Her smile was contagious, and he continued to step toward her. “It’s dark as river stone, and it makes your skin look so pale, like porcelain.” He stood close enough to her to feel the heat coming off her body. He reached out, and she flinched her face away, though not much, not enough. She allowed him to touch the pads of his fingers to the side of her cheek. It was so soft, so warm, and after a moment she pressed her face into his hand like a kitten might, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath.
“You are a horrible enemy,” she told him in a dreamlike mutter.
“We’re not enemies tonight,” he said quietly, shaking his head. “Live in this world with me, Susanna. Let me undo your hair and take care of you for one evening, I beg you.” And he was begging. He wasn’t sure if he could stop if she asked him to, but somehow he knew she wouldn’t.
He noticed her shoulders tense, and her eyes fluttered as if just waking. He reached for her crispinette, which hid her braids with enlaced pearls. He unpinned her hair and the crispinette came free. Her braid seemed to explode from its confines and draped through his fingers as long, black curls.
“My mother would have never permitted me to wear my hair down,” she said quietly, though with humor in her tone.
“Why not?” he asked, stroking his fingers through her hair, savoring the silky softness of it and the way it smelt like flowers.
“She thought my hair was wild,” she told him.
“What a crime,” he said, pulling off her other crispinette and tossing it before her on the table. “You have the hair of a goddess, Susanna.”
“You shouldn’t call me that,” she told him, with a sharpness from sudden unease. “You shouldn’t use my Christian name like we’re familiar.”
He combed his fingers through her hair, slowly looping the thickness around his fist. He pulled her head back, firmly but not harshly, and she made a little gasp as her eyes trained themselves upon him. Her expression was proud, but it was also excited.
“I will be familiar with you, Susanna,” he told her, his voice a rasp. He wanted her so badly. He wanted those pink, rose petal lips.
“I don’t know you,” she panted.
“Have you ever been kissed before?” he asked her, easing his grip on her hair.
She pressed her lips together but then shook her head ever so slightly. “No,” she replied in just a breath.
“Then you’ll remember me as the first man to do this.” He let go of her hair and gripped her face with both hands, lacing his fingers behind her neck. He had sacked cities and beheaded dukes, spoken his mind in front of the emperor more times than he could count, but he had never felt bolder than he did in this very moment.
He kissed her, pressing his lips hard and hungrily against hers and tasting her mouth deeply. He had nearly forgotten what fear felt like, but now he felt it brewing in his stomach. He didn’t want her to be leery of him. He just wanted her to let go of everything, of her kingdom, of her old life, and just be joined with him. He had fantasized about this moment for ages—the moment where a princess could make love with a man such as him without cringing. He wanted her to just kiss him back.
But she wouldn’t. Deep as his kiss was, it was one-sided.
He stopped kissing her and just held her face in his hands. The prettiest, sweetest, and most innocent face he had ever seen. Far too innocent for the lady of a great castle to have. Her uncle had at least done this much—by ruling her kingdom, he had also kept her out of the politics. There was no world-weary hardness to her. Maybe that’s what captivated him… or maybe it was those light blue eyes. “Beautiful,” he said, petting her cheeks with his thumbs.
“You shouldn’t…” she swallowed. “You shouldn’t kiss me.”
“Why?” he asked her, still gazing at her and stroking her cheeks. She still hadn’t pushed him away or cried out, and until she did, he wouldn’t move.
“Because… Because you’re not my husband, nor my betrothed…” she replied unsurely, quietly, and then her eyes closed sleepily, like a cat’s.
“If you were one of those women up in the castle, you would have been mine already,” he assured her. He grinned and pulled her body closer. “I would have singled you out, hunted you down, carried you off, married you, and taken you to wife in less than an hour’s time.”
Her eyes widened and her porcelain cheeks began to flush. She opened her mouth to reply, or maybe even to chide him, but then she closed it. After a couple of tries, she swallowed and asked, “Why me, sir? I am nothing any longer. Spending your time with me will get you nowhere and bring you no privileges. I have no more kingdom, and I will lose my crown after the trial.”
He squinted at her, wondering if she just couldn’t reason that someone could like her for more than just her crown. “Because I love being in the same country as you. Breathing the same air. I love the way you look at me. I love this small nose,” he kissed her nose, “and these pink lips,” he kissed her lips, “and this wrinkle that appears between your eyebrows when you’re worried,” he kissed that too. “I have been dreaming of you since I met with you for barely over an hour eight months ago, and I want to find out how much you’ll devastate my world when I spend just one night with you.”
“But you nearly beat me,” she protested, sounding a little short of breath and beginning to tremble slightly as his hands continued to caress her.
“You make my blood boil,” he agreed, and then kissed her again.
This time, she put her hands up and onto his chest, and shoved slightly. Just before he ended the kiss, however, she balled up her hands into his tunic, and kissed him back.
Lightning felt like it had struck through him from each of his toes to the tips of his ears when she kissed him back. His cock, which had already been quite hard, now strained as if determined to break free of his clothing of its own accord.
He dropped his hands from her head down to her waist, slinging one arm around her to bring her body in closer to his own while, with the other, he grabbed her bottom.
“Oh!” she squeaked, suddenly ending the kiss and attempting to jerk her body away.
For a second, he didn’t know if it was his brazen grasp that had her thinking twice, or the passion that was beginning to spark between them. And then he remembered, “You’re still sore,” he said, not as a question.
She didn’t reply, just blushed and averted her eyes.
He pulled her close to him and nibbled at her jawbone until she began to calm and melted into his embrace once more. As soon as she did, he began to pluck at the buttons that laced her gown. She froze, holding in her breath, but she didn’t stop him.
As the lacing became more intricate and difficult to undo properly, he pulled himself away and slowly turned her around, gathering her thick black hair and carefully putting it over her shoulders so that he could look at the fastenings that held her velvet dress together.
He pulled the cloth down her arms and toward her waist, then untied her two layers of underskirt. When the fabric was pooled around her knees, he kissed her neck and then stepped back to admire her in the lantern light.
His breath stopped.
Susanna was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen before in his life, and he hadn’t even seen the front of her yet. He focused on her bottom, which was beautiful as could be, somehow even more so with pink blotches covering it from her spanking. In a way, the scene struck him as extremely domestic. As she stood, she trembled and looked over her shoulder shyly at him.
He pulled off his tunic in a single motion and then, suddenly raging with energy, he stepped forward, swooped down, and picked her up into his arms. She thrashed around after squealing slightly from surprise, but then he found her simultaneously smiling, biting her lip, and covering what he could only assume were the most glorious breasts he’d ever see with her small, fair hand. “I’ve never seen skin glow so perfectly in candlelight,” he told her, and wondered if he was being possessed by a poet. He felt like one tonight; he felt overwhelm
ed by everything that was happening and everything that he was feeling. The world had never felt so right and wonderful.
He brought her to the pallet of cushions and laid her down on them carefully. “Don’t move a muscle,” he demanded as she began to reach for the nearest fur. He stood back, trying to pull his boots off and nearly falling on his face doing it. He had never been so eager to bed a woman in his life, not even his first.
She laughed slightly as he stumbled and he grinned at her. As soon as he could, he crawled onto the pallet and over her body, then nipped her playfully on the stomach.
He could already smell her sex, and he slowly moved his hand over her slender thigh, leaving a trail of goose pimples. He found her slit with his fingers. She was wet and hot for him.
“Gerhard!” she gasped, crunching her body upwards.
He put his other hand on her stomach and kissed her belly again. “Shh.”
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“Has a man never touched you here, my beauty?” he asked her, then pressed his thumb down into her wetness until he found her swollen little nub.
“Of course not!” she replied as if he was being scandalous just to mention it. He wasn’t surprised. Though most noble women he had ever met, unmarried though many of them were, weren’t virginal, Susanna looked at him like she was fascinated by his every move. That look filled him with fire.
He moved his body down and kissed along her knee. He was glad that she hadn’t been taken before. He wanted her as his. He didn’t want to think about the future, about what lay in store for her. He just wanted her all to himself, right now, as if there was no tomorrow at all.
He rubbed his thumb back and forth over her quim until her body began to writhe and she let out small, quiet little whimpers. She tried pressing her thighs together, and with a chiding tsk, he spread them back apart. “Relax, Susanna. I’m taking care of you this eve,” he reminded her.
She chewed at her bottom lip, looking more girlish than regal now.
Unable to keep from grinning like a cat in the proverbial cream, he kissed her inner thigh and began to move his mouth toward her center.
“Gerhard!” she chided.
“Shhh!” he told her, continuing to pet her moist lips with his tongue. “Shh…” He lapped at her, and her body bucked. He moved his hands, gripping them around her waist and then gripping her sore ass. She gasped and growled, continuing to buck against the sensations.
She sat up slightly, even grabbing his hair with her fingers, but without pulling. “Gerhard,” she whimpered pleadingly.
He lapped at her honey even harder, closing his eyes in bliss. He listened to her moan and writhe, varying his pace to match her movements until he felt like he was about to explode himself. At last he moved up between her legs, spread them wide apart, and put the head of his cock up against her lovely quim. Despite the cold in the room, her body had a sheen of sweat on it, and she looked like she was in a dreamy state of lust. She looked at him heatedly through slitted eyes as he rubbed his cock through her wetness before moving it toward her entrance and pressing forward.
She growled suddenly, her body bowing. “It won’t fit,” she said as he halted at her tightness.
“This is my quim,” he growled back. “And I will have it.” He bucked his hips forward, moving further up her tight channel as she moaned, her nails raking down his back. He gritted his teeth, pulled out slightly, and then pushed again. She gasped and he felt himself slide in deeper until he was fully inside of her, all the way to the hilt. He stayed like this for a long moment, putting his hands on both sides of her face and then kissing her deeply. This felt so right, being inside of her, being joined with her.
He was surprised when she began to writhe under him, spurring him to continue thrusting. He reared back and buried himself in her again and again, even stopping to raise her knees up higher so that he could plunge still deeper into her wonderful heat.
Never had he felt so close to anyone before, and never had he felt like his entire body was going to explode and dissolve like a spark. “Damn it, Susanna,” he told her, feeling like he was going to climax at any moment. He could feel her inner muscles begin to contract down on his member, and he thought that she had already had her pleasure until suddenly she sat up, gasping, and wrapped her arms tightly around him as she spasmed powerfully around his cock. He groaned and clenched his teeth, beginning to spill his seed deep inside her as he held her weight in his arms, cradling her on his lap as he knelt on the pallet.
He felt like he had never spent so much seed in his life, and as he finished, they sat still, panting and gripping each other until he turned and dropped against the pallet like a felled tree. She screeched slightly as their weight hit the pillow, and then they laid there, panting, their arms and legs entwined in each other’s.
He had his eyes closed as he took in everything that had happened. His dream had finally come true, and all he wanted was to rest so that he could do it again. He wanted to do it forever.
“I didn’t know I could do that!” she giggled once she got her voice back.
“Do what? Take all this man into you?” he teased, pumping his hips and pressing his still-buried cock deeper into her.
She laughed and shook her head. “No. I just…” she closed her eyes and took a deep, happy breath. “I never knew I could… feel that way. I…” She bit her lip. “Now I think I know why I was told to wait until marriage before I was allowed to share in that.”
He laid his head back onto a cushion as she snuggled against his stretched out arm. “Why?” he asked.
She snorted. “Because I’d never want to leave after that!”
They both chuckled for a long moment, but eventually silence overtook them, and he brushed her hair behind her ear. “You are the most beautiful creature I’ve ever beheld,” he told her with a sigh.
“You keep saying that,” she smiled.
“Because it’s true,” he replied. “You are.” He frowned contemplatively and then asked, after a short silence, “Why did you never marry, Susanna?”
She frowned and her eyes darkened slightly. “My uncle chased off most suitors. He said it was because he was picky for me, but really… I know the truth.” She sighed. “If I’d married, he wouldn’t have had his power.”
“All the more reason for you to have tried to find a husband,” he replied. “I know even the emperor tried to offer for you.”
“Yes, but that obviously came to naught. Though I’m glad the portrait that I exchanged with him came into good hands,” she said, raising an eyebrow.
Now it was his turn for his face to heat. “You… saw the paintings, didn’t you?”
“Painting—singular,” she corrected, “and obsessive sketches,” she replied with a sly smirk. “I must have made an impression on you somehow.”
He stroked the side of her face again. Yes, she most surely had. Her entire manner had entranced him. He had even liked the way she moved. He’d never thought it possible for a man to be so completely beguiled by a woman until the day he stepped into Hohenzollern. “You were the star in my sky. Although I did my best to ignore that,” he admitted bitterly. “I didn’t want this spell you have over me to be like this. But… I saw you, and my world went off kilter,” he admitted.
She gave him a chiding look, as if there was some part of what he was saying that he was making up. “I should have let you see my hair earlier,” she teased. “Perhaps then I could have made you captain of my guard and none of this would have happened.”
He smiled but then looked bashfully down and circled her perfect, swollen nipple with a lock of her black hair. “Your mother said your hair was too wild to wear down?” he asked, mostly to hedge away from the melancholy they could so easily fall into. She was his prisoner, after all, and he had just sacked her kingdom. It threatened to come between them like a cold breeze beating on a window shutter.
She smiled mischievously. “My nursemaid said that my mother’s
heart nearly stopped when I didn’t come out blonde like she was. She had the most flaxen hair when she was a girl. When she saw my black hair, she worried that I would never marry.” She gave a slight laugh. “If my mother had her druthers, I would have been married by eleven.”
“Eleven?” he gasped, shocked.
She nodded. “Yes, and it would have been far better. My brother, Nathaniel, was still alive then and so was my father. I could have escaped all that transpired after.” She looked around, but didn’t look at her surroundings in particular, but seemed to gesture with her glances at the celebration that still roared outside. “My sister’s too young to have the crown. I would have had a husband that would have taken power from Eberhard, or… well, it would have been Eberhard that would be going to Vienna.” Her lips tightened slightly at this.
He hated that man so much at the moment, hated how the mere thought of him was ruining their happy moment together. “He will face his judgment. He will not get far,” he promised her, then petted her hair. She seemed to sadden, and so he continued, “I know men like your uncle very well. I understand there was surely nothing you could do. Some men are like avalanches—if you stand in their way, they will roll you over and crush you. I wish I had done something then—like killed him with my bare hands,” he rumbled tersely.
Now it was her hand reaching out to him. She slid her hand over his chest, along his breast bone. “I remembered you, as well, you know,” she admitted quietly, coyly glancing up into his eyes and then back down to follow the patterns her fingers were drawing over his chest.
He was surprised by this, he had to admit. He hadn’t thought it was possible for her to remember him. It was nearly a year ago now, and he knew there wasn’t anything memorable about him. He’d barely gotten to speak to her, since her uncle was so aggressive toward him. “You did?”
She nodded. “I don’t see how I could have forgotten. You have a very recognizable face and voice,” she told him.
He grinned impishly, unable to help himself as he pulled her closer by clamping his hand over her bottom and pushing himself deeper into her. “I do?”
The Conquered Brides Collection Page 5