Page 44 of The Poison Princess and the Lord of Misrule

As his hand moves with mine over me, his other has dropped between us. He doesn’t have to strain hard to take himself out, and I can feel him working himself, fast, hard, his knuckles brushing my hip with every stroke.

“Don’t stop,” he commands through gritted teeth. “The realms of hell will swallow me before you stop, Seravyn. I want to seeyou come for me.”

A torrid lick of heat sears up my thighs, my back, stripping a desperate moan from my lips that undoes him.

His breath has gone ragged. His mouth is at my temple, against my ear, against my jaw, feeling me unravel against him, and it makes him some wild, feral beast.

He’s stroking himself with one hand, his other plundering my skirts to find my hand again…to help me work myself faster…

My head tips back, and Aldric growls his approval against my ear.

“Fuck, that’s it,” he says, more groan than words.

I have no tether over my own body. I’m rocking into him, against the corded muscle of his arm, pressing myself against my hand, something vile in me tempted to move it away, to have his hand take its place and his ringed fingers to sink deep and quench this building, maddening need.

And his hand over mine is encouraging it, heat climbing under my skin—even as Ren’s kiss is still warm on my mouth. That heat has found a current and is moving, and I can’t stop it.

I hate him.

I hate him.

“I hate you.” I seethe the words on a broken breath.

Aldric chuckles. “If hating me gets you this wet… Fuck, love. Hate me more. I can take it.”

His grip on my hand tightens, and his head tips over mine. “Look at me. I want your pretty eyes on me, Seravyn.”

Against my will, I look up at him. My teeth bite into my lower lip, refusing to surrender any more of my sounds to him.

And this arouses him all the more.

He’s so close. His mouth is parted, his breath ragged, eyes glazed, dark and furious with pleasure. He strokes himself with fast, rough moves as he thrusts into his fist. And he’s staring into my face with a smug certainty that he’s unraveling me just as thoroughly.

And I could end him here. He’s drunk enough to die believably. But a king dead a week before his wedding turns every eye in the realm toward his foreign bride and her dominion—and a blade must never be seen leaving its sheath.

So I endure this. Endurehim.

My legs are trembling, my breaths escaping me in a broken cadence, falling heavy between our bodies. My thighs squeeze together, trapping his hand, the pressure building into something unbearable.

This has to be Nythera’s doing. The goddess of appetite working her bidding. Or maybe this is what happens to a body trained to survive poison—the tolerance itself corrupting, becoming a wicked desire.

“Fucking hells,” he mutters harshly. “Since the day you entered this palace, I’ve not once been sated. Chambermaid after chambermaid, and not one of them could feed my appetite. Release without relief. Gods-damntorture, the frustration. Fuck, the mess I’m going to leave you in on our wedding night?—”

He breaks off. His face contorts. His hand on mine stills, then presses my fingers hard, and the pulsing heat winds through me, gripping me at my back until it unfurls in a torrent of blinding pleasure.

A sound tears out of me—a moan, broken and raw—and the moment he hears it, his body spasms, hips rocking furiously against me as he comes.

His mouth drops to the swell of my breast, his teeth sink into my skin. The pain lights the wick of pleasure with a blaze, consuming.

It’s fast and debauched and violent, and he nearly crumples. But he’s using his body to hold mine up, my legs threatening to fail. Aldric braces his forehead against the stone beside my head and he shudders against my hip. I feel the wet heat of him through the silk.

My body, traitor that it is, has not quite finished. I’m hot and shaking and humiliated, and the heat is still there, like a wound left open.

Aldric pulls his hand away from mine, removing his touch from me slowly, then draws my fingers up to his mouth. My breath stills at the sight of him pushing my slick fingers into his mouth, tasting me with a guttural sound at the base of his throat.

I shiver, heat tearing through me anew at the salacious sight, the feel of his tongue.

Then he releases me completely. Letting my wrist fallback to my side, his body lifts away from mine. He secures his breeches with a lazy hand. He smooths a strand of my hair back from my temple with a fingertip so gentle I want to scream.