“Cover for my scheming.” His lips brushed hers. “Keeping up with that idiot man-child was more torturous than Devil’s Island. I’d rather spend an evening with our old friend Flay than with the king of Harendell. At least Flay was consistent and focused, and he didn’t need his mother to achieve all his goals for him.”
Zarrah let out a choked laugh, and the last of her tension faded away. Reaching up, she pulled loose the tie holding his hair back, the lengths falling to his shoulders. She rose onto her toes and kissed him, fingers of one hand tangling in his silken strands even as she unfastened the buttons of his coat.
As their kiss deepened, their hips met, and the hard length of his arousal met the juncture of her belly and thigh, sending a jolt through her core. Zarrah couldn’t stifle the low moan that escaped her lips before she pinched them shut, aware that not everyone who might be listening was on their side.
“Saam checks the rooms daily for listening holes,” Keris murmured as he kissed a line of fire down the side of her throat. “Walls and doors are thick.”
“They’ll just think you’re sleeping with your bodyguard. No one will suspect it’s me.”
He pulled back, brow furrowing. “I don’t want them thinking that. I don’t want anyone thinking I’d betray you.”
Her chest warmed at the vehemence in his voice, and she bit his bottom lip. “I know you wouldn’t, and that is all that matters. Now kiss me.”
“Yes, Imperial Majesty.” He tucked a curl behind her ear, then claimed her mouth, tongue stroking over hers. Zarrah bowed into him, their bodies pressing even closer together as he trailed a hand down her spine and squeezed the curve of her ass. Lust surged through her, the desire to forgo foreplay making her body tremble, though vanquished by a primal need to have him inside her. To be reunited again in all possible ways.
She fumbled with the buttons of his shirt, wanting to tear them off but knowing servants would find that sort of evidence. It made themoment feel illicit and dangerous the way it had been when she was a prisoner in Vencia, and her breath came in small gasps as she struggled to maintain control.
Keris allowed her to pull off his shirt, and she hissed in anger at the wound on his bare chest, part of her wanting to storm through the palace and put a knife through William’s heart for harming what was hers. But the thought fell away as he unbuttoned her coat, casting it aside, and then lifted her shirt over her head, a soft moan escaping him as her breasts were bared.
“I had forgotten what true beauty looked like,” he whispered, holding her gaze as he dropped to one knee, then the other before pressing his lips to her stomach. Her heart beat staccato as he unfastened her belt, easing her trousers over her hips as he kissed his way down her body.
Zarrah swayed, barely managing the balance it took to step on the heels of her boots and kick them off. His knuckles grazed her skin as he removed her trousers, weapons thudding against the floor, her body entirely naked. “I need…” she whispered, words failing her as he kissed her knees, the insides of her thighs, her nipples tightening in the cool air.
“I know what you need, love.”
He caught hold of her thighs and pushed them wide, then bent his head to claim her. His normal tortuously slow teasing was absent, betraying that his control teetered on the same brink as hers. His fingers slipped inside her as he sucked her clit, her body jerking with pleasure even as she caught hold of him for balance. Her climax was rising, and Zarrah clenched her teeth tight, feeling a scream of pleasure rising with it.
“Not yet,” he murmured, then stood, lifting her with him.
Zarrah wrapped her legs around him as he carried her to the bed, laying her across the velvet coverlet. She could feel his arousal pressing hard against the apex of her thighs, and she reached for his belt, but Keris only shook his head.
He bent over her, drawing one nipple into his mouth while his fingers worked between her legs, and Zarrah pressed her forearm to her mouth to silence her moans.
“Come for me,” he murmured. “You break for no one but me, Valcotta.”
She bit down on her forearm as his tongue took the place of his fingers, the sound of his belt unfastening nearly her undoing.
His trousers hit the floor, and then he slipped two fingers inside her. Stroking in time with his tongue, stringing her as tight as a bow until she snapped with a cry, pleasure rushing through her in waves.
Keris didn’t give her time to come back into herself before his mouth found hers. He gripped her wrists, pinning her, and then plunged into her, filling her completely and making her cry out as his hips met her ass in one hard thrust. She wrapped her legs around him, pulling him deep as he filled her over and over again.
She tasted blood as she bit down on her wrist to keep from sobbing, her body tensing and building in a way that made the tension she’d felt before feel like a drop of water in a sea of desire, and Zarrah thrust her hips against him, hunting a release that she half feared might drown her.
He moved her wrists so that he could grip them with one hand, and with the other, Keris caressed the swells of her breasts and teased at their peaks, and that sent her over the edge a second time, her body tightening around his length as her toes curled and her back arched, her heart threatening to tear from her chest as she felt him fall over the edge with her.
“God, Zarrah,” he groaned into her throat, collapsing against her. “I love you.”
Tears burned in her eyes, all the walls she’d built to keep herself together crumbling down. “Never leave me again.”
“Never. I swear it.”
Every part of her wanted to cling to this moment. To let silence reign, the only conversation touch and soft breath. For there to be only the two of them, all the world outside the room falling away.
But they were at war, and the fight waited for no one, so Zarrah said, “We need to tear the crown from that bitch’s head.”
54
Keris
