“If you don’t like it, then don’t watch,” I said to Gabor. “Yes, sex with him is painful. That doesn’t mean I don’t like it.”
“It didn’t look like it.”
“Well, he’s my mate,” I said. “What am I supposed to do?”
“Let him serve you,” Gabor said, picking up one of my shoes between his cuffs and handing it back to me.
“How would that be fair to him?”
“Believe me, it’s enough.”
“I’m with Gabor on this one,” Jetsun said quietly. “I don’t mind sharing you, but I could go without ever seeing Tadeu torture-fuck you again.”
“Seriously?” I asked. “And would you be okay with it if we could never have regular sex again?”
“You don’t owe your body to anyone,” Gabor said. “Especially not someone who talks to you like that. He’s disrespectful. You’re my queen, but you’re his mate. He shouldn’t just serve you. He should worship every hair on your head and every inch of your body every moment of the day.”
“Because you would do that,” I whispered, realizing where this came from. He was hurt, frustrated, jealous of the fact that he wasn’t my True Mate even though he had loved me longer than any of them. I wished I could have chosen who my True Mates would be, but it hadn’t been up to me. All I could do was choose him now. I stood on tiptoes and looped an arm around his neck, pulling him down to kiss him gently.
“Anyone would,” he murmured, his eyes smoldering with a love so pure it ached in a place behind my sternum, even deeper than my heart.
“I would do the same for you,” I said, brushing my nose across his. “I will do the same. Understand?”
He pressed his forehead to mine, his jaw working back and forth, and then he gave the slightest nod. After a long moment, I realized the others were watching, that they didn’t know about Gabor and me. At least not everything.
I turned to them, feeling strangely shy. Gabor wasn’t my mate, and I wasn’t sure how they’d react to our relationship, which had developed outside my relationship with all the others, while they’d been in love with someone else.
“I was with someone else while we were apart,” I admitted.
“We know,” Shadow said, giving me a funny look. “We saw you in the arena.”
“Yeah, but a dozen guards did the same thing,” I said, feeling myself flush at having to remind them I’d been tasted by lots of men, not just Gabor.
“Why did the king do that?” Jetsun asked, cocking his head. “It seems an odd way to announce your betrothal.”
“What you didn’t hear from up in the stands was the king telling the guards I was the High Priestess,” I said. “So, at least a dozen of them know.”
“They all know,” Gabor said.
We turned to look at him.
“Guards don’t have families,” he said. “We are each other’s family. We’re the only people who can possibly understand what it’s like. We don’t keep secrets.”
“We’ll just have to make sure they keep that information confidential,” I said, understanding then that I couldn’t possibly disband or even reduce the guard presence. They needed each other even more than we needed them. What I’d said to them upstairs would be the extent of the changes. I’d let them decide if they wanted to leave, and those who stayed would be allowed to reconnect with their families and make new ones, receive help if they needed it, and not be forced to be weapons for the throne.
And Gabor… He was a guard, too. I’d have to let him keep being one, even if he chose to be with me. I couldn’t take him from his family, not after my father had taken him from the first one.
“Those guards aren’t your mates,” Shadow pointed out. “It’s been obvious to me that you and Gabor love each other since the day I saw you together, when we escaped the Panther Nation on that plane. I already suspected he’d be your last mate.”
“One from each nation,” Jetsun said. “Except the Lynx Commonwealth. I wonder if there’s someone there waiting for his True Mate.”
“He’s not my True Mate,” I said, holding up a hand to stop their speculation.
“Really?” Jetsun asked, cocking his head and studying Gabor. “I thought that’s why Camila’s spell on him was broken when he tasted you. That’s how we knew what would break the curse today. Your mother said the same. That you could break a spell of the ocelot amulet when you mated with a True Mate.”
I turned to Gabor. “Oh, yeah,” I said. “If you loved Camila, why did you do that in the arena?”
“Eat you out?” he asked, his usual unreadable expression and lack of inflection making the words somehow dirtier.
Just remembering how he’d eaten my pussy, with such yearning and passion, made me knees clench together. I didn’t know if I’d ever been wanted so much. “Yes.”
“Your magic overwhelmed me,” he said. “Whatever I felt for her was forgotten. And even when I loved her, my attraction to you was still there.”
“For me, too,” I said, humbled by his words. I linked my fingers through the chain on his cuffs and faced my other mates. “Gabor is not my True Mate, but he’s my chosen mate. I love him. We fucked. If you fucked Camila—Honestly, I don’t want to know. I know it wasn’t your fault, and I forgive you for anything you did. I hope you’ll forgive me for loving a man who isn’t my mate, and for wanting to be with him again.” I turned to Gabor, my throat tight and my pulse racing. “If you’ll have me. If you want me.”
“I don’t just want to be with you again,” he said quietly. “I want to be with you always.”
My heart welled with love, and I leaned into him, laying my head on his chest.
“If he makes you happy, you should have him,” Shadow said. “And if Tadeu really makes you happy, and you like what he does to you… Then I don’t have a problem with watching him fuck you. I know I attacked him before, but he loves you as much as we do. I saw that when we were with Camila. He wanted to get out of it more than anyone.”
“Really?”
He nodded. “I told you I wanted you to be happy, and if having him as your mate does that, then you should do it. It’s not anyone’s place to judge what you like. If he makes sure you cum, then I’ll take your word that you like it.”
His fierce green eyes burned into mine, and I shivered at the memory of the night in his trailer, when he’d chained me to his bedframe and fucked me over and over in his man form, his panther form, and every form in between. He’d kept going until I’d thought I would die, and I’d begged him to stop, but he couldn’t stop because he’d been mad with the drug we gave him, and he’d kept going until something inside me broke. Somewhere during that endless night, the pain began to feel like pleasure, and I couldn’t tell one from the other. I begged him to keep going, then, and he did, dragging me to a dark place of madness that only he and I had ever gone.
I’d begged for the pain, for him to bite me with his panther teeth, and while blood ran down my body and I screamed myself hoarse with pain and terror, he came inside me, and I came, too.
Now I nodded, taking his hand and pulling him closer. Tadeu had started to stir, and after a moment between my chosen mate and my panther mate, I pulled away. I knew what came next, and though I was a bit hesitant to use magic on something on Gabor’s body, I knew I couldn’t get the cuffs off any other way. Mine had blocked my magic, so I couldn’t get them off without charging it, apparently with orgasm. Gabor’s only blocked his magic, so I was able to use my own.
“Do you trust me?” I asked, gripping the chain that linked the cuffs together.
“Yes, Your Grace.”
I closed my eyes and focused my powers. At first, I felt them lick at the tender flesh between my thighs, as if tentatively checking whether I needed more. I refocused, channeling the magic to my hands. Lilith had taught me that most magic was done with the hands, which explained the cuffs. Even if my magic came from other sources, it was expressed through my hands, at least when I was using it intentionally.
>
After a few minutes, I felt a rush of magic flow out my fingertips, and the cuffs clattered to the floor. I hid a smile of pride and stepped back.
“Well, that’s done,” I said. “What now?”
Seventeen
We waited in the small room, hoping the others might find a way to escape Camila and come down, but no one did. I shared the story of the mostly uneventful last month with my mates, whispering the last parts, where Gabor had killed the king.
They told me about their month with Camila, in which she had treated them like servants and lorded their love over them exactly as I’d known she would. They had grown to resent her even though they still loved her, but it wasn’t until I blasted the arena that they’d seen a way to escape the stranglehold of their love for her. If Gabor had done it, they thought, so could they. My magic hadn’t broken the curse, but maybe it had loosened its hold enough for them to realize loving Camila wasn’t all they wanted, that they’d rather follow fate than their blind hearts.
“And all that stuff you said in her room today,” I asked at last. “That was just for show?”
“If she knew we were unhappy, she’d reel us back in,” Tadeu said. “She’s way too fucking good at that.”
“Don’t I know it,” I muttered. “I fell for that shit all my life.”
“It’s hard to explain,” Jetsun said. “But we genuinely loved her, even if we’d rather not. That pulled us back to her if she was ever hurting or wanting us.”
“We didn’t want to tip her off today,” Shadow said. “In case any of us got a chance to be alone with you again.”
“The worst case would have been if she’d ordered the guards to kill you when you walked into her room,” Jetsun said. “But we were prepared to fight them if that happened. Even with the love curse on us, we couldn’t hurt our True Mate.”
“She should have put a hate curse on me,” I said, glancing at Tadeu, who still seemed to halfway hate me. “That might have worked better than forcing you to love her.”
“Probably,” Tadeu said, seeing my eyes on him. “Now, you gonna let me fuck you now or what? I still love that frigid bitch.” He pulled up his sleeve to reveal his True Mate mark, which was still there but muted, no longer shining like the moon as it had before his love for me had been shadowed by Camila’s curse.
I glanced at Gabor and then away. “Maybe you should let the two of us have a moment alone,” I said. “I want his spell broken, too. It’s not fair to make him keep loving Camila against his will.”
“What if he gets carried away?” Gabor asked, glaring at Tadeu with such coldness I was surprised his balls didn’t shrivel up and fall off from frostbite. And though Tadeu was too cocky to show that he was intimidated, I saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed hard.
“I’ll stay,” Shadow said.
“If she’s upset when she comes out of this room…” Gabor said. He didn’t finish the threat but turned and left the room. It was enough.
Jetsun turned back, giving me one last look. “Are you sure about this, Itzel?”
“I’m sure.”
He left, and Shadow laid me down on the small table in the room and prepped me, and Tadeu fucked me to completion this time, pounding into me hard until I couldn’t hold back my screams. Then he came, watching my face and holding me down so I couldn’t squirm away as he forced his cum past my depths and my pain past the breaking point. Then I came, too, and when he slid out of my wrecked body, my arm was burning, and his mark was glowing again.
He stood over me as I lay on the table, trying to get my ragged breathing under control. He pulled my knees apart, staring down at my aching pussy. “Look how good I wrecked her,” he said. “Gods, seeing that messy cream pie makes me want to fuck her again. Should I fuck her again, Shadow?”
“No,” I gasped, almost choking on a sob as I struggled to close my knees. “Please.”
His cock was still hard, little drops of white cum still leaking from the tip and trickling down his rust-colored shaft. It towered over me, the size making me shudder with fear as he stood there gloating. “I could fuck you again,” he said, rubbing the base of his shaft against my pussy, the scorching cold of it terrifying even as a throb went through my clit at his words. “I could listen to you scream all day, baby. When I see how much it hurts you, I can’t help myself, though. I lose all control. I’ve never come so hard in my life.”
I bit back a sob, swallowing down the fear. He was my mate. He wouldn’t hurt me.
In the silence, I heard a soft click. It echoed through the stone room with an eerie finality, like someone pulling a pin from a grenade. I blinked back my tears, struggling to sit up. Tadeu tensed.
“She said she was done,” Gabor said, his voice quiet and so icy it made goosebumps rise along my arms and the hair on the back of my neck prickle.
Tadeu released me, raising his hands. “Calm the fuck down,” he snapped. “I was just playing with her. We’re just having a little fun, aren’t we, Itzel?”
I nodded, sitting up and wiping my face with trembling hands. Fuck, but I was scared he’d want to go again. I already knew my insides would feel like they’d been kicked by a horse for the next three days.
Gabor stood behind Tadeu, so he’d been entirely obscured from view by the giant tiger when I was on my back. Now I could see him standing there, a gun held to the back of Tadeu’s head, his eyes sharp and fierce, for once burning with intensity instead of blank as a stone wall.
“Now you’ve had your fun,” he said to Tadeu. “And it’s time for you to get on your knees and serve the queen.”
“What?” Tadeu growled, glowering and trying to turn to see Gabor.
The guard shoved the muzzle of the gun against his head, stopping him from turning.
“You heard me,” Gabor said in that same quiet, intense voice that dripped with icy hatred. “You made a mess of Her Grace, and now it’s time to clean it up.”
“But—”
Gabor’s finger slid onto the trigger. I knew I should stop him, but something held me back. Maybe some part of me hated Tadeu as much as some part of him hated me, just as we both loved each other in our own twisted way.
“I would think very hard about the next words that come out of your mouth,” Gabor said.
He didn’t have to add, Because they might be your last. Everyone in the room could feel Gabor’s intensity, shimmering around us almost as palpably as my magic had.
I knew even I couldn’t stop him if Tadeu pushed him further. He wasn’t my puppet. He had his own agency, his own ideas. In Gabor’s mind, what was right always prevailed over words and desires. That was why I had loved seeing him lose control with me, knowing how much it took to break down his iron walls, his self-discipline and sense of duty and honor. Knowing that I had the power to free him of those constraints made me feel like the most important person in the world to him. He needed me. Only I could set him free, if only for a few hours at a time.
And only he loved me enough to do what he believed was right, even if it meant killing my True Mate, the love chosen for me by fate itself. He would do it, even if it meant I would hate him for it. He would do it because he believed it was the right thing to do, that he was protecting me, that it was best for me. He would always do what was best for me, even if it wasn’t best for him, even if I didn’t want him to because of some self-destructive urge or guilty conscience. In the end, he would tell himself, I was better off, even if I never forgave him and we would never be together again.
“Do it,” I whispered to Tadeu.
He glared at me, anger burning hot in his eyes as he slowly lowered himself to his knees. It was nothing compared to the ice in Gabor’s eyes, an ice I knew ran through his veins and had frozen his heart for too many years. It only thawed for me, only beat for me. He would love nothing more than for Tadeu to disobey, to give him a reason to kill him so he couldn’t hurt me again. I could see that, and I knew we’d have to work this out over time. It wasn’t going away any
time soon. Gabor was a protector, a guard, and he was going to protect me, from outsiders and my mates if he had to and even from myself.
Tadeu spread my thighs and began to lick up the mess he’d made. As I watched him licking and sucking the creamy drops from my pussy, I felt a thrill of raw eroticism. There was something so incredibly dirty about seeing him lap up his own cum, and more than that, Shadow’s and whatever was left of Jetsun’s from earlier. I was too sore to even think about going again, but I still found myself squirming with arousal just watching him on his knees, his broad tongue obediently stroking my pussy while Gabor stood over him like a soldier at an execution, a gun pointed at the back of Tadeu’s head to make sure he did a good job and didn’t hurt me again.
When he’d licked every drop of cum from my thighs, pussy lips, and folds, Tadeu sat back on his heels, humiliation and anger burning in his eyes. “Clean enough for you, Your Majesty?” he asked, his voice bitter.
Gabor pushed the gun against the back of his head again, and Tadeu went rigid, but he didn’t strike back.
“Make her come,” Gabor commanded in that quiet way that left no room for argument.
His eyes locked on mine, and I saw the faintest glimmer of gold in his gaze as it heated. My clit throbbed, and I kept my eyes locked on him as Tadeu bent, his back still stiff, and began to tongue my clit with teasing little strokes. I knew Tadeu’s technique well, knew how quickly he could bring me to orgasm even when I wasn’t already aroused. He’d been doing it for years.
Jetsun, who had returned with Gabor after the main event, edged closer as if drawn by some invisible force. I could see the outline of his perfect cock against his pants as he stared, transfixed, as Tadeu’s tongue flicked my swollen clit. Shadow slid his hand down his pants, stroking himself in rhythm with Tadeu’s tongue. When my tiger lover moved lower, pressing my knees up and penetrating me his thick tongue, the other three leaned in to watch. My eyes met Gabor’s again, and my pussy throbbed around Tadeu’s tongue at the look of pure, raw lust in the guard’s eyes.
Fallen Princess Page 24
