Gently his fingers brushed the length of my spine, a blowtorch on my skin.
I gasped, a shaken, frightened sound.
He reached the small of my back, rested there for a moment. Then he ran his fingers all the way back up again, a long, light stroke. Gentle. So achingly gentle.
I was shaking, I couldn’t help myself, his touch doing something to me, reaching into my chest, past my breastbone, wrapping those long, wicked, beautiful fingers around my heart and squeezing.
I hadn’t been touched with gentleness before. Not like this.
‘I think I told you the moment I realised I wanted you,’ he said, adding his voice to the touch of his fingers, darkness and smoke, black velvet and fire. ‘It was early one afternoon. Everyone had gone out and I thought you’d gone with them too. I came outside because I heard someone in the pool so I thought I’d better investigate.’ He stroked me gently, long and slow, up and down, his touch flames on my skin. ‘And there you were, in the water. I was going to go back inside and then I watched you pull yourself out and I realised you were naked. Completely and utterly naked.’ His touch changed, tracing the curve of my butt. ‘I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything but look at you. Because you were so fucking beautiful. Your skin was glistening and the sun made you look like you were covered in jewels. You lifted your arms and pushed your hair back and I literally caught my breath.’ His fingers moved to the backs of my thighs, stroking me there before moving back up to my spine again, then further, to my shoulders, tracing every line of muscle, every curve. As if he was committing every part of me to memory. ‘It wasn’t your beauty that mesmerised me, Poppy, though you were amazingly beautiful. It was the look on your face. I’d only ever seen you angry and sulky and hating me, never anything else. But that day you were looking out over the sea and you had the most mysterious smile on your face. The slight hint of one. And I wanted to know what you were thinking. I was desperate to know.’
I should have been relaxed, he was touching me so gently, and yet I felt nothing but exposed. As if his touch was stripping me bare, taking away layer after layer, leaving me with nowhere to hide.
He shifted again and I felt the heat of his body come closer. The cushions dipped on either side of my head and I realised he must have put his hands there, because then I felt his breath feather lightly over the back of my neck.
I shivered, my heart squeezing in my chest yet again.
He kissed me, the softness of his mouth brushing the top of my spine before moving lower, kissing his way down the curve of my back. ‘You looked like a mermaid, so beautiful and mysterious, and I wanted you in that moment,’ he murmured against my skin, his voice my anchor. ‘I wanted you so very badly. But most of all I wanted to know what you were thinking.’
I screwed my eyes shut behind the blindfold, a weird emotional tide flooding through me as he kissed me, as he said those words, and it frightened me. I didn’t know what was happening, why I was feeling so...afraid and raw, like my innermost self was somehow lying there beneath him and he could see it.
He could see me.
I tried to concentrate on something else, the linen beneath my cheek and the press of the blindfold on my forehead, but my attention kept being drawn back to him by the light brush of his mouth on my skin. By his dark, deep voice, telling me things I didn’t want to hear.
That I was beautiful. That he’d wanted to know what I was thinking. There was something about that and the way he was touching me that made me feel as if he was ripping my heart out through my chest.
Why had he wanted to know? When I’d been so awful to him for so many years. And why was he touching me like that? As if I was precious. Because I wasn’t. Surely if I had been, my father wouldn’t have taken himself from me.
You know why he took himself from you.
‘I wasn’t thinking anything.’ I cringed at the hoarse note in my voice. ‘All I was doing was imagining that the house was mine and I was living there by myself. Nothing earth-shattering.’
He was silent for a moment but his hands didn’t stop stroking me, caressing me. ‘You didn’t want anyone around, did you? You wanted to be alone.’
‘Yes.’ I shuddered as he shifted again, trailing his mouth over the small of my back.
‘It’s lonely, though, isn’t it? That’s what you told me about my childhood, and it sounded like experience.’
Oh, shit. That was right. I had. In the shower, when he’d told me his father used to keep him isolated. And how he’d always wanted a little sister...
And you threw it back in his face all those years ago.
My eyes burned and I was glad I was blindfolded because I had a horrible feeling that I was going to start crying at any moment. Which was ridiculous. He wasn’t doing anything to me that hurt. He was only being gentle.
You don’t deserve gentleness.
‘I wasn’t lonely,’ I said both to him and to the thought. ‘I was fine.’
He only made a non-committal noise then his hands were on my hips and he was turning me over onto my back.
I didn’t want to go. At least face-down I had some protection, but there was none while I was on my back. Oh, there was the blindfold hiding my eyes, but he’d be able to read my expression anyway. He was so good at reading people, and me in particular.
I flung my arm across my face—not that that was any barrier—shivering as I felt his fingers settle at the base of my throat.
Oh, God. He was going to stroke me again, wasn’t he?
‘Of course you were fine.’ He trailed his fingers lightly down my torso. ‘That’s what you always say. But you’re not fine, Poppy. If you were, you wouldn’t mind me touching you like this.’
I shuddered as his fingertips brushed over my breasts, feeling my nipples get tight and hard. Feeling my soul curl in on itself, trying to protect itself from him and his maddeningly gentle touch.
‘I don’t mind.’ I had to force out the words. I had to force myself not to say another word too, the one that I’d never said the whole time I’d been with him.
Seven.
‘Yes, you do.’ His fingers stroked my breasts, tracing their curves, brushing lightly over my nipples and moving down, following the lines of my waist and hips, trailing over my stomach. More flames on my skin, burning.
‘Why not, bad girl? Why don’t you like being touched like this?’
I began to shake, half in helpless desire, half in fear. The blackness behind my blindfold lit up with flashes of pleasure as he stroked down my thighs and I wanted him to take me; to use me hard; to spank me and make me hurt. That was what I wanted. Not this...gentleness. Not this softness I didn’t deserve.
Because that voice in my head had always whispered the real truth and I had to accept it.
I didn’t deserve his kindness. I didn’t deserve his gentleness. I’d treated him with nothing but anger and contempt, and I’d done nothing at all to make him change his mind about me.
Nothing but have sex with him.
‘Is that what this is?’ I demanded. ‘This is all about sex, isn’t it? Just because I had sex with you—’
‘Hush.’ The word fell across the darkness with so much authority that I fell silent immediately.
My heart thumped; my breathing was fast. I was a mass of exposed nerve-endings and raw emotions and I’d never felt so vulnerable in all my life.
‘It’s not about the sex,’ he said at last. ‘This is about you. You’re hurt, Poppy. You’re wounded. And when a creature is wounded and hurt, they protect themselves. But I’m trying to tell you that you don’t have to protect yourself from me.’ His hands ran down my legs, softly, gently. ‘You’re beautiful, yes, but that’s not all you are. You’re passionate and you feel deeply. You’re protective too. Of your mother and how she’s survived.’
‘That’s not true. Not about Mum—’
&
nbsp; ‘Of course it’s true.’ His palms slid back up, long, stroking touches. ‘Why else would you get job after job to help her?’
I shook my head, denying it. I had to do that for Mum. She was my mother. She didn’t have anyone else. And I owed her after Dad...
‘It is true,’ he went on. ‘She gave you nothing and yet you wouldn’t leave her. Plenty of people would.’
I kept shaking my head and when I felt his mouth on my stomach, brushing more kisses over me, I tried to pull away.
But he didn’t stop raining kisses on my throat, my shoulders, my breasts and my stomach. As if each part of me deserved to be touched and kissed and stroked and held.
It was unbearable.
‘You shouldn’t do that,’ I whispered raggedly.
‘Why not? Give me one good reason.’
I didn’t want to tell him, didn’t want to give away the truth. But I had nothing left. ‘You’re right. I don’t deserve it.’
‘Poppy...’
‘My dad died because of me.’
He went still, his hands resting on me and not moving, and so I went on. ‘I wanted a pony when I was ten. I begged and begged and begged. And Dad said he didn’t have any money, but I wouldn’t listen. I told him that if he didn’t get me one I’d never, ever forgive him. I’d never love him again.’ The words were getting stuck, helpless tears clogging my throat. But I forced myself to keep speaking. ‘So he told me he was going to get me one. Then the next day he killed himself.’
‘Poppy.’
‘Mum screamed at me. She told me it was my fault for being such a brat. I know I wasn’t directly responsible. I didn’t know we were having money trouble and I didn’t tie that rope around his neck. I know it was his own financial mismanagement that did it. But there’s a part of me that thinks that maybe she was right. If I hadn’t been such a fucking brat, if I hadn’t told him I’d never forgive him, if I hadn’t kept going on at him, he might not have done it. That me begging for a stupid pony was the thing that maybe pushed him over.’ I could feel tears leaking out from underneath the fabric of my blindfold and I wanted to wipe them away, but I didn’t. ‘They didn’t want me anyway. Mum never wanted to get pregnant with me. I was a mistake. A mistake that killed my dad.’
I let more tears fall and just lay there, naked and exposed, the last horrible little secret echoing in the room around me.
Selfish and demanding, that was what I was. Wanting things I couldn’t and shouldn’t have. A pony. A mother and father who loved me. A family. A home.
I was a mistake. I shouldn’t even have been here.
I didn’t deserve a thing.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Xander
SHE WAS STRETCHED out beneath me, blindfolded. All naked golden curves and pain.
That pain was like a knife in my goddamned soul.
The tears leaked from underneath her blindfold, running down her cheeks and her neck, pooling at the base of her throat.
She thought she’d been the one to push her father over the edge.
She thought she’d been the one who’d killed him.
It wasn’t her. It was you.
The truth, that was what I had to tell her. The truth in all its ugly glory.
Except how could I do that now? I’d been trying to show her that she could trust me, that she didn’t have to fight me. That right now she was mine and I would care for her, protect her. Heal her if I could.
And she was wounded. So terribly wounded. Punishing herself for something that had never been her fault.
But telling her the truth might wound her even more and I couldn’t do that. It seemed like maybe some things were more important than total honesty.
So I didn’t say a word.
I leaned down, putting my hands on either side of her head, and I brushed my lips over hers then moved lower, kissing away the tears on her cheeks and along her jaw. Trailing down to her throat I tasted salt.
I gave her back sweetness. I gave her back warmth.
I gave her back kindness and caring and all the things she should have had as an angry, hurt little girl, that no one had given her. That she felt she hadn’t deserved.
She shuddered beneath my mouth, her hands lifting to my shoulders, trying to push me away, but I didn’t let her. Instead I took her hands in mine and turned them over, kissing her palms.
She gave a gasp, her body going taut, and I waited.
If she wanted to stop me, she knew what she had to do.
‘Xander...’ My name was a broken whisper. ‘Xander...don’t...’
But I ignored her. I laid her hands back down at her sides and I bent again, kissing my way down her body, inhaling the sweet scent of her, now tinged with the musk of her arousal and the salt from her tears.
‘You didn’t kill your father,’ I murmured, giving her this truth at least. ‘It wasn’t your fault. That was his choice. And it was the wrong one. He shouldn’t have done it, Poppy. He shouldn’t have taken himself from you.’
She gave a hiccupping sob, flinging her arm over her face again, even though she was already wearing a blindfold.
‘And if you’re a mistake then you’re the most perfect mistake I’ve ever seen.’ I stroked her, kissed her. Traced every line of her with my fingers and my mouth, not even questioning the urge, just going with it. I sensed that this was what she needed and so I gave it to her.
‘I’m a terrible person,’ she whispered in a cracked voice at last. ‘I treated you so badly. And it’s not Mum’s fault she is the way she is. If she’d never had me, everything would have been different.’
I put my fingers across her mouth, silencing her. ‘If she’d never had you, I would never have met you. And sure, my life would have been easier, but then I would have never got to touch you. Kiss you. I would never have been inside you.’ I let my fingers trail between her thighs, over that sweet, soft, hot little pussy. ‘I would never had known how it felt to have you touch me. To have your sympathy and your passion. Your caring. And I would have been poorer for that too.’
‘Stop it,’ she choked out. ‘Stop saying those things.’
But I didn’t stop. ‘You’re not my fuck toy tonight, Poppy.’ I stroked her inner thighs, spreading them gently apart, exposing the heart of her. ‘Tonight you’re my princess.’
She shuddered as I trailed my mouth up her thighs, then shuddered again as I brushed my lips over her pussy, kissing her there too. Then, using my fingers to spread her further, I explored her with my tongue. I tasted the tart sweetness of her, the sugar and spice that was her flavour.
I kept things gentle, light. There would be nothing hard tonight. It wasn’t the time for roughness.
I wanted her to trust me. I wanted her to know that, whatever was happening between us, I would never hurt her. That I was on her side.
Because she needed someone and I wanted to be that someone.
I didn’t ask myself why I wanted that; I just knew I did.
Sometimes the why didn’t matter.
All that did was that she knew I was there.
I nudged her thighs over my shoulders, tasting her even deeper, using my fingers to play with her clit and give her more pleasure. And this time I didn’t withhold her orgasm from her. I built it up and built it up, letting the sounds of her breathing and the tightness of her muscles tell me how close she was. Then I let it explode through her so that her back arched and she lifted her hips against my mouth, her whole body shaking, her sobs echoing through the apartment.
Then I did it again, touching her, stroking her, building up that pleasure for her, higher, hotter, until she was crying out in my arms. Until she was writhing as I sucked on her tight little nipples. Until she was moaning as I moved down to her clit once more and teased that with my tongue, my fingers gently exploring her soaking wet pussy.
Until
she was shaking and gasping as I brought her to another orgasm.
I gathered her in my arms after that, ignoring the fact that my cock was so hard it hurt. This wasn’t about me, not this time. This was about her, about what she needed. And she needed pleasure and care and softness. She needed gentleness.
She needed somewhere where she felt safe, where she didn’t have to fight all the time. Where she could let her guard down.
I wanted that place to be in my arms.
She cried for a while after that, her face—still with the blindfold on—pressed to my chest and I held her, stroking her hair and soothing her.
And even when her sobs had settled into silence I continued to stroke her, keeping things undemanding, not speaking. Just letting the silence sit there.
I gave it another couple of minutes after that, then I undid the fabric of her blindfold and pulled it away from her face.
Her cheeks were a dusky pink and shiny with tears, her eyes red-rimmed, and I expected her to hide from me again. But she didn’t.
‘Why?’ she asked thickly, staring up at me. ‘Why did you do that?’
I reached out, pulled my fingers through her thick black curls. ‘Because you deserve more than punishment. And because you need someone to trust. And I know what it’s like to have no one.’
‘How can you know that? You have your brothers.’
‘I didn’t have them all the time. It’s only been in the last ten years or so that we became close. Even when we were young, Dad kept me away from them.’ I let the silky strands of her hair sift through my fingers. ‘I wasn’t allowed to get close to anyone. My mother died when I was young and so the only person I had was him.’ I hesitated then said, ‘And you’re right. It was lonely. I was lonely. And I wish you could have trusted me then. But I understand why you didn’t.’ I looked down at her, letting her see the truth in my eyes. ‘And I want you to know that you can trust me now.’
She swallowed and her lashes came down, tears glittering on the ends of them. Then she put her cheek against my chest and settled against me. ‘I hate you just a little bit.’
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