Page 155 of Settle Down, Princess

My fingers twitched, wanting to clasp his wrist, just to feel his skin against mine, to hold him right where he was, but I needn’t have bothered. Arik shouldered closer, a small frown forming as he loomed above me.

“To keep you safe, Jessalyn, that’s why we disappeared for days. I can’t send you word that we’re engaging in treasonous plots.” He shook his head sharply. “We shouldn’t be here at all.”

“So why are you?”

I blinked, shocked I’d managed to croak that out, but I got my answer immediately in the chorus of snorts from each one of them.

“My father taught me to suppress every one of my impulses,” Silas said, tugging my head closer so our lips hovered over the other’s. “Never do what you want, only what’s smart, but I can’t…” His eyes burned as he stared into mine. “I can’t bring myself to do a single thing he taught me, not when I’m near you.”

That little sound of surrender, of the loss of hope and the finding of it, was a perfect match for the one in my own heart, so when Silas moved closer, when Roan wrapped his arm around me, and Arik pinned me to the wall, I melted into them, into Silas’ kiss. This, my heart beat, this was what eased the ache that throbbed so persistently in my chest, replacing it with a very different kind of pain.

My hands slid up and into Silas’ hair, a momentary feeling of the silken slip of it against my fingertips and then just his kiss. Hungry, claiming, branding me as his, it burned into me far more intensely than roseblood.

They all did.

Strong hands tilted my head Roan’s way, his kiss harder, hungrier, his small growl of desperation the twin of my own. When I pulled away to suck in a breath, Arik stared down at me.

“For you, Jessalyn.”

I don’t think I’d ever heard Arik say my name that softly, and his kiss was the same. Just a brush of lips at first, as if we were kissing for the first time, and in some ways, that’s what this felt like. When the drugs, the pain, and the fear was all stripped away, just leaving the four of us. “Just for you.”

I slid my hand around his neck like I had a right to, then tugged his mouth down so it slammed into mine.

Chapter 89

Arik

I had thought it was just the roseblood, but I burned for Jessalyn.

I craved the scalding lick of her, my mouth pressing harder, my tongue delving deeper, as my hand collared her throat, pinning her to the wall. I couldn’t even let her get an inch away from me, my grip tightening when she tried. The sounds of the others’ discontent was background noise to the touch of her under me. Her bones felt as fine as a bird’s when I slid my hands over her shoulders, tugging at the thin nightgown that revealed as much as it hid, needing to see, to feel the body hinted at beneath its cotton folds.

“Arik…”

I felt her moan vibrating in her throat as I kissed my way down it, my heart skipping a beat when her hands landed in my hair. The twist of the strands close to the scalp, the prickle of pain was a welcome feeling. I couldn’t get enough of it, the pleasure and pain of her, and when she pulled away, I saw the echo there of my feeling. She frowned slightly, just staring into my eyes as she caught her breath, and I longed to smooth that thin line between her brows away, right up until Silas stepped in to do just that.

I had her by the throat but his thumb smoothed across her brow, his gaze almost conciliatory, until his focus dropped down. He took in her full lips, now bruised and swollen from my rough treatment of her before shaking his head slowly.

“You shouldn’t have asked us in here.” She raised an eyebrow in silent question. “Shouldn’t ask my sister all those questions about our welfare.” He smiled, but it quickly faltered. “Shouldn’t make it seem like you care about a single one of us.”

“You fear discovery by the king?” she rasped out, that husky little voice playing across my skin like her fingertips soon would.

“No.” The shake of his head was sharp. “Not that fucking monster, but… it makes a man start thinking about things he shouldn’t.”

She reached out to trace the line of his jaw and I watched every movement of her hands with a strange kind of envy, my thumb swiping over her pulse point so I felt the moment her heart rate picked up.

“Such as…?” she asked.

“Hope, Jessalyn.” He moved in closer, unable to keep himself free of her orbit, his mouth finding hers like steel to a lodestone. “It makes me feel hopeful, the most dangerous thing a man can feel in Khean.”

“That’s what you’re calling this now?” she said in barely a whisper. Her head moved and so did his, like two dancers waltzing slowly across an endless ballroom floor. “Hope?’

“Need, desire, a pain that claws at my guts every moment I’m away from you, but it just hurts more when I’m close. I can’t make myself walk away, though.” His eyes found hers, holding them as they froze, a hair’s breadth away from a kiss. “I can’t, you know that now, don’t you? I can’t stop my brain churning, trying to find a way closer to you.”

“But you’re right here,” she said, peering at him quizzically.

“Am I?” My brother stared at her then. “Am I, Jessalyn? It feels like there’s a million other things in the room beside us, getting in the way, but—”

Her fingers pressed against his lips, first to silence him, but then as she stared, I was willing to bet it was because she was just as drawn to him as we were her.

---