In the Arms of the King

by Heather Killough-Walden

  Fuck it.

  He used his magic to rid them both of their clothing, willing it away like so much trash. It disintegrated from their bodies, evaporating into shadow-mist that lifted and surrounded them like tendrils of smoke. In the wake, Violet had nothing to hold on to, and her arms lowered to the bed in surrender.

  She was laid bare before him, every man’s ultimate wet dream. She was a fairy princess, quite literally, with her hair a waterfall of multi-hued gold, the enticing curve of her shoulders, and the rise of her absolutely perfect breasts. Her skin was pale and perfect against the darkness of his sheets, but for the slightly darker hue of her nipples, tightened so beautifully in the cool night air. The acorn diamond glittered madly where it rested in the hollow of her throat. It belonged there.

  She glowed like an angel, long-limbed and slim, her flesh dewy with perspiration.

  Her waist was narrow and the curve of her hips beckoned. He was gazing down at her, frozen in awe when he again caught the scent of her blood. His head snapped up, and he zeroed in on the small cut he’d made on her lip. His senses shifted. He could hear the fluttering of her heart, so rapid. He caught the adrenaline that laced her blood.

  His gaze shifted to her eyes. She stared up at him with warring emotions. Her eyes were locked on his mouth – his teeth.

  They were teeth he hadn’t used on anyone in more than three thousand years. But he saw the indecision there in her beautiful orbs. He smelled her fear. She was afraid of what he’d become, of what she didn’t know about him.

  And yet her body betrayed her like the worst turncoat imaginable, and the scent of her arousal was beyond intoxicating. She wanted him, despite the fear. Maybe even because of it.

  He could hear her quick breaths, shallow and shaky. His body ached. His mind reeled with implications and consequences. But then she did something he never would have expected her to do. Slowly, sensuously, Violet closed her eyes and bent her long, lean legs, opening them up to him.

  Keeran’s breath stilled in his very inhuman chest as she arched her back and raised her arms, reaching for him one final time. His glowing gaze sharpened, his strong body responded painfully, and a kind of madness overcame him at her submission. In one smooth, fluid movement, he was gliding up over her to reclaim the tender sweetness of her lips. He tasted her blood, wanted more of her, and knew that this time, he would have it.

  His hands cupped her face as he kissed her. She moaned in what Keeran now knew was impatient frustration. He smiled against her lips like a rake as his hand moved up her waist and chest to palm the tender curve of her breast.

  He propped himself on his elbow and ran one hand along the silken smooth length of her side. She gave a soft cry when his thumb gently brushed the hardness of her deep, red nipple. He did it again and she shuddered against him, gritting her teeth.

  He moved on to explore the tempting rise of her hip bone and the valley of creamy flesh beneath it before he brushed through her silken curls to the heated, waiting core of her. It gave off a radiating warmth, like flesh that had been flogged or sunburned, and a part of him went mad.

  She gasped against him as he circled her slit like a shark, teasing and taunting. When she bucked and pressed toward his fingers, he deepened his kiss to drink her in with greedy thirst. Then he parted her nether lips, slick with need, and pressed inward.

  The feel of her there took his madness and shook it up. The promised bliss of her wrapped around his cock was nearly unimaginable. He was throbbing hard, his manhood screaming for release.

  She made a deep, delicious sound against his mouth as his fingers dove ever deeper and were squeezed with her wet tightness.

  He swore softly under his breath, his mind delirious. She was so small, so hungry for him. He could wait no longer. He braced himself on the bed and reared up, pulling his fingers from between her legs. Violet’s eyes opened, and their gazes met. Her body went still in that kind of anticipation that is laced with gluttonous, glorious fear as he moved over her to press the tip of his engorged cock to her opening.

  She could feel how big he was; her eyes flashed with that knowledge. But she maintained eye contact – the wolf in her was not one to back down. She was a fighter. He smiled.

  It was a cruel smile, fangs and all.

  Violet’s hands went to his chest, and her fingernails curled into his muscles as he breached her defenses and slowly, oh so slowly, pushed into her tight, slick sheath. Her heat infused him like another kind of magic. She gripped him so hard, every muscle in his body flexed taut.

  When he was nearly all the way in, he paused and braced himself. Violet cried out against his mouth as he slanted over her in another hungry kiss and none-too-gently shoved himself into her to the hilt. He felt her arms come around him and smiled when her nails again dug into his flesh, leaving marks.

  He wasted no time, pulling out of her enough to make her moan beneath him before driving into her again, harder than before. He wanted to go deeper. He wanted to claim her as nothing and no one ever could.

  His vision was starring, his fingers were going numb and the only sensation in the world he could give notice to was the feel of her wrapped around him. He pulled out and drove in. Again. And again.

  Each time he took her, she arched to meet his thrust, the softest, sweetest sounds coming from deep within her and pouring across his tongue. Every gasp made him more of an animal, every moan drove him further over the edge.

  A change was coming; Keeran could feel it like an ebb and flow as he took his beautiful queen. The terrible fire that had consumed her before made way for new flames. Her rage and fury dissipated, making way for pleasure and a new kind of pain.

  And for a new kind of darkness.

  It was that darkness that he wondered if she recognized as he pressed it into her, as it left him and infused her glorious, sweat-glowing body. Just as were his fangs and the glow of his eyes, that darkness was a part of him he had never shown anyone. No one but her.

  The power of his many secrets swelled within him as he broke their kiss to pull back and gaze down at his mate.

  My mate. I haven’t thought those words in so long.

  She was covered in sweat, her lips swollen and red and parted, her eyes glazed, her breathing now more frantic and demanding.

  She was entering that blissful, barely attainable place where women hovered when their bodies drew near the edge. He saw that last, hard need riding her, and he knew she was in no state to understand what was happening to her. She wanted release. She would have done anything for it.

  And that fueled the bonfire that had already been threatening to claim Keeran completely. So he gave it to her. With a hard strength and a nearly cruel resolve, he shoved back into her and slipped one hand between them and found the spot between her legs that he knew would make her scream. Violet arched her back and opened her mouth. Her cry split the night as he simultaneously drove hard into her over and over – then one final time, finally impaling her so deeply, so fully, he felt he would split her in two.

  The tight ring of her muscles squeezed him in her climax and the world flashed out of sight. This was not a darkness of shadow that he was plunged into, but one of delirium. His body was shifted onto a plane of pure, immense pleasure, and he came so hard it hurt.

  He threw back his head and cried out harshly as a bliss he’d never known racked over him, wringing him out again and again.

  And again.

  It took eons for the world around them to come back into focus. Eons….

  And then Keeran slowly lowered his head, his eyes burning hot in his face. He closed them a moment, riding the last of his waves back down to Earth.

  Then he opened them again and looked down at Violet through a white glowing haze.

  The Winter King

  The Kings, Book Eight

  Oh my God! Poppy’s mind spun wildly out of control. She had no power over what her body was doing. One second, she’d been sitting way too close to a man who was way too beauti
ful, and he’d been laughing in that way that made her insides turn to absolute jelly, and in the very next heartbeat her hands were on either side of his face, and her lips were pressed against his.

  There was half a second in which she processed what she’d done and how she’d actually done it. And then, with the force of a hurricane, Kristopher Scaul crashed right back into her.

  If she’d had the ability to gasp or squeal or cry out in any manner, she might have done so, it happened so fast and so hard. But he claimed her lips in a take-charge kiss that pried them apart and opened her up without mercy or pause, and she lost all ability to do anything but feel.

  She made a small sound, captured hungrily by him as he expertly turned with her on the bed, and she found herself pinned beneath him on the mattress, her chest against his. The weight of his body kept her pressed into the furs beneath them as his hands encircled her wrists.

  She opened her eyes as he suddenly eased away, breaking their kiss. Her breathing was ragged, shocked into that fluttering-heart madness that promises pleasure, but threatens fainting spells. But he rose above her, and their eyes met.

  His were glowing.

  “Holy sh-shit,” she muttered, unable to stop herself. She wasn’t quite sure which sentiment she was expressing – her surprise over the kiss? Or the fact that the glowing eyes were one more reminder that he was supernatural king? Or both?

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  And despite the silhouette of him, the rock hardness of a man he was, the odd thing was he actually sounded like he meant it. “But I like the way you taste. And I love the way you moan.”

  He shrugged even, just a little, and Poppy felt mystified.

  “You really do like a lot of things about me,” she whispered.

  He gazed down at her through those eyes that looked like fire-lit glaciers, and then he laughed, and the sound moved deep in his rumbling chest, like the engine of a freight train. Oh gods, she thought helplessly as the sound and movement poured over her like its own kind of magic.

  Her heart wouldn’t slow down. His chest was like a brick wall against her nipples, and they were so hard at that moment, they actually hurt. Of course, that could also have been the temperature in the room. It was an ice hotel. In Iceland.

  But if he was going to be honest with her, then she might as well do the same. “I admit,” she said rather breathlessly. “I like a few things about you too.” Like pretty much everything.

  He grinned, flashing perfect pearly whites. “I know.”

  Poppy’s eyebrows rose. Cocky son of a bitch. “Oh?”

  He laughed again, and she bit her lip. She was going to rip a goddamned hole in it.

  “You’re awfully sure of yourself,” she said.

  “I have reason to be,” he told her frankly, and then he moved his body against hers, just enough to prove his point. His hands tightened around her wrists, his weight shifted where his knee pressed into the mattress between her legs, and the hardness of his ripped stomach against her hip bones all served as unwelcome reminders that the man on top of her was a walking, talking god. The sensation was bewildering. Every inch of muscle, every millimeter of strength throughout his tall, strong form, was predatory above her. He had her pinned. He was in charge.

  And her pants would be on fire and hanging from a telephone wire if she dared to claim that she didn’t like it. Because she did. A lot.

  She couldn’t stop herself when she made another sound, one of absolute and unrestrained need. But those teeth of hers pressed harder into her lip, nearly to the point of drawing blood. And the sudden pain that made her wince brought her mind back into focus and silenced any further sounds that threatened to escape her rapidly over-heating body.

  Above her, Kristopher noticed her teeth, saw what she’d done, and his glowing gaze narrowed as if in challenge.

  *****

  He leaned in so that his words whispered across her tortured lips. “I want to hear more of those sounds, Poppy,” he told her dangerously. “Why don’t you make some for me right now?”

  She closed her eyes, trying to shut him out. He was becoming her world, and she’d only met him hours ago. Who did this? Who jumped straight into bed with a man she’d only just met? What kind of person would she become? This was too much, too soon!

  She felt him move above her again, and then she felt the hotness of his breath at her ear – and a hard shiver rode through her.

  “I can be cold,” he told her, as if it were a warning. “And I can be just the opposite.”

  She remembered, suddenly, what she’d felt when she came out of the Starbucks earlier, just before she’d met him. A cold breath. That’s what it had felt like. It had whispered against her neck, just behind her ear. And now she knew it had been him.

  Except now there was no hint of cold about him. The man was a dangerous enigma, one who encompassed an entire spectrum of sensations. Now he was a furnace surrounding her, and she was pretty sure she was about to get seriously burned.

  A part of her wanted to cry. It was the part of her that hated her surrender, that helpless part of her that knew her need outweighed her misgivings and there was nothing she could do about it. So what if this didn’t make sense? So what if people didn’t usually sleep together hours after they met? Not in relationships where money wasn’t exchanged, anyway! But this was not a usual situation, and they were not usual people. Kristopher was a king.

  And in the end, she knew she would no longer be able to deny it. The writing was on the ice castle walls. It was on the walls of her heart. That kind of writing didn’t take a lifetime to translate. It took moments. Heartbeats.

  She was his queen.

  His lips parted, and his teeth gently bit down on her earlobe. She shuddered a sudden intake of breath, and that damn chuckle came again – right there where it could do the most damage.

  Now she did make that sound he wanted to hear more of. She could almost hear him smiling beside her, his grin declaring his victory. “Now say my name, Poppy.”

  She gritted her teeth, her stubborn streak kicking in, despite the fact that her muscles were turning to jelly and blood was flowing hot and fast to certain parts of her body. “No.”

  It didn’t even slow him down. In fact, if anything, he seemed to enjoy the fight in her. “What if I threaten to freeze an entire neighborhood unless you do?”

  She went still. “You wouldn’t.”

  “You’d be surprised what I would do where you’re concerned.” As if to prove his point, he released her left arm just long enough to curl his fingers over the top of her jeans, pulling the first button free. Poppy closed her eyes, squirming as her mind dove into a tailspin once more.

  This is really going to happen. More heat flooded her; she was growing wet with a burgeoning and building need. It was more cruel, hard evidence that she had no control over herself just then.

  “It’s easy,” he said, and his fingers unfastened the second button, brushing against her exposed flesh underneath. Another shiver coursed through her. “K-R-I-S,” he spelled out for her, speaking each letter directly into her ear. The third button went, and the tops of her white cotton panties were no doubt in view.

  She took a small breath, ready to surrender then and there, but as she prepared to give sound to his name, his fingers slipped under the denim of her jeans and his hand spanned the flat expanse of her lower stomach. The touch was electrifying, a heat so hot it was almost cold. Like lightning.

  She inhaled sharply and rose, arching from the bed to press further into his touch.

  He laughed again, and she cried out in a kind of desperation. But then his deft fingers slipped beneath the band of her underwear and sank lower.

  “Kristopher!” she exclaimed.

  But she cried out his name too late, for he’d already found her hot, slick core – and was pressing his finger into her. She felt it slowly, inexorably slide deeper, and all she could think was that she wanted more.

  “There now. Was th
at so hard?”

  He moved inside her, and she experienced the delicious, nearly painful pressure of a second finger joining the first. “Now that I have your attention, my little blossom, I want you to know that I’m going to strip you down, lay you bare before me, and torture you.”

  You already are! she thought helplessly. She hadn’t even realized that her arms had gone around him, and her hands were in his hair, her fingers gripping tight. It was soft hair, not what you’d expect for someone with the rough and tumble appearance he exuded. But there was nothing expected about Kristopher at all.

  “I’m going to make you beg me to stop, and then I’m going to fuck you like you’ve never been fucked before.”

  She would have growled a simple, “Do it already!” but the world tilted just then. Everything changed. The room around them grew bright with blue-white light, the bed beneath them melted away to a cool breeze, and every inch of her clothing vanished into nothingness. She was indeed laid bare, but not on the ice hotel bed.

  The portal of a transport spun around them, whisking them through time and space. A moment later, the light dissipated, and the room again solidified. She couldn’t see much of it over the expanse of Kristopher’s equally unclothed and very broad shoulder, but she saw enough to recognize the fancy, intricately carved and dome-type celling she’d seen in the ice castle.

  We’re back, she thought in blissful disorientation as he continued to move his fingers inside her, and her body responded with a virtual flood of heat and wetness. It appeared that the king’s powers were back after all. Full of surprises, she thought mindlessly.

  The top of the dome above them was clear, just as it had been in the antechamber of the castle. Beyond that clear and probably magical ice, a cluster of Cosmos stretched purple, pink, and black, sparkling like a velvet blanket sprinkled with diamond dust. She saw it in flashes as she thrashed her head back and forth and her body arched off the new bed when he found her g-spot and dug in.

  She squeezed her eyes shut tight again, her hands finding the bricks of his arms, and her nails digging deep as he moved downward, trailing kisses. He pulled out of her grip, leaving furrows of desperation carved into his arms, and Poppy squirmed wantonly beneath him as his lips blazed a heated trail across her right breast. He stopped to circle her nipple with his tongue, taunting it into a painfully hard nub before he gripped it pitilessly between his teeth.