by Roxie Ray
“Would you like to tell me, or should I—”
“No.” I caught Ronan’s hand as he shifted away from me. “Just… Just, don’t go.”
“But—”
“Come inside with me.” I sent a glance down the hall, just to make sure we weren’t being watched. Thankfully, it was empty. There was no one here but Ronan and me. “Please. Don’t leave me alone.”
8
Ronan
Alora was many things. Beautiful. Graceful. Charming. Kind.
But an idiot, she was not.
She knew what she was asking of me when she bid me to join her in her new chambers.
She knew exactly what was at stake.
And still, she had asked me anyway.
“You know what will happen if I am seen in your chambers, Your Highness,” I pointed out. Of course she knew. But sometimes, people needed to be reminded.
Even Alora.
Even myself.
“Come in quickly, then,” she shot back at me. “And shut the door.”
I should have told her no. If I had any sense of safety or security for either of us, I would have closed the door in her face and left immediately.
Instead, I stepped inside and closed the door behind me.
I could not help myself. Not when I saw the pain shining in her lovely green eyes.
No turning back now.
“I…I can’t do this, Ronan.” Alora paced back and forth across a rug so expensive, the price the king had paid for it could have fed an entire village on the outskirts of the capital for a year. If she moved across it any faster, the friction of her feet would burn a path right through it. “I thought I could. I know I have to. But seeing him, seeing the way he treats his people—knowing that he maims women, beats children…How can I possibly go through with this?”
There were tears in her eyes—but not tears of sadness. She was angry. Furious, even. Her fists were clenched like she was ready for a fight.
It shamed me to admit it, but I was proud to know that she had this side to her. I did not want to see her in pain, nor anger…
But there were some things in this life worth being angry about. It simmered off of her, brilliant and bright.
I placed a hand on her shoulder as she turned her back to me to continue pacing. “Do not worry. We can solve this, Your Highness.”
“Don’t call me that.” Alora snapped around to face me. “I don’t want to be Your Highness right now. I don’t want to hear my queen out of you either, for that matter.”
“Alora, then.” I moved to her and took her hands in the lower pair of mine, at least it would stop her from pacing. Once the rug was gone, she would end up walking a trench through the floor at this rate. “You are angry right now, Alora.”
“I’m more than angry, Ronan. I’m… broken. I’m done.”
“And you are right to feel that. The way King Brixta has treated his station…it is not noble. It is not right. In the face of tyranny, it is normal to feel like you do now.”
“He’s…going to be my husband, Ronan.” Alora stared up at me for a moment, then turned her face away as the tears spilled down her cheeks. Not just a single raindrop this time, but an entire storm. “I can’t escape this. If this is how normal feels now…I’m going to have to deal with this for the rest of my life.”
Tell her, a regal voice inside my head urged me. Tell her that he is not the real king. Tell her that you are the true ruler of Lunaria. Steal her. Take her away from this. Make her yours and take this planet back with Alora at your side!
But I could not. What was I supposed to say? That I had dreamed of her before I had even seen her face in real life? That the moons were sending me prophecies in my sleep in which I became Lunaria’s true king?
To Orion and Kali, believers in my faith, those things were comprehensible. Reasonable, even.
But to a human?
I would sound like a raving lunatic if I told her any of that. I knew it in the roots of my teeth and the pits of my soul.
“What do you want of me, Alora?” I asked instead. “If you are afraid of him, I can offer you my protection while I am here, but I do not know how long my time here in the palace will last.”
“I am afraid of him…but no, that’s not it.” Slowly, Alora raised a hand to my cheek. Her touch was warm and velvet-soft. She had hands that had never known battle. Uncalloused and smooth. So much unlike my own. “I know that you can’t protect me here forever. And I know I can’t run from this marriage. No matter how impossible it looks, I need to find some way to make the king trust me. Love me, even. But…”
“What, then?” Alora’s touch was addictive, but her words left me feeling helpless. It was not a sensation I was accustomed to. “If you are so insistent on going through with your marriage, what can I possibly do?”
“I can’t run from this, Ronan. But…” Her thumbs ran down my jawline, tracing its angles all the way to my chin. “I’m a virgin. I don’t want to lose my virginity to him.”
“I do not understand what you mean, Alora,” I lied. I knew exactly what she meant.
But I needed to hear her say it. If I made a decision about this before I heard it explicitly from her lips, I would be forever damned.
And if I did hear it from her…There was a good chance we would both be damned anyway.
“I want you, Ronan.” She said it with her shoulders back, her voice confident and clear. “Take my virginity. Please. Before he has a chance. I can’t stop him from having me…but right now, he can’t stop me from having you.”
And there it was. One of the things I had most wanted. One of the things I most feared.
If I took her as I wanted to, laid claim to her with my body as I already had started to in my heart…
She could be mine. She was offering herself to me. She was fated to be mine.
But if I chose this path—if I acquiesced to her request…
There was no turning back.
“This is…a bad idea, Alora.” I did not want to say it, but I had to. “You came here as a virgin. Your healers on Earth verified it. Yes?”
“Yes, but…”
“If King Brixta realizes that has changed, he may kill you.” I thought of Leonix, who I had not seen since I left Lunaria to collect Alora. Her pregnant belly. Her severed hand, forever gone. “Or worse.”
“Yes…and he’ll kill you too,” Alora said. “I’m sorry, Ronan. I know what I’m asking is a lot—”
“That does not matter to me. It is you that I fear for, Alora.”
Slowly, Alora smiled. “You don’t have to if he never finds out.”
I blinked at her. “That does not seem like a reliable plan.”
“Don’t you want me, Ronan?” Alora turned one of my hands over in hers. She brought my palm up to her breast and placed it there, just over her heart. “Maybe I’m wrong, but the other night in the tub…”
“Another bad idea.” I closed my eyes and let out a breath. Alora’s breast was perky and firm, but soft as well. Large and luscious and ripe. It took every iota of strength I had not to squeeze, but I did not have the willpower to take my hand away. “I should not have done that. It was wrong of me.”
It was the best I had ever felt.
“Ronan, be honest, do you not want me?” A look of hurt crossed over Alora’s face. “I understand that I don’t look like the women here—that maybe, I’m not your type, but—”
“Alora.” I would be damned for it, I was sure, but I wrapped a hand around her waist and cradled the back of her head in my third palm. With my fourth, I stroked her cheek as if she was something holy. To me, she was. “Of course I want you. I do not understand how you can doubt that.”
“Then take me! Fuck me! Ronan, please.” Alora folded her hands over my fingers against her breast and looked up at me with shining, pleading eyes. “I’ve been saving myself for my husband for twenty-five years. I don’t know how long that seems for your people, but for humans…it’s a very long time.�
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“That… I do understand.” I bowed my head, eyes closed once more. To stare into the greens of her irises for even a moment more would have caused me to lose control completely—something that I could not risk right now. Not if I wanted to damn us both. “I am twenty-nine, Alora. For twenty-nine years, I have saved myself for my wife.”
“But you want me.” She moved her hands to my face. Her fingertips ran down my cheeks, beckoning me closer to her lips. Her sweet, perfectly shaped mouth, just begging to be kissed. “And I want you. Ronan, please… If you’ve been saving yourself too, then you must have some idea of my desperation right now. I never had very high hopes for my first time…but please, Ronan, I couldn’t stand it if my first time was with him.”
I knew what she meant. I understood how she must have felt.
I only wished she could understand more fully what she was asking of me.
I had been saving myself for my wife, yes. But every bone in my body was ringing with the truth that my dreams had shown me in that moment.
Alora was my wife. In my heart. In my soul. In the cosmos. In the cruel, infinite tendrils of fate that bound us all, though I did not yet know how it could ever be.
When she asked me to take her, she thought she was merely asking me for sex. A brief salvation before she became the king’s possession forever. For good.
But for me, this would not simply be sex.
This was a terrible joke that destiny was playing on me. Fate was offering me one night with the only female I had ever wanted—so I would know exactly what I was missing when Alora married the king.
“If this isn’t what you want…you can go.” Alora stared up at me, eyes pleading one final time. “But if you do want me, Ronan—”
I did want her. I wanted her with everything that I was, and everything that I could be. With my past. My present. My future.
“How do you want it?” I asked quietly.
Alora blinked. “What?”
“Your virginity. How do you want to lose it?”
Slowly, a smile spread across Alora’s lips. “Oh. Well… Um.” Alora laughed and brushed her hair behind her ear. She was blushing. It was gorgeous. “Sorry. I’m not trying to ruin the moment or anything. I just…I guess I didn’t think about what would happen if you said yes.”
“I can leave, if you wish?” I knew how dire Alora’s situation was, but it was hard not to smile at her right now. She had just begged me to take her. Now that I had agreed, she was too flustered to know what to do next.
“No. Stay. Just…give me a second.” Alora turned and began pacing again, but this time, she made her way to the bed—then to the wardrobe—then to the large mirror on the far side of the room, and finally to the windows. At each place, she stared pensively. “Sorry. I’ve thought about this a lot.”
“How do they do it on Earth? The bedding.” I moved to the bed and gestured to it. “Here?”
“Customarily, yes.” Alora came to stand next to me. She stared at the bed in contemplation. “How do they do it on Lunaria?”
“Traditionally, on a bed of soft moss in the sacred caves, beneath the light of the moons. There is a crystal ceiling there that the moonlight passes through. It makes the whole cave glow purple while small, luminescent sprites float around the bodies of the newlyweds.”
“That sounds…beautiful,” Alora whispered.
“It is. But those are the old ways. Were this your wedding night…” I gestured to the bed again. “You would do it here with the king, on your back with your skirts pushed up over your waist and a pillow beneath your hips.”
“Oh.” Alora frowned. “That’s not as beautiful…but it’s more like what I was expecting, at least. I don’t suppose we could go to the caves?”
“Not without being caught,” I told her. “I am sorry. You would love them, though.”
“I’m sure I would.” She fluttered her lashes as she stared up at me. “Maybe you could take me there someday anyway.”
“Perhaps I could.”
“How would… you like to do it? How would you do it if you were king?”
I drew in a breath. She had no way of knowing what a tempting thing she was asking me.
I wanted to tell her then, about my dreams, my coronation, the fire and the look of love on her face as she stood at my side.
“In the caves,” I said instead. “I am a traditionalist, if you have not already noticed.”
“And if you couldn’t do it in the caves…”
I moved my hands to her body. I rested two palms on her hips and another to her cheek. With my fourth hand, I took one of the straps of her top between my fingers and slipped it off her shoulder.
“I would undress you. Slowly.” I slid the hand that caressed her cheek down her neck and pulled the other strap of her top downward. “I would take in every inch of your skin as it was uncovered for me and relish the sight of it as I felt my cock swell and my heart open with joy.”
“Is that what you’d like to do now? Undress me?” Alora’s voice was a whisper.
“Turn around,” I told her. Her eyes flashed up at mine—then she did as I asked.
“What next?”
“I would cup your breasts like this.” I moved two of my hands around her body and folded them over her teats. They were full and firm, perky despite their size. “Free them, like this…” With my free hands, I unlaced the top until it slumped to the floor.
“And then?” Alora purred as my fingers moved to her nipples, pinching them gently until they firmed to stiff peaks.
“Then, your skirt.” My free hands were already eagerly working with the laces. “I would want to see all of you before I took you.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t just flip them up over my waist and put a pillow beneath my hips?”
“The pillow, perhaps,” I said as her skirt dropped to the floor. I turned her around to face me and shifted my hands again. One on her hips. One on her breast. Two on her face, forcing her to look at me so she could see it when my eyes turned from purple to dark blue. “If I wanted to breed you.”
“Do you? Want to breed me?”
I closed my eyes and nodded. “Yes. Very much. And I would—if I were king and you were my wife.”
“But…you’re not.” Alora bit her lip as she stared at my chest. “I wish you were.”
“As do I, my queen.” I turned her face back up towards me again. “But we have already had a dozen mock weddings.”
“Might as well have a mock wedding night,” she finished with a gentle smile. “You’ll pull out?”
I nodded. “I will. But first…”
“What?” Alora asked. “The next thing is…well, you know… isn’t it?”
“No. Not with me. Not quite.” I chuckled, then nodded to the bed. “Lie down and spread your legs for me, my queen. My wife.”
“Yes…my king.” My cock stiffened harder than it had ever been before as Alora laid her curvaceous, lightly muscled body down on the bed. She spread her legs for me as I asked. It was so beautiful, I had to close my eyes as I breathed in her scent.
Wet. Wanton. Delicious. She was soaked for me already. The lips of her sex glistened with readiness, pale pink like the petals of a moon-rose.
“What now, husband?” she asked with a flutter of her lashes. “Should I get a pillow?”
“No,” I growled as I knelt before her. I licked my lips and breathed her in again. “Not yet.”
9
Alora
This was the second time I had been naked in front of Ronan—but this time, there was no water between us, no bubbles to conceal me.
“You are so beautiful, Alora.” Ronan placed his hands on my knees and moved them further apart. As he slid them up my thighs, I felt like something…sacred. Something cherished and holy. “My queen.”
His queen. Those words always sounded so much better coming from his mouth. He lowered his lips to my inner thigh and left a trail of kisses all the way up from my knee to the hollow whe
re my leg met my pelvis. By the time he was done, his hands were all over me. There were so many of them, it felt like he could touch me everywhere on my body, all at once.
It wasn’t the way I’d imagined losing my virginity. Ronan wasn’t my husband. Lunaria wasn’t even my planet.
How could I have imagined any of this?
“May I kiss your lips, my queen?”
When I glanced down, Ronan was staring up at me with his deep blue eyes hovering just over my pussy.
“Of course,” I said, smiling. “Come up here and kiss me, then…my king.”
A slow smile spread across Ronan’s lips as he shook his head.
“Not those lips,” he said—then, his mouth was on me.
He kissed my pussy with a passion I’d never imagined possible. His first two kisses were chaste, close-lipped. But then his tongue slipped between my folds and I gasped to try to recapture the air that had just left my lungs.
My cunt burned for him, and his tongue was just as hot. My honey slipped from my entrance with every throb of my clit, and Ronan licked it up like it was ambrosia.
“Delicious, my queen,” he purred against my cunt. “You are ripe and sweet as fresh gilly-fruit. So perfect. So mine.”
I didn’t know what gilly-fruit was, but in that moment, I didn’t care. His tongue pressed inside me, reaching deeper than any human tongue possibly could. There was something between the twin prongs at the tip of his tongue that throbbed against my G-spot. He was like an actual sex toy—something I had heard of, but never had for myself.
I could imagine a dozen different places where I wanted to feel his tongue pulsating next. When he withdrew it and pressed it against my clit, I had to clutch at the bedsheets beneath me just to keep myself from bucking up and floating away.
Out of all the places he could have put his tongue, that was by far the best.
His hands moved over me so gorgeously, I couldn’t keep track of which was touching me where. One moment, he was gripping my breasts, squeezing them firmly and teasing my nipples between his fingertips. The next, he was holding my wrists down as my hips bucked up wildly against his mouth. The next still, he was gripping my ass, lifting me up like I weighed nothing so he could press his tongue to my clit even harder.