by Pippa Grant
Her belly is visibly quivering, her breath coming quicker, her eyes so dark a man could get lost in them. “And if you succeed?” she whispers.
“Then I suppose I shall owe you three more climaxes and a bubble bath.”
Her laughter washes over me. I’ve made it my life’s mission to smile as often as possible—generally to the irritation of those around me—but I’m certain I’ve never smiled so wide nor so happily in my life as I am now.
“What kind of terms are those?” she asks me.
I succeed in pulling off her trousers and settle my shoulders between her legs, which she opens willingly for me, inhaling her sweet earthy scent and stroking the hot, wet silk covering her mound. “I never said I played fair, my lady. If you wish for better terms for yourself, you’ll have to be in charge of the wager next time.”
I press a kiss to the satin, she gasps, and I lick at the moisture soaking her panties.
“You—” she pants.
I lick her again, her hips buck, and whatever she intended to say fades into a moan of delight.
“This is safe for the baby?” I inquire.
“Yes,” she moans.
I tease my fingers beneath the fabric and stroke the slick skin of her center. “And this?”
“Oh, yes.”
I press another kiss to her satin-covered pussy while stroking her. “And if I were to take you hard from behind—”
“Yes. Oh, dog, Manning, don’t stop.”
“’Twould hate to disappoint a lady,” I murmur.
“You—could—never—oh yes yes yes more.”
These panties will definitely have to go. But not just yet, because she seems to be enjoying the teasing so very much.
Her skin is glowing, her hips thrusting into my touch and my mouth, and there’s nothing in the world I’d rather do than to pleasure her.
All night.
All day.
All forever.
She’s carrying my child. She’s brought hope into my life. And she’s done it all with no thought of what she might gain.
I’d be a bloody fool to not do everything in my power to please her.
She’s pushing at her panties, so I oblige in helping her. The seam tears easily, and soon she’s laid bare, her pussy glistening for me.
For me.
I don’t deserve this woman.
But as I take my mouth to her, licking all the way up those pretty pink folds to tease the hard nub of her clit, suckling it into my mouth while she gasps and pants and calls my name and invokes the heavens, I’m damned well determined to keep her.
To satisfy her.
To love her.
Love her.
Her hips thrust up to meet my mouth, her fingers grip my hair so tight my scalp aches nearly as much as my bollocks, and when I slip three fingers into her hot, slick channel, she comes so hard, so impossibly fast, squeezing her thighs around my head while her walls clench around my fingers. She cries my name.
I lick at her sweet juices.
I want her.
All of her.
I want her to be mine. Here. Now. Tomorrow. Everywhere.
She collapses back onto the bed as the last of her climax leaves her. I press a kiss to her inner thigh, and her skin visibly quivers.
“Oh my holy dog,” she whispers. “You definitely did that right. Thank you.”
I press a kiss to her other thigh. “Oh, no, my lady. Thank you.”
33
Gracie
My entire body is limp with pleasure, but Manning is still rock-hard, his length pressed against my leg, and that just won’t do.
He kisses his way up my belly, pausing to lavish extra attention on my breasts, and ohmydog, his hands—his mouth—his thoroughness all leave me gasping for air with another desperate ache building in my clit.
“M-my turn,” I manage to gasp.
He lifts lazy eyes and a soft smile. “All of tonight is your turn, my lady,” he informs me.
“Good.” I wiggle beneath him and push him onto his back, keeping a hand, an arm, a leg against his body the entire time. “Because there’s something I need to see.”
“Ah. I’m to be measured?” he teases.
The dim light from his bedside lamp casts shadows on the cut grooves of his abdomen. I’d like to fingerpaint his chest, and I can’t resist stroking the hard cords in his arms.
“You’re to be admired,” I tell him.
I let my hands trail down his, and he captures my fingers to press them to his lips as we lie side-by-side. Because he’s a stubborn billy goat and won’t stay on his back.
“You’ll stay tonight?” he asks.
“That depends on your behavior.”
I push again, and he once more rolls to his back. I lean up and look down.
Because honestly, I haven’t gotten a good look yet.
“Does the lady approve?”
I wrap my hand around Manning’s thick length and stroke upward. It’s hot, silky skin over solid brass, his head engorged, and he hisses out a breath when my fist reaches the top and strokes back down to his base.
“So far, you’re getting a perfect score.”
I sit up and lean closer for inspection, biting my lower lip, and his dick twitches in my hand.
I lick my lips.
He groans and thrusts up into my grasp.
I cup his tight balls with my free hand and bend to taste the salty tip of him.
“Heaven above, Gracie,” he gasps.
I swirl my tongue about his head, still gripping and stroking him, and his grunts and moans become incoherent. He tangles his fingers in my hair, but before he can tug me away, I adjust my angle and take him all the way to the back of my throat, letting my tongue stroke and suckle the solid steel of his cock.
He’s so hard. So thick.
So mine.
All mine.
My clit aches. My pussy’s clenching on itself. I want him to come in my mouth, but I also want so badly to feel him inside me.
“Gracie,” he gasps again.
His hips buck.
I ride his cock with my mouth, in and out, sucking harder and deeper, until he moans and grips my hair tighter. “Next time, love,” he gasps. “I need inside you. Now.”
He pulls me off and has me on my belly before I can take a full breath, his body behind mine. “Is this okay, love?”
His cock rubs against the seam of my pussy, wet and ready, and I moan when he brushes my clit. “Oh, yes.”
He spreads my legs with his thigh, cradles my belly and urges my ass into the air, and his engorged crown presses at my entrance. “You’re so bloody perfect,” he tells me as he pushes inside. “So beautiful. So brilliant. So bright. So bloody perfect.”
My hips jerk and I spread my legs wider, taking him deeper until he pulls back, then thrusts in harder and higher. The desperate spiral of ecstasy is building deeper and tighter so far inside me, and with every thrust, he’s reaching closer and closer.
“Manning,” I gasp.
“Fucking perfect, Gracie. Perfectly mine.”
His.
Oh, dog, how I want to be his.
He pumps into me once more, and my body falls apart around him, my orgasm hitting hard and fast and white-hot. He groans and tightens his grip on my belly as I feel his release pulsing inside me, my pussy clenching around him, taking all of him, giving him all of me, pressing back into him while we come together.
I grip his hand while I ride wave after wave of pleasure. He bows his head to my back, still spasming, his breath coming fast.
I’m never letting go. I don’t want to ever have to let go.
When the final aftershocks pass, I flop onto the bed. He collapses beside me and pulls me into his arms.
“Never let go,” I whisper.
He kisses my forehead, my hair, my brow, while our breaths stutter and hearts beat in sync, surrounded by the heated scent of sex and satisfaction and desperation. “Never, Gracie. I shall never let go.”<
br />
I wrap my arms around him and pull him as close as I can, kissing him hard and long and deep.
Because this moment, here—us—is perfect.
And I don’t want morning to come.
Ever.
34
Manning
Leaving my bed this morning is among the most difficult tasks I’ve ever done. I’d far rather stay cocooned beneath the blankets with Gracie, listening to the gentle hum of her deep breathing, our legs entangled, my hand cradling her belly, but I have duties I must attend, the sooner the better.
Because I do not intend for last night to be my last night with this generous, sweet-hearted, amazing woman.
And provided my tasks this morning don’t result in my being immediately called back to Stölland to answer for myself, I’m to board a plane to Florida early this afternoon for my other obligations.
Which only makes leaving Gracie more difficult.
Whilst I’m gone, the baby will grow. She’ll be viewing pictures of other men’s dicks to print on cookies. And I’ll be attempting to reconcile myself with that fact.
I can’t bloody well tell her how to make a living, and I can’t even think the words allow me to take care of you, my lady without seeing her wrinkle that nose at me while insisting she’s perfectly capable of caring for herself.
It’s remarkable how the very independence and strength that brought her here to rescue me is the very same independence and strength bringing yet another red haze into my vision.
Viktor nods to me when I descend the stairs. I don’t know how the man survives on so little sleep, but this morning, I’m damned grateful. “Could I borrow your office for a private phone call?” I inquire.
“As you wish, Your Highness.”
“Any word on when my father might arrive?”
“Approximately an hour, Your Highness.”
Which most likely means sooner, because my father is nothing if not early whenever possible.
“Thank you, Viktor. Ignore the stove. I’ll clean the mess shortly.”
He’ll ignore me, of course.
I settle into the simple chair behind the cluttered desk in the guards’ quarters and make a video call to a number that may very well be the end of me.
After six rings, the prime minister’s face blinks to life on my phone.
His dour expression would suggest he’s not pleased to see me. “Your Highness,” he says flatly.
“Mr. Isaakson. Lovely to see you this morning. How’s the weather?”
“Far better than my afternoon is becoming.”
Ah. I can see the normal charm won’t get me far.
The man’s still probably bloody irritated about that little incident with his daughter.
I was a rather obnoxious fool last summer.
“I owe you quite the apology, Mr. Isaakson. You and your daughter.”
A phone call without the video would’ve been easier. An email easier yet. But if I’m to have any chance of political assistance from the one man in a position to provide it—yet with so very little motivation to care about my situation—then I need to man up.
“Your father has convinced me you’re not one to make apologies or admit indiscretions, which is why he was so very willing to support me in the next elections,” Isaakson says after a moment. “Which begs the question, what do you want?”
“A favor for a lady, sir.”
The man’s eyebrows are bushy as hell, threaded with gray, lowering to dangerous levels by the moment. “A lady.”
“Ms. Elin Liefsson, to be precise. I daresay she’s come to the conclusion I’d make a rather terrible husband, but she’s not in a position to call off.” Or so I assume. Despite unrestricted access to my credit cards over the last several days, she charged barely two hundred dollars. Having been acquainted a time or two with the cost of ladies’ shoes alone, and knowing her disdain for me, two hundred dollars is a paltry sum. Additionally, Kristofer reported that she spent most of her days in the museums rather than in stores.
The woman has no more interest in being a duchess or a princess than I have interest in the means by which she acquires a higher title.
Isaakson clears his throat. “She’s hardly the first woman to come to that conclusion.”
“Yes, but she’s the only woman with the misfortune of having been betrothed to me.”
“This is a matter between you and your father.”
“Actually, ‘tis a matter between myself and my grandfather, but as he’s long departed, his sins have fallen upon his son and grandsons.”
Isaakson pauses with his shoulder leaned into the screen. It’s clear he meant to sever the line, but I’ve been given one last chance to make my case.
“My father is a good king. He puts his people first, bears his responsibilities with all the gravity due, and performs his tasks with the well-being of Stölland always at the forefront. As a gentleman, he knows he must honor not only his own commitments and debts, but those made by his father before him.”
“I have no quarrel with your father.”
I grin, because these two quarrel all the time. Better for the country that we compromise over our opinions to find the best solution than that the Prime Minister and I become nothing more than yes men to one another, he told me once. I rather suspect each of them like to argue for argument’s sake.
I’ve often known my father to do as much.
“So if a man such as the Earl of Austling were to try to make a claim on the throne, you’d support my father?”
He blinks. “What the devil are you talking about?”
“Honor, debt, and betrothals, Mr. Isaakson. Honor, debt, and betrothals.”
Isaakson stares at me through the phone without speaking. I’ve never inquired as to his feelings about Elin’s father. We’ve rarely had reason to talk at all beyond the occasional ceremonial gathering, and even then, I must confess my attention was less on the political guests and more on being a bloody nuisance.
But I do like to think my father wouldn’t have political allies who are idiots.
Austling isn’t his ally.
Austling is part of his inheritance, and the ugly part of his inheritance at that.
“Are you implying what I think you’re implying?” Isaakson finally says.
“I’m a spare heir banished to the Americas to get my head bashed in on the ice, which is far less troublesome for my family than allowing me free reign in Stölland,” I reply cheerfully. “But as my betrothal is quite political, it seemed prudent to seek the advice of a political man.”
“Is His Majesty aware that you’re telling me this?”
Translation: Is your father aware that you’re sharing the king’s secrets with a man who could destroy him?
“I’m still breathing, aren’t I?”
“You’re quite the pain in the arse.”
“Her ladyship is quite brilliant in her medical field.” I’ve no idea if she is or if she isn’t, but I’ve learned a thing or two having her in my home. “‘Twould be a shame were she forced to set aside her research to play the role of a socialite instead of making a real difference in the world. And I’m quite willing to indefinitely serve as an honorary ambassador for Stölland, should that be more beneficial to the country than yet another dukedom merely for a dukedom’s sake.”
“A bloody pain in the arse,” Isaakson repeats, this time with a sigh and a rub of a bushy brow.
“A tutor once told me to find what I excel at and to practice that skill to perfection. Being a bloody pain in the arse is most likely not exactly what he meant, but I do take my talents seriously.”
Would you look at that.
The man might’ve just smiled.
Or possibly I’ve given him indigestion.
“Is there anything else you feel the need to confess, Your Highness?”
“I rather think I’ve done enough for one day.”
I disconnect the call, unsurprised when the door creaks open across from the
desk.
My father peers in.
“Finally decided to grow up, then?” he asks.
If he’s angry, or disappointed, or worried, he’s hiding it well. He always has.
“’Twas inevitable, I suppose. Shall I take you to breakfast? There’s a lovely pie shop just around the corner. I’m certain I can charm the proprietress into opening early for us.”
He sighs, but there’s a smile teasing his lips. “You’re hell-bent on causing headaches all around today, aren’t you?”
“I’m merely warming up, Your Majesty.”
35
Gracie
When I wake up, light is streaming in through the gauzy curtains overlooking the Blue Ridge Mountains.
And I’m alone.
There’s a short note on the pillow beside me, along with my phone.
G–
I’ve texted you.
–M
His handwriting is bold and scrawly, the letters bleeding into each other. I smile. Both because he’s drawn a heart at the bottom of the note, and because he saved me from deciphering much more of his horrible penmanship.
It’s probably not that bad, but I don’t see it right. And he probably knows it.
I could learn to read better. Many, many dyslexics just like me have, and they’ve gone on to do bigger things than printing dicks on cookies in the back office of a one-horse town’s only bakery.
But I found where I fit. And that’s been enough.
Until now.
“Honey badger, read me the text from Manning,” I tell my phone.
Her electronic voice pipes up almost immediately. “I regret leaving a note, but you were sleeping so soundly I could not bear to disturb your slumber. I must be off for a meeting with my father, then to the arena for practice and the flight to Florida. If you require assistance in your return to Alabama, Kristofer will be more than happy to assist you. Safe travels, love. Talk soon.”
Wait.
Does he mean he wants me to leave?
I guess it makes sense. He’s out of town the next two or three days. And I do need to get home and check on my bakery, and I miss my cat and my friends, but what about taking care of his betrothal? And what’s going on with his family? Are they staying? Or traveling with him to his games?