by Parker Grey
I can feel my hair coming out by the roots, the pain white-hot and searing as I stumble backwards along the kitchen floor.
“Let me go!” I shout, and in that instant, the kitchen door bursts open.
Grayson’s standing there, several uniformed men behind him. He doesn’t say anything, but in three steps he’s across the kitchen, and Livia lets me go just before he reaches her, and I stumble.
It doesn’t matter.
“You’re a fucking monster!” he shouts, and shoves her as hard as he can. She falls back against a wall, and it’s the first time I’ve ever seen her look terrified.
Grayson advances toward her, a vein ticking in his forehead.
“I should beat you until you’re as ugly on the outside as you are inside,” he says, his voice low and dangerous. “I should—”
“Grayson,” I say, both hands on my head, trying to make sure she didn’t rip my scalp off.
He turns, and instantly, his face softens. I swallow hard, because there are tears streaming down my face and I have no idea what’s happening.
“Ella,” he murmurs, and the next thing I know he’s wrapped me in his arms and I’m tight against his chest. “Ella, I’m so sorry it took me so long to find you.”
I hug him back as hard as I can, burying my face in him, breathing in his scent — leather and stone, mixed with just a little bit of musk.
“What do you mean?” I whisper.
“You just left,” he says. “And I didn’t know your last name, where you lived, anything. I kept trying the diner, but since Livia owns it...”
The uniformed men are surrounding her now, and I can hear her pleading over their low, stern voices telling her that she’s arrested for kidnapping, human trafficking, and a whole host of other things I can’t make out.
“You were looking for me?” I ask, pulling back so we’re face-to-face.
“Of course,” he says, his eyes searching mine, and a small frown furrows his brow. “I told you I was yours, Ella. I meant it.”
I have no idea what to say, but my eyes fill with tears again.
“I didn’t think... I mean, I’ve read the papers, and...”
I bite my lip, because there’s no good way to phrase you’ve got a reputation for going through women like a hot knife through butter and I thought you were lying to me because of that to the man who just spent three weeks tearing apart his own kingdom to find you.
But Grayson just grins, then kisses me gently, his lips soft and warm against mine. I kiss back greedily, hungrily, like he’s a freshwater spring and I’ve been in the desert for weeks.
“That was all before you,” he whispers when we pull away. “You changed everything, Ella.”
The uniformed men take Livia away, out of the room. Peyton and Slade are screeching, so they’re probably also in handcuffs, and for just an instant, I feel bad.
Then Grayson kisses me again, and I feel less bad. I let one hand drift to my belly, and I wonder if I should tell him.
Not yet, I think. You’re not even sure.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Grayson
She comes back with me. I insist on it. I’ve gone long enough without her, and I’m not letting her stay here, alone, in this enormous house that’s haunted with memories of her evil stepmother.
The poor thing only brings two suitcases, and when I tell her that I’ll send someone back for the rest, she just shrugs.
“This is just about it, actually,” she says. “I mean, you can’t pack up the garden or the birds.”
When I drive her away in my limousine, she doesn’t even look back, just leans her head against my shoulder and heaves a deep sigh.
Ella’s pretty quiet the whole time, and I can’t blame her. This has to be a huge shock, but the way that she kisses me every chance she gets, the way she slides her hands over my body and the way she looks at me says that she’s glad I found her.
We install her in a suite in the palace next to mine, and the moment all her things are inside, I kick everyone else out. Ella stands in the middle of the ridiculously ornate room and looks around, wide-eyed and wondrous.
“You like it?” I ask.
Just watching her standing there is making me hard, so fucking hard I think I could cut glass with my dick. I’ve spent three weeks fantasizing about the night we spent together, about the way her eyes closed the first time I entered her, the way she looked over her shoulder at me an hour later as she eased onto my cock for a second time.
About waking up to her naked, sexy as fuck, and on top of me.
“It’s different,” she says, half-smiling. “I’m used to being around stuff like this, but I’m not used to living in it.”
“This is yours now,” I say, walking over to her.
I point at the couch, at the bed, at the floor, at the ceiling.
“These are all yours,” I go on, taking one hand and lacing our fingers together, then putting both hands to my heart. “And this is yours.”
Ella glances from my eyes to my lips, then kisses me. It’s a deep, slow kiss, our tongues winding together as her body presses harder and harder against mine. I can practically feel her need, and I wrap my other hand around the back of her head, pulling her close.
Finally, she pulls back, her lips swollen and red from the kiss, her eyes heavy-lidded with desire and sparkling deviously.
That look alone makes my cock twitch and strain against my pants.
“What else is mine?” she asks, half-teasing, a smile playing around her lips.
Fuck, I love this side of her too, this good-girl-gone dirty that I’m completely powerless to resist.
I grin and move our hands lower, unlacing our fingers until her palm is flat against the outline of my cock in my pants, and I groan.
“This is yours,” I growl, and her hand closes around me.
“Good,” she says, and I capture her mouth with mine again.
I can barely hold back. Ella strokes me, and even through the layer of fabric heat sizzles through my body like I’ve grabbed onto a power line. I bite her lip and growl into her mouth, the sound pure and primal and raw.
I press my lips to her neck, biting and sucking on it as my hands grab her perfect tits through her dress and I pinch her nipples just a little bit harder than I should.
Ella gasps and whimpers, so I do it again. She trembles against me.
“Grayson,” she whispers, and I take the shell of her ear between my teeth, licking it slowly.
“Kitten,” I whisper. “I need you right fucking now, and right fucking here.”
She squeezes my cock in response, and I groan into her ear.
“I’ve spent three weeks thinking about the way you say my name when you’re about to come, and I can’t wait any longer.”
“Then don’t,” Ella murmurs, and her hand finds the zipper on my pants, pulling it down tooth by tooth.
I almost explode, but instead I pull up the skirt on her work dress, grabbing her ass with both hands. I slide my fingers underneath her panties to find her soaking wet, and when I do she leans her head against my shoulder and sighs.
“You’re wet as hell for me, kitten,” I say.
“I know,” she murmurs into my neck. “It’s because I know what you’re about to do.”
I push my fingertips into her, feeling her writhe against my body. She takes my cock in her hands and it springs free of my pants, long and thick and so fucking hard I might never recover.
“I need you inside me,” she whispers, stroking me from root to tip. It feels so good I shudder. “Please, Grayson.”
That’s all I can handle. I grab Ella by the shoulders and spin her around — not harshly, but not gently — and push her against the back of a couch, the closest furniture.
She yelps, then giggles as I shove her skirt up and yank her panties down to the ground, unbuttoning my pants and undoing my belt, giving my cock a little more freedom.
And I push myself against her, my thick cock hard bet
ween the round globes of her ass as she arches into me. Her hands dig into the fabric of the sofa and she sighs, turning her head to one side.
“I can’t do gentle right now, Ella,” I murmur into her ear as I grab the neckline of her dress and pull it down.
It tears. I don’t care. I can buy her a new one.
“And I can’t do romantic. Right now, I can only promise you hard and fast and fucking deep, but I can promise you that you’re going to like it.”
Her dress tears more, and she shrugs her shoulders out of it, now naked from the waist up, her skirt hiked to her hips. Ella undone like this is the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life, at least until she reaches behind herself and grabs my cock again, leaning forward over the couch.
No; the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen in my life is Ella, bent over and undone, on her tiptoes, rubbing the head of my cock from her clit to her entrance, biting her lip and moaning.
I sink myself into her with a single stroke, and she cries out in sheer pleasure. I grab the back of the couch next to her hips and push myself into her as hard as I can as she arches her back.
“Grayson,” she whimpers. “Fuck yes, Grayson.”
I can barely breathe, she feels so fucking good. I’m inside her all the way to the hilt and her pussy is already fluttering and clenching around me, her hips moving as she bends over the couch, seemingly lost in a reverie of pleasure.
Scratch what I said before: Ella, gasping and moaning and flushed with my cock inside her is the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.
I can barely hold out, and even though I try to go slow it’s fucking impossible. Not when this is all I’ve thought about for weeks, not when Ella is moaning and gasping and whimpering.
Not when the only three words she seems to know are harder, Grayson, please. God, I love how filthy she gets when my cock is inside her.
I fuck her harder, holding her perfect tits in my hands, her nipples pinched between my fingers. It doesn’t take long before she’s reduced to gibberish, then just sounds, her back arched and her head thrown back.
It’s a miracle that I don’t come. It takes every ounce of self-control I have to fuck her like this and not come, but I’m a gentleman.
Just when I think I can’t make it any longer, Ella grabs a handful of my hair in her fist and arches back, her chest heaving under my hands.
“I’m gonna come,” she breathes. “Oh, fuck, Grayson, I’m gonna come so fucking—”
Ella screams, and it feels like a fist closes around my cock. I bury my nose in her hair and shout her name, because seconds later I explode like a nuclear bomb, coming hard and fast and long deep inside her.
I swear her whole body tightens at once, and Ella comes for ages, gasping and whimpering until she’s finally done. She releases my hair and sags slightly against the couch, then looks back at me through her eyelashes.
Even though I’m still inside her, the look is somehow coy. Innocent.
And fucking hot.
“That what you needed?” I ask, tracing a finger down her sweaty spine as we both gasp for breath.
Ella just smiles and nods.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Ella
I mean to shower, really I do, but instead Grayson hops over the back of the couch and before I know it he’s grabbed me and flopped me over onto him. We stay there in silence for a long time, and I’m just reveling in being here, with him.
Okay, and a little bit in the memory of Livia being dragged away by the palace guard. I liked that too.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he murmurs after a long time.
We’re half-sitting, half-lying, and we both got the rest of our clothes off so we’re completely naked.
“Tell you what?”
“About your stepmother.”
He’s stroking my hair softly, and I stare at the ceiling, trying to put it into words.
“I just wanted to escape for a night,” I finally say. “I didn’t want to be some damsel in need of rescue. I wanted to have fun and not worry about her at all for a little while.”
“I’d have helped you sooner,” he says.
“I didn’t know,” I say, turning my face into his chest. “I thought that you said that stuff to all the girls, so...”
I trail off, not really sure what to say. He just keeps stroking my hair.
“That’s over now,” he says, his voice deep and sincere. “I haven’t even thought about another girl in a month. Not since the day I saw you at the diner.”
I blink, drumming my fingers against his chest.
Tell him, I think. Tell him you’re probably pregnant and see if he still says this romantic stuff then.
“The day you wanted me to blow you in the bathroom?” I tease.
Grayson chuckles.
“If you want to know the truth, I think that would have ended with you on the counter and my tongue in your pussy,” he says. “Even that day I could just tell you were fucking delicious, and hung over or not, I thought about my head between your thighs for hours.”
My entire body blushes.
“Actually, can I ask you something?” he asks.
“What?”
He doesn’t answer right away, just gets off the couch and rummages through a drawer for a moment. When he walks back, he’s got something behind his back.
I frown.
And then Grayson gets down on one knee, both of us completely stark naked, and my mouth drops open.
“Ella Tremaine, I loved you from the second I saw you in that diner, and I’ve been trying to find you ever since,” he says, pulling out a ring box from behind his back and opening it. “Will you marry me?”
I can’t breathe. I can’t move. I can’t think anything except oh no, oh no over and over, because he doesn’t know, and now I have to tell him.
“Ella?” he says softly, after a long pause.
I swallow hard.
“I have to tell you something first,” I whisper, and Grayson frowns slightly.
“What?”
I close my eyes.
“I think I’m pregnant,” I say in a rush. “My period’s late, and everything makes me nauseous, so if that’s not part of the deal then you can rethink or something because I know this is really sudden and unexpected, and—”
His hand caresses my cheek, and my eyes fly open.
Grayson’s just staring at me, his eyes deep and serious, and I stop talking.
“Ella, are you serious?” he whispers.
I just nod, tears springing into my eyes.
He looks at me for another long, long moment.
And then he starts smiling.
“That’s amazing,” he says. “Are you sure? We have to make sure, we have to get you to the doctor and run tests and make sure that everything’s okay. If that bitch Livia did something to you to hurt this baby, I swear I’ll have her put to death.”
I start laughing. I’m relieved and amazed, because I didn’t think he’d be excited.
“I haven’t even taken a pregnancy test yet,” I say.
He’s on his knees in front of the couch, and he grabs my thighs and pulls me forward until I’m practically lying in front of him.
Then he kisses my belly, right below my belly button.
“Hey,” he says softly. “I’m your daddy. And I’m gonna marry your mom, and we’re gonna live happily ever after.”
He kisses my belly again, then looks up at me.
“If she agrees to it, anyway,” he says, smiling and taking my hand.
“I agree,” I say softly.
Grayson’s still grinning, and he takes the ring from the box and slides it onto my ring finger.
“It fits perfectly,” he says, and then there’s a salacious sparkle in his eyes.
“It does.”
“You know what else fits perfectly?” he asks, and kisses the inside of one thigh.
Heat bolts through me again, and I run my fingers through his hair.
“I think so, but we s
hould try it just to make sure,” I say.
Six Weeks Later
“I now pronounce you,” the priest says solemnly. “Husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.”
The entire throne room erupts into a cheer, thousands of voices all screaming at once, but they’re drowned out by Grayson kissing me as my husband for the very first time.
He does it gently, tenderly. The perfect in-front-of-a-huge-audience first kiss.
But I know what’s coming later. I know what he promised me last night as he slid into me as deep as he could, my knees over his shoulders, and my mind just about melted on the spot.
Tasteful kisses are for show. What happens in private is harder, rougher, and makes me come my brains out.
I’m practically in a trance as we walk back down the aisle, my enormous skirt swaying with every step. I can’t believe we got married after the textbook definition of a whirlwind romance. I can’t believe I’m a princess now, or that I’m growing our baby inside me.
It all seems so surreal, but then I look over at Grayson, he smiles down at me, and just like that, I’m sure.
Epilogue, Part One
Grayson
Four Months Later
Flynn raises his eyebrows as I walk back into the kitchen. I was just here ten minutes ago, and he raised his eyebrows then when I asked for a bowl of ice cream and a bowl of Doritos.
“Let me guess,” he says. “She didn’t like them.”
I clear my throat.
“Do you have any Cool Ranch Doritos?” I ask, trying not to smile. “The spicy ones are giving her heartburn.”
Flynn rolls his eyes and tosses a hand towel over his shoulder dramatically.
“Those are the ones she wanted last week,” he says, walking to the other end of the massive kitchen and opening a cupboard. “You sure it’s the spice level and not the fact that she’s eating Doritos with ice cream?”
I leave the two bowls in the sink and lean against the counter.