by Amanda Milo
“Speak for yourself—!”
“I always do—and for you too, because you’re mine.”
“You’re an arrogant ass.”
“But I’m yours, and you love me,” he says, and he would sound too damn confident if it wasn’t so damn true. “What’s wrong with this?” He wiggles his thumb again like I might not remember the subject of our conversation. “And bear in mind that my opinion—as your future ruling sovereign and husband—is the only opinion you need to concern yourself with. Because mine is the only one that matters in your whole world.”
“And to think you can get bigger-headed. It shouldn’t be possible.”
He moves his hips in a way that stirs his cock inside me. “It’s feeling bigger to you? I’m so proud right now.” He grips my upper thigh before he gives it a light shake, making my flesh bounce and jiggle. He must appreciate it, because he makes a hungry, rumbling noise before he pulls out long enough to plant a nip on the super-sensitive spot where my butt meets my leg. “I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve always been an overachiever.”
I groan into his pillow. “Stop. You’re going to make my head hurt.”
“I’m going to make your pussy hurt. Hold onto the blankets, love. When I fuck you up there, you can cling to the headboard.”
“Please stop talking. You’re so much more attractive when I can’t hear what goes through your head. You shouldn’t let these things out of your mouth.”
A work-roughened hand, one trained to a sword, and with fingers calloused from countless archer bows, reaches under me and squeezes my breasts, giving them attention they respond to like starving harlots.
And he’s still got his thumb where it shouldn’t be. Strangely though, as his cock retreats, his thumb… well, it’s been feeling… exciting to have it sticking me there, and when he rams his cock back into me, his thumb goes a little deeper, pushing past the ring of forbidden muscle, making never-before-teased nerves light up.
“Oh damn,” I complain.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?”
“Someday,” I promise him, “I’m going to do something so shocking to you, and it’s going to blow your ever-living mind.”
Gareth’s heavy chest comes down over my back, and his roughly-delivered words rasp into my ear. “Ella, I’m looking forward to it.”
So am I. I hope I can deliver.
“See that headboard, love?” he asks.
Panting, I manage, “Mmhmm.”
“Like I said. Gonna get you there. Be ready to grab on.”
He gets me there.
And when we get there, I don’t get to hold on after all, because he flips me over so that I’m pinned beneath him on my back. Instead, I take his great shoulders. When he slides back inside me, fitting us together, slowly pumping this time, I curve my arms up, hugging his neck.
His arms come down on either side of me. And when I look up into his face, he smirks, so beautiful, so proud. “I love you, my Ella.”
Because I’d been expecting him to say something I would want to slap him for, I’m thrown off balance by his declaration, and tears prick my eyes. “I love you too, you oaf.”
His huge hand moves to hold my face—and I balk. He frowns. “What’s up your bonnet now?”
My eyes cross trying to focus on his hand. “Which hand did you—”
Gareth snorts. “The other one, calm down.” He catches me by the chin. “Come for me.”
My eyelids lower, but not only from desire. (Although, yes, largely it’s due to the sexiness of his voice when he gives me this order, curse him.) “If only I followed your every command so easily.”
He smiles at me. “You will.” He presses his finger to my lips.
“I’m going to bite you,” I warn him.
“And I’d like it,” he promises. His eyes lose their lazy satisfaction and turn hotter, more intense. “Open up,” he orders, his voice all deep and tantalizing.
If I didn’t obey an order I want to follow from a voice I love so much, I wouldn’t be in my right mind. I take his thick fingers into my mouth, the weight of them feeling pleasing to my tongue.
Especially when he adds pressure, compressing my softness with his hard. “Suck.”
He moves down my body, and I think because he’s never gotten to freely mark my neck, he takes advantage of an area that won’t be seen by others’ eyes—and he bites and suck-marks the hell out of my breasts.
With his quickly-turning-expert touch, I do come for him, this orgasm rippling through me with the most power yet, and we make love with the passion our young hearts have always held, but were never allowed to show in full, glorious measure.
When Gareth can hold out no more, every one of his thrusts is punctuated by a delightful grunt, until his hips slam hard into mine, and he shoves himself over me, inside me, taking me, pinning himself inside me.
He collapses on top of me.
“Ooof,” I say, squished.
“Give me an hour,” he says, sounding groggy.
I poke him in the ribs, making him jump. “Move now or you’ll have suffocated me in an hour.”
He groans, rolling off me dutifully. “Already a fishwife.”
My words are clipped and my tone frosty. “What was that?” I pin the side of his smiling head with a glare.
“I said ‘already a right wife.’”
“You overgrown liar.”
“Yeah, but you’re secretly grinning.”
I say nothing, because he’s right. I try to sit up, but Gareth’s heavy arms band around me tighter. I pinch a fingerful of arm hair.
“OUCH, you vengeful little minx!” Gareth hisses, rolling half on top of me and diving his big head down to my hand.
I draw back my fingers before he can nip them. “I wouldn’t have plucked your hair if you’d let me up when I wanted to get up. See how easy we can make this if you just do what I want?”
“Or we could just nap here. What’s your hurry, woman? We need our rest so we can do that all again,” Gareth grumbles and drags his stubbled jaw over my collarbone, and it feels like he starts a fire on my skin.
“Stop it!” I shriek—not in true protest, but shrilly enough to irritate the overgrown beast’s ears.
Instead of letting me up, he nuzzles his nose into my throat, and sighs. “Every time I tried to plan how we would reunite, I couldn’t get past the part where I hold you in my arms forever,” he murmurs into my hair. “That was the sum total of my plan.”
Against my better judgement, I purr into his shoulder. I can’t help myself. He feels so right. “Good plan.”
I melt under him and enjoy the silence with him for all of another moment. “All right, well—this is nice, but as much as I’d love to continue this forever with you, I need the chamber pot,” I inform him.
“No.”
I try to grab his ear, but he hasn’t forgotten how to dodge me, a defensive technique he had to learn when we were young. “Don’t tell me no! Not unless you want to be wearing what should have gone into the pot, you bossy cow!”
Gareth raises his head, his lids lowered. “If one of us is a bossy cow, let’s review who’s been doling out the last ream of orders.”
I shove at his shoulder. “I don’t know why I missed you.”
He catches my hand, and I tense out of habit, expecting the playful nip like old times—but he kisses my fingers tenderly instead and says, “Because I love you more than anything, Ella.”
Vanquished, I utter, “I love you too, Gareth. You’re all I want.”
Gareth sits up, rising off of me, and grins. “Except for the chamber pot, right?”
CHAPTER 13
Royal weddings are stressful. There’s a chicken hidden in Gareth’s room—
(Yes, for the bloody bedding ceremony so we can present the damned sheets.)
—and every Tomas, Dick, and Harold has offered advice for tonight—
(How some of these men keep their wives is a frightful mystery, let alone how they m
anaged to impregnate them. Thank God Gareth’s got a rejoinder for every suggestion and takes none of these jackasses seriously.)
—and as soon as the king’s cup is empty, it’ll be time for everyone in the dining hall to latch onto Gareth and I, and spirit us to the royal bedchamber, where they’ll call out drunken encouragements—
Gareth’s hand folds over mine. “Did I ever tell you how pretty your coat is?” he asks.
Because I’m wearing the finest gown I’ve ever had the excruciating pleasure of being stuffed in, and not a cape or coat adorns me, I blink at him. “What?” Then I follow his eyes, to see fur has sprouted on my knuckles. “Oh my word!”
Gareth links our fingers before I can leap up from my seat. “Shh.” He leans over the arms of our chairs and presses his lips hard over mine.
The great hall fills with much catcalling.
We ignore it.
When he draws back enough for me to focus on his eyes, I see he’s searching mine. “Ready to get out of here?”
I take a shaky breath.
Gareth makes a noise in his throat, a male’s response to his female’s fear. “I’ll send them away now.” He turns, his chest punching out with his inhale, his body preparing to bellow a royal order all of the kingdom’s subjects will be forced to obey.
I reach up and grab his face. “Wait.” When I have his eyes, I take his lips. “I adore you so much for being willing to cut their festivities short.”
Gareth’s gaze narrows. “These are supposed to be our festivities.”
“Ha. Our festivities happen in private. And that’s all I want—I don’t need them gone, I’d just rather we didn’t have six dozen half-drunken sods who’ve been in their cups all night careening up the steps—carrying us—to the room.” Some of these people are our friends, and most everyone here means us well. But it doesn’t mean we want their assistance for this next part.
Gareth nods, brows jumping. “Wasn’t looking forward to that myself.” He turns to our king. “Father?”
The king, cheeks a little rosy, but eyes sharp and his smile indulgent, answers, “My son?”
Gareth tips his head to me. “I respectfully request the honor of carrying my bride to bed.” He looks around, his gaze cool, a warning look. “Without assistance.”
The king gives me a fond smile. “You know, I did the same for my lady once. Go child. Let your prince make off with you all by himself.”
“As my king commands,” I say with a respectful bowing of my head, and Gareth makes the hall erupt in shouts and jeers and cheers when he rises and picks me right up from my seat—and throws me over his shoulder, skirts half smothering his damned face, hauling me out of the hall like a caveman.
“You fool idiot!” I laugh breathlessly as he slides me down and into his arms when we reach the stairs.
“I couldn’t help myself,” he tells me, looking indeed helpless. “I have male instincts.”
I roll my eyes and cuff him lightly on the shoulder.
“Now, now,” he says, growling like he’s warning me to play nice, and he frees up a hand to catch my skirts, dragging them so they trail over his arm—but they’re still sweeping the floor, tripping hazards—so he tosses my train over his shoulder with panache and goose steps us forward, making me laugh at his silliness.
Gareth uses his nose to brush my hair away from my ear, where he rumbles, “You don’t know how much I’m looking forward to hearing you make that sound for the rest of our lives.” I can hear the grin in his voice as he adds, “Among other sounds.”
I pretend to sniff and look perfectly prim as he carries me past roaring cheers from our citizens who are spilling out of the hall after us, but who are all keeping a polite enough distance. “And I’ll enjoy the sounds I can make you make, my Duck.”
Gareth gives me a lusty kiss on the neck, growling, “I love the way you think. Let’s speed this up so we can get to the part where we’re sucking and riding each other—”
“Wait!” I cry as Gareth sweeps us past a wizened little man coming down the stairs.
Gareth stops, obliging me immediately.
He even brings me in close enough I can shock the older man by reaching out and dragging his cheek in for a kiss.
The gentleman sputters, turning red as a tomato. “I left you four pair, m’lady.” He tips curtsies to Gareth and I formally. “Thank you again for coming into my shop.”
“I’m so glad we did,” I gush, and I grasp a handful of my skirts to reveal my beautiful glass slippers that he created for me. We paid him handsomely when we saw the extent of his craftsmanship. Because not only did he form the slipper that sits on my real foot, he carved me a wooden foot to fit the second slipper. My new foot is so beautifully sculpted, it looks real. My smile is all gratitude for the master cobbler. “Thank you again, Gepetto!”
EPILOGUE
YEARS LATER…
Our benevolent king passed away this summer. He’d been grooming Gareth to take over the royal duties for years, so that wasn’t an adjustment—but we do dearly miss the man who was a wonderful grandfather to our many children. Much to Gareth’s horror and my initial hilarity, we created nine stunning daughters.
Initially, the morning after the fated ball where Gareth and I were reunited, Gareth approached his father with me in hand, and informed him that we needed to wed immediately, because his superior male essence had surely put me in the family way. In actuality, I wouldn’t be put in the family way for nigh on five months after my introduction to his superior maleness.
(At one point during month four, when my father-in-law innocently asked after the state of my womb and I had to tell him it was still empty, I whispered to Gareth that perhaps my body was confused about conception thanks to all the attention he paid to my ass. He whispered back that this wasn’t possible, because he made it all up to my pussy by lavishing it with the deepest, hardest affection.
Well. The man wasn’t wrong.)
Once the pregnancy seal was broken, so to speak, our girls’ conceptions followed one right after the other. When I announced baby three was growing in my belly, and did it while I was bouncing her sister on my hip (who had just been born barely three months beforehand), the king gave his son the most appalled and most proud look I’ve ever seen on a man.
My hilarity over Gareth siring nine beautiful girls who would be giving him fits when they came of marriageable age quickly turned to terror as they matured to pre-marriageable age and I recalled all too vividly that young men are dirty-minded nymphomaniacs, and I fear our daughters are too. Gareth of course won’t hear of it, and chooses to operate under the fantasy—vehemently—that they’re pure as driven snow. Ironically, Winter, our eldest, was rumored to have spent a few stolen afternoons in a cottage owned by seven miners. Seven! When we learned of it and interrogated her, she claimed it was completely innocent (something about teaching the bachelors to organize and clean)—but a month later and the lovebite on her neck from her huntsman beau certainly wasn’t. I scolded her and charged her to cover it up with makeup pastes and high collar dresses before her father had a heart attack or demanded her huntsman’s head, or both. She’s twenty-three, but see if her father remembers that when his little girl walks under his nose at dinner, sporting a hickey.
Gareth is one overprotective papa, or he tries to be. His girls are the apple of his eye. But unfortunately for him, his adored offspring are the apple of many a man’s eye and none of the rest of them gaze at them in a fatherly way. When Jasmine boldly declared she was marrying for love (expected and encouraged) and she demanded that the marriage laws be changed because they were oppressive and wrong (because it would otherwise be endless years before she could have the lad she’d already chosen)—she was five.
Gareth declared that he was building a nunnery.
(Thus far, seven of our girls have managed to badger him out of being shut up forever in a convent. The rest of them are on their own; he’s getting more obstinate about this every time he has to wal
k one of his girls down the aisle and hand her off to some bloke he barely approves of.)
Jasmine (who is our second-born, and is now twenty-two) is still in love with her lad. They recently exchanged nuptials. Our kingdom loves us; very soon they’re expecting that every time they turn around, they’ll be invited to the next royal wedding—and the free banquet and bar. Happy sods.
Rapunzel, our third, was the first one to sneak a boy into her room. She was fourteen. This is what we get for giving in to her childhood pleas to have the tower room all to herself.
(She’s twenty-one now and hasn’t yet turned wolf, so Gareth and I are thanking God above that the catalyst event hasn’t occurred… so far.)
Our fourth girl, Belle, turned away Gaston, her longtime suitor, because she has her heart set on the gardener. The poor man is fearsomely disfigured from a fire, but he’s got a good heart, even if it is a bit of a gruff one.
An attraction to gruffness may run in the family because her sister, Ariel (who must’ve inherited some latent ability to sing, because she’s amazing at it), is starry-eyed with a crabby gentleman named Sebastian, who lives in a modest castle by the sea. After the man approached Gareth on the beach, asking for her hand in matrimony when she was but sixteen, Gareth declared we were never going on another family vacation ever again.
The girls were so crushed, he relented by Christmas, and we went to the Northlands, as far away from sand and surf and seaside loves as he could get his young ladies. And that’s how Elsie (daughter six) and Annette (daughter seven) found their suitors.
When Gareth caught Annette with Kristoff, the boy who ran the reindeer sleigh rides, and she insisted Gareth had to let it go and couldn’t kill the boy because Kristoff was her one and only true love, Gareth literally banged his head against the wall.
(Um, Gareth banged his own head against the wall, not Kristoff’s—although that would certainly have made Gareth feel better.)
