Page 159 of Settle Down, Princess

“More than that.” Arik’s tone was gently chiding. “If he was just hard, all you’d need to do was unlace his breeches and jerk him fast—”

“Yes…” I hissed, pushing my hips up, needing more contact, more friction.

“And he’d spill all over his stomach, but what else?” When Arik pulled her hand away, I swore a blue streak under my breath, cursing him, his mother, his entire line right now. “What else is he experiencing?”

Her hands landed beside my head as she loomed over me. Jessalyn smelled as sweet as a flower garden most days, but there was something darker, more sultry about her now. I found myself wanting to identify and catalogue every possible bloom it could be, right as her eyes locked with mine.

Her smile when it came was like the sun rising, staining her cheeks with its light, and my heart was glad to see it.

“Anticipation.” She reached down with her hand, not a blade, but the edge of her nail felt like a knife’s point as she flicked one of the remaining buttons open, then another, her eyes narrowing slightly as she scraped a nail across my chest. Her smile widened when I stiffened. “You’re hovering on the edge.”

“If you know how often I experience that,” I ground out, “you might not be quite so self-congratulatory.”

“Is that so?” My shirt was pulled open, her hips landing on mine as she smoothed the fabric over. “Have you been aching for me, Silas?”

“The gods know how much.”

My hands landed on her perfectly formed arse, tugging her down as I rose up, grinding our bodies against each other. The friction was amazing and terrible all at the same time, the slip of the leather nothing compared to the satin of her.

“Well, now it’s my turn to find out.”

Jessalyn plucked my hands away and then pressed them up and over my head. “I think I’m going to need you to stay right there.” Her focus shifted to Arik. “He should be bound, shouldn’t he? One move and I…” She blinked. “I could do something I’d regret.”

“I think he’d like that very much,” Arik said with a chuckle. “Roan?”

“Tying up pretty girls?” the red-haired man grumbled. “That’s something I can get behind. This idiot…” But he undid his belt and pulled it free, moving to loop the leather around the other man’s wrists. “I don’t see the appeal.”

“My gratitude isn’t enough?”

Sometimes we forgot what Jessalyn was. A princess of a small kingdom, but a princess in truth. She looked through her lashes at Roan, his groan a perfect expression of the one I kept back. He lashed my wrists to the headboard with a dark look my way before turning back to our woman.

“Always.” His hand slid into her hair and I experienced the bittersweet pain of watching the two of them kissing when my own mouth ached for the lack of her. “Now, don’t get tempted to gut the prick. It’s a feeling I fight each day, but we must resist.”

“No gutting.” My stomach muscles jumped as she traced her fingertips across them. “No permanent damage.”

Her smile faded as she stared into my eyes, instinctively communicating her boundaries in that moment and I nodded in recognition.

“I’d wear your scars gladly, lass. Any mark you choose to give me would be treasured, but… not now. Not this time.”

“Not this time,” Arik agreed, passing her the knife, and that’s when my focus fell apart. He was talking to her, telling her what to do and what to be careful of, but I didn’t care. Just those long elegant hands clasping the hilt, her perfect oval nails contrasting with the ebony handle–my eyes fought to take in every detail even as my mind started to lose the ability to do just that. His voice was just a low hum, hers a bright counterpoint, right up until this.

“Watch him!”

It felt like I heard Arik’s voice coming from far, far away, because he couldn’t intrude on this most-intimate space. Everything narrowed down to just her and just me. That keen look, those blue eyes sharp as her knife’s blade as she watched me shift and flex, testing the belt’s limits, the leather creaking as I tried to meet her what was in her hand.

“Quietly.” Her hand on my stomach pushed me down, and when I followed her lead, my breathing shallow rather than in great gasps, I was rewarded. “Be perfectly still for me. You can do that?” Her voice was the perfect blend of plead and command. She was my queen. She ruled me utterly, but right now she needed my cooperation. I nodded sharply, unable to deny her anything, and my reward came quickly. “Good boy.” Her praise wreathed around me, tying me far tighter to the bed than Roan had dared as her knife came down.

I had to wait for it, that became clear. She didn’t hesitate, but the knifepoint seemed to descend glacially slow. Or perhaps it was just my heart rate that was fast, beating so hard in my ears that the sounds all blurred together, I couldn’t tell. All I could do was watch her hand grip the knife handle so tightly her knuckles went white. I wanted her to do the same to me. Hold my dick, squeeze me to the point of pain just to feel the flush of endorphins rushing through my veins, like they did right now.

Jessalyn was doing exactly what she was told to. I could dimly feel her restraint, the blunt knife dragging across my skin, but the tiny snarls of metal on the blunted point did the trick, leaving raised welts in their wake. I wasn’t a slut for pain, something that Rose had announced after one long session. I didn’t need Jessalyn to hurt me to feel this. It was the exhilaration of it, the sting reminding me just how close I was to the bleeding edge, literally.

“Jess…”

I sighed her name, needing to say more, to describe exactly what she was doing to me, but she just shook her head slightly, then shot me a secret smile. One just the two of us shared, it felt, the others disappearing from my field of view. Just her, just my girl, my mate, my queen. My mouth worked, but no sound came out but a terrible groan.

“There, there.”

She sounded like a nanny soothing a recalcitrant child, but there was nothing motherly about the way she pressed the knife hilt against my cock, her lips now kissing the marks she’d made. Pleasure and pain, my eyes rolled backwards, unable to bear to watch anymore. My other senses needed to engage, feeling the soft press of her lips and then… fuck, her tongue sliding along the scratch. The salt of her saliva made it throb so fucking good. My wrists jerked against my bonds, needing to cradle her head, hold her right there, but instead, I was forced to lie there as she pulled away.

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