by N J Adel
“Apologies, but these… They really wanted to be there instead of me and thought I’d go down without a fight.”
I raked the huge muscles covering his body from head to toe, salivating. “You look like you can put up a good fight.”
“Thanks, Majesty. That’s exactly what I did. I fought them off.”
“That’s your confession, Drusus? You fought your brothers to meet me at the tomb?”
“It’s the reason behind it that I’m confessing.”
“I wonder what that would be.”
He swallowed. “Forgive my insolence, Majesty. I know it’s so very wrong of me to feel that way, but I have been enchanted with my Queen. That’s my confession and the answer to why I have no woman until now.”
That was rather insolent, yet flattering.
And adorable.
And…nipple-hardening. I raised a brow. “Enchanted?”
“Since I was a boy, knowing that you will wake in my time, I have…fantasized…” His heart skipped a beat as he let out a heated breath. “Forgive me.”
“A child’s imagination needs no forgiveness.”
“But I’m not a child anymore.” He bit his lip.
My gaze fell to his mouth, his sweet, fleshy lips I’d tasted and now wished to devour.
We were so close that I could feel his breaths scorching my lips, no boundaries between us. Nothing standing in the way of another delightful kiss.
Except for the menace inside me.
The image of Drusus lying limb in the tomb assaulted me, and I withdrew both my hands with a sigh.
His heart thrashed. “I beg you not to lose your trust in me, my Queen. I’m a simple trader, a commoner, I know I have no chance or right to even wish for my forbidden fantasies to come true.”
The hot fire inside me, the one that hopped and flared whenever it felt like it, was pulling something fierce in my core. My attraction for Drusus from the moment I’d laid eyes on him was undeniable. Now, with how forbidden he was for me and I for him made this attraction even more appealing.
Irresistible.
Threatening.
“It’s not status that’s stopping me from allowing you your wildest of dreams,” I explained, reminding myself in the way.
His eyes widened with a sparkle, and the shameless heat coming from him compelled my body to react in the opposite direction of my sensible intentions.
“Then what is it?” he asked, his voice a whisper laced with lust.
“I almost killed you today. I’m afraid it will happen again if I let go of one fraction of my desire for you.”
His breaths caught as he moved closer, his knee touching mine. “But you healed me.”
The blazing energy bubbled in my belly. My breasts rose and fell, my nipples hardening to the point of pain, as I imagined what we could be doing on this terrace. In that bed. “What if I can’t do it again? In time or at all? Are you willing to risk your life for one moment of pleasure?”
He inclined his head and drew even closer, his lips parted, dangerously inviting.
“Majesty!” Redamun’s voice accompanied by a knock on the door made me jump.
Drusus swore under his breath, and I lifted my gaze to the dark sky, his frustration matching mine.
I closed my eyes for a moment, disappointed, yet relieved. “Enter.”
The door screeched open, and Redamun’s steps echoed behind me but slowed on the terrace. Drusus rose to his feet and crossed his hands over his lap.
Glaring and clenching his teeth at him, my guard stood before me. He, too, had showered, reeking of misk. His skin glowed against the black tunic and golden shawl attire.
“Master Nur is waiting for Your Majesty,” Redamun said.
I nodded, my mind elsewhere. These two fine specimens standing tall and hot and masculine within a groping range drove me insane.
I had to let this fire out somehow.
Now.
“You may leave to prepare those meals, Drusus,” I said before Redamun exploded or hurt the man in any way. I didn’t need a special sensing power to know my overprotective guard was enraged by my alone time with Drusus.
“Yes, my Queen.” Drusus started.
A smile of mischief danced on my lips. “And tell Nur I shall be running a little late.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Redamun frowned at the comb and oils. “Was he brushing your hair…Majesty?”
I smirked. “Yes.”
He folded his arms over his chest, examining my hair with a fuming gaze. “He didn’t do it well. Even I can do a much better job.”
I stood and ambled toward him, the smell of desire Drusus’s flirtations induced between my thighs strong for my new nose, titillating.
Did it reach Redamun, too?
I secretly hoped so.
Without hesitation, I unfolded his arms and let them circle my waist. “I have a more adventurous task for you.”
His lips curl into a snarl. “Majesty smells like…”
“Sex?”
He ground his teeth. “And castor oil.”
I laughed loudly. “I hope the former is more powerful than the latter.”
A troubled sigh escaped him. “Holy Gods, how I’ve missed your laugh.”
“Is that all you’ve missed?”
He glanced down at my lips, his arms tightening around me. “No. But I also didn’t miss seeing someone else courting you. That remains the hardest part of my job.”
“Perhaps now that I’m no longer the ruler of the most powerful kingdom in the world, you won’t see much of that.” My hands traveled along his bare arms, feeling the bulges, contours and sinews. His muscles clenched. His whole body tightened, burning up.
“I just did,” he mumbled. “Is Majesty going to have him?”
It didn’t sound like a question. More like a hidden plea for me to say no.
“None of your concern,” I replied.
The hazel eyes flashed with heat and fire.
Pure hunger and rage.
I loved to tease him like that just to see this look in his eyes. The one that skittered my pulse, bloomed a teasing, tingling heat between my thighs and tickled up my spine.
“My job is to protect you. Guard you. At all times. Even when you’re in bed. Who joins you in that bed is my concern,” he ground his jaws, “my Queen.”
“In that case, guarding me would be much easier if you were the one in that bed.”
He took a long, trembling breath, his eyes smoldering. “Majesty…”
My hands glided across his chest and then clasped behind his neck, bending his head to mine. “What?”
“I’ve always found it very hard to fight temptations when it comes to you.” His voice strained with desire.
The throbbing of his pulse induced mine. “But you’ve managed so far.”
“With the new enhancements this glorious Awaking Day added to my nature, I can assure you…I shall fail now.”
I bent his head so low I could feel his breaths searing my cheeks. “I so want you to fail.”
He swiped his tongue along his bottom lip, his stare locked on my mouth. “Majesty, please. I honestly can’t resist.”
I stared back at his defined mouth. “Then don’t.”
Slowly, his head bent even lower, closer. Our heartbeats raced one another, and I could feel both our fires as his kiss set me aflame.
It was everything I’d imagined and more. Our first kiss. Steeped in a passion that promised realness not a fairytale. The primal desire that lived in us all. And with his lips, he told me he embraced himself, the way he truly was and not a copy of a fictional romantic idol. And with that unique fire we were connected within.
I could feel Redamun now. Read his soul. The way he felt at the moment took my breath away. I’d always known what he had in his heart for me, but sensing it sifting through my pores, wrapping itself around my heart, sent me to another dimension.
It wasn’t just lust.
It wasn’t just adm
iration.
It wasn’t just the guard who fell for his Queen.
It was much more than I could put in words or explain in knowledge.
Magic.
The real kind. Not the tricks or the priests’ sorceries.
Love.
When we broke away, his eyes were shut, and his fingers felt like hot metal on my waist.
He removed them quickly. “Did I hurt you?”
Flushed, I shook my head, my hands still wrapped behind his neck, my mouth dry, my pulse and center throbbing.
“I want…” He sighed, and then licked his lips. “As much as I loved and have yearned for this moment, your safety is my number one priority. This is not safe, my Queen. There’s a…fire… I can’t explain.” A scowl darkened his face as he gestured at his abdomen.
“It’s the same wild energy that generated my fireballs. I have it. You have it. Tia, too. And I believe Nur has it as well, only hasn’t been triggered yet.”
“What’s triggering mine?”
I chortled. “What do you think?”
His scowl deepened. “Does this mean that every time I’m…near you… Does this mean I’m a threat to you, Majesty?”
The possibility terrified him, and I wished there had been a way for me to take away his fear and not just sense it. “We might both burn each other, yet we both can heal. I want to try, Redamun. This experiment will help me understand many things.”
“Experiment? Is this what I am now? An experiment subject? An animal?”
“A very alluring animal.”
“I beg you not to make fun of me, Majesty. Neither my passion for you nor risking your life for an experiment are jokes.”
“Making fun of our situation is the only thing keeping me sane. Can’t you see, Reda? We are all experiment subjects now.”
He drew away. “Majesty…”
“Do you want this or not?”
His shoulders slumped. “More than anything.”
I stepped forward and pressed into his body, unable to stay away for another moment. “Then shut up because I’m done talking.”
There was one instant when he froze, when he struggled. But then instinct took over. He didn’t say another word. His mouth crushed to mine, and his kiss seared possessively across my lips.
I loved the way my small body—compared to his—melted into him. The way our lips fit. The way he tangled and untangled my hair around his fingers and held me tighter and tighter. His unmistaken desire for me poked me in the stomach, igniting a spark with which I could light the whole world on fire.
He growled as our kiss grew fierce, lips parting, his tongue seeking mine. His hand slid around the silk covering me as he pulled me to him, like he would never let me go.
“Tear it off,” I rasped, pushing his shawl off his shoulders.
With one swift move, he ripped my dress in two, the tearing sound loud. The look in his eyes as he ate my body with them, the blazing fire of animalistic lust, sent sweet shivers down my core, a slick warmth forming between my legs.
“You are so…” His hands reached for my body but retracted. “It has reached my chest, the fire.” He winced. “I don’t know how to touch you without burning you.”
I was naked in front of him, hot wind and need sizzling my flesh. My own wild energy blazed violently through me, but I didn’t care.
I needed him.
Now.
“I can stand it.” I took the end of his tunic in my hand to undress him, but I accidentally ripped it off.
His brows shot up. “Aa’ha.”
I stared. Ogled at his bulky, sinewy nakedness. At the huge erection jutting blatantly from his shaved body. “Yes. Aa’ha.”
Before I knew it, he grabbed me, yanked me into him, scooped me up into his arms and dashed inside my chamber. Searing flesh to searing flesh, we were melting into each other, with the fire, with anticipation.
He laid me on the bed and aligned his body on top of mine. His eyes locked on my face. His erection, rock hard, pulsed against the wet heat between my thighs. “Your beauty is beyond my imagination, and I have imagined it so many times.”
I bit my lip. “You’re a perverted guard, fantasizing about your Queen’s body, relieving yourself to your ill visualizations of this very moment. I should have you removed from my service, not invite you to my bed.”
“Yet here I am,” he approached my ear, “naked with my Queen, about to make love to her sensuous, seductive, fleshy, full-bosomed body.”
I gasped and trembled as his breaths and inappropriate, yet arousing words ignited hazardous flames inside me. “Guard Redamun, you truly are a pervert.”
He looked at me, his effect on me evident with the heat flooding my cheeks and the wetness gushing from my opening, and I could tell he was enjoying what he was doing to me.
His lips parted with a smile. “Yet you seem to like my unabashed side, my Queen.”
“Yes,” I hissed. “So much. I need you…Guard Redamun.”
He throbbed, the gleam in his eyes predatory.
“You like it when I call you that? Guard Redamun?”
His heart pounded in his heaving chest. “Yes, and this talk I was trying to have to slow down and control this blaze inside seemed to have fueled it more, especially when you call me that.”
I parted my legs a little and felt his heavy phallus in my palm. “Then stop talking, Guard Redamun.”
He groaned, his eyes rolling back. “You will tell me if you’re hurting?”
“Yes.” I moaned into his lips.
His hands gripped me to him as his tongue found mine. Then it traveled to my neck, my chest, my engorged nipples, suckling, licking, devouring.
My skin burned, literally, but the pleasure he evoked in me was worth it. I whimpered as he feasted on my breasts, my palm tightening around his long, throbbing, scorching erection.
I threaded his lustrous, long hair, pushing him farther down. He looked up at me with smoldering eyes, as if saying, “At your service, Majesty.”
His mouth slid from my breasts down to my belly, leaving a wet trail of kisses, and then he blew a hot breath on my center.
My stomach clenched, a fresh gush of desire trickled within, and I withdrew both my hands and clutched at the sheets, bracing for what was to come.
He parted my legs farther, lifting them and letting them rest on his shoulders. As he gazed at my sex, his hands left a burning imprint on my thighs. My eyes squeezed shut while I moaned in pain.
Then my skin recovered.
Instantly.
I’ve never seen anything like that. This is insanity in its purest form.
He winced. “I can’t stop it from searing you. Just seeing your juicy nether lands sets the fire in my every limb, in my manhood.”
“Worry not. I’m healing in no time.” I opened my eyes. His thirsty, tormented expression aroused me even more. “It’s you I’m worried about. Seeing you like this, listening to your hungry words makes me about to shoot fireballs from down there.”
“My Queen, you can shoot whatever you wish in my face.” He dove in, nose, lips, tongue, smelling, licking, eating.
I writhed and squirmed and whimpered, ripping the cotton sheets in pieces. With this pleasure, with this torture he unleashed in my sex, he owned me. That possessive thirst in him, in this unique, intimate moment was… intoxicating. Not smothering like it might be with any other man. With Redamun, my loyal protector, it dazed and dazzled me, knowing that I was his in a way that felt so safe and so dangerous simultaneously.
His hands slid off me as he drew back, half of his skin melting and in the next moment rebuilding.
I gasped at the sight of his face, of the flaming balls forming in his hands.
“I’m so sorry. I can’t contain it.” His eyes widened in panic, searching desperately for a place where he could release the energy. Then he raced out of the bed.
I jumped after him, my breasts and buttocks bouncing with me. “Where are you going?”
&nb
sp; He stared at me for one moment before he spun and darted toward the terrace. But he didn’t stop there. He hopped and paddled in the air, his flailing arms on fire.
I flew to the banister. “Redamun!”
CHAPTER TWELVE
If someone told me a man could jump off a two-story house and fly in the air, defying the planet’s Holding Force, with arms on fire, I’d lock him up in a madhouse.
But this was happening before my eyes.
Redamun was swimming in the air with an invisible force holding him up until he was above the pond. Then he cannoned in the dark water with a massive splash, turning it orange red, like a fire star hitting the earth.
My heart thrashed as I watched the fire glare, and then fade, with no sign of Redamun.
Cold sweat covered my naked body as I waited for what seemed to be an eternity.
Yet he didn’t come up.
Should I shout for help? Should I go down? Should I jump like he—
A water splash interrupted me.
Followed by a loud gasp.
Then his head bolted above the water surface.
I exhaled a big sigh of relief as he glanced up at me, grinning from ear to ear, running his hands through his soaking hair.
“What are you so happy about? You scared me to death,” I whispered, knowing he would hear me.
“Apologies for that, My Queen. I can assure you I’m unharmed,” he whispered back.
“Thank the Gods.”
He waved at me to come down. “Majesty should try it. The rush is exhilarating.”
My jaws parted at the absurdity of his suggestion, but then the wild energy stirred, reminding me of my new self.
I didn’t take long to measure the chances. An essential quality in a knowledge seeker was the ability to take risks, and I’d proven I was one of the biggest risk takers in all history.
If Redamun could do it, all four of us could do it. I should experience every change, every power myself. To feel it. Comprehend it. Use it.
Control it.
His excitement as he kept gesturing for me to come down reached me, and I took a few steps back and inhaled a deep breath.
Then I sprang forward and jumped in the air.
My heartbeats echoed through me, and I heard nothing but them for an unknown period of time.
