Fallen Princess

by Alexa B. James

  I could see it in his eyes, the doubt, the thoughts churning.

  “If it’s what you want, too,” I said, my heart stammering in my chest. I was sure it would simply go still and cease beating if he said I was wrong, that he didn’t feel the same. I had endured too much heartbreak to withstand even one more.

  “I… I want you,” he said. “But… You’re the princess, Your Grace. And I’m just a guard. And worse than that, I’m a traitor to your throne.” He stared at the king’s body, slumped on the side of the throne, so close and yet, so forgotten. It wasn’t a person anymore. It was just a thing. Even the blood had slowed, flowing across the marble and down the steps, bathing to platform where we sat. I’d almost forgotten we sat in a pool of my attacker’s blood.

  It didn’t change my mind. If anything, it made me want Gabor more. He had protected me, even knowing it meant the ultimate sacrifice for him. He wasn’t a guard or an assassin. He was a warrior, and he had conquered the enemy. And I wanted to be the prize he sought, the one he had won by defeating evil.

  “You vowed to protect the throne,” I said. “And he was trying to take over the throne after his tenure ended. He was trying to usurp the throne so he could rule again by forcing me to marry him and serve as his magical slave. You weren’t just doing your job. You were doing what’s right, even knowing you’d die for it. If anything, it makes you the bravest, most worthy, most honorable man I’ve ever known.”

  I kissed him with all the passion I felt, and this time, he kissed me back. He cradled my body in his big hands, lifting me closer to him so I didn’t have to reach. His lips were soft, his tongue gentle as it caressed mine, his warmth bringing me back to life. He held me protectively, lovingly, as his mouth took mine, coaxing me toward an arousal I wasn’t sure I could feel again, despite my determined words. I felt safe in his arms, loved, treasured. I’d never felt these things with a man before, at least not our first time. But it felt right with Gabor.

  His thumbs caressed my back, and I buried my hands in his hair. His skilled tongue slow danced with mine, and suddenly, all I could think about was how it had felt between my other lips, how his tongue that was soft and warm had turned rough when he claimed my pussy with it. I ran my hands down his neck, over his broad shoulders in his stiff uniform. At last, I broke the kiss, breathless and hot all over. My lips felt swollen from the length of our kiss, and my pulse was racing. Between my thighs, I could feel every heartbeat throbbing in the soreness left by the king.

  “Take this off,” I said between panting breaths. “It’s not fair. I’m naked and you haven’t even unbuttoned the top button of your uniform.”

  He undid the top button and smiled down at me. “Happy now?”

  “I’ll be happy when you’re wearing as much as me,” I said. “And every inch of your skin is on mine.”

  He gulped and undid his buttons quickly, peeling off his uniform jacket and tossing it aside while I rested back on my hands. When he reached for the bottom hem of his undershirt, I did, too, gripping it and helping him pull it over his head. I stared at the strong, carved lines of his muscles, like marble under his brown skin. His nipples were small and flat and dark, and I reached out, running a fingertip over one of them. I’d forgotten the blood until it left a streak down his chest.

  I hesitated, then smeared my hands down his arms, relishing the iron muscles of his biceps and triceps. Ocelot guards worked out, and it showed in every inch of his chiseled body.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, his voice throaty and choked.

  “Painting my warrior in the blood of his vanquished enemy,” I said, dipping my hand into the pool around us and smearing it down his chest.

  For a second, he didn’t move. Then he pounced, grabbing me and flipping me onto my back in the pool of blood. He shoved his pants down, and I used my feet to push them off as he kicked off his boots. His skin was hot on mine, and the contact made me gasp. The pleasure I took in the sensation of his body on mine was so deep it was almost painful. He held himself over me, his erection as hard as steel and burning into the cool, bare skin of my belly. A shiver of anticipation went through me, and I reached down, wrapping my hand around his shaft.

  His cock was long and full, and unlike his refined, polished exterior or the rest of his smooth, honey-brown skin, it was dark and ridged with veins and somehow wild looking, as if only this part of him belonged to the animal that he was. When I pulled the skin back from the tip, the head of his cock was a slick, angry purple. A tremor of lust raced through me, and heat pooled between my legs as my pussy clenched with longing.

  Gabor lifted his hand from the pool of blood around me and stroked it over his cock until it was coated with thick, glistening red. A shudder of primal, animal desire ran through me, too. I swallowed hard, raising my gaze to his. His eyes glimmered with gold at the edges, burning into mine. I liked knowing he had this wild, carnal side locked away beneath the stony exterior. I liked that I could unlock it, free him for a moment.

  “Fuck me,” I whispered, my throat tight. He lowered his cock to my entrance, and I moaned at the sensation of the bloody head pressed to my bruised, quivering opening.

  His voice came out choked. “Your Grace.”

  “I think you can call me Itzel now,” I managed, rocking against him, coating his tip with my slick as well as the blood of my father.

  “Princess Itzel…”

  A throaty, breathless laugh escaped me. “Just Itzel is fine.”

  “My queen,” he groaned, his hands framing my face, his eyes filled with darkness and a glimmer of golden light as he pushed himself inside me with one slow, powerful thrust.

  “Oh gods,” I gasped, ripples of pleasure racing through my entire body, curling my toes and making me feel as if I could lose control and orgasm this very second.

  “Did I hurt you?” he asked.

  “No,” I lied. It did hurt. I was sore from the king’s treatment, from how long it had lasted, long after I’d been wet from my orgasm with Gabor. But I wasn’t going to let that stop me from being with the man I loved in my deepest heart.

  “What do you need?” he asked, propping him on his elbows and grinding his pelvic bone slowly against my clit until I thought I’d explode. “Let me serve you, my queen.”

  “Don’t treat me like I’m fragile,” I said, wrapping my legs around his hips. “Fuck me as hard as you want.”

  “You feel so good,” he rasped, his smooth voice ragged with desire. “I don’t want to move. I just want to feel you from the inside.” He leaned down and kissed me gently, but I could feel the edge of danger in it, like he was barely holding back from fucking me like a savage. It only fueled the fire inside me, and I nipped at his lip, grinding my hips against his, needing friction so badly I thought I’d scream if he didn’t give it to me. He ran a hand over my breasts, massaging them and painting me with my dead father’s blood while his thick, animal cock stayed buried to the hilt inside me.

  “You’re even more magnificent than I dreamed you’d be,” he said, his eyes glazed as he grazed his thumb back and forth over my wet nipple. “I’ve wanted this for so long, Itzel.”

  “I know,” I whispered. “So take it. I’m yours.”

  His cock throbbed hard inside me, and I squeezed my walls around him, making him shudder and draw a ragged breath. “If you do that again, I’ll lose all control,” he murmured against my lips.

  I could see the glow of his eyes through his thick lashes as he watched my lips, and I knew he was close to the edge. “I want to feel you lose control,” I whispered into his mouth, clenching around his shaft again. “I want you to make me scream when you cum inside my pussy.”

  He growled low in his throat, that sound that was somewhere between a purr and a warning. Then he gripped my hip and pulled back so only his tip was inside me before slamming his raw cock deep into me again. I arched up, relief and pleasure wrapping around my body as he began to thrust into me in a rough, dominating rhythm. He kept me balanced
on the knife edge between pleasure and pain, drawing moans of pure bliss from my lips to echo through the stone hallway.

  I liked that he didn’t treat me as something broken or traumatized. He fucked me hard and deep, pinching my nipples to make me whimper, pinning me to the floor and driving his bloody cock into me until so hard we slid in the blood, eventually slipping off the top step, still locked together in the throes of passion.

  “Let me on top,” I demanded, pushing at his chest.

  “Not until you come,” he growled, his eyes flashing dangerously with his ocelot.

  “Make me.”

  He thrust his cock deep into me and stilled, grinding his pelvic bone against my clit again. “You like that, don’t you?” he asked. “I could feel you pulsing around me when I did it.”

  “Oh gods, yes,” I gasped, clawing at his shoulders as he rubbed rhythmically until I had no choice but to obey his rough command. My walls clenched around him, and he groaned as my sheath fluttered in helpless waves of pleasure, squeezing his cock until he exploded, too. Hot cum gushed into me, and a second wave of pleasure washed over me, pulling me under as I came again, my broken screams ricocheting off the ceiling high above.

  Gabor lowered himself to kiss me, then drew a line of blood down the center of my face. “You’re so fucking hot all naked and bloody,” he murmured, kissing me again.

  “You’re one to talk,” I said, drawing streaks of war paint on his face.

  His cock throbbed inside me, and I twisted around under him, sliding in the blood. “Now let me on top.”

  “You’re ready for more?”

  “You said I could be on top if I came,” I said, grinning up at him. “Now you get to be on the hard, cold marble.”

  He grabbed me around the waist and flipped us over. My skin prickled with cold as the blood ran down my back, but I threw my damp hair back and straddled him as he sat on the bottom step, leaning back on his elbows on the next one.

  “I like you on your back,” he growled. “But this view might be even better.”

  “It must be,” I teased, “if you’re ready to go again already.”

  “For you, my queen, I’m always ready.”

  I didn’t want it to end, but I knew it had to. Not yet, though. Not even when I had to clench my teeth against the raw pain as he penetrated me again. I rode him slow and deep, paying attention to the way my magic felt as it began to recharge; the roughness of his hands on my skin; the stretch of my pussy wrapped tight around his ridged cock; the cold, unforgiving, slick marble under my knees; the dirty, wet sound of our sex as he drove to the hilt inside me with each thrust. At last, I couldn’t hold back, and I came again, the throne room echoing with my hoarse cries for the last time.

  Gabor pulled me to him afterwards, and for a while, we lay tangled together, sweat and blood and cum drying on our bodies. At last, light began to filter in through the stained class skylights overhead. I was bone tired from the endless, insane night I’d just endured, but I knew it wasn’t over. The body of our dead king lay cold beside the throne.

  “What are we going to do?” I asked at last, lifting my head from where I’d lain on Gabor’s chest for the past hour or so.

  “I’ll turn myself in,” he said, wiping a bloody finger gently across my forehead. He popped it in his mouth, licking off the blood. I fought the urge to ask if he’d done that before, if he’d eaten his kills. I knew now that shifters had different rules, though. It wasn’t fair to judge them based on the human customs and moral code I’d grown up with.

  “We can run away together,” I suggested.

  He ran his hands up and down my upper arms as if to warm me. Then he slowed, wiping his thumb over the six moon-white marks my other mates had given me. “You didn’t get a new one,” he said quietly.

  “Did you get one?” I asked, already knowing he hadn’t. It would have marked us both.

  “No,” he said. “I thought maybe… Everyone you’ve been with got one.”

  “I thought of that, too,” I said. “I wondered if it would mark anyone I ever fucked, no matter who they were.”

  “You should find them,” he said. “They’re probably looking for you.”

  I snorted, though pain twisted in my heart as if I could feel Camila’s knife of betrayal all over again. “I doubt that.”

  “You know how seldom this room is used,” he said. “That’s the only reason they haven’t found us yet.”

  “They love Camila,” I pointed out, my voice bitter.

  “I did, too,” he said quietly. “Until I tasted you.”

  Heat shimmered in his voice as he added those words, and my nipples hardened instantly. I was pretty sure I could have gone again already, but maybe I was simply blocking out the trauma of the night and clinging to something that was already slipping away.

  “You think if they were with me again, I could break the amulet’s spell?” I asked. My mother had told me that the amulet’s curse was broken when she met her True Mate. They’d already been my True Mates, though, and it had still worked on them. Still, if she could do it, I had hope that I could, too. Somehow, I could bring them back.

  “I know you could,” Gabor said. “That’s why they’ve kept them from even seeing you. But you should go to them. You should have your True Mates. You’ll need them.”

  I reached up and laid a palm on his cheek, stroking it with my thumb. “What about you?”

  “I’m not your True Mate,” he said gently. He took my hand, kissing my palm before lowering it from his cheek. “I’m honored to have had one night with you, Your Majesty. I’ll never forget this as long as I live. But you have mates, and I’m not among them.”

  The sadness in his voice, the longing, made my heart cave in on itself. “I don’t care,” I said. “That True Mate stuff doesn’t matter to me.”

  “It should.”

  “Okay, I’m lying,” I said. “It does matter—but not more than what my own heart tells me. You matter just as much as they do, Gabor. I need you just as much. I don’t need a mark on my arm to know I love you or one on yours to know you love me.”

  “I do,” he said, brushing his lips over mine. “But I won’t have anyone else pay for what I’ve done. I’ll clean up this mess, and you’ll go back to your mates, and I’ll tell Camila what happened.”

  “No,” I cried, flinging my arms around him. “You can’t, Gabor. They’ll kill you. We can—we can hide the body.” I remembered all those rumors about how the king and his guards made bodies disappear. I didn’t care anymore, though. If it was the only way to get rid of the evidence, I’d give him my blessing to eat the body. Hell, I’d help him if it meant he didn’t have to die, that I wouldn’t lose him after this one terrible, beautiful night.

  He smiled a little and pried my arms loose. “The king’s disappearance wouldn’t go unnoticed,” he said. “They’ll keep digging until they find who’s responsible, and if they can’t, they’ll find someone suspicious to blame.”

  “Me,” I said quietly, realization dawning. “You’re doing this because you think they’ll blame me.”

  “You aren’t responsible,” he said, smoothing my hair back. “Of course I can’t let them blame you. I can’t let anyone take the fall for something I did.”

  I was so desperate I would have taken the fall for him if it meant we could be together. But no matter which one of us confessed, we wouldn’t end up together. He was right. This could never be. We’d have this one night, and that was all. He would be executed, and I would have only the memory for the rest of my life.

  My throat closed up at the thought of losing him so soon. It was all I could do not to throw my arms around him and beg him to stay, the way I’d done once before, when Camila had broken my heart. The way I’d wanted to in the dungeon. Why did he always have to leave? When would it be the right time for us?

  Fourteen

  “Gabor,” I said slowly, still holding onto him, not ready to let go yet. “Do you believe I have a legitimate
claim to the throne?”

  That frown tugged his brows together again. “What do you mean?”

  “My father made the case for it,” I said. “Part of what he said was a lie, but not all of it. I’m not his daughter, and I really was born a shifter. I have ocelot blood on my mother’s side. Does that give me a claim, even though she was the lowest ranking ocelot?”

  He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Technically, all ocelots are nobles,” he said. “Even if she didn’t have a title before she married your father, he gave her the title of queen. And she’s your mother, so…”

  “He was trying to put me on the throne, so I must have some kind of claim, right?” I asked, excited that it was Gabor with me now. He knew more about this stuff than I did, since I’d been raised basically in the dark about shifter politics.

  “You were born a princess, and if you’re an ocelot, then yes,” he said. “But I’m afraid you wouldn’t have as much as Camila. She’s a full-blooded ocelot, for one, and is part of the royal bloodline.”

  “And she’s the oldest child,” I said.

  “That wouldn’t mean much,” he said. “Having more than one child is almost unheard of for ocelot couples, and if they did, the second one would be human, so they couldn’t take the throne.”

  “Right, of course,” I said. “So this has never happened before. We don’t really know if I have a better claim than any other titled nobility. King Ocelot was going to put me on the throne, and no one was going to contradict him because he’s the king and everyone is terrified of him.”

  “Camila could have challenged it,” Gabor said.

  “But most people don’t like her any more than they liked him, so they wouldn’t get behind her,” I said. “She’d have no power. She would’ve had to accept it.”

  He nodded. “That’s not really relevant now, though.”

  “But whether I’m a legitimate heir with a claim to the throne is relevant.” In my excitement, I grabbed his hand in mine before I remembered my broken fingers and gasped aloud.