by Maisey Yates
He had not known when...
But it would stand to reason that she would have been down here. And perhaps he had known.
Perhaps he had always known that in this place, for royalty alone, he would send her to meet her fate.
For if he must be damned by it, then perhaps she should be too.
He stood, looking down at her, her skin pale against the dark red of the cushions. The thatch of curls between her legs aroused him beyond the point of reason.
All of the blood in his body had flowed into the source of his desire, and he felt that he would die for not having her. Which was exactly why he was going to make himself wait longer.
Years.
There were spare few things in this world that he had ever wanted and not been able to have.
He wanted his brothers back, and he could not reach beyond the veil of death to make it so.
And he had wanted Tinley Markham.
Beneath him, astride him, in front of him. However he could have her.
From the moment she had become a woman.
He had wanted her in spite of the fact that she had worn his brother’s ring, in spite of the fact that their fathers had decided she would be most suited to marry Dionysus, and not Alex, because God knew the men could’ve made that determination. It was what Tinley’s mother had wanted.
She was correct, in that, the cold hard facts were neither man thought she should be Queen. For had they, she would have been put in the position to be Queen.
And still, he wanted her.
But he was savoring the moment. Savoring the moment where control failed and desire ruled. For this time...this time nothing would stop him. Not when she wanted him as he did her.
Only her.
He knelt down before her, a king on his knees, and brought her body to the edge of the raised cushion, pressing a kiss to her ankle, to her calf, the inner part of her knee. To her side, where she shook beneath his lips.
“Alexius?” She said his name like a prayer, like a question.
Supplication on her lips.
“You know what I intend to do,” he said, his voice a growl. “I intend to devour you.”
He knew then, that when she had been standing on the edge of the wood, she had been weighing these things. Whether to run into the forest and be devoured by what awaited there, or stay here and be eaten by him.
He was very glad she had chosen the latter.
“I bet you taste sweet,” he said. “I have wondered. These long years, I have wondered, what it would be like to feast on you. What it would be like to hear you call out my name, and I intend to. You know how long it has been since anyone has called me Alex? Until you. I would hear that name on your lips as I pleasure you.”
He moved higher, his breath on the heart of her now, her sweet scent inflaming him.
Then he lowered his head and slid his tongue over her swollen flesh. Her hips bucked up from the cushion as she whimpered. And he pinned her there, consuming her like a man starving.
For he was.
Starving for her. For all that she was.
He consumed her like he would die if he did not, because he thought he might. Gorged himself on her. On her beauty. On her essence.
He pushed two fingers deep inside of her and found her tighter than anticipated. So he teased her, toyed with her until he began to feel her internal muscles quiver around him. Until he could feel her orgasm building.
Then he sucked that bundle of nerves at the apex of her thighs, and he felt her break. She twisted and writhed beneath him, her release a relief to them both. For he had little control left, and none he could exercise anymore.
He moved up her body and kissed her, deep and long, and then, finally, he thrust inside of her body.
CHAPTER EIGHT
TINLEY WAS STILL trying to recover from the earth-shattering pleasure that Alex had given her, when he breached her.
It hurt.
It nearly took her breath away, as powerful as the pleasure that had come before it.
He was so big. When she had seen his body, she had been terrified for a moment, but then he had begun doing all those wicked, pleasurable things to her and it had been difficult to think. No, not difficult, impossible.
And everything he had done to her felt so lovely, his tongue slick and perfect, his fingers knowing and deft, and he had penetrated her that way, and she had thought perhaps it would take some of the difficulty away from their actual joining.
It did not.
Panic rose in her breast.
Courage.
It was a strange thing, to call out for courage for something she was the one who had initiated. Something she had chosen to do.
But it was frightening. And it was all a bit too much.
And he was...
He was so large and hard and everything. And having him inside of her was beyond anything she could have imagined. For she had known that it might be intense, but she hadn’t really known.
It was as if he was inside of her, not just in a physical sense. But in all the ways he could be. As if he inhabited her soul.
It was terrifying. And so was he.
His expression was intense, his big body frozen atop her.
“Tinley?”
“I... I didn’t know.”
“How?”
Confusion swarmed her. “I... How could I?”
He looked tortured then, his dark brows locked together, his teeth clenched.
“Are you all right?”
“No,” she said.
“We’ll stop.”
“No,” she said.
Courage.
“I want this.”
Because she had to do this. She had to. He was the lion. The wolf pack.
The dragon.
And she was not a virgin sacrifice. She was a knight, needing to slay him.
Needing to slay this.
So that she could become... Whatever it was she needed to be.
But if she backed away now, then it would still be unfinished. If she backed away now then she would never know.
And she had to know.
She had to.
He pushed deeper inside of her, and she hadn’t known it was possible. But finally, some of the pain began to recede, and it gave way to pleasure.
Or, if not pleasure, then something infinitely better than what had come before.
This was different, though, from the easy pleasure she had found from his mouth.
This was something more. It went deep inside of her, and seemed to weave itself in the fabric of her soul.
Created in her a symphony of desire that wrapped itself around her every cell, her every vein, every fiber of what she was.
Until she became part of him.
And he became part of her.
There was a depth to it she could not fathom.
An intensity she could not pin down.
And somehow she knew, this wasn’t about sex. This was about the two of them.
About the things that had existed between them for all time.
About fate.
And when he began to move, all the glimmering strands of pleasure that had woven themselves through her began to sparkle. Shimmer.
They warmed her and filled her, changed her. Consumed her. Until she was a creature made entirely of need.
Alex’s creature.
But when she saw his face, when she saw the cords in his neck standing out, when she saw the intensity in every line of his big, muscled body, she realized that he was her creature all the same.
That they were one with this, and with each other.
This man who was so different than she.
Who was duty and honor and perfection.
They were the same.
In this, they were equal.
In this, they were remade.
His thrusts were deep, consuming, and she wrapped her legs around him, urging him deeper now, for the pain was gone, and all that remained was wonder.
She didn’t think she could possibly be stretched any tighter, didn’t think she could possibly scale to higher heights, but she did.
She did.
And each movement of his body within hers did it.
Each rush of his hands over her curves, his lips on her neck, on her mouth.
And then, he lost the rhythm entirely. Splintering into something golden and bright and sweeping her up and all of the fractured edges. And when they broke for the last time, it was together, harsh cries escaping them both at once as he pulsed inside of her and she gripped him tight, wringing every last bit of pleasure from each other as they found their ultimate release.
And then she lay there, knowing that she had been utterly changed.
Knowing that she had lied to herself when she had said she was simply on a quest for courage and closure and an end.
For she had begun something here in this place, and had seen herself utterly changed as a result.
And she did not know how she would find a way back from it.
You won’t. You’ll have to find a new way.
Everything made sense then.
For that was the truth of it.
She had been trying for all of these years to make sense of an old path that no longer went anywhere.
To go over old wounds, over and over again without actually finding a way to heal them.
To sink into a life that she cared about—undoubtedly—but in such a way that she held herself back for the simple reason of wanting to show her mother she was wrong about her. That she was wrong about her needing to change in any way at all.
There were things she needed to change.
And it might not be about hair or any of the shallow things her mother had fixated on, but there was truth buried beneath the criticism, and being angry about it wouldn’t do anything to change that. And rebelling against it for the sake of it wouldn’t fix anything either.
He moved away from her, his expression grim.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“You hadn’t had a lover.”
“I thought... I didn’t think it would be terribly surprising.”
“My brother slept with... Anything and everything. The fact that he did not sleep with you is unfathomable to me.”
“All you would’ve had to do was ask. I wasn’t ashamed of it. I assumed... I assumed for a long time that he didn’t out of respect for my father. Because he was... I don’t know. It was some kind of virgin bride thing, I figured. Now I just think maybe we didn’t have chemistry.” She felt humiliated and small. And it wasn’t about the fact that she hadn’t had sex with Dionysus. That didn’t embarrass her.
It was that she didn’t recognize all she hadn’t known.
She felt ignorant, and ridiculous, and she hated that most of all.
“It would never have occurred to me he would not have had you the minute it was justifiable.”
“Well, he didn’t,” she said. “You don’t have to rub it in.”
“Does it bother you greatly?”
“No. I said it didn’t. I mean it. I’ve never been...wounded about that.”
He frowned. “You loved him, and you were never sorry that you missed a chance to be his lover?”
“I was young,” she said, her face hot. “I didn’t know. I don’t want to talk about this with you minutes after losing my virginity to you, thank you.”
“You should have told me. I would’ve been more gentle with you.”
“All the more reason to not tell you. I didn’t need you to be gentle with me. I just needed this to be done.”
“Oh, is that all you needed? Was I an itch you needed to scratch?”
She didn’t like the sound of that. And she could tell by the disdain in his tone that he did neither. But he wasn’t being nice to her, and she found that she perversely wanted to exercise the power that she seemed to have to upset him. Because she felt vulnerable. And she didn’t like it.
“I guess so. A question I needed answered. Something owed to me by the royal family, after all. I haven’t had a lover. It seemed time that I did. I didn’t really want to be trotted out to a roomful of men that I might be married off to not knowing exactly what I was agreeing to. I had never even seen a naked man until you. So, now I know more or less what to expect.”
He chuckled. The sound dark. “No. Trust me, cara, you don’t.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Oh. Are you one of those men quite confident in your singularity?”
He lifted his dark brow, and as she was fully able to gaze upon his singularity in the moment, and as he stood there naked, unabashed and unashamed, she was certain that most men did not match him for size. They couldn’t possibly.
He was far too...much to be anything beyond above average.
“Now I know,” she said. “I thank you for that.”
Her clothes weren’t here, so she gathered up her dignity as best she could, and walked away, knowing that he could see all of her bare skin as she tried to keep her head high and walked next to the winding pool, back toward where she had abandoned her clothes. It meant going through that hot water again, and back through the ice.
And by the time she was in her room, she was shivering and miserable, and felt nothing like the luxuriously appointed Royal she was sure she had been meant to feel like by the end of an afternoon spent in that spot.
No. She felt ruined. Unmade, without being remade all the way.
She felt...
Broken.
With a spirit of rebellion, she put her leggings and sweatshirt on, refused to put any product in her hair, knowing it would dry frizzy.
With Algie safely in his carrier, she took Nancy and Alton out of their cage, and placed them on the bed, letting them both trundle around while she tried to find enjoyment in their cuteness. She had been effortlessly charmed by them before.
She was not charmed now.
Peregrine chattered from his cage in clear indignation.
Join the club.
“I can’t please everyone,” she threw a hand out wide. “You don’t get along.” She frowned deeply at the ferret and added, “And it’s not my fault you’re mean.”
She would’ve liked to shout that at Alex.
“It’s not my fault you’re mean,” she repeated again. “And completely unreasonable. And... And... And why did it have to be you? Why did it have to be you that I wanted so much? Why couldn’t it have been anyone or anything else? And why didn’t you warn me that it would...”
Her stomach hollowed out suddenly and she lost all her anger, overtaken completely by abject misery.
She slowly unfolded herself onto the mattress, pressing her face firmly against the bedspread. One of the hedgehogs crawled up onto her back, and over the other side.
It summed up her feeling perfectly.
She had thought she would come out the other side of this feeling empowered, courageous.
Like a woman.
Instead, she rather felt like a hedgehog doormat.
It was not empowering in the least. It wasn’t anything except for sad and tomorrow... Tomorrow she was supposed to go into a ball and be presented to all these men. And decide who she was going to marry.
A flame lit itself in her breast. And that was when she knew.
That she had needed to do this. She had. Because she might have balked if she’d not had this experience. She might not have been able to be brave enough.
For tomorrow, when she was introduced, she was going to make the announcement that she was not going to marry
anyone. She was going to find a way to make a life on her own terms.
And the one thing she had done for herself...
She had made it impossible to stay here. Impossible to stay connected to Alex.
He was engaged to another woman. However unofficially as far as a love match went.
She would never be able to face his wife. Not after she had seen him naked. Not after he had been inside of her.
And there was no question of her marrying another man. None at all.
She had sealed her own fate, and even though much of what she had done had been foolish she could not regret that. At least, in the story of her life, she had been the author of this particularly inglorious moment.
She would not pawn the credit off to fate.
She would take it all.
And she would take it with pride, even if she couldn’t take it with happiness.
And she would have to hope that someday she could.
Even if it would be someday very far away from here.
Even if it would be a someday without Alex.
CHAPTER NINE
HE HAD HANDLED the aftermath of their encounter badly.
But his thoughts had still been swirling with the truth of it all. That Tinley had been a virgin. That she was his, and only his. That she had not been with his brother.
He did not know why he should care, except that he felt no man particularly wanted to have a woman after his brother had had her. For a variety of reasons. And he was no different.
And there was something... Something extraordinary about it. His.
Except, he had wounded her gravely, and now the time of the ball was drawing near and he had not had a chance to speak with her. But perhaps it was better for that. Perhaps, the time for conversation was over. They didn’t do well when they conversed with each other, but they did quite well when their bodies met.
Being inside of Tinley was unlike anything he had ever experienced before.
It had been a baptism. A revelation.
It had been...
It had been wrong. But it had also been something to chart a course by. It had made decisions out of problems, and for that, he was grateful. For that, there was nothing to be but grateful.
He was certain that his decision would cause irritation, after all, his PA had certainly made it clear to some of the men that the reason for coming to this event was to look for a prospective wife, one who had the full support of the crown of Liri, but... No one would express their displeasure, for Alexius was the King. And in the end, that was all that mattered.
