Page 60 of Settle Down, Princess

“Of course it did, you idiot.”

“That doesn’t seem possible.”

“It’s the look of a man having his soul sucked out of his body is what it is.”

“No…” The crack of Arik’s voice had me looking up. “It’s more than that.” He stroked my cheek with his knuckles, his brows creasing in an expression of sweet pain I knew all too well. Somehow that was reassuring, that someone so much more worldly than me could still have his legs cut out from under him by… whatever this was. “You look so fucking beautiful on your knees.” My brows jerked down and I made to pull off, but his hand clamped down on my head, then caressed the shape of it when I didn’t move. “I feel like we need to get down on them most days, bow before our queen, but that will get tricky the closer we get to the capital.”

Fear threatened to cut through the haze of lust.

“But no matter what happens, I won’t forget the moment you went to your knees for me.” His eyes held mine for several seconds, but then his cock twitched in my mouth, demanding attention. “Here it comes, lass. See if you can take it all.” He and I moved together then, working to bring him to a heady peak, then prolong the pleasure when he went tumbling over. “That’s it. That’s my girl. Suck it all down, lass, every drop. You make me feel things I’ve got no business feeling…” He let out a ragged groan. “And you make me want to feel them anyway.”

A slide of his hand across my head let me know my job was done. As I relaxed and sat back on my heels, a dizzying exhaustion overtook me. My vision pulsed as they hauled me to my feet, and I was like a limp doll in their hands as they pulled me closer.

“A bit lightheaded, love?” Roan asked, but Silas frowned.

“She’s crashing.” His fingers slid across my scalp, probing gently like a physician, not a lover. “And she’s got a fucking head wound! She needs a healer…”

Whatever anyone else had to say about that, it was lost to me. One lot of men had brutalised me into unconsciousness, but these men had sent me there, drifting in a cloud of pleasure.

Chapter 34

My mother was stroking my hair.

When I was a little girl, she loved to do just that, using the heavy hairbrush with the silver and mother of pearl inlay to brush through my hair in long strokes. I’d lay with my head in her lap, on the verge of sleep, with my breath becoming slower and slower. That she was doing so now, after everything that had happened, helped me drop deeper into the darkness that promised the rest I yearned for. But then she said the words that stopped me from falling too far.

“Jessalyn…”

Her voice was filled with all the affection I craved. I could feel the love throbbing there, clear and evident, though that wasn’t all. Concern, worry, and just a rough edge of anxiety. Usually that meant I’d done something I shouldn’t have, used the wrong fork at dinner or worn short gloves when long ones were called for. That didn’t fit with what the overwhelming feeling of love that I had.

The other strange thing was that she wasn’t saying my name in her usual carefully cultured tones.

“Jessalyn…”

I shifted restively, feeling like I was hovering in a sensual kind of darkness that licked at my skin, ready to swallow me down. I wanted to go down its dark throat. I felt like if I did, then it’d all stop, the pain, the struggle, the uncertainty, and the need. I’d stop. A tiny throb of concern made me wonder if that was such a good idea, but it was so fleeting that it was there and gone again the moment I felt it. The darkness remained.

“Jessalyn…”

The voice was deeper now, more resonant, vibrating toward me through the darkness and forcing it to shift, slip along my skin, swirl around me in response to currents I couldn’t see.

“No, darling girl…”

Who was this man to command me so? And it was a man, because Mother’s voice had completely transformed somehow, going from elegant and feminine to ragged and masculine. The words felt like they snagged on my skin, in the way that satin slippers did when I neglected to polish my feet smooth.

“Jessalyn…”

I was swept up then, picked up and swirled around by a hidden presence so immense the whole world was forced to shift and change in response to it. I felt dizzied and slightly ill, and once I noticed that, it seemed to make my guts roil more aggressively. My brow creased and I didn’t like that. The more I became aware of my body, the more the darkness receded, and that didn’t feel a good thing at all.

Pain, throbbing slow and steady—at a pace akin to my mother’s when brushing my hair—pulsed through my head, though these regular spikes of sensation were nowhere near as pleasant. As soon as I acknowledged the pain in my head, that seemed to enable me to feel it all: in my wrists, in my neck, in my whole body. Becoming aware of it made me whimper, and my fingers twitched before catching on something very warm and very hard. I felt a need to see what it was, and that made my eyelids flutter, flutter, like a moth against a lantern’s glass. But moths die when they manage to touch the burning wicks of candles, and that’s what my eyes did as they flicked open.

“Jessalyn…?”

He hung over me, holding onto my arms as he gazed down at my face. His blue eyes were red-rimmed, blood-shot with a filigree of capillaries, and he stared for several heartbeats as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

Arik.

His name came to me suddenly, as did so much else. Arik, rescuing me from my dress and then from the castle. Arik, leading me to the docks under the guise of being a helpful stranger. Arik, cautioning me not to drink roseblood tainted beer but doing the same when I downed mine, then sending word for his contacts—no, his men—to meet him at the tavern. And there the four of them had sat, watching me and listening to my plans of escape. And Arik had given me a bag of gold, no doubt passed on to him by their king, knowing that I’d never be able to use it.

But I had.

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