by Selena Page
"That looks beautiful." He squeezed her hand tight and led her over there. The sun brushed the ground through the leaves, half shading the patch of ground she'd chosen. Like he was a proper courtier and not a runaway, Jack bowed to her and let a blanket fall from the magic of his hands to the ground.
"A gentleman, too. Impressive," she teased. She leaned in close and kissed him, her lips barely brushing his, teasing in another way.
Jack growled deep in his throat and pulled her close. "Gentleman, yes. Not feeling very gentle."
Her hand dropped to squeeze him through his pants. Her expression looked a little startled at her own daring, and then pleased. "But all man. That works for me."
"Woman," he growled. He prided himself on his self-control, but she was testing every iota of it he had.
"Man." She grinned. "Naked against the sky, isn't that the way it's done? As we came into the world, so we shall enter it again, joined?"
"You know the words." He unbuttoned her shirt, taking his time. She took over, pulling her shirt over her head and reaching for his.
"I can even stumble through them in High Court, if you'd like. They're prettier that way."
"I like your native tongue." He pulled his shirt off, or helped her to do so hurriedly, so he could steal another kiss. "I like your tongue."
She unbuckled his belt and unbuttoned his pants with far less clumsiness than he had shown. "Where sun and shadow meet, we meet."
He pulled her pants off, working them over her hips with a growl. "Where the forest meets the field, we meet."
She laid herself on the ground, spread naked for him. He could smell the power and the desire rising off of her. "Then meet me, Jacanamo Tyberius Henry Angoulême. Amber Ellis-Caprice of the Caprice line waits for you."
Jack didn't have to be asked twice. He managed to remember the words. "I meet you, Amber." He let out a small, rueful chuckle. "Literally and ceremonially."
She was ready for him, and he was more than ready for her. He grabbed her shoulder and her arm as he slid inside her, feeling her power and her pulse thrumming around him. She tilted her head back and moaned. The long expanse of her neck called to him, and he leaned in for a bite.
Had he been thinking, he might have worried she'd complain, but Jack wasn't thinking. He moved his hips in time with hers, feeling her tense around him with every thrust. He held her as close to him as he dared, drinking in her scent and the taste of her power.
He thought they might be sending up a beacon to the sky, but that didn't matter anymore. Let the Guard come, let the skin-donners come, let . . . he stopped thinking and just breathed her in, moved within her as she rose up to meet him.
She grabbed onto his hip and shoulder, pulling him down to her as she rose up. She had thrown her head back, and her cheeks were flushed. She bit her lip and gasped; Jack could feel her around him. He could feel their magic moving under his skin and through both of them.
She shuddered around him with orgasm, her nails raking across his back, and Jack shuddered inside her. The magic crested and fell, settling over them like a cloak.
"I . . . whoa," Amber panted. "You are something else, Jack, Jacanamo Tyberius. I've never known anyone like you."
He looked down at her, grinning. "I've never known anyone like you, either, Amber Caprice."
"I wouldn't want to be . . ." She swallowed and laughed, a little bitter sounding and a lot amused. "Ordinary." She tilted her head. "What do we do now? Up to Saratoga? A wedding seems superfluous at this point, I mean." Her gestured hand took in their bare bodies pressed together.
"Oh, but everyone loves a good ceremony." Jack's lips twisted in a small smile. "We'll go meet your family. How far is it, do you think?"
She chuckled. "Don't know your way around very well, do you?" She peered through the field to the sliver of a lake visible through the trees. "Maybe two and a half hours from here. At normal speeds."
"I don't think you do anything normally," he couldn't help but tease. "Especially since your car is upside-down." He really should move, before the police showed up, before the guards woke up, before someone asked why they were laying naked in a field so near a crash they'd happened to be in. "Should we be expecting a farmer with a pitchfork?"
"This isn't 1915, you know." She stretched under him, her body brushing over and around him in strange and delightful ways. "There was that car crash, shit." She flopped, glancing over his shoulder. "What are we going to do about my car."
Jack sighed. He was going to have to move, pitchfork-wielding farmer or no. They were going to have to get out of here before the Guard woke up, for one. Reluctantly, he pulled himself up to his knees. "I was thinking I would pull it out of the ditch."
Chapter 11
Amber took a moment to stare at Jack as he held himself above her on all fours. For one, he was gorgeous, his body toned and tanned, his smile perfect.
For another, he'd just said he was going to pull her car out of the ditch.
She coughed. "Um, Jack? I know it's a Japanese car, but it still weighs over a ton."
He grinned at her and stood. "Trust me?" He offered her a hand.
"I think we're past trust." She took his hand and let him pull her to his feet. "We're on ran away from immortal police forces together. Which, by the way, is supposed to be the second date."
"I'll make a note of that." He was still grinning. Amber was, too. He was ridiculous, she was ridiculous, they were ridiculousness squared. But she grinned anyway.
They were, she realized, standing in a field, naked, grinning at each other. She cleared her throat and looked away. "This," she muttered, "this is what they call the madness of the fae."
He laughed. "That's just me. Here, Lady Caprice, let me get your cloak." He turned a bow, complete with flourish, into a tidy scoop-up of Amber's jeans and t-shirt, and then did the same for his own clothes. "There. Now you may be clothed in more than just your radiant beauty."
She eyed him sidelong. "If you're going to keep that up, I'm going to want a divorce before we've had the wedding ceremony."
"There will be no wedding." A voice boomed across the field. Amber held her clothes up to cover herself. Jack, on the other hand, dropped his clothes and put Amber behind him.
"Hey!" she muttered, although she had to admit she might appreciate the gesture and the view. A naked Jack from behind was as nice as a naked Jack from the front.
Unfortunately, they had more important things to worry about than nudity.
"Stop this childishness at once." The voice was no less booming as the speaker got closer. "And you will return home and marry Lady Fioralbe Hachetorn as you have been pledged to do for some time."
Amber peeked around Jack. The man coming toward them--the High Court fae coming toward them--reeked of power. He looked like it, he practically vibrated with it. He was tall, his hair silver and cut short, his crown just as silver. He looked strong, broad-shouldered and ready for a fight, and he was wearing a silver-and-gray suit that had to cost more than the car his Guards had ruined. His ears were pointed, his eyes violet, and his skin practically luminescent.
He looked a little like Jack around the eyes, but mostly, he looked angry. "And don't think you're going to be without punishment. You attacked our Palace Guard."
"Technically, they attacked me and I defended myself." Jack's hand found Amber's. She squeezed his in return. "And, I mean, really. They were making a huge mistake."
"They were following my orders. As you should learn to do. Now, leave this consort of yours and come peacefully, or don't." Something fierce flashed in the man's eyes. "It makes no difference."
"Father," Jack offered, as if he hadn't been threatened, "may I introduce Amber Ellis-Caprice, of the Saratoga Caprices, and my bonded fiancée. Amber, may I introduce my father, the High King of the Fae of New York City, Anoniono Dorn Huldenius Angoulême, called Tony."
Amber didn't know what they were doing, but Jack had been pretty good with bluffs so far. She bowed, trying to
pretend she wasn't standing naked in front of a High Court King. "Sir."
King Tony raised his eyebrows. "Bonded fiancée?"
"Freely sworn," Jack answered. Amber saw where he was heading.
She turned to look at him, ignoring the King a few feet away. "Freely given," she agreed and pledged.
The king shook his head. "Of all the foolhardy, naive ideas, you went off and pledged yourself to, did you say Caprice?"
"I did, although that's not really the important part."
"I cannot allow this defiance to stand. You've been gallivanting around the country for far too long, Jack, and now when it's finally time to settle down, you--"
"I settled down." He squeezed Amber's hand. "I settled down right here in this wheat field."
The King set his jaw. "You think this ends the matter? You've insulted Lady Hachethorn."
"That was the point. She's an obnoxious, power-grabbing, miserable wretch of a woman who would have climbed for your throne over my body and aimed for yours." Jack's voice was rising. "So I insulted her. I married someone I actually like."
"You haven't married her yet," the King snarled.
"You're welcome to attend the wedding," Amber said, in a burst of near-suicidal snark. "We'll be having it in Saratoga, where my family lives."
"There will be no wedding. This level of defiance cannot be tolerated." The king lifted his hand.
Amber thought, later when there was time for thinking, that maybe the King hadn't been defied in a little too long. He'd telegraphed the move, and Jack was already countering, his hand up and Amber's power melding with his.
Freely given and freely bound. It felt a hundred times stronger than it had before, and a thousand times better. Her bare feet curled in the grass, and her fingers pressed against his palm.
"I might be a rogue, a wastrel and a lay about, but I don't break my oaths." Jack carried on conversationally while he surrounded them with pulsing white magic. "I lie and I cheat and I weasel and I dodge." With each verb, he sent out a bolt of power, wrapping around the King of New York City. "But I made a promise to this woman."
"A pity you didn't keep your other commitments." The king rolled his shoulders and shrugged, and the bands of power popped off him in a swirl of shining gray-and-silver light.
"I keep the commitments I make. You may be the King, but I don't recall you asking my permission before pledging me in marriage." Jack squeezed Amber's hand, and she found herself smiling.
"You need to settle down! There are only so many years you can wander about causing trouble." The king lifted his hand, calling power into it.
"The thing is, that's exactly what I said I was doing. Here I am. Settling down. Binding myself to this lovely woman." Jack swung Amber around until his back was to his father. "Remember? We invited you to the wedding." He lifted his freehand up in the air. Amber followed the gesture with her eyes and saw the moment he caught his father's power-blast and tossed it casually back where it had come.
"Jack," Amber murmured. She didn't know if the King of New York could hear her or not. "That's my future father-in-law you're taunting there."
"Listen to me, you cursed spawn of a damned line, you are no more my daughter-in-law than--"
Jack's face darkened and he spun around, making it a dance move where their linked hands glided over his head, leaving Amber behind him. "Stop right there." He held out his hand, power pulsing from it in white circles like a slow-motion sonic boom. "Stop before you say something we're both going to regret."
The king's lip turned upward in a sneer. He opened his mouth, but whatever stupidity he was about to say was silenced as the slow-moving power Jack had set into motion hit him.
Amber felt it land, her power and Jack's twisted together into a force that pushed and cocooned more than attacked. Jack caught her quirked eyebrow and looked back at her.
"One. He's the King, and I don't want to be King. Two. He's my father, even if he's being stupid." From the angry eyebrow the King lifted, he could hear everything Jack was saying. "Three, if I hit him, he'll shove it off. He's the King of New York." Jack's serious expression dropped into a wide grin. "So I'm doing something underhanded."
"You? Underhanded?" Amber grinned back at him. "Never!"
The King shifted and silver power ebbed off of him in starts and snorts. Jack moved forward, their power flowing in a steady stream. Slowly, the silver power sputtered away into nothing. The King appeared wrapped in a cocoon of white light with amber-yellow streaks.
He pushed against it, the silver power seeming to surround him. Jack stepped forward again, bringing Amber with him, their power braided together like their bodies had pulsed together. The silver light subsided.
Jack bowed to his father. "Goldy'll be awake in a few minutes. She'll be able to get you out of this." He tapped the outside of the cocoon with a grin.
Then the grin dropped, and he looked at Amber. "She's right, you know." They looked back at the captive king together. "You're invited to the wedding. And there will be a wedding."
Silver light rippled, paused, and touched on the golden light in the king's bindings. Although it must have cost him to do so, the king nodded.
"We'll see you there." Jack swung Amber up into his arms. "But first I want to find a threshold. And maybe a bed."
Amber, for once, couldn't come up with a single reason to argue with him.
Up Next:
Alynia Caprice gets her story in:
Sin & Redemption
Available September 2016
About the Author
Selena Page is the author of the Caprice Chronicles, a paranormal romance series centered around a family of cursed witches and warlocks. Her heroes are hot, her heroines are sassy, and the spellbinding chemistry that results will blow your mind.
A foodie, knitter, and lover of daring bodice rippers, Selena writes from her beachfront home in Galveston, TX, and spends her spare time relaxing in the sand and playing in the waves with her viking husband and her three corgis by her side.
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