“But if you all three take me, and I become pregnant, we won’t know who fathered the child until it’s far enough along for a paternity test.”
“We won't know even then,” Jude growled, stroking his own engorged length as he watched her breasts tremble.
Maari frowned. “Why wouldn't we—”
"It doesn't matter who the father is,” he informed her. “That's the entire point of sentencing a princess to sire our bastards. They will be of royal blood, on both sides, but of unknown paternity. Shamed, even as they are adored by their parents—by all four of us."
"But, why would you do that to your own children?" Tears formed in her eyes, but she steadfastly refused to let them fall.
"Because they are also yours,” he spat, as if that should have been obvious. “Your sons and daughters will never bear the Camden name. That is your shame to bear.” With that, Jude lowered himself over her, bearing his weight on one hand while the other guided his cock to her entrance. “No tears,” he reminded her, and her breath hitched while she nodded frantically.
And suddenly Malac was at her ear, kneeling on the bed beside her. “Relax, my sweet princess,” he cooed against her ear lobe. “Jude won’t hurt you on purpose, but you have to relax and let him in.”
Maari shook her head, unsure how to comply. She was wound tight, her entire body tense with anticipation of the inevitable invasion. So Malac took her chin and turned her face toward him. He held her gaze with his bright green eyes. “Just look at me. Just listen to my voice,” he said as Jude pressed forward, shoving his way inside her.
She gasped at the burning pain. At the intimate intrusion. But Malac would not release her chin. He would not relinquish her gaze. And when tears formed in her eyes, while Jude pushed and pushed, filling her with inch after thick, hot inch, Malac leaned down and claimed her mouth for himself. He slid his tongue into her, stroking against hers in an intimacy that mimicked his brother’s claiming of the rest of her, yet distracted her from it.
And when Jude was finally fully seated inside her, his cock throbbing against her torn flesh, he groaned, a sound so indulgently satisfied—so unabashedly vulgar—that Maari tensed around him, and the burning intensified.
“Gods, she’s tight,” Jude grunted, pressing forward, even though there was no more of him for her to take. His pelvis scraped against the sensitive bundle of nerves at the top of her sex just as Malac’s tongue stroked against hers again, and Maari moaned from the sudden unexpected pleasure in spite of—and perhaps because of—the pain. “Fuck,” Jude growled as he began to pull back.
Maari whimpered from the friction of his withdrawal, and Malac’s tongue stroked into her mouth again, just as another hot, wet mouth closed over her right nipple, pulling on it almost gently.
Orlann had returned to the bed.
Together they took her, Jude lost in his own pleasure, grinding out filthy praise for her beautiful body with every thrust into her. Malac kissed her, making demands of her mouth that kept her focus on him, even as that blissful pressure began to build again, triggered by friction not just against her clit, but deep inside her. Orlann made a feast of her breasts, suckling, biting, licking and teasing until her body was a symphony of sensation, as overwhelming as it was blissful.
Then, suddenly, she tore her mouth from Malac’s and clutched at the rumpled bedclothes. She gasped, grunting softly with every thrust into her, staring wide-eyed but unseeing as a ravenous need overcame her. A desperate hunger she had no idea how to sate.
Her hands abandoned the fabric beneath her and clutched at Jude’s arms instead, where he held himself over her. His eyes flew open at her touch and he stopped moving, surprised by the voluntary contact.
“Please,” she moaned, frustrated when what she needed—she wasn’t entirely sure what that was—began to slip from her grasp, while he stared down at her. Motionless. “Don’t stop.”
“Fuck,” Jude groaned. He slammed into her faster, growling as he grew even harder inside her.
Maari screamed as she fell over the edge again, her eyes closed, and as her body clamped down around him, he came, hard, grunting filthy praise with his next thrust.
Over and over he shot his release into her while she moaned beneath him, clutching at him with both hands, her heels digging into his spine, her nails gouging into the backs of his arms as euphoria washed over her in wave after blistering wave of inarticulate rapture.
And finally, he collapsed on top of her, chest to sweaty chest, his massive cock still jumping inside her as he rode out aftershocks that sent shivers through her entire body.
“Holy fuck,” Malac whispered, and distantly, Maari realized that at some point, both of Jude’s brothers had disengaged and backed to opposite edges of the bed. “I’m next.”
Jude tensed. Then, before she’d managed to bring the room back into focus—to regain her composure—he lifted himself with one bulging arm and reached back with the other to release himself from the clasp of her legs. Jude stood, pulling out of her in one efficient motion. Leaving her empty and naked, and dripping with his fluids. Abandoned on the wrecked bed.
“I think I’ll stay for a while.” Malac crawled across the mattress toward the princess, who still lay flushed and exposed as she stared, unfocused, up at the ceiling. Trying to draw her thoughts into focus. To understand what had just happened.
How could something she hadn’t wanted feel so good?
“No.” Jude barked at his brother as he pulled his pants on. “You can both take her tomorrow, however you like, so long as at least one of you fills that cunt full of cum before you leave. Until then, get the fuck out and let her recover.”
The mattress jostled beneath her when Malac reluctantly left the bed, and Maari blinked as the lust haze finally began to clear from her thoughts. She sat up, horrified to find herself still on display, and tucked her knees up to her chest to reclaim her modesty.
“Stay on your back,” Jude ordered as he stepped into his shoes. “Your only job here is to conceive.” Then he snatched up his shirt from the floor and threw open the door into the hall. “I’ll have food sent for you both in an hour,” he said to Annah as he held the door open for her. “If she gets out of bed before it gets here, neither of you will eat until morning.”
“Yes, sir.” Annah kept her gaze on the ground as she stepped into the room, but she gasped when she looked up to find Maari trembling in the center of the bed, still clutching her own knees, her hair tangled and her skin flushed. Her gaze trained on a wet spot on the comforter.
His hand still on the doorknob, Jude waved his brothers toward the door.
“See you tomorrow, princess,” Malac called as he stepped into the hall. “If you dream about me, try to remember the details. I love dirty talk.”
“Get some rest,” Orlann advised her. “You’re going to need it.” He stepped past the king and out the door.
Then Jude looked at her, his gaze moving slowly over the arms wrapped around her legs, the chin resting on her knee. The hair falling over her shoulders to shield her from the visual invasion, though he’d just been buried very deep inside her. Finally, his focus found her confused, tear-filled gaze, and just for a second, something almost human flickered behind his eyes. Not sympathy, exactly. Not empathy. Certainly not guilt.
Pity, Maari realized, with a bittersweet pang of relief. For just an instant, Jude Camden, the warrior-king of Loborough, who’d severed her brother’s head, annihilated her hymen, and stolen her entire future, had felt sorry for the fallen princess. For just a moment, she thought he might actually be human, and if he was human, he could be reasoned with.
Then, the moment passed.
“Take a breath, princess,” Jude said, blinking ice-blue eyes at her. “This is only the beginning.” Then he stepped into the hall and closed the door.
5
Maari
The click of the deadbolt sliding home triggered the collapse of the floodgate holding back everything Maari had felt over
the hour-long assault upon her senses. Rage mingled with lust, humiliation with pleasure, and it was more than she could process. It was more than she could bear.
She collapsed face-down and screamed into a clean spot on the comforter.
Annah rushed across the room and crawled onto the bed, trying to soothe the princess, but her words went unheard, her gestures unnoticed. Maari screamed until her voice cracked, and all Annah could do was stroke her hair down her back until her agony finally ended in sobs that wracked her whole body and dampened the bedclothes with her tears.
“Are you okay?” Annah asked. “Did they hurt you?”
Maari’s head popped up with the sudden reminder that she was not alone. “No.” She sat up and wiped her eyes with the heels of both hands. “They made me like it.”
“Well then, that’s a blessing, isn’t it?” Annah smoothed the princess’s hair down her bare back. “If you have to give yourself to them, at least there’s pleasure to be found in the submission.”
Maari shoved Annah’s hand away, fixing a fierce scowl on her handmaid. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” But then, how could she? Annah wasn’t the one forced to open herself for her enemies, or see an entire kingdom slaughtered. “I didn’t want to like it,” she snapped, her voice seething in unspent rage. “They murdered my brother in front of me and stole my entire future. My marriage. The children I was supposed to have. My freedom. They are my mortal enemies, and I want to hate everything about them. Everything they do to me. But they took that choice away too.”
Maari was humiliated to remember how she’d moaned beneath Jude, writhing in a desperate bid for release, so overwhelmed by her own treacherous need that she’d lost focus on her hatred. She’d been unable to hold onto her anger. But now that her mind was clear, that rage had returned tenfold.
She intended to let it consume her and become the fuel that coursed through her veins. The source of her iron-clad determination to succeed where her brothers had both failed. Maari would achieve peace her way: by ending the Camden bloodline, instead of perpetuating it.
“I only meant—” Annah clasped her hands in her lap, resisting the urge to soothe her royal companion with a comforting touch, an effort she clearly knew would be rejected. “The Camden princes are said to be quite good in bed. It’s said they are generous lovers, and—”
“Who says that?” Maari demanded, pulling her knees up to her chest.
“Well, I don’t know, precisely. I guess it’s a bit of a legend. But then, that’s what I thought about the biting too, until they bit you.” She ran one finger gingerly over the bite at the base of Maari’s throat and seemed both relieved and surprised when the princess did not flinch. When the wound didn’t feel hot with infection.
Maari wiped tear-damp hands on the lilac comforter. “What do you know about the biting?”
“It’s said that the Camden men infect the women they…seduce. By biting them.”
“Infect them with what?”
“With…themselves. They say it’s one of the gifts bestowed upon each of the First Families by the native gods, when Syrus was first terraformed and settled. A gift passed down from father to son, for generations.”
“The gods.” Maari huffed. She’d heard the legend of the gods and their gifts, of course, but those were nothing more than an absurd mythology. “There were no gods here when Syrus was settled. The Delaynes are one of the First Families, and we have no gift.”
Annah gave her a strange look. “And yet those men bit you. They say that if you’ve been bitten by one of the Camden princes, once the infection takes hold, your body will cave to his will until the bite wears off. It will ready you for him the moment you hear desire in his voice. Or feel it in his touch. Or catch it, even subconsciously, in his scent.” Her focus narrowed on the princess. “Does any of that sound familiar?”
“That’s what Jaarod meant,” Maari mumbled, reluctant to admit aloud that she might be wrong. “My brother told me to let them make it easier for me. Clearly he’s heard about these bites.” Not that being forced to enjoy something she didn’t want could truly be considered making it easier.
“I’m sure that infection is why you passed out.”
Maari blinked at her. “Does every woman those bastards take to bed fall unconscious?”
Annah laughed. “Certainly not. But then, I’d assume most women aren’t bitten by all three of them at once.”
“Lucky me.” Yet despite the edge of sarcasm in her voice, she did feel somewhat mollified by this new information. She wasn’t weak-willed; she was infected.
Well, they may have turned her body against her, but they would never be able to infect her mind. Or her heart.
“How long will the effect of the bites last?”
Annah could only shrug. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know. I can ask one of the other maids, the next time I see her.”
“Thank you.” Maari rose onto her knees to crawl toward the edge of the bed, but before her feet could hit the floor, Annah laid one hand on her arm.
“You’re supposed to lie on your back for an hour,” she reminded the princess. “Or neither of us will get dinner.”
Despite her hunger, Maari would eagerly have given up another meal for the chance to bathe. To wash Camden sweat, and saliva, and semen from her body. To soak in hot water and ease the fresh ache between her legs. But it wasn’t fair of her to deprive Annah of food. So she flopped back onto the bed with a sigh and flipped the edge of the comforter over to cover her nudity and to stave off the chill in the room, this far from the fireplace. “What is the point of this? Lying still is supposed to help me get pregnant?”
“I guess it’s supposed to prevent the…um…dripping?” Annah shrugged and folded her legs beneath herself at the head of the bed. “To keep the fluids where they need to be.”
“What if I don’t want to get pregnant? Are they really going to know if I don’t lie here for the next hour?” Maari squinted up at the ceiling, looking for the telltale shine of a lens among the wooden beams. “Are there cameras in here?”
“I don’t know. But I wouldn’t bet against the king of Stead Camden knowing everything that goes on in his own palace.” Annah lowered herself onto her back next to the princess. “Why don’t you take a nap? When you wake up, dinner will be here, and after we eat, I’ll draw you another bath.”
“I can’t sleep. I’m too angry.” And too sticky with drying fluids.
“Well then, turn onto your side—that isn’t technically disobeying—and I’ll play with your hair. You’ve always found that soothing before, haven’t you?”
In fact, she had. So Maari rolled onto her right side and tucked the flipped-over comforter around her bare hips. Annah snatched one of the pillows propped against the headboard and slid it beneath the princess’s head, smoothing her hair out behind her, over the satin pillowcase. She began combing out Maari’s long, dark curls with her fingers, and by the time she’d smoothed out the tangles and begun to braid, the princess was sound asleep.
The creak of the door opening woke Maari. She sat up, startled, and clutched the comforter to her chest. Annah was gone. The princess was alone, and the moonlight shining through her bedroom window told her that though it felt like she’d slept for weeks, she hadn’t yet made it to the next morning.
When a woman stepped into the room carrying a large, round tray covered in a shiny metal dome, Maari realized she had, in fact, slept for less than an hour. Dinner had arrived.
The servant glanced briefly at her, then she carried her tray to the small table by the window, without a word. As she was uncovering the tray, the bathroom door opened, and Annah reappeared.
“Oh good, dinner! Thank you!” the handmaid said to the servant, who only gave her a formal nod on her way out of the room, carrying the dome. The door closed behind the servant, and the deadbolt slid home again. “Princess. You must be starving.” Annah took two plates from the tray and arranged them on opposite sides of the t
able. “Come eat.”
“I don’t care to eat in the nude,” the princess informed her. “If they want me to eat—and I would assume they do, if they intend for me to carry their children—they’ll need to bring me some clothing.”
Annah turned to her, a glass of ice water in each hand. “Do you have any way of contacting them with this demand?”
“Of course not.” The Camdens had confiscated her personal com device when she’d passed out in Jude’s arms, three days ago. They’d taken every single bit of freedom and independence from her.
“Then this may not be the time to make that point.” Annah set the full glasses in front of the plates she’d arranged, on either side of a fragrant basket of freshly baked rolls. Then she lifted a throw blanket from the back of a small sofa in the sitting area and carried it toward the bed. “Will this work, for now?”
Maari nodded, convinced as much by the aromas emanating from the table as by Annah’s makeshift solution. She stood and accepted the blanket, then she wrapped it around herself like a bath towel and tucked the loose end between her breasts. “Thank you.”
Annah led her to a chair she’d already pulled out at the table, where a small feast awaited. Each plate held a roasted chicken breast, seasoned with rosemary, and a mound of steamed vegetables, as well as herbed potatoes, with a pat of butter molded in the shape of the Stead Camden crest. Dessert was a small tray of strawberries standing on end, each of which had been cored and stuffed with an elegant dollop of a rich-looking cream, topped with a delicate chocolate accent in the shape of a stylized letter C.
“Shall we?” Annah stood behind her own chair, clearly waiting on the princess to sit first, as was the custom when dining with royalty. Not that Maari had ever eaten with a handmaid before. Though clearly her new status as a royal prisoner had come with changes to more than just her wardrobe.
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