Twin Heirs to His Throne

by Olivia Gates

  Now nothing mattered to her anymore but the fact that he was the only man she’d ever want, that he was her girls’ father and he loved them. That he’d come back for them had shown her a glimpse of the perfection they could have.

  Now all she wanted was for him to end her exile.

  Her hands and lips roaming his solid vitality, singed by his heat, tapping into his life, she begged for his response.

  Please. Please. Please.

  Then he moved...away.

  Her lips stilled on his chest, mortification welling inside her like lava. He was rejecting her again.

  But...maybe not. With the debris of the past between them, he wouldn’t presume to take what she was offering when he didn’t know what it was, or how it would affect their sensitive situation and fragile new harmony.

  But this wasn’t the past. This was now. It could be their tomorrows. She had to risk new injury for the slightest possibility this new man he’d become had changed toward her, too, and might now want her as she wanted him. He had wanted her once, before he’d stopped. Maybe this time he wouldn’t stop.

  Pulling back to look up at him through eyes filling with tears, she found his face clenched as hard as the muscles that had turned to rock beneath her fingers, buzzed like live wires. He was shocked. And aroused as hell.

  His hunger buffeted her, left her in no doubt. It wasn’t lack of desire that made him pull back, but uncertainty.

  Attempting to erase any doubts he had, she pressed against him, sobbed into his hot neck against his bounding pulse, “Take me, Leonid, just take me, please...”

  “Kassandra...” His rumble of her name reverberated inside her as he heaved up, tugging her with him. In the past, he would have scooped her up, but she knew he couldn’t now.

  Her legs still almost gave out as he rushed her through compartments, past the dining area to another closed door. Behind it was a bedroom as big as the lounge, dominated by a king-size bed covered in gold-and-black satin. His bedroom.

  Before she could use what was left of her coordination to stumble to the bed, he closed the door and pressed her against it, taking her face in both hands. In the pervasive golden light, his face was supernatural in beauty, reflecting the hurricane building up inside him. His blue-fire gaze was explicit with one question: Did she know what she’d be getting into when he let it break over her?

  Feeling she’d crumble into ashes if it didn’t, she cried out, “Leonid, I want it all with you...”

  With a groan that sounded as if something had ripped inside him, his head swooped down and blocked out existence.

  Then he was swallowing her moans of his name, giving her his breath, reanimating her as he growled hers inside her.

  “Kassandra...”

  It was like opening a floodgate. To the past. To that first kiss that had been exactly like that. A conquering; a claiming. Her breath fractured inside her chest as she drowned in his feel and scent and taste. As she had that first time, and for a whole year afterward. She’d only drowned in desolation, alone, after he’d cast her out.

  But she was drowning again now. In kisses that tantalized her with only glimpses of the ferocity she needed from him. His hands added to her torment, gliding all over her, never pausing long enough to appease, until she writhed against him, whimpering for what she’d never and could never stop wanting. Everything with and from him.

  But he wasn’t giving her everything, as if still testing her, not sure how total her surrender was.

  She dug her fingers into his shoulders. “Leonid...please, give me everything you’ve got.”

  His head rose for one suspended moment, long enough for her to see his shackles snapping, then at last, he clamped his lips down on hers, hard, hot branding. His tongue thrust deep, singeing her with pleasure, breaching her with need, draining her of moans and reason.

  She took it all, too lost to pleasure him in turn. His absence had left a void that had been growing larger every day until she’d feared it would hollow her out, leaving only a shell. Now he was here again, filling the emptiness.

  Pressure built in her eyes, chest and core. Her hands convulsed on his arms until he relented, pushed her blouse up and over her head, pulled her bra strap down, setting her swollen breasts free.

  She keened with relief, with the spike in arousal. He had her exposed, vulnerable. Desperate with arousal. Shaking hands pressed her breasts together to mitigate their aching as everything inside her surged, gushed, needing anything he would do to her. His fingers and tongue and teeth exploiting her every secret, his body all over hers, his manhood filling her core, thrusting her to oblivion...reclaiming her from the void.

  Tears flooded down her cheeks. “Don’t go slow, Leonid... I can’t wait, I can’t...”

  * * *

  Leonid had to be dreaming.

  It had to be one of those tormenting figments that had hunted him mercilessly every moment since he’d watched her stumble out of his hospital room. Kassandra couldn’t be pressing into him, all that glorious passion and flesh, sobbing for him to take her. He couldn’t be scenting her arousal, feeling it vibrating in his loins, hearing it thundering in his cells.

  She couldn’t want him still, after what he’d done to her.

  Her teeth sank into his bottom lip, hard, breaking his flesh. The taste of his blood mixing with her taste, inflamed his every nerve. Her distress felt so real.

  It was real, a firebomb of madness detonating inside him, blowing away the last of his disbelief, and his control.

  He smashed his lips harder into hers, and her cry of relief, of exultation tore through him. The need to ram into her, ride her, spill himself inside her, with no finesse, no restraint, drove him. Her flesh buzzed with her distress beneath his burning hands. Her incessant moans filled his head.

  She wanted an invasion. And he would deliver.

  It had been so long without her...so agonizingly long. He’d thought it would be for the rest of his miserable life. But his banishment was suddenly over. She was taking him back when he’d thought it an impossibility. And he would take her as she needed him to, binge on her, perish inside her.

  He swept her off her feet and she arched deep against the door, making a desperate offering of her core, her breasts, her hands behind his head sinking further into his sanity, speeding his descent into delirium.

  He fell on her engorged breasts, starving, took what he could of her ripened femininity, where his daughters had suckled, insane with regret that he hadn’t been there to witness it. Tearing her skirt farther up in rough, uncoordinated moves, he spread her thighs wide around his hips. She thrashed, clamped him with her legs and need, her sobs sharpening. His distress just as deep, he held her with one arm, reached between her legs, pushed aside her soaked panties, opened her folds and shuddered, on the brink of release just gliding his fingers through her fluid heat.

  Drawing harder on one nipple, then the other, he rubbed two fingers in shaking circles over the knot of flesh where her nerves converged. Once, twice, then he felt her stiffen, that soon. He gritted his teeth, anxious for the music of her release, even if he suffered permanent damage hearing it.

  She came apart in his arms, magnificent, abandoned, her cries fueling his arousal to the point of agony. His hands shook out of control as he freed himself, the anticipation so brutal his grip on consciousness was slipping.

  Fighting to focus, he snatched her thighs back around him, groaned as her wet heat singed his erection, even as her heavy-lidded gaze scalded the rest of him. Growling something not even he understood, driven, wild, his fingers dug into her buttocks. Her breasts swelled more at his roughness, her hardened nipples branding his raw flesh even through his clothes.

  His vision distorted over lips swollen from his ferocity, quivering from a taut-with-need face. “Come inside me n—”

 
He drove up into her, roaring her name. But though molten for him, she was as tight as ever, her flesh resisting his invasion as he stretched her beyond her limits. But knowing their impossible fit only drove her beyond coherence with pleasure, he pulled out only to thrust back, again, then again, again, again, to the rhythm of her piercing screams as she consumed him in her velvet inferno, until he’d embedded himself inside her to the hilt.

  Then he stilled in her depths, surrendered to her clenching hunger as it wrung him, razed him. At last. At last.

  He rested his forehead against hers, overwhelmed, transported, listening to her delirium, to his. Her graceful back was a deep arch, granting him total freedom with her body.

  Then it was no longer enough. The need to conquer her, finish her, end inside her rose like a tidal wave, as it always had, crashing and destroying everything, before building again as if it had never dissipated.

  Blind, out of his mind, he lifted her, filled his mouth and hands with her flesh. He had to leave no fiber of her being unsaturated with pleasure. He withdrew all the way out of her then thrust back, harder, then harder still, until he was hammering inside her to the cadence he knew would overload her, until she convulsed in orgasm, her satin screams echoing his roars as he followed her into the abyss of pleasure.

  Her convulsions spiked in intensity at the first splash of his seed against her womb, and he felt her heart spiraling out of control with his as a sustained seizure of release destroyed the world around them.

  Then it was another life, where nothing existed except being merged with her, riding the aftershocks, savoring the plateau of ecstasy, sharing the descent.

  It had been beyond control or description. Everything.

  Yet it wasn’t enough. Would anything with Kassandra ever be?

  He knew the answer to that. Nothing ever would. He’d never had enough of her. He’d been hers alone since that first time he’d laid eyes on her. He would have remained hers even if he’d never had her again. Even if she’d hated him forever.

  But defying comprehension, she didn’t. Not only didn’t she hate him, not only did she still want him, she seemed to have forgiven him. She’d given him her body again, her acceptance, her support with the twins, her ease. Her laughter. How was it even possible?

  And he realized. He’d done that. When he hadn’t meant to.

  All he’d meant when he’d let go of the act of stiffness and distance had been to end her fears toward him, neutralize her hostility, for her own peace of mind. He hadn’t dreamed she would not only relinquish her rightful hatred of him but seek his intimacy again, and with this unstoppable urgency.

  And he realized something else. Even though she’d completed her descent from the peak of pleasure, she wasn’t pulling away.

  He withdrew a bit, keeping them merged as he looked down at her. She seemed disoriented, her eyes slumberous, fathomless as they gazed up at him. A goddess of temptation and fulfillment, something every man dreamed of but never really expected to find. And he’d found her, not only once, but against all odds, twice.

  Unable to stop himself, his hands dug into her buttocks, gathering her tighter to him.

  Her eyes scorched him to the bone with the amalgam of pleasure and pain that transfigured her amazing beauty as he expanded even more inside her. Her core, molten with their combined pleasure, contracted around him, making him thrust deeper into her, wrenching moans from both their depths. Then slowly, her lids slid down.

  In seconds her breathing evened. She’d fallen asleep.

  Overwhelming pride that he’d pleasured her so completely, as he’d used to, it had literally knocked her out, burgeoned inside him. He hardened even more, that first explosive encounter only serving to whet his appetite. As it always had, during their past extended sessions of delirium. Visions assailed him, of taking her to bed, making love to her again as she slept, until she woke up on another orgasm.

  But he couldn’t do that. He had to let her sleep.

  Cursing his shoddy coordination, he gathered her in his arms and walked slowly with her precious weight. She’d left it all to his power in lax trust, testing his precarious balance. The trek to the bed felt endless. Placing her under the covers and adjusting her clothes, she stirred only to touch what she could of him with sleepy kisses and caresses, murmuring wonderful little incoherencies in appreciation of his caresses and coddling. He struggled up, heart thundering, brow covered in cold sweat. His control had one last notch before it slipped again.

  One thing pulled him back from the temptation. The sheer regret and despair that pulverized the heart he’d thought had shriveled the day he’d pushed her away all over again.

  This had been a terrible mistake.

  For her sake, from now on, he had to leave her alone.

  He couldn’t succumb to her need, or his weakness, ever again.

  * * *

  Kassandra woke up from an inferno of eroticism, on fire.

  Gasping as her dream about Leonid evaporated and with it the impending orgasm he’d been about to give her, it took her a disoriented minute to realize where she was. In Leonid’s luxurious jet bedroom, fully clothed and tucked beneath covers that felt alive with silky touches and sighs.

  Leonid had knocked her out with pleasure. As he’d always done. So even this hadn’t changed.

  Barely able to move, she turned her head to squint at the digital clock pinned down on the bedside table...and gasped. It was seven hours since she’d shut down in his arms. They must be about to land. And he must have had things to attend to. Which was a good thing. She didn’t know how she would have faced him after what she’d done.

  She’d almost attacked him in her arousal!

  But once he’d made sure he knew what she’d been asking for, how far she’d wanted him to go, he’d...devastated her. She felt...ravished. Every inch of her felt fully exploited, delightfully sore and was screaming for an encore. Pushing away the covers that suddenly felt filled with hot thorns, she teetered barefoot to the adjoining bathroom.

  It turned out to have a whirlpool tub, which she couldn’t rush to fast enough, taking her clothes off to sink in.

  As the warm currents bombarded her ultrasensitive flesh, her condition worsened as the memories of her encounter with Leonid boiled over in her blood. If he’d been here, she would have lost her mind all over again, and again.

  When she couldn’t take it anymore, she heaved out of the water and headed on trembling legs for the mirror, in front of which she shakily dried herself. She looked exactly like what she was. A woman who’d been possessed and pleasured within an inch of her sanity, and was now looking wild with her need for more.

  But...would there be more? What would he say and do when she next saw...

  “We are now approaching Zvaria, and will be landing in ten minutes. Please fasten your seat belts.”

  The pilot’s announcement pulled her out of her feverish musings. But before she could head for the door, it opened. And she found herself face-to-face with Leonid.

  Before her next heartbeat, he smiled, but it was detached, impersonal.

  “Good, you’re awake.” Before she could respond, he opened the door wider. “Let’s join the twins and share this historic event of landing in the Zoryan capital for the first time together.”

  As she approached him, he receded to let her pass. She tried to meet his eyes, read in them his response to what had happened between them, where he thought they’d go from there.

  But he turned his gaze away in what seemed like a natural move as he invited her to lead the way.

  Heart thudding to the rhythm of uncertainty and mortification, she walked ahead, her thoughts tangling.

  Did he have too much on his mind, with the resolution of their situation and his looming responsibilities? Or was he just regretting what had happened?

/>   Trying to project the ease she’d perfected for the girls’ sake, she pinned a brittle smile on her face as they joined the others. As usual, Eva and Zoya demanded his attention, and hers to a lesser degree, leaving no room to focus on anything but them until they landed.

  By the time they did, she’d decided she wouldn’t torment herself with conjectures, that she’d let Leonid tell her what he thought and wanted when he had time for her alone again.

  * * *

  The moment she stepped out of the jet behind Leonid, who was carrying the girls, frosty air flayed her face and filled her lungs, so crisp and clean it made her gasp. The winter-wonderland vista beyond what was clearly another private airfield, with the imposing Carpathian Mountains in the distance, was so different from anywhere she’d ever lived, or even visited, that it reinforced again that she was a world away from her normal life in every sense.

  She didn’t have time to marvel at the awe-inspiring surroundings, or to linger over the realization that this rugged land must be responsible in part for Leonid’s uncompromising distinctiveness. Her attention was drawn instead to the multitude of reporters and photographers who came literally out of left field to gather around the bottom of the stairs.

  Her every hair stood on end as Leonid, who’d secured both girls in one arm, reached for her with the other one, posing for their first-ever family picture.

  Then, as they resumed descending the stairs, the girls clung to him, burying their faces in his chest, eyeing the dozens of strangers calling out a cacophony of questions. Feeling his heat and power surrounding her, she found herself instinctively seeking his protection, too, dimly realizing what a sight they must make. The proud lion king, literally, with his pride of clinging females.

  Leonid paused at the last step of the stairs and addressed the crowd. “Thank you for coming to meet my family, but you will understand that after the long flight, my only priority is their comfort. Each of you will get invitations to the press conference I will hold to answer all your questions as soon as my family is settled in their new home.”