“You’re making it sound more noble than it is,” I muttered.
I’d come home to keep my murderous father from perpetuating crimes against those he ruled, and to keep my sister from following in his footsteps. But anyone would have done the same. It wasn’t like I deserved a medal. It so obviously needed to be done that I didn’t even know if it could be called a choice. It wasn’t like I’d woken up one day decided it sounded fun to overthrow a monarchy. It had to be done, and I seemed to be burdened with the task.
“You saw how many people disagree,” she said. “This has been brewing for years. Now we have a leader. I’m still looking for your army. I’ve found two of them already. The Lion Prince and the Cheetah Knight are safe and have been told to remain where they are.”
I wanted to argue, to say I needed them with me. Their presence would have comforted me, kept me sane. But I knew Magda and her family were already eating less so that they could feed us without buying extra food.
“The king has spies everywhere,” her husband had said the first night we tried to refuse the food after realizing what they were doing. “We can’t buy even an extra orange. Not when we have the queen to protect.”
“We’re not starving,” Magda had said. “And neither will you. Not under our watch.”
The humans knew if they refused the food and pretended they weren’t hungry, we wouldn’t eat either, so we all had a little each meal. I couldn’t bring in two more men, two men who would take food from this generous family and probably have less to eat than they did now, with whatever family was hiding them.
“There are hundreds of humans who support you,” Magda said now. “And a very sophisticated underground network with coded communications. I send messages through my flowers. Which, I might say, are doing quite well. Almost too well. You must have a green thumb.” She gave me a look, raising a brow as if to coax an answer from me. It was all I could do to hold back a blush that wanted to creep into my cheeks. I’d thought the flowers looked more and more lush each day, but I’d dismissed it. I wasn’t exactly a flower expert, and I didn’t know what kind of fertilizers they might be using.
“You know, my husband does the same thing,” she said. “When he has trouble sleeping, he goes down to the shop and tinkers with the flowers. I guess I should thank you for keeping him in my bed all night. He seems almost a young man again. I suspect he’s taken a fancy to you, Your Grace, but I’m getting the benefit.”
Her eyes shone with merriment, and I was glad she was secure enough in her marriage to find a potential crush amusing. Some women would have thrown me out on my ass if they thought their husbands were lusting after me.
“Oh, I don’t think it’s that,” I assured her. “The thrill, the danger, it can be an aphrodisiac. Seeing you do something brave for our country probably reminded him why he found you so attractive to begin with.”
I couldn’t exactly tell her the truth. I should have known. The flowers, their renewed sex life… It was my fucking magic. I remembered what had happened in lynx territory. When I got worked up, my magic amped up, and it affected everyone nearby. Which meant Magda’s husband was extra horny. And we hadn’t touched the flowers, but maybe my magic was making them horny, too. Or whatever made flowers grow to the size of saucers and overflow their vases and pots.
“Well, I have you to thank for it, whatever it is,” Magda said, finishing her tea and setting the cup down. “But back to the matter at hand.”
“Right,” I said, relieved to move on to safer subjects. “You pass flowers with messages.”
“Others send through other means of communication,” she said. “But yes, I send flowers, since that won’t raise a bit of suspicion. That’s how I found out who had your African companions.” She looked so proud I couldn’t help but smile at her.
“What if someone intercepts a bouquet and gets the note?” I asked, suddenly alarmed by that thought. After everything she’d done for us, I couldn’t bear the thought of her being caught by vicious ocelot guards.
She laughed, pushing the last biscuit of our afternoon tea toward me. “There’s no note,” she said. “The flowers are their own message. The morning after I found you here, I sent every blue rose I owned out into the city.”
“The Queen’s Rose,” I said, pushing the biscuit back. My mother had loved the genetically modified blue roses so much that my father had ordered them named in her honor.
“That’s right,” Magda said, sliding the plate back to the middle of the table. “And everyone who got one in a bouquet plucked them out and gave them to someone else, passing on the message that you were alive. Giving them hope.”
“But how did you find out about Sir Kenosi and Prince Kwame?” I asked.
“We all have ways to communicate,” she said. “And I pick up gossip in the shop. For instance, I heard just today that someone broke into the royal stables last night and stole two of the king’s finest horses.”
“Tadeu,” I said, my heart leaping so hard in my chest that I nearly lurched out of my chair. I hadn’t realized how happy that news would make me until I heard it. He’d been beastly to me, but he was still my mate. I still loved him as much as any of the others.
“I’d better get back down to work,” Magda said. “I’ll let you know if I hear anything else whispered on the wind.”
“Take this,” I said, breaking the biscuit in half and handing half to her. “And thank you. Thank you so much. For everything.” I wrapped my arms around her and hugged her hard, so grateful for the hope she’d given me that I could have cried. I couldn’t wait to get back to Jetsun, to share the good news.
“This is great news,” he agreed a few minutes later, when I’d relayed the story. “We can get a message to Camila, so when she’s ready to negotiate for the last amulets, she can send some sort of signal.”
“We need to find the other two,” I said, a knife of pain sliding between my ribs at the thought of my first two lovers, Lord Balam and Shadow. No word from them after a week. Had they been caught in the crowd, in the fire? If so, had their cats been able to heal them?
I couldn’t bear the other possibilities.
“They’d want us to go forward with or without them,” Jetsun said gently.
“I know,” I said. “I just can’t.”
“There has to be something we can do,” Jetsun said. “You said you snuck out a lot growing up. Could we move around after curfew?”
I had snuck out, but back then my biggest concern was being grounded in my room for a week. If Gabor caught me now, he wouldn’t throw my drunk ass over his shoulder and carry me home the way he had in my very first memory of him. Usually, they’d just let me find my own way home.
Now, if the guards saw me on the street, they’d capture me, and if we fought back, they’d have no qualms about killing whoever was with me. That was the part I couldn’t risk. I’d already lost too many of my mates too many times. Loving so many men left me vulnerable not just to attack, but to anyone attacking them.
If they caught me, they wouldn’t kill me. They’d bring me to the king, who would make an example of me in a very public trial. Father would probably even let foreign news crews in for that. He’d want to show the world what the Ocelot Nation did to traitors. He’d want to show the people of our nation what happened if they rebelled. And he’d want them to know their figurehead was gone when he killed me.
“No,” I said. “We can’t risk it.”
“Underground tunnels?” Jetsun asked.
“Not through the city,” I said. “Only under the palace itself. And you can bet they’re guarded by a dozen of the most ruthless, heavily armed men you’ve ever met.”
“There’s one thing we haven’t done,” Jetsun said, scratching the back of his neck and staring down at his feet.
For a second, I didn’t answer. We never talked about what we did at night. It was like, if it happened in the dark and was never brought to light, that it didn’t happen at all.
“Wh
at’s that?” I asked carefully.
“We can stop time,” he said. “And look while everyone else is… On pause.”
That was one line we’d never crossed since the heat, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to cross it again. We did other things. Mostly, Jetsun did them to me, but sometimes, he let me return the favor. Still, somehow it was possible to convince myself there could be redemption for us still, as long as we left that one line uncrossed.
“Maybe I can ask Lilith for help,” I said. “She said I could call on her in emergencies. And my mother. She was the High Priestess before me. Maybe she can help find them or show me how to use my magic to do it.”
“You should probably be training with her, anyway,” he said. “You have the ability to go back and forth between worlds, but you’ve barely scratched the surface of that power.”
“Been kinda busy,” I pointed out. “But I’ll start using the days for that. If I can face her.”
Shame burned through me anew at the realization that she’d surely ask about Jetsun. His father would want to hear about his son, too. And I’d have to pretend we were getting along famously, all the while knowing what I’d done to his son when I showed up in the midst of my first heat. And that was if he didn’t already know what we’d done. He was a god, too, after all. He might be able to see this world, even if my mother couldn’t.
Still, if it would reunite me with my mates, I would do it. I’d do anything. Even what Jetsun had suggested, though I’d try everything else before that.
“I’ll guard over your earthly body while you’re training with her,” Jetsun said.
“Are you sure that’s safe?” I asked. “What if the guards find us while I’m in the spirit world?”
“If I hear any commotion downstairs, I’ll come through and get you,” he promised. After a second, his cheeks colored, and he caught my eye. “And you’ll be safe from me, too. I won’t do anything to you while you’re gone.”
“I wasn’t thinking that,” I said quickly. I hadn’t been, but then again, he had fucked me while I was asleep in the cave. Surely it would be tempting to see me lying there all day, knowing I’d be none the wiser if he couldn’t resist.
“Good,” he said, looking relieved. “I would never do that. I promise.”
“I know,” I said, feeling acutely uncomfortable. In fact, the conversation made things awkward during the day, though they’d been easy before now. With all that tension in the air, I was relieved to have an escape, and I decided to go into the Spirit World today instead of waiting.
Lilith agreed to let me observe her using her magic, so I spent the day with her, working up the courage to see my mother when the time came that it could no longer be avoided. That night, as we lay behind the counter in the flower shop, I told Jetsun about my travels and how Lilith said I could use my magic to summon my mates. He didn’t bring up my cowardice in avoiding our parents. He was doing the same thing, after all. As a demigod, he was also capable of traveling through the veil, but he chose not to.
When I finished telling him, I realized it was the first time we’d talked after the lights went out. We seemed to have blurred the lines of what was allowed earlier, when we came close to acknowledging our relationship during the day. Now, we’d brought ourselves into the dark instead of pretending that once the lights went out, we were someone else, a pair of lovers camping out. A pang of regret went through me when I realized this might be the end of our nightly connection, even though I knew it was right, that it was better this way. Still, my body craved his touch, and my mind craved the oblivion it gave me.
We lapsed into silence for a while, and then I turned onto my side, rolling away from him and closing my eyes, telling myself this was for the best. It was. It had to be.
Still, when Jetsun turned the other way, his back toward mine on the narrow bedrolls Magda had passed down to us each night, my heart felt hollow. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so alone. I’d always had Camila, and when she’d turned on me, I’d had my whole crew behind me. Now, I was alone except for this man I wanted so much it hurt, a man I had to stay away from, if not for my sake then for his. That was the only thing that held me back from turning and wrapping my arms around him. I didn’t want him to feel the shame I was feeling anymore. I wanted him to feel good about himself, not live with the self-loathing of knowing he was too weak to resist his own sister.
I woke to the sensation of his warm, wet tongue licking my pussy. I’d been dreaming, and I could almost believe this was part of it. Since this was the only way we could be together, pretending we weren’t, I played along for both our sakes. My hips rose, my knees opening for him, and he continued licking and sucking gently at my clit, moaning into me and sending me spiraling with pleasure.
“Deeper,” I moaned, grabbing his head and pulling him in.
On my command, he pushed his long, rough tongue inside me and began to fuck me. I cried out his name, arching up, pulling him deeper while my thighs spread wider and my pelvis rocked against his face. I could feel a creaking in the wooden floorboards, and then the soft, damp press of petals under my back, as if I were lying in a field of clover instead of the hard wooden floor. Around us, I saw gold dust swirling and spiraling, dancing with streaks of blue magic. Flowers burst from buds into full bloom, opening as I opened for Jetsun, letting him consume my center like a bee sucking the nectar from a flower.
Bliss washed over me as I came, and for a moment, nothing existed but the magic of his mouth joining my core, pushing me over the edge.
Suddenly, the deafening sound of shattering glass broke my pleasure trance. I held back a scream of surprise and scrambled upright. The shop was filled with a faint glimmer of blue magic, but not enough to see who had broken the window at the front of the shop. One second, I heard footsteps crunching on the glass, and the next, I was pushed roughly onto my back and penetrated.
I was too shocked to scream, my whole body tensing up as someone I could barely see buried his long cock to the hilt inside me. My pussy was too wet to offer any resistance, but my walls clenched tight around his hot shaft as he loomed above me, breathing hard and grinding deep into my core. He drew back before plowing into me again, burying himself so deep my clit was crushed against his pelvic bone. My sheath clutched him in a stranglehold, and his cock throbbed thicker in response, sending a pulse of arousal straight to my clit.
The shock of the attack broke, and I cried out, bucking to free myself. He clamped a hand over my mouth to stifle my cries as he began pumping into me hard and fast. I scratched at his hand, trying to pry it from my mouth. He growled again, continuing to force his bare cock into my slick, clenched pussy with a sharp, punishing thrusts. He grabbed both my hands and pinned them above my head with an iron grip around my wrists before continuing to pound into me while I kicked and bucked, trying to get my knees in front of him so I could throw him off. But he was firmly between my thighs, refusing to be deterred by my frantic thrashing or stifled screams behind his hand.
I bit his fingers, but he only grunted and thrust into me harder, crushing me into the floor with each brutal stroke, using my wild writhing to hit new angles inside me that made me gasp as little sparks of magic lit up inside me. As his blood spread across my tongue, my slick increased, coating his cock. Humiliation burned through me at my body’s response, and I increased my attempts to escape. The harder I fought, yanking at my hands and biting, bucking and kicking, the harder he fucked me. A low growl built in his throat with each thrust, and at last, he drove deep into me and held, his cock thickening as hot cum gushed into my pulsing center.
“My turn,” growled a familiar voice, and the man above me pulled out, his seed spilling down my ass and onto the floor under me.
The next moment, another figure loomed over me.
“What the fuck,” I managed before he forced his thick cock into my dripping pussy.
“That is what we’re doing, Princess,” Lord Balam said, thrusting into me with quick, rough jabs. His coc
k made slicking noises in the wetness his companion had left—Shadow, I assumed.
“You could have warned me.” I pushed up onto my hands, my fingers sinking into the carpet of leaves under me. Lord Balam sat back on his knees and pulled my legs around his waist, never breaking his rhythm. He held me around the waist, pumping his full, huge cock into me until I thought I’d burst. I let my head fall back, my hair spilling behind me. I could hear Jetsun breathing hard behind me, and a second later, he moved in closer, his hands cradling my head, his fingers massaging my scalp as Lord Balam plundered the painful places inside me that I loved him to hit.
“Gods, I’ve missed tearing into this tight little cunt,” Lord Balam growled, driving hard and fast into me, burying himself deep and jerking my hips down onto him. “Come for me, Princess.”
I let go, letting ecstasy take over my body as I came again, Lord Balam’s cum spurting into me with each pulse of my walls around his girth. At last, he and Jetsun lowered me to the floor, Jetsun’s hands still cradling my head and Lord Balam’s arm still around my waist and his cock buried inside me.
“Fuck, that was almost worth going without for a week,” Lord Balam said, kissing me hard on the mouth.
“I missed you, too,” I said, a smile finding my lips for the first time in days. They were safe. My mates were all alive and okay.
“And you,” I said, turning to Shadow. He may not be the type to say much, but he’d shown me how much he missed me when he couldn’t even wait to say two words to me before fucking me. That was the way he showed he missed me, the way he showed love. I would have liked to know it was him and not some stranger coming in off the street, but now that I knew it was him…
Well, it was hot that he couldn’t wait to get inside me. I should have known, anyway. Jetsun would have fought anyone else, defended me to the death. His shifter senses and superior night vision had let him know it was my mate, that it was someone I’d want fucking me, even if I didn’t know it.
Fallen Princess Page 10
