by Olivia Gates
He buried his face in her breasts as he lay buried inside her, and they trembled together for a long moment, just savoring the connection, the reciprocal submission and domination.
He suckled her nipples in turn, soft pulls that grew hard then harder, each tug shooting straight to her core, making her pulse around his invasion, shifting her up and down his shaft. She pulled his head up when she couldn’t bear any more, captured his lips. He drew her soul right out of her, infused her with his. His endearments grew thicker, more explicit, the words she longed for, the voice she lived to hear.
As the pulse of pleasure threatened to burst into the convulsions that would shatter her, he felt it, swept her around and under him and gave her the pressure she needed to spill over, screeching, into intoxicating climax. She felt his jolt of answering ecstasy, was scorched by his seed as it pulsed over and over into her womb, bathing it, filling it, until the pleasure eddied in a downward spiral so violent her consciousness flickered.
She came back into her body to his caress, to the feel of him still filling her. He was poring over what she knew was her ravaged-by-emotion-and-satisfaction face. His was gentleness and possession personified.
“You would send a man to his grave with a smile on his face and a fervent wish to rise again only so that he could die once more at your hands. You’d make him want to do anything to deserve your esteem and respect. You make me want to be the best man I can be.” He took her lips in what felt like a pledge. “So yes, Phoebe, I will become crown prince.”
She cried out her pleasure, for him, for Castaldini, surged up to fill his cherishing and indulgent embrace.
Throughout the rest of the night, they planned and projected and shared all the exquisiteness that was only theirs to share, a steady supply of which would fuel all her tomorrows.
And if something in her deepest consciousness fidgeted, wondering why he hadn’t exactly asked her to be part of his future, it settled back into serenity with the certainty that he soon would….
Fourteen
They stayed two more weeks in paradise.
They would have gone back to Jawara the day after Leandro made his decision, since he’d refused to have a succession ceremony. He wanted no fuss, no media, no delegates bearing congratulations. He was taking the oath then getting down to business. But the king’s illness had postponed his instatement.
On the day they did return to the capital, she went out. She bought something. She returned to the palace, entered her bathroom and came out. Transfigured. Pregnant.
She’d planned on taking the Pill before she and Leandro become fully intimate, but their intimacies hadn’t been planned. She’d started the Pill the day after the fire, but the power of what they’d shared that climactic night hadn’t only brought them back to life, it had sowed new life inside her.
It felt like a miracle. It was one. And more.
Before Leandro had come back into her life, she’d been resigned to live a life devoid of passion, had assumed that, to fulfill her hopes of having a child of her own, she would have had to go the sperm donor way. But now…
She was having Leandro’s baby.
The only baby she wanted.
The discovery rocked her, the knowledge tore her apart.
With joy.
The reality, the significance, the beauty expanded through her in a paroxysm of mindless delight. The news trembled on her lips, shuddered through her limbs with the need to tear through the palace and fling herself into his arms.
One thing held her back. Something just as momentous. The historic occasion of Leandro taking on the mantle of power. And even though she felt her heart unraveling with impatience, that event had to take precedence right now.
But after he did…blood frothed and tumbled through her system in a boil of expectation and glee.
Then, as she got ready for the succession ceremony, her whoops and whirls around her room decelerated, her simmering blood cooling. Then it gradually…chilled. With the sedimentation of frost. Of uncertainty.
He had been beyond loving to her, beyond magnificent, beyond memory or imagination, as he’d promised. But he hadn’t promised her a future.
Oppression bore down in degrees, until it started to cut off air and blood flow.
Did he want a future? Wouldn’t he have said something during the past weeks if he did?
He’d told her everything, from his earliest memories to how he loved everything she’d ever touched. But he’d said nothing about taking back his original pact—the one she’d once agreed to wholeheartedly. What if he’d been gorging himself on all they could have, like a man would at an all-you-can-eat buffet, to turn craving into a permanent glut? He might have been living a totally different experience from the one she’d been losing herself in, believing they were in agreement. And she would be the one guilty of changing the rules midstream, believing her own fantasies, and imposing them on his every word and look and touch.
More nightmares blossomed, billowing like the smoke that had heralded the flames that had almost claimed their lives.
His old accusation mushroomed inside her. That she’d wanted him as a stepping-stone to royal status. What if he considered her pregnancy a ploy to entrap him? Even if he didn’t—if he hadn’t thought of a future with her, did she want one if he felt obligated to offer it now that she was carrying his child?
The dream world she’d been inhabiting for the last seven weeks started to distort into something macabre. A place where any move might end in devastation.
Stop. Stop. What was she thinking? This was Leandro, and this was the present, not the past when everything had gone wrong. They had a future together. If she couldn’t believe he loved her after all they’d shared, when would she? So he hadn’t mentioned future plans. Yet. He had that tiny matter of taking on the destiny of a whole kingdom on his mind. She should just shut up her insecurities, and go watch her man—her love—enter history.
She rushed to put on the dress he’d asked her to wear. Feeling the fumes of insecurity blowing over, chalking them up to the aftereffects of the life-changing discovery and pregnancy hormones, she ran out to the Throne Room.
Despite Leandro’s wishes, there was a ceremony of sorts. The representatives of the D’Agostino family and the Council gathered in their fineries to witness a succession, something most of them hadn’t witnessed. But Leandro wouldn’t let them force him into changing his plans by much, didn’t give them the spectacle they were congregated to watch.
Looking light-years beyond spectacular in his crown-prince uniform, colored the deep crimson and gold of Castaldini’s crest, he walked up to the king, knelt on one knee, recited the oath, barely gave Benedetto time to tap his shoulder with the scepter before rising, turning around and thanking everyone for coming, clearly telling them all to scoot. It was over in less than five minutes.
But it was still something she’d remember forever. The sight of the only man she’d ever love in the middle of the fairytale setting as he took on the mantle of power and privilege he’d been born to, that he’d worked all his life to deserve.
He was now glaring at the crowd. He seemed to want a private audience with the king. And he wanted it now.
Everyone, disappointed, succumbed to Leandro’s influence, learning from the outset they had a regent who got his way. She met Leandro’s gaze over their departing bustle. Those eloquent eyes of his said so much, with such intensity. Such emotion.
She almost ran to him. She told him instead. In their whispers. The ones they no longer needed the whispering gallery for. Me, too. Oh, my love, me, too.
She suppressed the impulse to dance all the way to her room. She thought she might have scared a few people with her blaring smiles.
She’d just flung herself down on her bed when the venomous words hit her.
“You think you’ve got him now, don’t you, you American harlot?”
She closed her eyes. She knew that voice. She didn’t want to acknowledge the malignant man
ifestation that wore the body of a stunning female.
She opened her eyes, sat up in slow motion. And there she was, as majestic and flawless as ever, wrapped in the perfection of the emerald chiffon creation she’d worn during the ceremony. Stella the Serpent, as Phoebe and Julia called her.
Phoebe got up, circled the malevolent presence. “I wish I could say the same to you, Stella. But ‘harlot’ would be a huge compliment. And I certainly don’t owe you any of those.”
Stella’s perfect face was stained with the nastiness of her nature and intentions. “Save your pathetic attempt at cutting wit, you low-born trash. Your sister might have caught a minor prince—”
Phoebe interrupted fiercely, “Caught and kept. In spite of all your efforts to take him away, you high-born waste of DNA.”
Stella’s lips thinned. “Paolo was a child when she trapped him. And I let him go because he’s pathetically attached to the brood she’s saddled him with. I wouldn’t play mother to her rats.”
“Yeah, keep telling yourself that he didn’t see the evil spirit infesting your beautiful body. He ran from you, not the other way around. And we all know it. Notice the ‘all’ part?”
Stella smirked. “Go ahead, delude yourself. But there’s another who won’t run away.”
“You mean Leandro, right? Of course you do. Why chase the current king’s son when you can go after the future king himself?”
Stella stiffened, her eyes shooting over Phoebe’s head, her composure cracking.
Then it hardened again, the maliciousness in her eyes growing maddening. “I know this tactic. Women like you, climbers and moochers who have nothing but an easy body and a scheming mind, go around accusing others of what you’re doing yourself. You’re chasing after Leandro. You think if you compromise him enough, he’ll be honor-bound to make you his queen. But I’m not letting you disgrace him or blackmail him into making you anything.”
Exasperation and animosity finally morphed into rage. “And how will you stop me? Will you run to Leandro and tell on me? Tell him how I’ve been entrapping him with only one goal in mind?”
“Yes, I will. I’ll save him from the user that you are.”
“You mean you’ll save him for the user and abuser that you are? Well, good luck, sister. It’s your word against mine. Who do you think he’ll believe?”
“He means nothing to you at all, does he? This incredible man, and all you see is your ticket to royal status. You’re so certain of your power over him, think him so under your spell, you believe he’ll give you everything you’ve been after.”
“Yeah, my power over him is total, and it has no chinks in it for pathetic schemers like you to enter through. So go ahead, try to get him out from under ‘my spell.’ Knock yourself out. Preferably literally.”
Stella’s voice shook, but her eyes were stone steady. “You…you vile manipulator…even if you manage to deceive him now, I’ll help him see through your act one day.”
“Yeah, yeah. Save your breath for your act. Break both legs.”
Stella gave her such a look, Phoebe’s blood stopped in her arteries. It was…demonic. Then she sobbed and ran out.
The moment the door slammed after Stella, Phoebe began to shake. But it had been worth it, dammit, to turn that viper’s attack against her.
Suddenly tears were streaming down her cheeks. It was…too much. The paroxysms of emotion were taking their toll.
Seemed it was going to be one hell of a pregnancy.
And she couldn’t wait to experience each tumult and discomfort. And each breath of life with Leandro.
Leandro’s fury mounted. Even now that it was all over.
The moment he’d declared he’d accept the succession, the damned Council had dared demand—again—that he take their choice of queen with the crown. They claimed they were conveying the king’s will, since his illness had robbed him of the ability to speak it. The bastards even insinuated they’d take it up with Phoebe. They were sure that as an official of Castaldini, she’s see the exigency of having the crown prince marry, for his kingdom, a woman versed in all the demands of a queen’s life and duty.
He’d blasted them. He was marrying—for himself—a woman who would put any queen in history to shame. It was nonnegotiable. Otherwise, good luck with Durante or Ferruccio.
He’d stuck close to her during the last couple of weeks in fear that someone would get to her, try to pressure her into leaving him to his “greater destiny,” distress her for one second behind his back.
Out of respect for the king, he’d given his word that he wouldn’t declare his intentions until he’d informed Benedetto of them. They probably thought the king might still sway him. The fools.
Not that Phoebe needed declarations. She knew he was hers. She didn’t need words to solidify her ownership. Still, she’d have them now, like she already had everything that he was.
After the ceremony, he’d arrived to find her door open, and his sprint had faded. She always closed her doors. She probably wasn’t inside.
He’d been about to go tearing through the palace searching for her, to make a very public fool of himself when he’d…heard.
Her voice. As he’d never heard it. Cruel. Cold-blooded.
Stella had accused her of entrapping him for the sole reason of becoming queen. And…Dio… Phoebe…she’d admitted it, gloatingly sure of her power over him.
Stella had dashed out of Phoebe’s room in tears, not noticing him standing there, dumbstruck. Echoes of her voice and Phoebe’s still shrieked their vicious catfight in his brain until it felt like pulp.
He means nothing to you at all, does he?
Yeah, my power over him is total.
His own thoughts battered him. Taunting. Jeering. You believed she wanted you for yourself? That that made more sense than her wanting to be queen?
His worst nightmare. Again. A virtuoso act. In the past, and now, far worse. She’d used reverse psychology so he’d rise to the challenge, do whatever it took to be perfect in her eyes. As he had. And all that time, everything that had appealed to his tastes and logic and healed his wounds and ensnared his mind and spirit—unreal. Every word and glance and touch, a yank from a master puppeteer. Everything—everything—they’d shared, a lie.
His feet moved, taking him inside her room. She lay on her bed. Everything. She was everything. And she’d left him with nothing.
She suddenly jerked up and looked around. “Leandro, darling…”
She looked…overwrought. She’d guessed that he’d overheard her confessions. Was thinking how to perform damage control.
He felt something within him give, like the steel foundations of a skyscraper moaning as they collapsed.
He heard himself saying, “I’ve chosen a wife, Phoebe.”
He stopped, torturing himself with every nuance of her masterful act. Such expectation on her face. Such trust. Such adoration.
And he lost whatever shred remained of his control, his sanity, in the conflagration that consumed his soul.
“You want to know who she is? The only woman to suit me, the woman worthy of being my princess, my future queen, mother of my children, my heirs, owner of my heart and soul?”
He waited again. Saw the dawn of absolute delight.
Then he drawled, “A pure, noble, Castaldinian woman.”
He opened himself to the shock wave razing through her until the agony of it decimated his last shred of humanity.
And he taunted, “What do you think of Clarissa D’Agostino?”
Phoebe stared at Leandro. The man she loved with everything in her. The father of her unborn baby.
He’d turned into a stranger. And he’d said…he’d said…
This had to be some trick. But he didn’t have a sick sense of humor. And this was beyond sick…this was…was…
The banked panic began to rise. “Don’t, Leandro. That’s one thing that just isn’t—isn’t…”
“Funny? You think I’m joking? I’m not. Can’t y
ou see that? So—how does it feel now? To be led on until you think you have the world in your hand, only to be cut down in one vicious stroke? To know that you mean nothing?”
She wanted to close her eyes. She couldn’t see this. That face. Demonic in beauty and evil. Far worse than Stella’s. Than anything. But she couldn’t look away. She was paralyzed. Beyond agony. Beyond shock.
All this time, he’d been building up to this moment? When she’d believed in him, lived and would die for him? He’d done this just for the pleasure of slamming her down? This was his revenge for her daring to run away from him once? Was there cruelty like this?
There was. And worse. It was him, looking at her with that mad gleam in his eyes, a feline hunter waiting for its kill to twitch so he could batter it again. And again.
But she wouldn’t curl up and play dead. She had to fight back. If he was the monster he was showing himself to be, she wouldn’t just expire in silence.
She could say nothing. The truth was sinking its talons into her guts, preparing to wrench them apart.
“So what do you think of my choice, Phoebe? As the king’s daughter, Clarissa is everything my wife should be. And she was such a vision tonight. Don’t you agree? Come now, Phoebe, tell me. You know how I value your opinion.”
Every word was one more slash, tearing everything she’d believed they’d had apart, everything she’d thought would sustain her for the rest of her life.
“I wouldn’t have believed that even you had the nerve to ask something like that, to…to…”
“To…what? Mat’ooli, don’t say…you expected me to choose you?”
She could only stare into his malice. So there truly was no end to one’s capacity for suffering.
She wondered if pain could kill. It should. Nothing should be this cruel without an end. “Isn’t that what you wanted me to expect? What you worked so hard to lead me to expect, when I started this relationship with no expectations? Beyond feeling blazingly alive in your company, in your arms? Isn’t this what you planned? What do you want to hear now—how completely you’ve taken me in?”