Page 21 of Mastering their Maiden

I drew her focus back to me by taking her chin in hand, letting my eyes settle on her pretty face. Gods, she was beautiful. Those sun-kissed cheeks, the pouty set of her mouth. Her bright eyes, the same color as clear skies over the mountains of my home. I stared into them, my cock twitching in my trousers, begging to be put in her cunt where it belonged.

“I’m talking about Makan,” I said, my hands tightening on her waist as I pulled her against me, unable to resist grinding into her softness. “When he pushed you. Did he hurt you?”

She blinked, then the ghost of a smile curled one side of her mouth, and her hands softened on my chest ever so slightly. “No. It would take more than a shove to hurt me.”

I heard Kaiden grunt, and Dex and Umber’s expressions were amused as they stared at her. Placating, almost.

But I smiled, licking my lips before I turned her and started walking, backing her up to the bed. My eyes stayed locked on hers, and I found no tears or fear in them. Instead, they were wide, her pupils dilated, filled with a desire she was trying far too hard to fight. I grinned, taking her chin between my fingers to hold her gaze as I continued to move her back.

Princess, Umber and Kaiden liked to call her. Dex had taken to it, too. Aleria.

Yes, she was a princess.

But this girl wasn’t ever going to sit in a tower and issue orders from a throne, even if we sat in chairs beside her. She was a fighter, her fierceness born out of necessity. A will to survive so she could help others live. She was like the four of us.

She was like me.

I leaned in, my teeth nipping her bottom lip when she tipped her head back. “You were brave today, Aria. But you don’t need to fight us so hard.”

“Fighting you isn’t hard. I’ve lasted this long,” she hissed, teeth clenched as I walked her back to the bed. “You think a couple of slaps to my ass or promises of pleasure are going to make me weak in the knees? Think again. I don’t need you, and I sure as hell don’t want you.”

I smiled, relishing the defiant challenge in her eyes. If you’re going to fuck me, fuck me, she said, because she wasn’t one for games. She’d had people manipulating and toying with her for most of her life and it had gotten old, but I wasn’t playing any games with her. Oh, no. I would fuck her like she wanted. Hard and rough. Pinning her body under mine, using my strength to subdue her to show her I was strong enough to master her. I was strong enough to keep her safe.

It would happen. Very soon.

But not today.

No, today our girl needed to be shown how much she needed us. How badly she wanted us despite her defiance. She needed discipline, yes, but she also needed contact. To be touched and cherished and worshiped. She would be, even if we had to pin her down and hold her spread to receive our praise.

Aria’s breath hitched when her legs hit the bed, but my body was still moving, taking hers with it as I fell onto the mattress. She tried to move back, scrabbling up the bed away from me, but I followed, pinning her with my weight and a hand in her hair. She hissed when I closed my fist into the thick strands, then her eyes went wide just before they closed and her lips parted.

Giving me the perfect opportunity to seal my lips over hers and steal the kiss I’d been dreaming of since I first set eyes on her.

CHAPTER 8

Aria

I pushed my hands into Zander’s chest.

Hard.

It was no use. He was heavy, and strong as I’d made myself, he was stronger.

He didn’t pin my hands or even try to stop me from shoving at him, mostly because his hands were busy. One cupped my breast, kneading it through the thin fabric of my dress as I tried to shove him off, hating yet craving the tension it stirred low in my belly. His other hand fisted into my hair, holding my head steady, leaving me unable to resist his kiss.

It wasn’t the first kiss I’d ever gotten. I’d given one or two to entice a guard to look the other way when I’d snuck out. But Zander wiped the memory of those kisses away. He pushed my lips open with his tongue, seeming to savor my taste and the feel of my lips even while I tried to resist the urge to kiss him back.

Was it an automatic response? An instinctual urge to mold my lips to his and pull him close? Because it sure as hell wasn’t me. It couldn’t be me.

“You fight so hard, Aleria. What would happen if you just gave in?”

My eyes were squeezed shut, but I opened them when the bed dipped and Umber crawled next to me. Zander’s lips claimed my mouth, but Umber’s pressed to my ear, his breath tickling my neck. One of my hands was in Zander’s hair, pulling hard to try to get him to release me from the kiss. But Umber took it and brought my knuckles to his lips. His fingers slipped between mine and he pinned me down, pressing my hand into the mattress. Zander released my lips and began to move down my body, and Umber took my chin, turning my panting lips to meet his.

I was torn between who to fight. Should I claw at Umber for imprisoning me? Or fight Zander? His hands were working at my dress, and he practically ripped through the ties on the bodice. I pulled my lips away from Umber’s and cursed violently.

“You can’t claim me,” I protested, gritting my teeth, then crying out when Dex took the hand shoving at Zander’s shoulder and pinned it on the other side of my head. He settled down on one side of my body while Umber framed the other, both of them shushing me when I started to thrash. “You have some weird ritual that happens, right? Do you want to ruin that? Destroy—”

“You’re right. We don’t want to ruin that.”

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