Page 69 of Princess of Thorns and Ruin

Thankfully, vampires heal too fast for her to be sore.

Tensing in anticipation, I adjust the angle of her hips and impale her on my cock. God. She’s perfect. Tight and smooth and so deliciously out of my league.

Inside her, I feel more alive than I’ve felt in decades. This night wasn’t supposed to happen, yet it somehow broke the streak of forgettable one-night-stands that governed my life. I want to worship her body until the point of exhaustion and start again tomorrow, but that’s wishful thinking.

She moves with me, chasing her release, and I bring a hand to her front to caress her breasts, her nipples hard and sensitive. I fuck her slow and steady, the tip of my cock stretching her entrance with each thrust until she writhes.

“Harder.”

I spread her open with a slow but forceful thrust, and her eyes roll inward as I tease her, hitting the same spot over and over again until she arches her back and moans, lost in the ecstasy of her orgasm for minutes, her walls soft and wet as her juices flow around my length, her mouth opened in a mix of surprise and joy.

“That was…amazing.”

Vampires don’t blush, but if we could, her cheeks would be crimson, and her wide, joyful grin tugs at a loose thread inside my heart.

“Are you really going to marry him?” The intrusive question worms its way out, crude and unexpected. I pushed it out of my mind all night, but I can’t reign it in anymore.

She kisses my jaw. “Are you jealous, Mr. Beaumont?”

Fucking A.

I both hate and love how my surname rolls off her tongue. She’s teasing me in both senses of the word, her pink tongue fucking with both me and my name in one go, making jokes like this is just another Tuesday.

She’s about to marry a man she loathes. A proper princess would be crying her eyes out about the unfairness of her gold-ridden destiny, but not Arielle.

I shift on the bed, the sheet wrapped around my midriff. “You have options, you know. Say the word, and I’ll sneak you out of here before the fuckers can blink and bring you back to Europe…”

“Ah! You’re funny.”

Her melodic laugh unravels me, and my eyes narrow. “I amuse you, now?”

“Yes.”

I never understood these royals. Why is she not fighting this? Why would she marry this pig?

Her gaze collides with mine, ten times sharper than it was a second ago, sharp enough to cut through steel. “Is that what you did for Elle? You smuggled her out of the castle?”

My brows pull together.

“You lied to the king at the tribunal. I heard it, loud and clear.”

My mind reels, thinking back on our earlier conversations. “You have powers, like your mother did.”

The mention of her mother causes her eyes to glaze over, and she withdraws inside her royal carapace, the discussion coming to an abrupt stop. “My mother could bend people’s will, and it got her killed.” A minute passes in silence, Arielle retreating more and more into herself until she breathes, “Did you love her? Elle?”

I rub my chin, embarrassed. “I used to. Not anymore.”

She nods to herself and holds the comforter to her chest, and I can’t help but feel I said the wrong thing. Maybe she thinks that I’ve got a kink for royals, but that’s simply not true.

“My brother will not let her be, you know.”

“I know.”

The first hints of dusk appear in the windows, and my stomach lurches. Her first-blood and his escort could appear at any moment to feed her before sundown.

Arielle angles her face away as I gather my clothes, straighten the collar of my shirt, and make sure my jacket is perfectly straight. “See you out there, Lucky.”

Jude is standing guard on the other side of the door, both hands clasped in front of him. Fuck. We exchange a look, and his lips quirk before his serious, professional scowl returns. Jude is like a brother to me. He’d never sell me out, but I still would have preferred for this to remain my little secret.

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