“Yes?”
“I changed my mind.”
“About what?”
“I want you to touch me.”
James gave a soft laugh, then coughed. “Is your goal to drive me to tear down the wall between us with my bare hands, Princess? Or are you only aiming to add to my torment?”
Her mouth curved with a small smile, each breath a challenge as the water that had been poured into her cell evaporated off the hot stone. “Both?”
“Wicked woman.” But then his hand closed around hers. “I’ve got you.”
Ahnna tightened her grip on him, feeling as though his touch was the only thing holding her sanity in place as the prison raged with the howls of its inmates and the furnace beneath slowly cooked her alive. “Don’t let go.”
“Never.”
He held tight to her hand through the worst of the heat, but it gradually eased, the steam dissipating through the small hole above them. It became easier to breathe, but Ahnna kept her cheek pressed to the wall, her hand locked in James’s.
“I’m afraid I’m going to lose my mind,” she whispered. “I’m afraidI’ll go mad, and that everything that matters to me will burn and I’ll never know it.”
“I won’t let you lose your mind. We’ll find a way out of here—it’s just a matter of figuring out how.”
Panic started to rise, as choking as the steam, but then James’s fingers moved from her hand. Slowly, he traced up the veins of her wrist to her elbow, and then back down, and the sensation made her pulse hum in an entirely different way. Up and down her wrist, and then he said, “Would you like to know what I’d do to you, should I find myself on the far side of this wall, Princess?”
“Yes.” The word came out as almost a moan, and she struggled to comprehend how the feel of his fingers on her wrist was somehow the most erotic sensation she’d ever experienced in her life.
“Are you sure you can handle it?” His voice was low, and it stroked places that his fingers couldn’t reach.
“I am certain.” There was no other answer, because if he stopped touching her, stopped speaking to her, her mind would surely crack.
“I hadn’t finished kissing you when you decided to stab me with my own sword,” he murmured, tracing a finger over her palm and making her fingers curl. “And I’m a man who finishes what he starts, so I’d surely start there. Tasting those sweet lips while my tongue explores that mouth of yours, all while I think about how it will feel when those lips are around my cock.”
Ahnna’s breath caught, heat rising to her cheeks because no one had ever spoken to her like this. No one had dared. “Your Highness, this hardly seems appropriate language for a prince.”
“Nor for a princess. Shall I stop?”
“No.” She squirmed, rubbing her thighs together, an ache forming between them. “No, my curiosity is piqued.”
“I wouldn’t dare leave you unsatisfied, even if it is only your curiosity.” His fingers locked with hers, and he pulled, forcing her shoulder deep in the hole, her cheek pressed hard against the stone. His lipsbrushed her knuckles, and Ahnna whimpered, wishing desperately that her other arm wasn’t broken so that she might put fingers between her legs.
“I’d move to your throat,” he murmured. “And leave my mark on your skin, because you are mine, Ahnna, even with walls and circumstances and bad history between us. I’d rid you of those clothes and lay you down on the ground while sucking on your perfect breasts, tasting those nipples that I recall are the color of roses. I’d make them pinker still because I know you like the feel of teeth on your skin.”
Ignoring the pain in her arm, Ahnna moved her right hand between her legs and found her clit.
“You’re touching yourself, aren’t you?” He tugged harder on her arm, stone digging into her shoulder, grip on her wrist implacable. “Enough of that, Princess. You’ll come when I’m ready for you to come.”
Ahnna’s pulse roared in her veins, desire running so hard and hot that she felt almost feral with the need for climax. But she obeyed him.
“This entire time, of course, those long legs of yours will be wrapped around me.” He kissed her knuckles again, then sucked on one of her fingers. “I confess to having a small obsession with your legs, Princess, and I’ve stroked my cock to completion more times than I care to admit with thoughts of them filling my head.”
Ahnna’s back arched, her nails digging into the skin of her thigh to keep from touching herself. Her climax was rising on his words, on his voice, and on the feel of his mouth on her fingers.
“I think next, I’d spread those legs wide to look at that pretty pink pussy of yours. Admire how wet you are and how much wetter I intend to make you, and then I’d—”
“Oh, nemesis! What are you whispering about down there?”
Ahnna sucked in a shocked breath at the sound of Carlo’s voice.
