“Sweet goddess.” I drag his face to mine, capturing that wicked mouth before it can do any more damage.
Our lips fuse, and I can feel the passion igniting between us. Thiago ravages my mouth like a drowning man seeking water. My nails rake down his bare shoulders, digging into pure muscle, and a groan tears from my lips as he sinks between the cradle of my thighs, rocking against me.
It’s too much.
Hard fingers stroke their way up my thigh, and his gaze locks upon mine as if in challenge. Back and forth. Back and forth. Knuckles questing their way higher until I’m holding my breath, trying not to squirm. Trying not to rock my hips against him.
“The first time I fucked you, we took no time for such niceties,” he tells me. “But the second time, you stole away from your mother’s court and met me in the ruins of Hammerdale. You told me you couldn’t betray your mother unless I promised you my heart. So I gave it to you then and there. Forever, Vi. Forever mine. And I won you over with soft kisses”—like the one he presses against my jaw—“and gentle touches”—those knuckles brush against the leather covering my thigh—“and the hot lash of my tongue, right… here.”
I nearly die as his touch finds me.
He rubs those fingers between my thighs, and I’ve never hated my leather breeches more.
“Your mother proclaimed me a thief, Vi. But I never stole a thing that wasn’t freely given. And I never will.”
The touch vanishes.
“Don’t you dare stop.” I grab his wrist.
“No?” He bites at my lower lip, his thumb brushing back and forth over that seam, igniting a million nerves. “Then beg me, Vi. Beg me to shatter you. Beg me to break you. Beg me to make you scream.”
Yes. I throw my head back, arching my spine. “Please, oh, please.”
He tugs at the leather of my breeches, jerking them apart roughly, and then his fingers slide beneath my waistband, slipping between the wet crevice until they find me. “Beg harder. Tell me how much you want my touch. Tell me how you can’t live another moment without it.”
Fuck. “Harder. More. Please. Please, Thiago.”
He has his fingers inside me, and he fucks them there mercilessly, one hand pinning my wrists to the bed, and the other wreaking sweet torture.
I thrash and buck, my breath coming in sharp, harsh pants.
I see a thousand stars, biting my lip so hard I want to scream. And then he’s doing exactly as he promised. His thumb presses down ruthlessly, and I don’t even have the breath to beg for more. I shoot over the edge, shattering into a million tiny pieces.
He holds me through the aftermath, his face burrowed against my throat and his own harsh pants landing wetly on my skin.
Slowly, he lifts his head, capturing my gaze, and then he brings his glistening fingers to his mouth and sucks my moisture from them. “I hate every fucking moment of this curse, except for this one. The moment of surrender.”
Sweet merciless fuck.
My head falls back on the bed. I don’t know how I’ve managed to retain any of my wits at all. “How many times have we done that?”
His eyes darken, and I can sense his pain in the roughness of his voice. “Far too many times to count.”
“If it’s any consolation”—I let a trembling hand skate up the plane of his chest, brushing my thumbs against the roughened stubble of his jaw—“practice makes perfect.”
He nips at my fingers, then lowers himself onto all fours over me, his massive arms caging me in. “Are you asking me to continue?”
I think about it.
In my mother’s court, sex is often used as a weapon or a political maneuver. I learned that lesson when I was eighteen and Etan of the Goldenhills taught me I couldn’t trust a honeyed tongue or a passionate kiss. While the other women of the court enjoyed such pursuits, or laid their own, I was somewhat choosier.
Sex isn’t just a means to an end for me. Nor is it a means to answer the questions that brew inside me. I need those questions answered first, before I allow him to take further intimacies.
“I—”
He presses a finger to my mouth. “You don’t need to say it. I can see it in your eyes.”
Thiago leans down, replacing his finger with his lips as he presses the softest of kisses to my mouth. My resolve is just beginning to weaken when he finally breaks the kiss.
A dark smile curls over his mouth as he pushes away from the bed. “Let me know if you want to test your memory again. Until then…. You’d best get dressed, Vi. Before I forget my promise to give you time to remember me.”
A pent-up breath explodes from me as he strides toward the chair where his shirt lies. But it can’t slake the furious burn of unfulfilled desire.
“You bastard.”
Thiago laughs as he snatches up his shirt. “Your move, Vi. It’s always been your move.”
24
It takes me several days to recover from the onslaught of the curse breaking. I spend those days either sleeping or roaming the battlements of Ceres, looking down at the town.
I know now why Thiago kept me locked away up here.
There are too many people in the town who know who I am. All it would take would be one slip, and then the curse’s steely trap might have snapped shut and driven me mad.
It reminds me of my mother’s court. Doors slamming in my face. All those nobles and emissaries glancing at me from a distance before they were whisked away. It was never obvious how closely guarded I was, but my mother ascertained that I was kept away from anyone who might reveal the truth.
All those lonely hours in the stables or in the library were merely another sort of prison.
“Vi,” Thiago calls, breaking me out of my reverie. He’s striding along the battlements toward me. “The others are in my war chamber. Do you think you’re ready to join us?”
After days of mindless recovery, I’m ready to rejoin even my mother’s court.
Or not quite.
Surely, I’m not that desperate for company.
“I would love to.”
He escorts me inside, and I can feel the tension in his silence. We haven’t touched since that day. Nor have we kissed. Sometimes he looks at me as if he’s still silently counting how many kisses I owe him, but I haven’t dared broach the subject.
I needed time, and he gave it to me.
The others are gathered in the audience chamber.
“Welcome, my princess,” Finn says, bowing again as if we’re meeting for the first time. I don’t know where he’s been, but it wasn’t in the city.
“Is he always like this?” I ask Thalia.
“Always,” she admits, rolling her eyes. “Finn would flirt with your dead grandmother.”
Eris mutters into her wine, “Though his favorite flirtation is with the mirror.”
Finn shakes his head.
“I can’t quite remember why I missed you, Princess,” he says. “Or these moments where the three of you decide to cast such vile lies upon my innocent ears.”
“Someone has to contain your enormous sense of arrogance,” Eris tells him.
“And that someone is you?” he asks coolly, stealing her wineglass and draining it before she even has a chance to snatch for it. “If you were any other woman, I’d be questioning just what your fascination with challenging my pride is.”