Page 37 of Vows to a King
Such delight bloomed in his eyes that her heart spasmed in her chest. “How well you understand your husband already,” he said, nipping a line of kisses down her throat.
His tongue swirled around her breast, finally licking the engorged peak. Fresh sensations assailed her as he sucked at her nipple and then applied the same ministrations to her other breast. The deep pulls of his mouth sent twangs of sensation to her sex.
There was not a square inch of her that he didn’t kiss or taste or nip. And soon, Jemima was panting again, starting that inexorable climb toward another ecstatic shattering.
Her skin tingled, tears flew down her cheeks as he teased and teased, building her up all over again. Until she was so incredibly sensitive down there that even a breath of air made her sizzle.
Only when she dragged her nails over the taut skin of his shoulders, pulled at his head and begged him to take her, did he run the head of his shaft down her folds and thrust into her in one smooth stroke.
Pain spiked like a live flame for an instant and then slowly faded out as new sensations clamored to be felt. The heavy, aching fullness that came after was unlike anything Jemima had ever known and yet she wouldn’t trade her crown for it. They lay chest to chest and their hearts thumped in unison.
“Adonis,” she whispered, feeling an absurdly desperate need for more connection in that intimacy. A new kind of vulnerability seemed to fill her from inside out, just as he did.
His weight on one elbow, her husband stared down at her. Sweat pearled over his olive skin and in his eyes, a cavernous hunger lurked. For just a second, Jemima found herself utterly unequal to it and blinked rapidly to shy away from it.
The man didn’t miss anything. “There’s no way I could avoid hurting you that first time,” he said, mistaking her panic for pain. His thumb traced the fold of her hip and thigh, as if to soothe her. “I promise I won’t, ever again.”
“I know that,” she said, not hiding the awe in her voice. “I can’t believe you didn’t do this for so long.”
“What do you mean?” he rasped, shifting around her, rotating his hips in such a way that honeyed shivers sizzled down her spine. An earthy moan escaped her. Suddenly, she was desperate for him to move. Desperate to claim him as he had her.
“I cannot fathom the amount of control it would take to deny yourself. Especially when such temptation dogs your every step.” When he didn’t answer, she fidgeted under his heavy, drugged gaze. “I guess what I’m asking is why.”
A silky shoulder rose and fell and along with it came a slight but masterful thrust of his hips. As if to remind her she was pinned under him in every way.
Jemima writhed under him, needing friction at that place, and his eyes nearly blanked with pleasure before he said, “You ask too many questions and dictate too many conditions, wife.”
Laughing at his exaggerated tone, she licked at the seam of his mouth and when his tongue came to play, she tangled hers with it. The kiss deepened in mere breaths. His rough groan and rougher thrust had her nearly jumping out of her skin. “Please,” she said, panting now. “All I’m doing is trying to understand you.”
His gaze searched hers. “My excesses led me to despise myself, more thanhedespised me. One morning, when I woke up with a sour taste in my mouth, a pounding in my head and couldn’t remember how I ended up on the floor, I realized I was making everything he said about me true. I realized why Mama decided to punish him so and that Iwashis son, in the worst way possible. And that was…unbearable.”
Tears prickled behind her eyes for the torment and burden he still carried, but she knew instinctively that he would loathe her sympathy. Neither did she like it that she would never be able to take this pain from him. And she desperately wanted to, fool that she was.
With a forceful laugh, Jemima shook the useless tears off. “No more denying yourself then,” she said, nipping at his chin playfully. “Or me, rather. You have unleashed a wanton creature. I want this pleasure, this claiming over and over again.”
Utter glee transformed his face from godlike looks to boyish beauty. “I vow, Your Majesty—” he whispered the words into the skin over her breast, that tantalizing, teasing swivel of his clever hips, never entering fully or deeply, paving the steps to her unraveling “—to please you as and when you want. I’m utterly at your service.”
Jemima laced her fingers with his. “Tell me how it feels for you. Please.”
“You take me so well and clasp me so tight, Jem. As if you were the prize for my penance,” he said, nuzzling his nose at the arch of her neck. “So good that I don’t want this to end.”
Her shortened name sounded so sweet to her ears that she stroked her hands down his back with a greed she couldn’t hide.
“Oh, but I want the destination you promised me, again.” With that, she lifted her hips in an experimental thrust.
His shaft lodged deeper inside her, nudging at that very spot where heaven seemed to linger. With a moan, she did it, again and again, seeking friction. It sent them both arcing and shaking into each other, setting off a new explosion.
Jemima tried her best to keep her eyes open as Adonis moved over and inside her with a precise, calculating rhythm that was designed to maximize her pleasure.
But she no more wanted his finesse than she wanted his masks.
Clasping her feet around his bottom and meeting his thrusts, she urged him deeper and faster. He gave in with a curse, pistoning into her, his flesh slapping against hers and when it felt like he might carve a path to her very heart with his hard thrusts, Jemima’s climax drew her into another vortex. She spiraled and shattered into so many fragments and over her, Adonis let out a feral groan.
And then, with his mouth buried at her neck, his teeth grazing her skin none too gently, the Devil Prince unraveled. And a small part of him had become hers, Jemima decided, pressing her cheek against his.
* * *
May tumbled into June, stuttered into July, bringing with it the glorious but sticky splendor of summer to Thalassos. To escape the heat, Thalassans and visitors to the kingdom alike swarmed to the beaches for swimming and sailing and simply lounging on the golden sands.
