Raucous hoots and cheers broke out that carried the same wild thrum of energy that crackled in the air. Fresh goblets were then quickly in courtiers’ hands. Some revelers retreated to the darkened corners of the room. Others moved to the plush black velvet furniture that remained in plain sight. The scene quickly became similar to what you’d see if visiting Oleander House on any given night. Trystin rejoined the pretty male that waited for him at the base of the dais. He looped an arm around his waist and guided his companion to a lounger. Trystin placed his goblet on the adjacent end table and grabbed a fistful of his companion’s hair that he wore in sleek, short curls, and devoured the male’s mouth. They undressed one another as they kissed. Moans sounded from various corners of the room. It was an assault on her senses that added to the flood of heat she felt watching Malachizrien’s cousin and his lover.
“I don’t like your attention being elsewhere, Princess,” Malachizrien rumbled. She felt a hard tug on her hair then. Itforced her head back and Malachi dragged his nose up the side of her neck. He nibbled her earlobe and then did the same to the pointed tip of her right ear. Her nipples hardened. Her entire body blazed with heat. Malachizrien released her hair to grip her jaw and turn her face away from his cousin. “Look,” he said, tipping his head toward a group of courtiers who occupied loungers facing the dais and who gazed directly at her and Malachizrien. “We have our own audience.” The courtiers’ eyes were darkened with lust and excitement. There were others as well who eagerly watched to see what she and their king would do—what Malachizrien would do to his war prize that he’d captured from the enemy king. “Are you still intent on pretending you won’t enjoy this, love?” Malachizrien asked silkily. “I smell how wet you are, by the way.”
It was all the warning she got before she heard the rip. Then her dress, though it covered little to begin with, was falling off her shoulders and breasts. The sheer fabric collected in a heap at her waist. Malachizrien’s fingers dug into her hips, lifting her up and brushing the shredded dress aside. She, the archprincess of the Aether Kingdom and betrothed to the Hyperion liege lord of the Six Kingdoms, was left entirely nude, straddling the Apollyon king, as he sat atop his wretched throne. That this would erode whatever pedestal the prophecy had thrust her upon while baiting Rishaud with an act that would send him into a blind rage once the details got back to him was an understatement.
An acrid taste should’ve settled in her mouth at being used in such a manner. But a deep-seated pettiness and anger took root, and she relished the embarrassment it’d bring Rishaud and the way it would undermine his supposed destiny and absolute authority. Perhaps it was the churning storm of seething rageat the fact that Rishaud had sought to chain her, break her, and use a prophecy specifically about her to widenhisrule that had her fully leaning into Malachizrien’s machinations and grinding against him with total abandon.
It certainly wasn’t the sense of longing—ofneed—that coursed through her.
Kadeesha reached her arms back and wrapped them around Malachizrien’s neck, grinding against him harder, reveling in the delicious friction. A low growl erupted from him, and she somehow held back a moan of satisfaction at eliciting such a sound. Skillful fingers rolled her nipples between them and kneaded her breasts. Malachizrien’s teeth scraped the tender skin at her neck, bit down, and then one hand was moving between her legs and spreading her wide. She was so wet that it took no effort for him to plunge two fingers into her, then adding a third, stretching her. She rode his hand with all the voracity that she wanted to ride his cock with. When his thumb circled her clit, she threw her head back, but once again bit her tongue to keep from moaning. She was moving off pure fury and a rampaging need to underscore the point that nobody and nothing owned her except herself. But that also meant putting on certain brakes and not giving Malachizrien any indication that he was driving her insane.
However, his adept fingers doing maddening things inside her and the hungry gazes of the courtiers who watched them combined to do something to her. She typically fucked in private, so it was a revelation at this very moment when she learned she got off on being watched by so many eyes. Or maybe Malachizrien was just that good that he scrambled her brain and made her forget which way was up and which way was down. Either way, she felt the pressure build low in her stomach. Feltit surge between her legs. Felt the floodgates about to open. She bit down on her lip savagely to hold that particular response back.
“Don’t,” Malachizrien snarled in her ear, his hand tangled in her hair and wrenching her head back again.
“Don’t what?” Kadeesha asked innocently.
“Play stupid, for one,” Malachizrien barked, fingers ruthlessly pumping in and out of her in a fashion that made her nearly whimper and beg to feel his cock in their place. “For two, don’t hold your fucking orgasm back. Give it to me.”
“No,” she gritted out, her voice cracking in a grating way. “I don’t like you. I despise you,” she said as evenly as she could manage with his fingers thrusting her into oblivion. “I agreed to go along with this, but you don’t getthat. Ever again.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said rough, low, and arrogant as ever. “Regardless of what you’ve decided, I have a reputation to uphold. So you will come and relish it when you do.”
“You can’t make me do that,” she snapped.
“Would you like to make a wager?” The question wasn’t really a question, though. It was issued as a dark, carnal promise. He crooked his fingers and they hit a spot that left her shaking while his thumb pressed down on her clit. She felt tendrils of an icy chill skirt over the too-sensitive flesh. Searing pain didn’t erupt like when he’d assaulted her hand with his void magic, but the sensation that hit her this time was still cold, an unending loop of frigidness that skimmed the line between delivering a sweet agony that left her breathless and a pleasure that splintered her mind—and all of it was delivered straight to her clit.
“Come for me,” he commanded.
She jolted and cried out, screamed the bastard’s fucking name, as she came so hard she saw stars.
Chapter Ten
MALACHI HAD HARBORED EVERY INTENTION OFruining the archprincess tonight, though not in the way she thought. Yes, making her come apart on the dais while sitting atop his lap, atop his throne, inside his palace, in his seat of power, was part of severing any claim Rishaud thought he had to her. But he had other motives as well. When he’d inserted himself in the Aether princess’s path at her club, he wasn’t sure what he’d initially expected. But it sure hadn’t been the sultry enchantress who’d sauntered up to him, damn near grabbed him by the dick, and asserted that she was going to ride his cock. There was no coyness. No games. No angling for something he could give her beyond a spectacular and thorough fuck. It’d made his dick stand up and pay attention, and it’d stayed hard since then, his mind stuck on her boldness and the utter authority with which she took what she’d wanted from him.
But then he’d seen her at her wedding, and that woman had been different. She’d been less wild, more leashed, primmer and more proper and judgmental and sosouthern-like. She’d remained that second woman since then, and it agitated the fuck out of him. So when he tore off the dress, he hadn’t been thinkingabout Rishaud in the least. He’d rendered her naked while she sat on his lap, on his throne, with the singular focus of eviscerating the proper and perfect southern lady facade she donned for the world. He wanted to shred that mask, dirty up her polished exterior, and completely ravish Kadeesha Mercier until she ended up exactly how she had been: wild and unleashed, grinding against him with reckless abandon and screaming his name without a care to what was proper. But fucking hell, as she heaved atop him, her toned and plush body a comfortable weight he’d gladly let smother him, he found himself short of breath too. His pulse roared in his ears. His blood thrummed in his veins. Every fiber of him snarled that her one orgasm wasn’t enough. He wanted to sink inside her to the hilt and drive them both insane until she was hoarse from screaming his name and her cum coated his lap …
He dragged in a slow breath through his mouth, not foolish enough to breathe in her sweet floral scent any further. It had already been branded into his mind since Oleander House and it had kept him in a constant state of arousal ever since. He locked that knowledge away deep and pulled on his own mask. Hypocritical? Yes. But necessary all the same. She was an Aether royal, after all. They were aligned against the same enemy for the moment, but when Rishaud was taken care of, he’d be snatching her throne from her and assimilating her court into his, the same as the rest of the Six Kingdoms. She was too fierce, too much of a fighter, to just roll over and let it happen. Before she’d even expressed such, Malachi had already known as sure as he knew his name that she’d fight him to the death. And he didn’t plan to die anytime soon. He planned to be around to live and bed beautiful women and fight for eons yet, matter of fact. So while he could—and would—thoroughly enjoy havingKadeesha in any and every way she let him for the time he had her at his court, that was all it was going to be. Definitively.
She slapped his hand that still had shadows entwined through his fingers away from her clit finally. He scowled when he thought he caught a breathlessNo more … I can’t take it. He’d have to remedy that nonsense. Later, though. For now … he spun her around so she straddled his waist and faced him, unable to see his court at her back. Right now, in her postorgasm high, he wanted her eyes on him and him alone. And it was magnificent to be king, because he always got what he wanted—in perpetuity. Done messing around, he freed himself from his pants and entered her on a hard, merciless thrust that seated him magnificently deep within her. She screamed his name—Malachi, the right version that he’d demanded she speak, and like the other times before, it seriously screwed with his head. Hearing his name on her lips like a fervent psalm to a great Celestial, inhaling her scent until it crowded out all others in the room, tasting her sweetness on his tongue, feeling her warmth and stickiness still coating his hands and his legs where her orgasm had drenched him … all of it drove him out of his skull and left him floating among some far-off, bliss-laden, delirium-inducing plane. He fucked the Aether princess like her life depended on it, likehislife depended on gifting them both a release. Gripping her exquisite ass, he pumped brutal thrust after brutal thrust into her as he lifted her up and slammed her down over and over.
Like at the pleasure house she owned, the princess gave as good as she got. He might’ve been in control this time, but she synced up with him perfectly, rolling her hips in maddening circles for every one of his upward strokes. In fact, they fell into a torturous rhythm too well. And Kadeesha’s pussy felt like hewas a perfect fucking fit—he let shadows devour that thought because danger lay down that path.We arenotmade for each other, his mind gritted out. He cleared his thoughts of the extra noise, focused only on how good Kadeesha felt with her walls gripping his cock, squeezing the life out of him.
“Shit!” he rasped, furious about how divine she felt. But he buried his fingers in her hair and dragged her head down, kissing her deeply and savagely while his strokes mirrored that energy. He understood right then and there that he’d been wrong when initiating this. This latest time of being inside her wouldn’t slake his need any more than the many rounds they’d screwed back at Oleander House. He had barely been able to drag himself out of and away from her then. Now, with her constantly right within arm’s reach and staying in his palace, he was deluding himself if he imagined he’d be doing anything except sinking inside her and driving them both senseless every chance he got while their arrangement lasted.
He heard those infernal words again that sounded likePlease … can’t take any more … too much …
“Yes, the hell you can,” he barked, picking up his pace, driving into Kadeesha harder to stress a point.
She dug her nails into his back and screamed his name. He snarled when molten fire shot into his back—her aether flames shooting from the fingers buried in his skin. But he also realized he liked it. Got even harder inside her, relishing the line between pain and bliss. Her walls contracted in a viselike grip and then she was trembling, shouting his name at a pitch that could shatter glass, and doing precisely what he wanted her to—making a mess all over him.
“Good. Fucking. Girl,” he grunted, his own voice unsteady. Then she rocked against him while riding out her orgasm in away that had him breathing her name into the side of her neck—burying his face there was the only thing keeping him from shouting it louder—and coming so hard inside of her the room spun. It knocked him so off-kilter, so thoroughly twisted him up, that all he could do was lose himself in the orgasm and cling to Kadeesha. Someone could’ve been standing right in front of him with a sword poised to take his head, and he would’ve been at their mercy. No, he would’ve been athermercy, because he would’ve stared down the danger and still been unable to extract himself from her to save his literal life. It felt just that good with her unraveling atop him while he came inside her.
Even after the tremors wracking her body died down and his heart rate had mostly slowed, they didn’t move. He wasn’t certain what she was thinking; perhaps she was too bone-tired to do anything else, too spent to leap off him and utter something scathing like he expected. For his own part, Malachi simply didn’t give a shit at the moment to be anywhere other than languishing inside her. He was entirely unhurried to change his position. In fact … he manifested a cocoon of impenetrable darkness around them that sealed them off from the external world and its sights and sounds and activity completely. He no longer cared to have an audience—the message would get to Rishaud via whatever disloyal courtiers Trystin had added to the revelry, after all. Then, he stood, maneuvering so he remained as deep inside Kadeesha as he could get because the world could implode and he still wouldn’t be slipping out of her at the moment. He only realized he said the last part out loud when she chuckled low and sultry and smug. Though she didn’t object. She only asked, “Where are we going?”
“To my apartments,” he answered and decided walking would take too long. He cast a pool of darkness on the groundbeside them and stepped into the Void. They exited in the center of his bed. He drew out of her finally, though it wouldn’t be for long. “On your knees,” he ordered after laying Kadeesha down on the mattress. It was a testament to how well-fucked and eager for more she was because she didn’t fight the command. She propped herself up on all fours, her back arched, her lush ass raised spectacularly in the air—it was the precise position he’d wanted to get her in again since Oleander House. He spread his knees wider behind her for leverage, grabbed her sinfully plush hips, and slammed right back inside her, wringing delicious moans from them both.
“Good. Fucking. Girl.”
