Marco’s face contorts with pleasure.
“Is this more to your liking, Your Highness?”
He doesn’t reply. Can’t reply. He’s lost somewhere beyond words, beyond thought, and when I angle my hips just right and hit that spot inside him, he cries out prettily.
The sound echoes off the palace walls, too loud, far, far too loud. My hand flies to his mouth, muffling him.
“Fuck, I almost forgot how noisy you are.”
Marco pulls my hand away, panting against my palm. “Only… only with you, birdie.”
Something cracks open inside me at those words. Like my ribs cracking apart. Like my heart tearing in half.
I wrench his face toward mine, crushing our mouths together. My teeth scrape his tongue, sink into his lip until I taste copper. It’s teeth on teeth, tongue against tongue, biting and sucking while I fuck into him with everything I have left.
White-hot pleasure racks through me in waves, and I’m trying to hold back the inevitable, desperate to make this last. Because if this really is the last time I get to be inside him, the last time I get to taste him on my tongue, the last time I get to hold him in my arms…
Only with you, birdie.
Writhing back into me, Marco moves my hand from his hip to his cock, and I stroke him mercilessly. If this is all I can give him—these stolen moments, this borrowed pleasure—then I’ll give him everything I have. His breath comes in raspy gasps against my ear as I work him with my slick palm, thumb circling the head of his cock the way I know makes him tremble.
He releases with a cry that he tries to muffle against his own forearm, hot ropes of cum coating my hand, his body clenching around me so my knees almost give out as I hurtle toward euphoria.
I can’t hold back. Pure bliss pulls me under, into her sweet tide. I push into him one final time, as deep as I can go, my free hand digging nails into his hip so hard I’ll leave marks. Good.
I hold us there, buried to the hilt inside him, as I empty myself with shuddering pulses.
“Don’t move,” he says on a breath, immediately, the last drops of me not even inside himyet. “Not… not yet.”
I happily remain nestled inside him, holding both his hips tightly, pulling him flush against my body. We’re both breathing hard, hearts hammering against ribs, sweat cooling in the night air. His head lolls back against my shoulder. My teeth have left his lips bruised and tender, and I brush the back of my knuckles across them.
My eyes drift across the moonlit garden spread below us—the perfectly manicured hedges, the marble paths winding between beds of roses that probably cost more than most people see in a lifetime. For a wild moment, I imagine the pair of us floating upwards, flying away from this palace and this Emperor and this city to somewhere else.
Somewhere we wouldn’t be stealing five desperate minutes on some tyrant’s balcony, but rolling together on soft grass under an open sky. Walking hand in hand along a shoreline where no one knows our names, where Marco isn’t a champion killer and I’m not scheduled to die for entertainment.
Where we could justbe.
Marco leans further back into me, gazing up at the clear, starry night. The constellations spread above us, a shimmer of scattered diamonds on black silk, but they seem dimmer somehow. Less brilliant than I remember.
The stars aren’t as bright as Atrea’s.
It’s as if Marco can read my mind, because he says, “Doesn’t it seem impossible to you that these are the same stars as the ones above Atrea’s cliffs?”
For a moment, I don’t reply, just stare up at the familiar patterns—Orion’s belt cutting across the darkness, the Big Dipper hanging low on the horizon. The same constellations my father taught me to navigate by, the same ones Esme and I used to wish on from our roof.
“You’re wrong. These are not the same stars,” I say, putting conviction behind my words, as if I could convince him the sun isn’t yellow if only I tried hard enough. “But one day, Marco, you will see those stars again.”
His eyes drop, suddenly brimming with unshed tears.
Marco’s entire body goes rigid against me. He jerks forward, pulling away so abruptly that I lurch backward in shock. He doesn’t look at me as he slides open the balcony door. Not even a glance.
And then he’s gone, leaving me alone on the balcony with nothing but moonlight and the ghost of his warmth still clinging to my skin.
Chapter twenty-three
Marco: Protection
The party is a living, writhing nightmare. The second I walk back in, all eyes are on me, and they know one way or the other. Whether they think I fucked Robin or fucked the Emperor, everyone’s watching, whispering. There’s nowhere to go, no one to turn to who can shield me, so I walk across the room, head high, to the drinks table.
