He froze, watching her. “God, Gia.”
She smiled even as her cheeks pinkened. “I used to think about you when I did this,” she admitted. “For years. And then I’d have to come into the parlor the next morning and pretend I hadn’t fantasized about your body in mine.”
He stripped off the remaining clothing and moved toward her. “What did I do in these fantasies?”
“Everything you have done already,” she whispered, continuing to touch herself with one hand while she reached for him with the other. “With your hands, with your tongue, with your cock.”
She arched against her fingers, pleasure rippling over her face. Not quite an orgasm, but something very close. He took a place next to her and placed his hand over hers, joining her to stroke her sex. She was slick already. She turned her head into his throat, sucking gently as she lifted into him, into herself. Together they worked at her and when she came, she groaned into his skin, like she could pour that pleasure between them as she arched against their fingers.
He urged her to her side, her back to his chest, and aligned himself against her entrance. She pushed back, taking him before he could make the same move, and he chuckled at her ardor. A sound that faded into a moan as her heated sex gripped him. He fully seated himself and began to gently grind. Her body still twitched with her orgasm and he loved the fluttering around his cock. He wanted it again. He wanted to take her control, give her nothing but sensation to erase a difficult night.
She rocked back against him, his name echoing from her lips over and over again as he took her in long, slow strokes. He wrapped his arm around her body, threading their fingers together while he took. She leaned into him, her gasping breaths coming shorter and shorter.
He put her hand back between her legs and she glanced over her shoulder at him, question in her eyes. He held that stare. “Come for me. Come all around me. I want to feel it.”
Her pupils dilated to almost fully black and she began to grind against her own hand. The grip of her sex intensified, tighter and wetter as she increased her own pleasure. It increased his, as well, and he gripped her hip hard enough that he dented her flesh. Sensation streaked up his cock, settled in his balls, a slow build to an explosion he knew would be harder and hotter and more powerful than the last.
She gasped and he felt her strokes become more erratic, the edge of release. When she fell, it was a cacophony of sensation as she ground back against him, crying out in the quiet, her body gripping his so hard that he couldn’t control himself anymore.
He moved to pull from her, but she pressed back harder. “In me,” she gasped. “Please!”
He couldn’t deny her, nor himself, any longer, and he poured into her with a guttural, animal cry. He stroked so hard as he came that he pushed her partly on her stomach, rising over her as they came together and then collapsed, him partly covering her, their sweat mingling.
At last he found the strength to roll away from her and she turned to face him, snuggling against his side with a satisfied sigh.
“Did I just utterly defile a queen?” he asked, staring down at her.
She laughed as she looked up at him. “By coming inside of me?”
He nodded.
“If you did, I would want nothing less than to be defiled. After all, I am past the age of bearing children, so there is no risk to it. And I liked feeling you inside me when you spent.”
He shivered at her directness and the images it created. And if he weren’t exhausted by having her, he might have gone right back to the act. But instead he gathered her closer and kissed her temple. “I liked everything about what we did, Gia. And if you give me an hour, I’ll like it all over again.”
She giggled, an almost girlish sound that reflected no worries, no pains, and he felt a satisfaction the likes of which nothing else had ever given him. Because he had helped her, and that was, in the end, the greatest duty of his life.
Even if it couldn’t always be.
CHAPTER 10
Giabella had always been able to compartmentalize herself when it came to her duties. Whether she was having a good or bad day personally, she could enter a room filled with dignitaries or subjects and dazzle as a good queen should. No one could ever read her expression if she didn’t allow it.
But today, standing in the middle of the receiving room, surrounded by ladies and gentlemen for her farewell tea before their return to the capital, she was…distracted. The reason was, of course, Dash, who stood across the room, talking to Count Friskar.
He was so handsome that her heart fluttered like a schoolgirl’s. And when he glanced her way and gave just the slightest of supportive smiles, that heart throbbed all the more powerfully.
“Your Majesty?”
Giabella blinked and returned her attention to the companion she had all but forgotten was at her side. Lady Allen, one of the lesser gentry from the central part of the island, and a woman who had always been someone she counted as a friendly acquaintance.
“I’m sorry, my dear,” Giabella said, and felt her cheeks heating. “I found myself distracted.”
“Understandably,” Lady Allen said with a warm smile. “You must have so much on your mind with the election just weeks away. And then…what? Have you put much thought into your future?”
Giabella glanced again at Dash. She knew him so well after all this time, she could parse out even the slightest hint of his mood or thoughts. He was in his element at the moment, talking to Friskar as something closer to an equal than he ever had as a servant. That is what a position in government would give to him: a higher footing that he certainly deserved.
And a future she refused to disrupt, even if it broke her heart. After all he’d given her? She couldn’t.
“I’ve been thinking a great deal of Everlay lately,” she said after a pause. “My old homeland is a place I’ve not visited in years, and I was never able to have an extended stay when I went. Perhaps after everything settles, that would be the…the best decision for me. And for the country.”
“How so?” Lady Allen asked, her brow wrinkling.
Giabella sighed. “The last thing this country will need is reminders of the monarchy they are about to reject lurking around every corner, spending their money and potentially influencing decisions despite the election.” She tried to avoid looking at Dash yet again. Almost impossible. He was a magnet for her. An irresistible pull. “I want everyone to have a chance to settle into their new roles before I make myself a regular public figure again.”
Lady Allen nodded slowly. “I would miss you, of course. Your lovely company is always a pleasure. But I understand the desire. It is admirable, really. All of what your family is surrendering is admirable. I hear it from the people regularly when I am out and about in the world. They want their freedom, their autonomy, but they do not hate you.”
“Most of the time power must be removed through violent means,” Giabella said with a shiver. “That Grantham was willing to simply surrender it is something I am very proud of. I hope that the others in control will feel the same and not act out of malice.”
Lady Allen tilted her head. “Are you talking about Lord Hadley? About the altercation between you a few nights ago?”