by Shen, L. J.
It’s being desired by him.
“Grim,” I whisper into our kiss.
Hearing his name on my lips seems to rattle something in his ferocious self-control. He pins me against the wall and kisses me so fiercely I can’t breathe.
“Tell me what you want,” Grim orders between deep and dirty kisses. He’s like a wall himself, huge and hulking and immovable, and I love it. I love having all this vigorous power shuddering against me. This is why queens take a guard for a lover, I think in a daze. This is why the ancient Manaroan queens indulged.
“Noelani, tell me. I can’t be careless with you. I won’t. I have to know what you want, little queen.”
Easy question. “More. I want more.”
I’m rewarded with another shuddering groan out of him, and then a kiss so obscene that I can’t stop myself from seeking friction against my taut nipples as he gives it to me. I pull my robe even farther apart so my breasts are exposed, so I can arch and press them against his chest, which is warm and impossibly firm even through his tuxedo shirt and jacket.
“I can give you more,” he promises. “I can give you everything.”
Those words curl into my chest and belly like waves, sun-warmed and filled with the unrelenting energy of entire oceans. Such a simple thing for a lover to say, and yet I feel completely overwhelmed by the power of it. I already know I’ll replay this moment in my head for weeks and months to come, and maybe that’s why I say, “For tonight, Grim. You can give me everything tonight.”
There’s no mistaking my meaning. Tonight is all we can share. For a thousand reasons, tonight is all we can share, but that doesn’t make the words burn any less as they leave my lips.
Grim goes very still for a minute, and I think I hear a catch in his breath, but before I can ask, before I can say something else, something ridiculous like do you want more than one night, because I think I do too, he gives a slow nod.
“Tonight,” he repeats, and then it’s like he’s realized he has no time to waste. He gets to work on my mouth like he’ll be paid by the kiss, and he moves his hands underneath my robe and on my bare bottom. When he discovers the thong, his entire body tenses, and when a blunt fingertip runs along the lace covering my sex and he feels how wet I am, he growls.
I hold on tight to the unyielding curves and swells of his shoulders as he drops his hot mouth to my jaw, to my neck, the hands on my bottom coaxing my hips up and down, up and down. I realize with a kick of jagged lust that he’s slowly moving my spread cunt over his tuxedo-clad erection.
And said erection rises well above the waistband of his tuxedo. Even through my lace thong and the fabric of his clothes, I can feel how thick it is, how swollen and flared he is at the head.
“Big,” I breathe.
Grim grunts in response.
“Give it to me,” I demand, not caring how imperious I sound in the moment. I want it, it’s there—give it to me.
I arch my back and writhe in his arms, needing to rub myself harder against him, needing that big shaft to grind my aching clit against.
“Greedy little queen,” he mutters into my neck and pulls me away from the wall, carrying me into the sitting room where we’re surrounded by windows and the cold D.C. night.
Outside in the snow-fluttering dark, there’s an entire world of deals and decisions, of money and power, but here in this room, there’s only us, two bodies straining and grasping to get closer, closer, closer.
“Grim, please,” I beg. “I need it. I need it, I need it.”
“I know, but even greedy little queens have to learn patience.”
I’m about to protest when he sets me down on the dining table at the far end of the room and then steps between my legs. His face is still impossibly serious when he looks down at me, but there’s a hint of reverence as he gently slides the robe down my arms and off my body.
The silk whispering against my skin is the only noise in this world we’ve made.
When he’s exposed me completely, when he can see for himself the high jut of my breasts and my bare belly—taut but marked from when it stretched to carry a future king—and of course, my lace-covered pussy, he sucks in a breath and then shakes his head at himself.
“You’re a treasure, and above my pay grade.”
“A treasure is useless if it’s never found. Or never claimed.”
“Is that so?” In a glance, he rakes over the swells of my breasts and the place where my thighs meet my body, but there’s something else in his face right now, something behind the hunger and severity. Uncertainty? Doubt? Is the novelty of fucking a queen wearing off already? Of knowing one? Is it the difference in our stations?
No. No, I won’t let this crown steal tonight from me. It’s taken so much, the least it can do is give me a few stolen hours with this man of sternness and shadows.
I reach down to palm his thick erection, and then I wrap my fingers around it and squeeze.
“Yes, that is so,” I reply.
My touch seems to sear through him, sear away any doubts, and he lets out a slow breath. “Noelani,” he says. Just that, just my name.
“Lani.”
His gaze snaps to mine. “Lani.” My name emerges low and hot and rough, and hearing my girlhood nickname from his lips sends a deep thrill through me. For a moment, I think of how good he’d look in the palace amidst all the sun-drenched opulence, how good he’d look in my childhood home, surrounded by the lush Manaroan forest. How good he’d look in Manaroa, period.
Just tonight. He’s only yours tonight.
“My Lani,” he murmurs again, the possessiveness no less impactful because it’s—by necessity—temporary. And then he bands an arm behind my back so he can lift me off the table. His other hand tugs my thong down my hips and off my legs with expert skill and efficiency. Before I know it, I’m laid on my back with care and ease, and Grim’s taking a seat on the chair in front of me.
“What—” I start to ask, and then he dips his head between my spread thighs and gives my sex a slow, wet kiss. “Oh.”
I’ve never had this. I was born to marry a king; I was trained in the art of pleasing a king; and Rua was not only the particular king I was groomed to satisfy, but my only lover too. His kingly pleasure, his desires were the only ones considered, and he never wanted to do this. Never wanted to please his queen in turn.
There weren’t courses on pleasuring a queen, but Grim intuitively knows how. Each bold curl of his tongue at my center, each starving kiss is something so brand new it defies description.
It’s soft and light.
It’s hot and wicked.
It’s better than anything I’ve ever had.
“Oh.” My eyes drift closed. My back arches. “Oh, my God.”
His answer is to wrap his hands around my hips and haul me closer to the edge of the table and to his mouth. He sits there like a king at the feasting table, savoring every nook and fold of me. Exploring every inch with hot kisses and seeking tastes. He misses nowhere and nothing. He nuzzles into me and scents me, and his resulting growl is enough to make my toes curl against his shoulders.
Every kiss, every lick sends me squirming, aching for more and also overwrought with the expert oral he’s giving me. He doesn’t let me squirm away though, cradling my entire bottom in his giant hands and pinning me to his mouth as he eats me up like a starving man.
And then he starts these exquisite circles around my clit, and I know I’m almost lost. For all the delicacy of his skill, there’s a ruthless hunger behind it, and it’s intoxicating. Exhilarating. My heart throbs in tempo with my needy cunt.
The building orgasm tightens low in my belly, twining behind my clit and around my womb and my inner thighs. I want to see him when I come, want to see those proud shoulders wedged between my thighs and the sweep of his sooty eyelashes against his cheeks. I want to see Brock Grimsby—rugged, dangerous, roiling with trapped energy, still wearing his crisp tuxedo—giving this orgasm to me.
I push up
onto my elbows so I can look down my belly at him, and as I do, the diamond flower in my hair starts falling. I reach up to pull it out, and Grim’s head jerks up from between my legs.
“The flower stays,” he commands. His lips are wet with me, and his eyes—his eyes betray something I don’t think he knows they’re betraying. “Please,” he adds, and there’s a note of choked need in his voice. “I want it there.”
A carillon of breathless emotions plays through me. Breathless, perilous emotions. “Okay,” I answer, my voice a choked whisper too. I retuck the flower comb back into my hair. “It stays.”
And the look he gives me right then—like he’ll give me anything now, anything that’s his to give, simply because I’m doing this small thing for him—it’s worth everything. It’s worth the angry, lonely waiting I did for him tonight. It’s worth the courage it cost to move the flower to the other side of my hair as the snow fluttered around us.
Tonight, I have to remind myself again. This interlude will be as fleeting as the snow beyond these windows, melting before it even hits the ground.
He ducks his head again, adding his fingers as his shameless mouth coaxes my orgasm free, making everything hot and wonderful and tight and wonderful and oh my God—
My head falls back as everything below my navel detonates with sheer, unalloyed pleasure. My thighs, my belly, my cunt—they all clench so tight I can’t breathe, and then release in a quivering wave that has me keening and thrashing against his persistent mouth. The clench and the wave, clench and wave, over and over again, until I feel like a wave myself, like an entire sea of them, just churning and churning out to every horizon. Like I am even more than the sea, I am the horizon it stretches to. I am the sky arcing blue and happy over everything, and Grim is the sun, hot and life-giving and vital.
I can’t imagine not feeling this way ever again. I can’t imagine not riding the rest of a climax against Grim’s hand as he stands up and surveys how he’s wrecked me ever again.
I can’t imagine surviving tonight without wanting more.
For his part, Grim looks like he could take or leave survival right now, depending on how much it interrupts his time with my pussy. He slowly lifts his wet fingers to his mouth and sucks them clean while he stares hungrily at the part of me he just pleasured, and then once they’re cleaned, he palms my still-trembling flesh in his hand and meets my gaze.
“More?” he asks. It’s almost ridiculous, because there he is, six and a half feet of potent male with magnetic eyes and a tuxedo worshipping every muscular line of his body—not to mention a glorious erection straining at those well-tailored pants—and he’s asking if I want more after giving me the best orgasm of my life. Of course I want more.
But I do also appreciate the asking. I appreciate the effortless way he knows how to take care of me, to please me; I appreciate the concern he has for what I need and crave. I even appreciate—not that I’d admit it to him right now—that he made his decision about coming here tonight carefully, with consideration for what it might mean for the both of us.
I appreciate him.
“Yes,” I say, pushing into his touch. “I want more.”
Chapter 4
Grim
“Be specific, Lani,” I say, licking my lips where the taste of her is now branded.
The shortened form of her name is an intimacy in itself, somehow grounding this fantastical night in reality. I’m not fucking Her Majesty, Her Royal Highness, or the queen. It’s Lani spread for me, a buffet of firm thighs and proud, high tits, and a tight, wet pussy.
“More,” she says again, uncertainty flickering through her eyes. “I told you I want more.”
“What do you want me to do?” I frown, tilting my head to peer down at her. “Have none of your lovers ever asked what you like in bed?”
Long, thick lashes sweep down, but I don’t let her hide, tipping her chin up with my index finger until our eyes meet.
“I’ve only ever had one,” she admits, her voice husky, reluctant. “I was trained to
please the king.”
I frown, inwardly reeling from the revelation this sensual creature has only been with one man. “And who trained the king to please you?”
“It doesn’t work that way. When you’re the queen,” she says, her smile jaded, cynical. “everyone assumes you’re so pampered, and in many ways you are. But proximity just means you’re first in line to serve the king, the first royal subject. Your pleasure is an afterthought, if it’s thought of at all.”
“Not to speak ill of the dead,” I mutter, casting a hot glance down her tight little body. “But your husband was a fool.”
She raises dark eyes to meet mine.
“Maybe he didn’t understand the pleasure there is to be found,” I say, unbuttoning my pants, pulling down my zipper. “In pleasing a woman so much she can’t remember her name, but she screams yours.”
She glances down at the bulge pressing against my briefs, licks her lips. Her stare is fixed and curious.
“Would you like to see?” I hook a thumb into the waistband of my briefs.
She nods, sitting up, careless of her nakedness with the silk robe pooling around her hips. I pull my dick out and grin when she gasps.
“You’re pierced,” she says, her eyes round and delighted and maybe a little scared when they meet mine.
I take her hand, guiding it to my cock. The pads of her fingers caress the head, the slim barbell of the apadravya piercing.
“Shit,” I hiss, closing my eyes. Even just that barely-there touch tightens my balls, stretches my dick.
She glances up through a fan of dark lashes, her smile turning powerful and wicked. “You like that.”
“Understatement,” I choke out.
“You asked me what I want.” She stands, and the robe slides off the table, puddles around her bare feet and slim ankles.
She walks past me, a provocative pendulum of hips and ass. Pausing at the bedroom door, she looks over her shoulder, the flower glinting and crystalline in her dark hair. When she moved it tonight on the steps, it was a declaration of her willingness, of her desire for me. Her want was on display as surely as if we’d fucked in the open under the full moon with her whole entourage watching.
“What I want specifically,” she says, her wry grin the only thing she’s wearing. “Is for you to give me what you said. To fuck me until I don’t remember my name.”
Her eyes drop to my cock, fully erect and pierced and ready to serve her. “Don’t keep your queen waiting.”
Chapter 5
Noelani
Who is this uninhibited woman walking naked before a stranger?
This hungry creature with pleasure dripping down her thighs, demanding more? This woman unfazed by a lover with twice the cock of her husband’s, and pierced to boot? I stride with confidence belied by my wobbly knees and crawl onto the mammoth bed.
And wait.
For a few seconds, the threat of rejection circles overhead like a buzzard. Grim’s not right behind me, not nipping at my heels, and that cold fist of doubt punches me in the throat, but then he walks in slowly, and I understand the delay.
He’s shed his clothes and enters the hotel bedroom completely naked, his only adornment a simple gold chain with two rings hanging from his neck. The tuxedo was a thin skin of civilization, and beneath it lay the wild, bronzed beauty of his body. Massive shoulders, chiseled pecs with dark brown nipples, a taut, muscled belly, long, carved thighs and calves.
And that elongated cock, tipped with the swollen, pierced head. I don’t even realize I’ve reflexively opened my legs until the cool air kisses my wet pussy. He makes me brazen, makes me discard not only my crown, but something even more vital—my guard. I want to let him in, and by the unmitigated hunger of his stare fixed between my thighs, he wants to get in.
He crawls to the center of the bed where I lay with my legs splayed. Eyes latched to mine, he reaches down and runs one calloused thumb over my clit.
He strokes again, steadily increasing the pace, and thrusts his middle finger inside me.
“Grim,” I gasp, my back arching, my hips taking up the rhythm of his fingers.
He doesn’t answer, but with his free hand, strokes a palm along the inside of my thigh, subtly pushing me open even wider. He carries this out with a steady zeal until I hear my own wetness and smell my own passion. I cry out, another powerful orgasm sweeping through me. I collapse back into the satiny pillows, my eyes heavy, my body languid like a bee drunk on honey as he leaves the room.
When he comes back, he’s already rolling a condom over his length, and even through the latex, the barbell of his piercing shines with potent promise. Grim positions his lean hips between my trembling thighs, and leans forward, bends down until his lips caress the corner of my jaw. His breath brushes soft and warm over the shell of my ear.
“Are you ready to be fucked, little queen?”
There’s no dignity in my response. “Please.” I’m nearly in tears, begging, pleading. I want it so badly. “Please fuck me.”
Granting a wish, following a command—I don’t know which, but he enters me with force. There is nothing tentative about his first thrust. His big body surges forward, conquering mine in one movement. It’s breath-snatching how huge he is. My tight passage stretches around him, struggling to accommodate what feels like a fist inside me, but the sensual press of that barbell, in and out and in and out, mutes the slight discomfort of a man for whom it should be anatomically impossible to fit.
Oh, but he does.
“Jesus.” I tip my head back and curl my legs around his pistoning hips, digging my heels into the ungiving, muscled globes of his ass.
That drag of those balls strung through the head against the walls of my pussy is maddening, wearing a Grim-groove inside the most private parts of me. Rua was always quick, like sex was something he needed to check off the list his secretary brought to him each morning with his coffee.