“All along, you were looking for an excuse to be wanton with me, weren’t you?”
I would protest that I loved him before I knew such deeds existed, but with my mouth stuffed full of his cock, I can’t. I never wanted his respect, at least not in this sense. Outwardly,yes. But I’ve longed for him to show me this side of himself for years.
As long as I suspected it was there, simmering below his too-noble surface.
“That’s it, Gwen. Show me your tits the way you did when you poured water all over your chest.” A hard, muttered syllable, devoid of meaning, escapes his lips. “I wanted to chop my way into your apartment and fuck you right then and there. I hated not being able to have you.”
I can’t get them both out. Seeing my struggle, Kai extracts his cock and pulls me up by the elbows. Reluctantly, I stand up, wobbling on aching knees. Already missing the feeling of him on my lips.
He crushes me to him in a ferocious kiss. I cling to him with dear life. My heart soars. It’s like falling in reverse, this love. Flying instead of drowning. The back of my dress gapes open. Cool air kisses my heated skin. He tugs the sleeves down, trapping my arms at my waist with my nipples puckering in the autumn air.
“Look at you,” he breathes, his devouring gaze dark and thrilling.
“Anyone could come out here and see us.” I squirm at the thought, half excited, half mortified.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Not really.” But the risk of discovery has me on tenterhooks. That part does excite me. Everyone would know. Iwantthem to know that he is mine, and I am his in every way. “Promise me it will be like this when we’re alone.”
Fire lights in his darkened eyes. He backs me up a step. Two. His arm comes up behind me and braces me from hitting the stone wall. Shielded from view—though it would be obvious to anyone coming into the garden what we’re doing—he nips myearlobe and squeezes my breast. I arch into him with an airless gasp. “Does that mean you’ll say yes?”
“If we can be our imperfect selves when we’re together? If I could have you before all the world? Your respect, your honor, your love, and all of this, too? Yes, Kai. I’d marry you in a heartbeat.”
He trails heated kisses down my throat and drops his hands to my bottom, lifting me. Rough rock bites into my back, a stinging counterpoint to the way he sucks and bites my breasts. I clutch his hair by the fistful, pushing him away when it’s too much, dragging him to the other side where I ache for his mouth.
Waves of pleasure cascade through my body. He pins me to the wall and hikes my skirt up, finding my core and stroking me there with a low groan. His cock twitches against my inner thigh.
“Fuck, Gwen, you’re so wet.”
“You do this to me.”Only you. Always you.
He circles the sensitive nub, pushing his rough fingers inside me and reaching for the spot that makes me see stars.
“In me, Kai.”
We can’t be gone for this long. Everyone will talk. They’re talking now, surely. There must be wild gossip, but I can’t bring myself to care. They can’t hurt me anymore.
He slides into me with a single thrust, filling me, stretching me to breaking, and sets a relentless pace. I come with his name on my lips, a raspy exhalation. Stone scrapes my back raw. He doesn’t stop, taking me for his own pleasure as I take my own.
We shudder to a halt, sweat sheening our skin in the cool breeze.
“You’ll marry me, then,” he says, his breath still labored. A statement, not a question. “Bear my children.”
The way he says that clenches everything below my navel. “Yes.”
He drops his forehead to mine. “Thank fuck, Gwen. Finally. You are one very difficult-to-seduce scullery maid, you know that?”
I laugh. He sets me on the ground and helps me right my clothing. “No one would say that. People have been whispering about me for years, Kai.”
“Idiots, all of them.” He shakes his head in disbelief. “I understand the assignment now. You want to be treated like a lady in public—mostly—and in private, you’ll be my personal toy. I can do that.”
He kisses me as we walk into the banquet hall. Prickly, embarrassed heat crawls up my throat and into my cheeks. Especially when raucous applause breaks out.
The Queen Regent of Montrace moves gracefully toward us, wearing the same warm smile she had for me the day of Kai’s Ascension, arm in arm with my clearly overwhelmed grandmother.
“I suppose we’d better make this a hasty wedding.” She smiles.
Nana beams. “I didn’t think this would ever come to pass,” she whispers to me. “Well done, Gwen. My granddaughter, Queen Consort of Montrace. Incredible.”
