by Meg Xuemei X
“The longer your delay,” he growled, “the more burn it’s going to cause.”
Why do I care that you burn? I’ll only fuel the fire to toast you!
I smiled. “And the forbidden fruit is sweeter.”
He shook his head in exasperation, then he softened his tone, as if talking to a little girl. “None of your schemes and plots against angels will work. Your foolishness will only get you killed, and I don’t want that to happen.”
He couldn’t care less about me.
As if reading my thoughts, he added, “I have to protect my own interest.”
Of course, he would go to extra lengths to secure his end of the bargain and make sure no one screwed up his fuck rights.
He’d known about my moves. He’d set his eyes on me. He didn’t even care that I schemed to overthrow his race as long as I didn’t get myself caught before he could fuck me.
He didn’t think I could pull it off, and he called me stupid.
How dare he?
He would pay for his insufferable arrogance. He would pay for underestimating me. I longed to see the look on his face the day I stomped him and his kind under my feet.
Then the shadow of doubt ate me. I’d seen how he fought on the battlefield. I’d seen how he wielded the Forbidden Glory and erased a superior warrior race in a heartbeat.
I bit my lip as a wave of anxiety filled my every thought.
No, I refused to feel hopeless.
“Next time you want to go anywhere,” he said, “you’ll let me know and I’ll take you there.”
“If I ask you to take me to see the flame, will you do that?”
“It’s better than to let you go down there on your own and get yourself killed one day,” he said, “the day I arrive too late.”
“Okay. Thank you,” I said. “I’m tired now. Will you escort me back to my suite? I need to bathe and go to bed.”
Though safety for me was an illusion in the angels’ city, I wanted to curl up under the blanket on my bed and feel temporarily safe and sound after the ordeal of virtually being cooked by the angel’s flame.
But I wouldn’t tell the prince what had really happened.
“I’m not done with you,” he said as cruelty touched his eyes. “Though I won’t end you, it doesn’t mean I’ll let you off the hook so easily, Princess. You need to not test boundaries.” He’d thrown my words back at me. “And today you’ll learn that you won’t always get your way.”
Chapter 13
PRINCE SETH
Rose had faced Forbidden Glory. She had stared into its blue flame and prevailed. Now she was trying to fish information from me, batting her beautiful, whisky-colored eyes. Light swam in them whenever she aimed to manipulate.
When I interrogated her further on her encounter with Forbidden Glory, she wrapped lies in truth, which infuriated me.
The feverish flush in her cheeks and the lingering terror in her eyes had told me as much. I’d scented Glory on her skin. The flame’s power had licked her and tasted her.
The Dragonian declared that the Mysthians were all liars, seducers, and thieves, among many other bad names. The engineering race had prepared to go to war with the “Earth’s Favorite,” after the Mysthian emperor had scoffed at their leader for asking for Princess Rose’s hand in marriage.
Emperor Oberon had bent when King Agro had demanded the same. The angels had conquered all kingdoms except the twilight realm. Oberon knew he wouldn’t hold Mysth if we started an all-out war against him.
So the princess had come to Atlantis. She’d been busy scheming and plotting since day one: not over how to be a good queen to my brother but how to undermine the angels.
Possibly, she’d made an alliance with the Dragonian rebels. Only the Dragonian had the blueprints of their former capital. Only the engineering race could provide a device that would crack open my brother’s study and my library.
Since the princess had found the path to Forbidden Glory, the Dragonian must have known about it. Or had the princess’s courtiers fed her the information? Many angels were engrossed with those enchanting male and female courtiers, who I believed to be Rose’s network of spies.
A few high-ranking angels must have talked under the pillow power.
With the intel, the princess had struck out.
An uneasy thought kept bugging me. Now that she’d found the angel’s power source, she would never let it go. Did she think she could steal it or destroy it? Forbidden Glory hadn’t killed her the first time—and I intended to find out why—but it wouldn’t let her live the next time.
Only my lord father and I could tame the power.
The princess had been foolish to get involved with something way outside her understanding.
But she managed to get out alive, didn’t she?
The new inscriptions flashed in my mind: All who enters shall perish. Except the chosen son and daughter.
She had entered, yet she hadn’t perished. Was she the named daughter?
Had she somehow rewritten the ancient, angelic inscriptions?
Unlikely.
The great earth magic must be in her.
Either it had shielded the princess from Forbidden Glory’s attack, or the Glory couldn’t harvest the elemental magic before it was ripe in her.
It needed to feed on the earth magic to replenish its power after I’d used it to open the portal to Earth and tear a rift in the magic wall of the twilight realm.
It took tremendous energy to keep the leyline open.
Now Forbidden Glory was thirsty. It would want me to bring Rose to it when the magic rose in her. She had exposed herself to it.
If my lord father’s sight had turned to Earth when Rose had faced the Glory, he’d have headed here already.
The girl hadn’t had the slightest idea what kind of disaster she’d brought on herself.
A renewed rage rampaged through me. So much work to keep this one out of trouble.
Maybe I should just forget about that one-night deal and be done with her.
“You should never wander to places you have no business in,” I chided. “Don’t expect me to jump at every opportunity to rescue you just because I want that one fuck. Many young, stupid things believe they are invincible, until death takes them.”
She let me yell at her for a while, then looked up at me with an exhausted, antagonistic expression. I stopped berating her. I didn’t want to break the fragile connection between us. “This is for your own good, Rose,” I said, my voice less harsh.
She peeked into my eyes, as if to determine the amount of truth in them. As if to see if I really meant to protect her. Then, for a moment, her gaze softened, and the edginess departed her face, which made her very feminine.
A primal male need shot through me, making me want to pull her into my embrace and shield her from all hostile forces.
The walls in her went up the next second, against me and all angels.
I drove my body forward, pressing hard against her to remove the negative space between us. I wanted to crash down her walls more than I wanted to crash anything else.
She’d kept denying me and defying me. That had to end.
If I let her go on like this, she would eventually get herself killed before I could claim her.
She needed to learn to surrender.
And it started now.
Chapter 14
PRINCESS ROSE
I hadn’t known two bodies could be so tightly locked, and Prince Seth was one of the largest angels.
“You’re crushing me, Prince,” I said, hearing my own anger as I struggled for air. “Your weight is crushing me.”
“Then you should know any action has consequences,” he said. “Everything you do has a ripple effect—usually a bad one.”
He pressed harder, completely backing me to the corner. His hard ridge pricked my stomach and glided up. The hardness and heat were overwhelming and…welcoming.
“Get off me,” I said.
“Ar
e you issuing an order to me?” he said and pulled himself an inch away from me. Before I could inhale to speak, he lifted me from the ground and drove his body toward me again. The hard head of his shaft hit right against my sex.
Liquid heat exploded between my thighs.
What if there were no clothes and no barrier between us? Would the heat of passion burn any hotter?
The angel rocked his hips and his cock rubbed against me, sending a delicious sensation all over.
I wanted to tear his clothes off. I wanted nothing between us, just our bodies meeting each other.
I wanted the real thing.
I wanted to have his big cock inside me.
Pleasure rocked my core at his every thrust.
At the same time, shame shook me.
I didn’t ask for the carnal pleasure. My heart didn’t want this angel, but my flesh rebelled and craved more of him. It responded madly and giddily to him. His scent, his body, and his mere touch were the only things that mattered.
The Prince of Angels pulled back and thrust toward me again.
Somehow I knew he wasn’t exactly offering me pleasure; he was executing a punishment.
Chastisement or not, I wondered if this was only foreplay, if in the end he would tear my clothes off and take me.
My heart pumped rapidly. Blood heated in my veins. Fear and thrilling anticipation overwhelmed me. Would he force me if I said no?
How far would he go? How far would I go? Part of me wanted him to go all the way, badly.
I resented his dominance, yet it turned me on like nothing else.
No, no, I screamed at myself. Have some backbone!
The need and ache between my legs were undoing me.
I’m Rose Jekaterina Faylinn, I reminded myself as I panted. I am the future Empress of Mysth. I am the last line of defense against the angels.
I shoved him back at the same time he pulled back for another rough thrust.
While his face registered surprise at my sudden resistance, I swiftly ducked from under his arm and moved behind him, faster than a flash.
I wanted to hurt him, and I wanted him to kneel first. My foot shot out, connecting with the back of his kneecap.
“Eat dirt, asshole!” I shouted, wishing there was mud on the spotless, granite floor.
My kick was strong. My boot had broken three or four bricks layered together every time I’d trained with the master of arms. But kicking this angel was like hitting a rock that had been frozen for hundreds of years.
He didn’t go down. Damn him!
As I blinked, he wheeled around me, faster than anyone had the right to be. I’d watched his act in the arena, but fighting him in person was different than watching.
While stupefaction was on his face since he hadn’t known I could actually fight and that I was fast, he grinned at me.
It wasn’t a friendly one.
It was the smirk of a cat watching a squirming mouse.
It promised a lot of wickedness that words couldn’t define.
But I was no mouse.
Letting out a battle cry, I charged him and threw a flurry of no-nonsense punches and brutal kicks. Damn, I was fast!
He dodged a few of my assaults with his superb reflexes. His expression showed that he was still processing this new understanding of me.
Yes, this lamb had teeth and claws!
I swung a leg at him and he jumped up as if to avoid stomping on my foot.
Idiot! That was a feint.
I landed a heavy fist to his gut.
“Ouch.” He smirked. “That hurt. A lot.”
I sucked in a breath. It felt like the bones of my hand had just shattered, ramming into steel by accident. I swore a series of dark curses.
“A princess should not curse,” he said, “especially such a fine one as the Morning Star of Mysth.”
I could see furious fire burst in my eyes, but I reined it in and turned it into a cold calculation. My master of arms had always warned me that only a fool would be driven by unwise anger.
I wheeled around the angel to seek his next weakness.
My adversary was a battle-hardened jerk. His whole body was corded with muscles of steel, except—
With that in mind, I lunged again, feinted, and went for his groin.
I hit empty air between his legs.
I looked down and found that my feet had left the ground.
The angel had grabbed both of my arms. I tried to kick my feet backwards to make him release me, but his legs locked mine. I was completely in his iron grip while he’d shot into the air.
“You want a fight, little girl?” he grated in my ears. “I’ll give you one.”
I couldn’t even spit at him since he had me from behind, but it didn’t stop me from thrashing and screaming murder.
We were near the ceiling now. I was far from the ground.
One of his hands withdrew from my arm.
Horror hit me. I had infuriated him so much that he was going to drop me. My brain matter was going to spill on the marble floor.
Even my immortality wouldn’t save me.
“No, Seth!” I shut my eyes and cried. “Don’t do it!”
“I wasn’t going to drop you, idiot,” he said with a half-laugh, half-sigh.
Bastard! I was so mad, yet I wasn’t stupid enough to not realize that I was out of my element in the air. I opened my eyes, looked down at the ground far below, then shut them again.
We Mysthians weren’t fond of heights, though we loved to climb to the top of the silver trees in the twilight realm.
Trees had branches. Here, I had nothing to hold onto in midair.
No, I could grab the angel.
My hand moved backwards and wrapped around his leg tightly. My other hand grabbed the front of his trench coat for dear life.
He chuckled as his hand shifted to wrap around my waist. “You should hold my cock. That way I’ll never drop you, not even by accident.”
“Let me down,” I demanded.
“Not yet, Princess,” he said.
The angel flew toward a high window, grabbed a vast painting near it with his free hand, and tore it off. He was really strong. He held the huge painting as if it weighed nothing.
To him, I must have been like a feather in his arms.
The prince descended and tossed the painting to the ground. With a precise kick to its center, he made the painting cover the hole-door that I’d discovered and he’d hacked open.
Realizing that he wouldn’t obey my steely command, I softened my tone a notch. “Would you put me down, please?”
“That’s better,” he said, but flew high again.
My patience ran thin even as fear grasped me. “What are you doing? You can’t just swing me back and forth in the air!”
“I thought you’d like this,” he said. “Don’t you want to fly?”
“No!”
“Afraid of heights then?” he asked. I could almost picture the cold smile that ghosted over his sensual lips. What was I thinking—sensual—while he treated me this way?
“You weren’t even afraid of fire,” he said. “I thought you were fearless.”
I pursed my lips. There was no win in this. I hoped I could play dead and he would just leave me alone.
The angel turned and dove. The ground rushed towards my face.
I shut my eyes and felt the soup I had earlier coming up from my stomach. Then I was on the ground. My legs wobbled. As humiliating as it was, my hand didn’t let go of the angel until I steadied myself.
“I promised you a fight, Princess,” he said with a satisfaction. “And I’ve never broken my word.”
As if I should reward him for his rough treatment.
Without a word, I swung my leg toward his crotch while he was still talking shit to humiliate me further. I could see his hard-on. As he’d said, as long as I was around, it never went down. We would see if my kick could get it down!
He sidestepped and blocked my boot. The bastard was
too fast for my liking.
I assaulted him again, deciding his rigid shaft couldn’t be as hard as his other body parts. He would hurt like a bitch if I could hit the mark, and then I would giggle.
He made a show of focusing on protecting his manhood as he ducked my attacks. While he was having fun, he constantly shouted instructions at me. “Good training, but you need more solid footwork. Your speed is fine, but you’re too light against me, so—”
So I’ll give you some footwork! I delivered a few false moves to confuse him—I’d given up on going for his precious manhood. It was hopeless trying to land a blow there anyway. Then moving faster than he thought I could, I swept a leg and hit his calf.
And I got him!
The angel staggered and fell, and I wished the fall had broken at least one of his wings.
I leapt at him and straddled him, determined to keep him down and throw a few punches at his face to create some bruises. He had to pay for the dread he’d caused me to feel in the air.
He dragged me down toward him, seemingly effortlessly, and I fell on him instead of sitting tight on him. For a second, all I heard was the sound of our heartbeats. They were not in sync, though it was difficult to tell what was his and what was mine amid my confusion, anger, and humiliation.
But I wouldn’t stay to distinguish our heartbeats. I had better things to do. I struggled to break his hold and swung an arm toward his nose to wipe off his smug look. He shifted his hips, his left leg moving to pull me under him.
I hung on.
He smirked. “One, two—”
An explosive strength hit me. I blinked, a bit stunned. The next thing I knew, the angel had flipped me over and I was under his weight.
The prince leaned back leisurely, his elbow supporting some of his weight while his other hand pinned both of my wrists over my head.
I pulled a knee up to ram onto his balls but failed to do so. Obviously he’d expected it. His hard-muscled legs pressed against mine, locking onto them.
He gazed down at me, amused. “If you want to be on top, you’ll have to wait for your turn.”
Anger surged in me like a hot iron, but I soon gave up the idea of banging my forehead against his. I had punched his stomach and hurt only my hand. His skull was definitely much thicker than mine. I did not need to test it to find out the truth.
