mistress he held in his arms.
He groaned again, his hands moving roughly to her ribcage to squeeze and haul her against him, biting her earlobe as he did so. As she began to gasp, he loosened his hold and pulled back. She was the same striking beauty she’d always been with the same mischievous gleam in her eye, the same mouth any man who saw her pictured bobbing on his cock.
Come quickly, the note said, written in the cipher they’d used as children, when they called themselves the king of thieves and the queen of whores, still ignorant of what their futures held.
He set her back a bit with a groan, guiding her by her upper arms. “I’ll need your money, luv, and that necklace.” He tweaked the shining bauble at her throat. “This is my work on a night such as this.”
She made to jerk away from him. His grip tightened. Her breathing quickened.
“You think me a common strup, content to service a man in a piss-stinking alley?”
“No, my lady,” he said, dragging his lips along the column of her throat, making her shiver. “But at heart, I am a thief. Though not one who has ever left a woman unsatisfied once she’s given up her blunt.”
And with that he swept her from her feet and tumbled her onto the bed. She let out a girlish shriek entirely unbecoming a king’s mistress, but one that completely suited the girl he remembered, the tangle-haired street urchin who swam in the city harbor, dodged the city guard, raced through the streets barefoot, and sunbathed on rooftops. Then came a low-throated, sultry chuckle that left nothing of the girl and spoke of everything she had learned since.
Lying back, propped up on her elbows, she gazed up at him, eyes hooded, mouth smiling, looking happier than he’d ever seen her. He took his time, kissing his way up her long bare legs, making her shiver as his mouth approached her wet, swollen cunt at a glacial pace.
She sighed as he approached her inner thighs, shivering with expectation. She grabbed his hair, attempting to draw him into her more quickly.
Instead he bypassed her sweet spot and moved to look eye-to-eye. He stroked back her hair, searching in her face for… what? What did he expect to find there? What he did find was a soft green-eyed gaze looking back, all playfulness gone, leaving only a genuine tenderness.
“I missed you,” she whispered.
He tried to convince himself he imagined the tenderness as she sat up, tracing her tongue around his ear, before biting lightly on the lobe to draw him down. She took his face between her hands, drawing him farther down to be lost amidst a voluminous gown and sumptuous bedclothes, as though drowning in cotton and silk, that sultry chuckle all around him.
And that easily the tone of their lovemaking changed from violent, almost desperate, to something slower, sultrier, almost tender.
Their lovemaking often started out so—brutal, aggressive, not violent but certainly assertive. Sometimes, it was she, there and ready with a blindfold and stack of chains. Other times, he was the one to bind her. But lately the tenor had changed, often beginning with posturing and domination, but culminating with an almost-gentle quality that left them both shaken and quiet. Gradually, no more toys, no more props appeared between them, only his body and hers, and the quiet gasps and sighs, the nail marks running down his back, the slightly reddened ass cheeks of her, to show for their efforts.
This time was no different, the initially aggressive actions slowing, softening, into something far less showy and possessing far more depth.
He stroked a hand up her smooth thigh, coming to rest on the rounded swell of her ass. He dug in his fingers, making her arch and moan against him. She had always liked a firm hold on her ass, and by her reaction, practiced or not, it’d been a long time since a man had grabbed her the way she liked. He licked and stroked and made her come in a dozen small ways until he felt her growing more restless, eager for more than just his fingers and tongue.
He rolled onto his back, drawing her over him, his cock resting at the juncture of her thighs.
“Don’t tease me,” she gasped, her slickness writhing on his hard length, her face flush and pink.
He eased into her, slowly, holding her hips to prevent her moving too quickly.
“Wait,” he soothed. “Go slow.”
“I can’t… I…” She was already rocking, shaking, fairly vibrating with her need for his touch.
He groaned and gave in, plunging into her fully, rocking their pelvises together, his mouth trembling with effort. And then she was coming, so hard and so fast it was all he could do to keep up with her, thrusting into her, urging her on, until her own pleasure broke, her pussy clenching his cock with an almost painful fervor…until the spasms passed. He drew her down onto his chest, holding her tightly to him as her heart hammered inside of her chest.
He kissed her ear, her cheek, rubbed her back, reminding her to slow her breathing. And gradually she came back to herself, coherent but spent, not even protesting when he allowed her to slide off his still partially erect cock, her body slack from orgasm, while his had yet to spurt its final pleasure. But he found he had no need. He enjoyed her enough as it was; he had no need to come every time.
She rested on her side in the circle of his arm, her hand resting on the center of his chest.
It was then he noticed it. He examined the ring on her finger.
“He wants to marry me off,” she said. “Respectability and all that.”
“And?” he said. “Isn’t that what you wanted?” By the intense look on her face, he knew it wasn’t.
“I wanted money, that look on a man’s face when you know you’ve got him. And I have those things. It all just got so…”
“Easy?”
She looked up at him. “Yes.”
She’d finally put word to the very thing that had been bothering him as well. He’d clawed and climbed and killed his way to become the highest among the city’s lowest, a king among thieves, the Grif himself. But as the baubles and coin and swag came his way, he found life easier and the booty less satisfying. He’d feared even putting a name to this discontent he’d felt building over the past months, but lying there, with her, he found he knew exactly what she meant. Life at the top had gotten too easy, it seemed, for both of them.
She sat up. “It just seems so…boring.”
“I’d hardly call a climb up an unclimbable wall boring, darlin’,” he said. But deep down he knew what she meant.
“I can have anything, have any man I want,” she was saying. “And I stand there at these grand parties, surrounded by dukes and earls and their luscious, well-preserved wives and…I don’t want any of them. I don’t want any of it.”
“We could add some flogging,” the Grif suggested, but the Queen shrugged it off.
“I’m not talking about a little slap and tickle,” she said. “I’m talking about honest to gods boredom. I mean, I walk into one of these parties, and I know I could have any man I wanted, and half the women. It’s…frightfully dull. I want…” She laughed. “I want hot haddock, fried fresh with salt jus
t off Market Street, and sold so piping hot the salt burns into your fingers when the old woman tosses it to you.”
“The old woman died,” he said. “Her daughter runs it now.”
“See, that’s what I mean!” She sat up, facing him. “I’m locked up here, and I’m missing everything. And then he’ll marry me off, and I’ll miss even more. I want to see mountains again and feel the sun on my face lying on rooftops above the bazaar. I want to go down to the public baths and not have to take fifteen serving women along to wipe my ass.”
He laughed.
She threw a pillow his way, but she was laughing as well. “I’m serious! I want to stand at the prow of a ship and feel the sea spray on my face. I want to let the rain and wine run down my face, to press grapes with my feet. I want to climb to the top of a watchtower and gaze out across the sea. I want to ride with a caravan where there’s nothing for miles and miles but sweet grass and the farts of mules.”
“To freeze in winter, and starve in summer.”
“To riffle the stores of the greatest sultan…”
“To dodge the soldiers…”
“To see great paintings…”
“To stand with our hands on the block for stealing them…”
“To fuck wherever we please.”
He pulled her down to him, biting her lip, hands tight on her upper arms, her laughter against his mouth. And for a moment he wanted her, he wanted it, so badly that it made an ache inside of him.
And then he came back to himself. “We’ve worked hard for what we have, love,” he said, setting her away again. “To get where we are. Is that not enough? You’d give all that up?” He smiled, but he couldn’t make the expression reach his eyes.
Her clear green gaze met his. “Wouldn’t you?”
Even now, after all the time apart, she still picked him apart and left his game shattered on the floor. She could name his deepest desires and greatest fears and strip them bare.
He drew her down to his chest, her fingers spread against the stiff black hairs there, lips inches from his own. He nuzzled her neck. “I will be needing that necklace, sweet,” he said, his fingers snaking toward the clasp.
She slapped away his hand. “Like hell.”
There was the street-savvy girl he remembered. Easy life had softened her, but not worn her away completely. “All your money and the necklace. That is my work on a night such as this.”
Lightning danced in the sky behind him as he spoke. A storm was coming. And he wanted to be away before it broke over the cities.
She toyed with the pendant, thoughtfully rolling it between her fingers in a gesture that seemed as though she must do it often. “I go where it goes.”
“Are you asking me to take you away from here?”
She grinned. “I’m asking you to let me use your rope.”
And she rolled off, bouncing as her feet hit the stone floor. She fetched a bag from the corner, tugging it open to pull out dark clothes of various colors—thieves’ clothes—and began to pull them on.
“You’re not coming with me.” He rose from the bed as well, tying his breeches back on and fetching his shoes.
“The hell I’m not,” she replied, tying back her hair as she headed for the balcony. She was reaching for his rope, throwing her leg over the lip of the rail, looking out at the storm gathering along the far horizon.
“The hell you are. Get off that rope. Don’t you dare climb down the side of that… no, hey! I’m talking here!”
She looked up at him. “A beautiful, sexually talented woman wants to run away with you in the middle of the night, and you’re saying no?”
“Woman, I’m the king of thieves; I can make away with any woman I want.”
She shrugged. “Go ahead then. But be sure to bring her home when you return. For future reference, I’m partial to blondes.” She winked and vanished over the edge of the balcony.
He stood there a moment, taking it all in. The King of Thieves, the Grif himself, tamed by a saucy, red-haired wench? Well, not just any wench, the Queen of Whores herself. And over the years, hadn’t they made quite a team? He smiled to himself, thinking of the jobs they’d pulled, before either of them was remotely underworld royalty. If he was honest with himself, he missed those days—the scurrying through streets and up the sides of buildings, the scams and grifts and heists. He’d missed her smile and spunky wit. And now, here she was, giving him a chance at that life again. Could he really pass that up out of pride?
“Are you coming?”
He smiled and reached for the rope, expertly swinging himself over the side and slithering down.
He’d heard Morocco was nice. Maybe he’d take her to Morocco. A Sultan lived in Morocco as well, fabled to be very rich indeed…
Her Heart’s Tomb
Jennifer Kacey
The ground rumbled beneath Sonya’s feet, and she held her breath. Nearly half a mile inside the burial chamber with her arm poised in the air and her finger on the trigger of an aerosol can, what she needed least was a freaking earthquake to put a quick end to this expedition.
Several seconds later, the warm tomb quieted, and all she could hear was the thump-thump of her heartbeat. Losing her focus in front of an empty room shouldn’t have kicked her heart into overdrive, but she’d bet her bounty the room wasn’t empty at all.
Depressing the knob on the can of her least favorite body spray, she smiled.
The three-foot expanse in front of her lit up with a complex grid of nearly invisible threads, each now revealed by the aerosolized liquid clinging to the fibers. Empty room, her ass. But when she drew in a satisfied breath, the scent of the Axe spray hit her—his scent—nearly taking her to her knees.
Jack.
“Fuck,” she whispered to her broken heart. “He’s not coming. He doesn’t give a shit. This is my tomb. Mine.”
Shrugging off her pack along with the nostalgia, she set the can on the ground at her feet. She slipped as many of her things as she might need into the pockets of her cargo pants and again faced the room.
Thankfully, open spaces at the top of the rock cavern allowed enough light in to illuminate the area she needed to work. Infiltrate? Break into? Whatever. Some people worked in an office space or a clothing store. She wasn’t most people.
Tucking her long dark braid into the back of her tank top, she readjusted her firearm holster and palmed the butt of her custom-made handgun. The one Jack made.
Equal parts lust and hurt filled her chest as she thought about receiving the gift.
She choked off the emotions and bent to snatch the deodorant spray off the rock floor. One of the only reminders of him she had. One of the two things he’d left in their apartment before he’d bugged out. The other thing he’d left? A note in his halting scrawl saying he had to leave. He loved her, needed her, but he couldn’t stay and couldn’t explain why.
Again spraying the area in front of her, she tried to forget him and moved with purpose. Not slow, not quick. She didn’t dare rush as she weaved through the mesh of trip wires. Hurrying through a booby trap would turn her into another of the skeletons she’d seen crumpled along the way. Lesser men had fallen before her.
Good riddance.
A woman was smaller, lither, and could get in and out of tighter spaces and circumstances than a man ever could. Jack had commented on it several times. His praise? She hated to admit it, but she trusted his words.
Trusting wasn’t something she did easily. But she’d trusted Jack. Trusted him enough, loved him enough, to teach him what she knew. Stealing for the highest bidder wasn’t a particularly noble profession, but thieving was what she knew. Her parents were the notorious international jewel thieves of Taipei. At last count, they were wanted on four continents.
Spraying upward again, she maneuvered through the last section of filaments, and then pocketed the can of spray.
Jewels.
So limiting.
As she was on her own, she’d branched out. Art wor
k, statues, vehicles, artifacts. One-of-a-kind treasures—like the item she was hunting now—were her favorite. She’d steal anything except for three things: drugs, arms, or people. She wouldn’t touch those jobs.
Around a corner, she wiped her brow, thankful for the lack of a draft, or Jack’s spray wouldn’t have done her any good before. Any wind movement through the tunnels would have dispersed the spray too quickly, and the liquid couldn’t have collected on the threads. Maybe luck was on her side. Or fate was faking her out, getting ready to kick her ass again.
Checking her watch, she calculated how much longer she’d have daylight. Ninety minutes at most then she’d have to abort. Getting trapped in a tomb with no light and plummeting temperatures would seal the deal on a shitty month.
As she quietly moved along the corridor, Sonya let her mind wander back to the man who’d left her weeks ago. The day had started like many others. Early that morning, he’d woken her. Her favorite way. Rolling her onto her stomach and moving between her thighs. Fucking her slow, deep. Hard.
His deep voice in her ear, whispering for her to come for him. To come on his cock.
Across their moonlit loft back in the States stood a freestanding mirror, reflecting their love-making. Her much-darker skin tone—thanks to her Egyptian ancestry—beneath his much-lighter, European complexion. The visual they made together stole her breath.
For the first few strokes, she’d always wonder if she were dreaming. Because no man felt that good inside her, and not just her pussy. He was inside her, part of her, and they’d been together for almost a year.
In the dark was when he’d sneaked inside her heart. When all of her defenses were down, and he’d asked her about her dreams and wishes. Things she’d never shared with anyone.
