I turned my head to the side so I wouldn’t have to look at Macalister and gasped it into my arm. “Oh, my God. Yes, Royce.”
My fiancé’s finger pushed and pulled inside me, moving faster to match the hurried pace of his tongue lashing at me. I gulped down air but grew lightheaded anyway. There was nowhere to look. Not at Royce, whose penetrative gaze made me want to explode, or at Macalister, who appeared both tormented and enraptured.
I knew it was wrong.
That I should send him away, or at least open my mouth and say something. This moment was supposed to be between Royce and me. But if I spoke up, it’d ruin everything. Royce would be rightfully furious, and he didn’t handle his emotions well. What if he lost control and said something he regretted? What if he gave away what he was planning?
The greedy, selfish part of me didn’t want this to be over. I was close to orgasm. Royce’s mouth lapped at me, and when he added a second finger to join the first, my lips parted into an inaudible cry. Electricity danced over my bare skin. My breasts ached, and my nipples pinched tighter.
So, I kept my tongue leashed and let Macalister watch how his son pleased me. I allowed him to listen to my soft sobs of pleasure and the sound of Royce’s fingers as they made me wetter still.
The wrongness of it was so overwhelming, it consumed everything. It pinned me to my seat on the couch and in Royce’s hands, naked and squirming as I gasped for breath. I tried to keep my gaze on the man kneeling on the floor, but Macalister’s presence demanded attention and stole my focus.
The way his fingers tensed on the doorframe made me think he was imagining what he’d do with them if given the opportunity. How he would use them to coax out an orgasm. It was difficult to concentrate with my climax closing in, but I stared at him, trying to give him the darkest look of disapproval I had.
Without a sound, I made my battle cry.
Macalister made his with the corner of his mouth lifting in an evil smirk.
There was power in this room, and it had all been mine up until this moment. Like a fool, I hadn’t realized we were playing a game, and as usual, Macalister was already two moves ahead. His hand came down off the doorframe and seemed to glide through the air in slow motion.
Holy shit. I watched with dread and sick fascination as he cupped himself through his slacks and began to massage his building erection.
My hands tunneled into Royce’s hair, preventing him from turning and seeing the horrifying thing unfolding behind him. It was hypnotic the way Macalister’s palm slid up and down, and how his fingers clenched and gripped. Dark, twisted satisfaction spread across his face.
He wasn’t mad anymore. No, he was enjoying the view. His gaze trailed over me, lingering on my breasts, and followed the lines of my spread legs. I felt his scrutiny the same way I imagined his cold fingers would feel.
This had to be a bluff, I told myself. Macalister couldn’t stand I’d been in control, and he’d done what he could to level the playing field. I held his gaze with defiance. He wasn’t going to actually . . .
God, I was supposed to know better. It was win at all costs in this family.
I hopelessly chased my breath while watching his fingers methodically undo his fly, and my muscles coiled with anxiety. I choked on air as his zipper was pulled down, tooth by silent tooth. No, no, no, repeated in my head, but I didn’t issue a whisper to stop it. I was drunk off desire.
The flurry of Royce’s tongue seduced. His fingers touched the spot deep inside me that made my heart skip and stumble. I was right on the ledge, only a fingertip’s grip away from falling into ecstasy.
My frantic gaze bounced between him and Macalister’s hand as he buried it inside his undone pants and dug around. And then it began to move, sliding up and down in long strokes.
It was beyond fucked up. So perverse, even the Greek gods might have been proud.
Royce’s fingers plunged inside me so fast the couch began to shake, and I forced my gaze down, wanting to see him and nothing else. I was a passenger who naïvely boarded a rollercoaster, but only once I was strapped in and the cars were climbing the hill did I realize what a mistake I’d made.
I needed off. I had to find a way to stop it, I had to—
Satisfaction erupted and burst from my core, spiraling out along my limbs faster than lightning as I came. A shocked moan crashed through me while I flinched and contracted and let go of Royce’s head. It felt like I was being jolted with a Taser, only instead of painful electricity, it was hot pleasure.
He sat back but left his fingers buried inside me, where he could feel every reactive pulse my body gripped him with. He watched me with wonderment and desire, and I forgot about the other man in the room. All I wanted was the one who’d waited a year to have me, even when he wasn’t sure he’d get to.
The man I loved who was trying to dethrone a king.
“Royce.” My voice cracked with emotion as I begged. “Make love to me.”
For a moment, Hades stepped aside, and Ares took over. His expression said he’d go to war and march through hell, and Royce would spend every last dollar he had to keep me. Nothing would stand in his way.
I blinked, unleashing a tear I hadn’t realized had collected in my eye, and Hades returned. He came to me, wiped the tear away, and pressed his mouth to mine. His arms caged around me, and I was Persephone, happy in her prison.
It was unclear when Macalister left, but by the time Royce lifted me up off the couch, his father had vanished. He must have shut the door behind him because it was closed again. A stone of guilt settled on my chest, crushing my heart. I shouldn’t have allowed any of that to happen.
There wasn’t time to dwell on it. Wooden beams decorated the ceiling, and their lines continued down the back wall, so they were the only thing breaking up the floor to ceiling windows, and Royce walked us toward it until my upper back was flat to the smooth wood.
He was already hard as he stood between my legs, but I clasped a hand around him and pumped my fist, trying to repay at least a fraction of the pleasure he’d given me. His palms were on the beam over my head and he looked down to watch my strokes, and although it severed the connection of our stare, it didn’t break the spell between us. His chest rose and fell with his uneven breath, and he throbbed in my hand. He enjoyed the feeling, but I couldn’t help but wonder if he was allowing it more for my benefit than his own, giving me an opportunity to reciprocate.
His eyes met mine and announced all he wanted was to follow the command I’d issued.
Make love to me.
A breathless sigh slipped from my mouth as his hands drifted around me, both behind my waist. One moved to splay across my back and the other slid down over my backside. Without thinking about it, I hiked my leg up to wrap around him, and his fingers trailed lower. They skated down through the crevice of my body between my cheeks, and he stifled the noise of surprise I made by planting his mouth over mine.
There was only the faint brush of his fingertips against my clit before he moved on and his palm slid against the underside of my thigh. I was balanced on the ball of one foot, but then he was lifting, and it left me with no choice but to wrap my legs and arms around him and hold on.
He stared at me like he might die if he didn’t, and slowly lowered me onto him, inch by impossibly good inch. On the outside, we were so still we were practically statues, but inside everything was going haywire. My pulse was an engine in overdrive. Nerves fluttered in my belly. A whine threatened to bubble out of me.