Royal Treatment

by Tracy Wolff

  Getting her in bed and then getting the hell out of Dodge is probably a good place to start. Which is what I do—or at least, what I try to do. But as I deposit Lola on the bed, she wraps herself around me and hangs on tight.

  When I try to pry her hands away, she murmurs, “Stay,” and holds on even more tightly. But her eyes are still closed and her words are so slurred I almost can’t make them out.

  “You need to sleep, baby.”

  “Stay,” she says again. “Can’t sleep.”

  Her words are patently untrue, considering she’s sleeping right now. But there’s something about the way she says them—even when she’s mostly asleep—that gets to me. That reaches inside of me and tugs on my own issues before I can even begin to brace for it.

  I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since the afternoon I was kidnapped. And I’ve pretty much given up on the idea of ever having one again.

  But the idea of Lola suffering as I do bothers me more than I care to admit. It bothers me so much that, after I slip her shoes off and pull the covers over her, I find myself sitting on the edge of her bed, stroking her hair and whispering to her, though I’m really just making sounds instead of actual words.

  She curls into me almost as soon as I sit down, one arm over my lap and her body curved around my hips. “Stay,” she says again, and though I know I shouldn’t, I can’t fight her. Not now when my resistance to her is so incredibly low.

  After sending a quick text to my detail, I stretch out beside her, pulling the covers around us and sliding my arm beneath her head so she can use my bicep as a pillow. It’s just for a minute, I tell myself as she burrows close. But even as I try to fight it, her warmth sinks into me, burrowing inside of me and taking away the cold for the first time in way too long.

  I take a deep breath and hold her even tighter. Just for another minute, I promise myself. Maybe two. Five minutes won’t hurt anyone—not Lola, who is back to being out like a light, and not me. And if I’m wrong, well, that’s okay too, because the only one I’ll hurt is myself…and that’s something I’ve been doing for a long time now. Something it feels like I’ve been doing forever.

  * * *

  —

  The nightmare comes like it always does—in the quiet, in the dark, when I’m most alone and most vulnerable. There is no rhyme to the dream, no reason, no one thing I can point to and say, that’s it! That’s why I’m having this dream. That’s why I’m so damn afraid. There’s no image from my childhood, or even my captivity, manufactured by my brain to terrorize and hurt me.

  But the dream does just that anyway. Dark and silent and empty, so empty, it looms in my brain, an open cavern just waiting for me to slip in, to slip down and down and down, until I hit the bottom.

  It’s not a metaphor, I tell myself as I struggle to pull myself out of it. Any more than it’s real. I’ve clawed myself back from the edge, clawed my way up from the bottom, and I’m not sliding back again. Not now. Not ever.

  And still the chasm yawns in front of me. Still I feel myself moving toward it, one slippery toehold at a time.

  Michael tells me not to fight the dreams, to just go with them. But he’s not the one about to be sucked into the abyss. And he’s not the one who has to try to function with whatever he finds there. Sweat blooms on my brow and pours down my face. I want to yell, to tell myself again that this isn’t real. To say it over and over and over again, until it’s true. Or until I finally believe it, whichever comes first.

  I’m getting closer to the darkness, closer to the emptiness, and I decide to take Michael’s advice this time. I give up trying to fight it. Instead I let it pull me forward, faster and faster, until I’m standing right in the middle of the darkness. Only then, as the horrors of the past nip at my heels and the blank emptiness of the future looms large and overwhelming, do I finally find the strength to do what must be done. The strength to do the only thing left for me.

  I open my eyes…and find Lola staring down at me, crazy corkscrew curls falling half over her face as she watches me with obvious trepidation and concern.

  Fuck.

  I drape an arm over my eyes in a belated effort to hide myself from her as I try to get my shit together.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  “I’m okay,” I tell her a few seconds later, after I’ve shoved as much as I can back inside of me. To prove it, I shove my hair back from my face. Fake a smile I’m far from feeling.

  Lola doesn’t answer, just continues watching me with too much compassion in those beautiful eyes of hers. Somehow it makes everything worse, as does the knowledge that I have totally overstayed my welcome.

  I push up on my elbow, trying to get a look at the old-fashioned alarm clock on the dresser so I can figure out just how long we’ve been asleep…and just how long I’ve left my detail sitting outside, waiting for me.

  I get a quick glimpse of the clock—it’s eleven thirty—but before I can move to shrug the covers off, Lola is leaning forward. Cupping my cheek with her hand. Pressing her lips to mine.

  It’s not our first kiss, but it’s the first kiss we’ve shared that feels like this. Soft and sweet, and so much more than the heat from earlier. Which is ridiculous, I know. We barely know each other, no matter what it feels like in the dark.

  As her lips move against mine—slowly, tenderly—I feel the tension inside me drain away. Feel the heaviness I’ve carried for months now lighten, just a little. I don’t know why, when she isn’t the first woman I’ve been with since the kidnapping. But maybe the why isn’t important. Maybe all that matters is that Lola feels good. So good. And as she scoots closer to me, as she wraps her arms around my neck and presses her breasts against my chest, I feel good too.

  It starts with her whimper when I slip my tongue along the seam of her lips. Continues with the small gasp she gives as her fingers dig into my skin. And when she parts her lips for me, sliding her tongue along my own, the journey is complete. I close my eyes and sink slowly, inexorably, into the oblivion she provides.

  Rolling onto my back, I pull her over me so that her glorious legs are straddling my hips, her sex nestled against my cock. She’s warm and soft and sweet, so sweet, as I wrap my hand around the back of her neck and pull her mouth back down to mine.

  She comes willingly, her fingers sliding up my chest to tangle in my hair as I pull her lower lip between my teeth and nibble at it.

  “Garrett.” My name is more feeling than sound, an echo that moves from Lola’s mouth to mine as I slip my tongue inside of her, as I delve deeper, as desperate to explore the recesses of her mouth as I am to explore her body.

  She tastes like cinnamon, like honey, like everything I could possibly want. It’s crazy, so crazy, to be thinking like that when we’re caught in this crazy situation together. When everything about us being together is fake.

  But that doesn’t seem to matter as I slide my lips across her cheek and down her neck to the pulse point at the hollow of her throat. As she moans low in her throat and tugs at my hair. As heat races through the both of us, her body turning molten as she arches against me.

  I lick my way from one pulse point to her neck, savoring the sweet and salty taste of her almost as much as I savor the feel of her nipples hard against my chest. Almost as much as I savor the feel of her hips rocking against my own.

  It wouldn’t take much to slide inside of her, to rip her underwear away and feel all that heat clamping down on my cock as she moves over me. But amazing as that sounds—and fuck, it does sound amazing—I want more for our first time than a lightning-fast race to completion.

  I want to touch her, taste her, hear her—I want to explore every part of Lola. Want to feel her orgasm on my fingers and against my mouth, want to give her so much pleasure that she comes screaming my name, again and again and again.

  I tell her so, whisperin
g every single thing I want to do to her between hot, wet, open-mouthed kisses—to her neck, her shoulders, the upper swells of her breasts.

  She’s crying out before I even pull her dress down and brush my thumbs against her nipples, her eyes closing and her head lolling back. But that’s not what I want from her right now, and I pinch her nipples just hard enough to have her eyes flying back open. They’re dark and dreamy in the dim light leaking in from the living room, her pupils wide and unfocused as she shudders against me.

  “Look at me,” I demand, pulling her face close enough to mine that I can feel her breath on my cheek. “Tell me this is okay. Tell me you want this.”

  “I want you,” she answers, voice thin and breathy. “I need you, Garrett.”

  It’s more than good enough to satisfy my conscience, more than good enough to have my body slipping the tight leash I’ve kept it on since the moment I first laid eyes on her at the lake.

  Heat explodes inside of me and I slam our mouths together. I kiss her for what feels like forever. Kiss her until I’m drowning in her. Until our lips are swollen and sensitive. Until I don’t know where she leaves off and I begin. And then I kiss her some more.

  I want her on fire, want her burning with the same need that threatens to eat me alive. I want her to lose control, to trust me enough to let me take care of her in every way a man can take care of a woman.

  I want her. I just want her.

  Chapter 16

  Lola

  He feels so good.

  More than that, he makes me feel so good. Makes me feel beautiful. Desirable. Captivating. Necessary.

  It’s quite the head trip for a girl who’s always been expendable, but then everything since I met this man—this prince—has been, so why should having sex with him be any different? Garrett is a walking contradiction and while I normally like a guy who is easy to figure out, he intrigues me as no one else ever has. Most of the time, he’s all calm, still waters, but the moment he touches me, the moment he puts those gorgeous lips of his on mine, I can’t help but realize just how deep he is. And just how much is going on under his surface.

  There’s a part of me that wants to stop and poke around a little under the surface—I can’t help but remember the look on his face when he came out of that dream a little while ago—but as Garrett slides his mouth across my breast, as he takes my nipple in his mouth, I can’t do anything but moan. Can’t do anything but give myself over to the pleasure he gives me so easily. So unselfishly.

  I arch my back and press closer. Revel in the heat streaking along my nerve endings, the pleasure sizzling inside my veins. Everywhere he touches, everywhere he kisses, is on fire and I want more. Need more. As much as I need to give him the same kind of pleasure in return.

  I slide my hands under his shirt and up his chest, scratch my nails lightly over his skin, and relish the way his muscles go tight and his breathing grows quick and harsh. It’s my turn to play with his nipples, to flick my thumbnails across them and watch as his eyes go shadowed.

  He growls low in his throat, and then his touch—and his mouth—turn rougher, darker. Flames lick their way from my nipples to my stomach, down my arms and legs, until they coalesce in the ache between my thighs.

  “Garrett, please.” I rock against him, straining to get his hardness exactly where I need it. Desperate to have him inside of me. “Please.”

  He laughs, then pulls his mouth away completely before blowing a soft, steady stream of air over my diamond-hard nipples. I grab his head in response, tangling my fingers in his soft, silky hair as I try to force his mouth back to my nipple.

  “Don’t tease,” I plead, arching against him.

  “Sweetheart, I haven’t even begun to tease you.” He curls his tongue around my areola, sucking it into his mouth with a power so strong he has me gasping.

  “Too much?” he demands, pulling back.

  “No, no, no!” It’s a chant now, a plea, and with any other man I would be horrified at how close I am to begging. But with Garrett I don’t care—I can’t. Not when the pleasure he’s giving me is so intense, so all-consuming, that it’s all I can do to keep from coming before he’s even inside me.

  “Take me.” It’s half command, half entreaty, and I don’t even care which one he hears. Any more than I care how hot and needy and overwhelmed I sound. Because I am all of those things, and all I can think about right now is getting Garrett inside me.

  “I thought that’s what I was doing.”

  My hips are lifting and lowering now, my nails digging into the taut muscles of his chest as I whimper and whisper dirty little pleas. Finally, my voice breaks as I gasp out, “Faster. Now. Please.”

  “I’m a slow-and-steady kind of guy,” he tells me even as his hand slips between my thighs and inside my panties. “I don’t do fast.”

  His thumb strokes over my clit, once, twice. And fuck. I come, just like that. Just that easily.

  Ecstasy slams through me. For long seconds I can’t move, can’t think, can’t do anything but feel as wave after wave of sensation washes over me. Garrett takes me through it, lips sliding over my breast, hips arching under mine, thumb circling my clit, driving me higher and higher and higher until I come again, new pleasure ripping through me until I can’t tell where the first orgasm ended and the second began.

  When I can finally think again, I lean down until I can press my mouth to his. “That was…” I trail off, lost in the sensations still sparking inside me.

  “Just the beginning,” he tells me. His breath is hot against my cheek, his hair cool against my flushed skin. At least for a moment, then he’s squeezing my waist, coaxing me up and off him.

  I start to roll onto my side so I can slip off my underwear and undo his pants and finally—finally—get him inside of me. But Garrett is having none of it. Instead of letting me do it, he slides his hands under my dress. He pauses for a minute on my ass, then squeezes my cheeks in his big, rough palms before ripping my panties clean off.

  Holy shit.

  I barely get my head around that when he’s pulling me back over him…and up. At first I don’t know what he’s getting at as he coaxes me up his abdomen and chest, so when it finally registers, I nearly fall right back off him and onto the bed.

  But his hands are on my thighs now and he’s dragging me up, up, up, until my knees are on either side of his face and I’m holding onto the headboard to steady myself.

  “You’re so beautiful, Lola. So unbelievably beautiful.” He inches his hands closer along my thighs, parts my labia with his thumbs. And then he just waits, breath hot against my sex, as he stares at me for long seconds.

  I squirm a little—I can’t help it. No man has ever looked at this most private part of me and called me beautiful before. No man has ever made me shiver from just a look.

  The realization makes me tremble all over again—well, that, and the sudden knowledge that I’m getting in way over my head here. It’s just a game, I remind myself. Just a little playacting to get Garrett back where he belongs—first in line to the throne of Wildemar. The fact that this thing between us suddenly feels so real, and worse, so earth-shattering, is all on me. After all, it’s not Gorgeous Garrett’s fault that he really is Prince Charming. It’s my fault for imagining, even for a second, that I could be Cinderella.

  I shove the thought—and all of the other ones I don’t want to deal with—out of my head. And concentrate instead on how it feels to have Garrett beneath me. On what it will feel like to have Garrett inside me.

  “I like these,” he murmurs, bringing me back to the present with a stroke of his fingers across the trio of red and pink cherry blossoms I have tattooed on my inner thigh. His mouth brushes against my skin, his tongue tracing the inky swirls.

  “I got them when I—” My voice breaks as he swipes his tongue across my clit. Once, twice, then again an
d again.

  It’s the best fucking feeling in the world, and it just keeps building with every second that passes. With each lick of his tongue. With each clasp of his hands. I just came twice, but I can feel the tension building again, my body growing more and more taut with every touch of Garrett’s skin against mine.

  And when he moves forward, blowing one long, warm stream of air against my clit, I can’t do anything but call his name over and over again. I’m coming apart, my body more sensitive than it’s ever been…or maybe it’s just Garrett, who somehow knows exactly where and when and how to touch me.

  “You’re amazing,” he tells me right before he delivers one long, slow lick along my sex. “So fucking responsive I could just—”

  He breaks off when I scream, my hands clutching at his hair as flames rip through me and I climax one more time.

  Chapter 17

  Garrett

  Watching Lola come, feeling her climax against my mouth, is the sexiest thing I’ve ever experienced. She’s far from the only woman I’ve been with in my life, but as I thrust a finger inside of her to prolong her orgasm—because I’m dying to feel the rhythmic clenching of her body around me—she’s the only one I can remember. The only one I can ever imagine thinking about now or in the future.

  It’s my craziest thought yet, in a night full of crazy thoughts, so I banish it and concentrate instead on moving her slowly, carefully, down my body. She’s like putty now, soft and warm and relaxed, and I can’t help taking advantage. Any more than I can help this driving need I have to explore every inch of her.

  Flipping her over so that she’s on her stomach, I climb on top of her. Straddle her hips. And slowly kiss my way over her slender shoulders and down her spine.

  Lola’s fingers fist in the sheets as I pause at the small divots at the top of her hips, thoroughly exploring the indentations with my lips and tongue. She tastes sweet here too, like warm honey and vanilla. My body is screaming at me to get a move on, my dick so hard it may never recover from the torture I’m putting it through, but right now that doesn’t seem to matter. Nothing does but tasting more of her. Feeling more of her.