Crowning His Convenient Princess (Once Upon A Seduction... Book 4)

by Maisey Yates

  Then he tore himself away from her mouth again, making his way down, kissing the delicate skin around her breasts, knee, before moving up to suck her nipple.

  She gasped, shocked at the arrow of pleasure that pierced her, so deep and so true she wouldn’t have thought that she could feel such pleasure again. Not so close to what he had given her release before.

  But still she felt it. And it left her utterly transfixed, in desperate need of more.

  “You,” she murmured even as he moved over to her other breast, licking and sucking, bringing her nipple into its heightened point. “I need you.”

  He stood, and began to unbutton his shirt, letting it fall open, revealing that beautiful body she had admired so many times. Those perfect muscles, dusted with just the right amount of hair.

  And then he moved his hands to his belt, and her throat went dry. This was the part of him that remained a mystery to her, and the very idea of seeing him now sent little rivulets of pleasure straight through her.

  She wanted him.

  Wanted this.

  He pushed his hands down, along with his underwear, and her breath left her body. He was beautiful. Every inch of him.

  And there were a great many inches.

  No wonder women lost their minds over this man.

  He was everything a man should be. Large and broad and thick all over. The most stunning sight she ever beheld. He was art.

  A man seemingly carved from marble and made into hot, delicious flesh.

  “See anything you like?” His lips tipped upward, that indolent smile she knew so well curving that wicked mouth.

  “Just you,” she said, breathless. “That’s all.”

  He growled, coming down onto the bed with her, every inch of his naked body touching every inch of hers. She rolled against him, desperately needy.

  He kissed her.

  Kissed her until she was slick with her need for him. Kissed her until she felt hollow. Until she thought she might die of the need to have him inside of her. He wrapped his hand around his heavy length, pressing the head to the entrance of her body, then drawing the moisture from inside of her and up the sensitive bundle of nerves at the apex of her thighs.

  He teased her like that, teased them both, slowly, sensually, the pleasure like a lightning strike as he did. When he finally placed that thick head back in her entrance, she was trembling. Ready to make him come inside of her.

  She might not know if it would hurt, and exactly what it would feel like, but she knew it was what she needed. Knew that only this would bring the fulfillment that she craved.

  He rocked his hips forward, and she gasped when he reached the much discussed hymen, but he didn’t seem to notice, as he rolled his hips forward, filling her completely.

  It hurt, but only for a moment. And then it was nothing but a sense of completion. Of desire deep and real, as her internal muscles gripped him and seemed to pull him deeper inside.

  She rocked her hips against his body, and it was like gasoline thrown onto a lit match. They combusted. His thrusts were wild, and seeing him like this, feral and without that urbane wit that he used as a shield between himself and the world, seeing him pure and unguarded, his teeth bared like an animal, his ice blue eyes hot and fierce, his entire body reverberating with a growl every time he claimed her body with his own, was the most intoxicating aphrodisiac that Latika could have ever fathomed. She’d never known how wonderful it could be to be desired by a man.

  No. Not by a man.

  By this man.

  This man was everything.

  He thrust home, grinding his hips against hers, release bursting overhead like fireworks. And then on a growl, he seemed to give up his control, his big body shook as his length pulsed inside of her, as he spilled himself into her.

  And then they lay together, breathing hard, slick with sweat, and all tangled up in each other. Then he moved away from her, with shocking speed and the fluid grace of a panther.

  “You were a virgin,” he said.

  She rolled to the side, revealing a spot of blood, shame filling her. “Yes,” she said.

  “Then tell me, Latika. You don’t happen to be taking the pill, do you?”

  And that was when she realized, that she and Gunnar did not use protection.

  And given the timing of the month, the risk of her getting pregnant was very real.

  * * *

  Gunnar’s pulse was hammering wildly out of control. “Are you on anything?” he repeated.

  “No,” she answered. The answer that he knew she would give. Rage spiraled through his veins.

  “I told you that I never want to have children.”

  “I wasn’t thinking,” she said, her face getting pale. “I...”

  “I don’t believe you,” he said, rage an unforgiving, unreasonable monster in his gut.

  And when he got down past that bright, burning rage, there was something far worse under it. A sense that he had to escape his skin. That his body, his very essence, had betrayed him and there was no fixing it.

  Things had been set into motion that could now not be stopped and the absolute terror he felt over that...

  Over the possibility of fatherhood.

  He couldn’t breathe.

  “I don’t care what you believe,” Latika said. “I didn’t think of it. You clearly didn’t either, so I don’t know why I should be the focus of your rage.”

  “Is there a pill you can take?” There had to be something. A way to turn back the clock. To stop the mistake.

  Her expression contorted. Shock. To pain. To rage. “I refuse,” she said. “What will be will be, the mistake was ours, and I’m not going to reverse course and make a decision that I will personally regret.”

  “Because you want a baby,” he said. “And that was your goal along.”

  She frowned. “No. I do want to have a baby. I always have. But to act as if I was somehow using my feminine wiles to manipulate you...” She stood up, hunting for her dress. “There are easier ways to get sperm, Gunnar. Every single one of them involves not having to put up with you.”

  “Yet, producing a child with me comes as a very hefty reward, I should think.”

  “I married you already,” she snapped. “Where’s the benefit of manipulating you? How would that get me money I don’t already have access to?”

  He knew that what she was saying was true, and that his response was unreasonable. And yet, he could not stop himself. Panic was overtaking him now, and it was an emotion he was not familiar with.

  He had spent days locked in a dungeon in the castle in Bjornland, and not felt panic. He did not know who he was, and if he despised her for anything, it was this most of all.

  He felt like his skin was not his own, and that was something that could not be endured.

  “I will have nothing to do with the child,” he said.

  He expected the words to bring with them a rush of relief. Because it was a decision, if nothing else, and it was the unknown that he could not bear above all else.

  But he felt no relief. Instead, all he felt was a sick kind of grim determination that settled low in his stomach and refused to be moved.

  “You won’t have anything to do with your own child?”

  “I already told you how things would be. You are the one who refuses to be reasonable here.”

  “Fine. Then you may have nothing to do with the child. But if there is a child, and that is your stance, you will have nothing to do with me either. You wanted me. You had me. Understand that it is the last time.”

  “That’s it then? Your first time will be your last?”

  She whirled around, her eyes a glittering brown blaze. “It will not be my last. I will go about my life as if I do not have a husband who would deny his own child. I will be discreet, but trust that I will find so
meone who will share my life with me. And if you seek to cast me out, then the world will know of your cruelty. If Ragnar comes and scoops me up because you deny me your protection, when I have your child, then what will the world think of you? And isn’t that why you’re doing this? So the world will think better of you. I thought... I thought beneath it all was a good man. But no. You’re a bad man, Gunnar. And just because you did something good for your sister doesn’t erase that.”

  Fury rose up inside of him and he reached out, grabbing hold of her arm. “Don’t you think I know that? Don’t you think I already know that I’m dark beyond the telling of it? It doesn’t matter how much light I throw onto myself, doesn’t matter how much I pretend to be a man filled with nothing but cares for where his next drink might come from, that I don’t know that my soul is a pit.”

  He released his hold on her.

  “Even if there is no child, you will not touch me,” she said. “I could never be with a man who would say the things that you have. Who thinks the way that you do. I’m appalled by you. Disgusted. As much as I ever wanted you. I’m going to shower now. I need to wash you off of me.”

  She turned and went into the shower, and he let her go.

  He prowled down the hall, pacing back and forth, and then he went into his office. He looked out over the ocean. He would have liked to stay here longer, but their time here was at an end. He had accomplished what he had come for. They had made a show of his company. Had revealed what a fantastically generous soul he was. But he was more than he had always shown the public.

  And he had revealed to Latika just how broken he was.

  All the sharp edges that lived inside of him that would only cut those who dared come closest to him.

  It was time to leave.

  He made a phone call to his pilot. “Ready the plane. We depart first thing in the morning.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE TRIP BACK to Bjornland was worse than the trip to the States. Latika was reeling from the speed at which they had boomeranged between one continent and another. And if the bed had been uncomfortable and awkward, looming large on the plane on the way over, it was worse now.

  Worse now that she had been with him. Worse now she knew all the things he could make her feel in a bed like that.

  She felt sick with regret. With sadness.

  Because she had felt... For one fleeting moment she had thought maybe she’d found love.

  Oh, she wasn’t so foolish to think that Gunnar would have immediately fallen in love with her, just because he had bared his soul. But she had felt something for him. Something that had surpassed anything. As if he was what her heart had been waiting for all along. And then it had been for nothing.

  Because he had revealed the truth of himself.

  He would ignore their child, would hold himself separate. Would sleep with her, and disavow a life they had created.

  And she could not endure that. She could not set a child up for that kind of pain.

  Nor herself.

  She felt sick with worry. Sick with regret.

  When they finally arrived in Bjornland, they did not go to the palace, but to Gunnar’s apartments.

  She didn’t know why that surprised her.

  “We will be living here,” he said. “Your things have already been moved.”

  “Of course,” she said, feeling like she was floating outside of her body.

  On numb feet she walked into the bedroom that he had gestured toward. All her things were there. And it was separate from his.

  That was a good thing. Because the only thing she could see happening now was the two of them living separate lives.

  In this space that was so much smaller than the palace.

  She flung herself down onto the bed, and she couldn’t cry. Instead she just lay there with eyes that felt like they had been rubbed with sand.

  The next week was a blur, the days leading together like strokes of watercolor on a page.

  Except they weren’t blurry, no. Latika was all too tied in with what was happening in her life.

  And worst of all the things she hadn’t fully thought through, she was not Astrid’s assistant anymore.

  She was robbed of the thing that used to keep her occupied. And robbed of an excuse to spend time with her best friend.

  On the fourth day since they returned home, Astrid called her.

  “You know, it’s quite ridiculous that you’re acting as if we can’t spend time together simply because you don’t work for me anymore.”

  The truth of the matter was, Latika was partly avoiding Astrid, because she didn’t want her friend to notice how sad she was.

  She couldn’t talk to her about Gunnar’s revelations, because she had promised, and because she understood why Gunnar felt that way. She agreed with him. To reveal everything would be to harm Astrid, and Latika didn’t want to do that. But she was bored, and she and Gunnar hadn’t spoken in days. Her husband came and went like a thief in the night, and otherwise was never home.

  She wondered—with a brilliant, burning stab in her chest—if he was already in the beds of other women.

  And why shouldn’t he be?

  Just because he’d been with her a few days earlier wouldn’t keep him from seeking another lover. It never had before, not with any other woman, so why would it be different with her? He had made it plain she didn’t really matter to him.

  So when she had been back a week, she entered the palace for the first time since her marriage and walked slowly into Astrid’s personal parlor.

  “Hi,” Astrid said.

  “Hello,” Latika responded.

  “You don’t look good,” Astrid said.

  “It’s fine,” Latika said.

  “Is being married to my brother such a trial?”

  She tried to force a smile. “I knew you would ask me about him.”

  “Is that why you were avoiding me?”

  “No,” she said slowly. “Things are strange. Things have changed. And I didn’t want to assume...”

  “Our friendship is more than you working for me. It’s even more than you being married to my brother. I care about you because I care about you. It isn’t connected to what you can do for me.”

  Latika was suddenly so very glad she came, because she had never needed to hear something more in her entire life. It was the thing that she had longed to hear from her parents. The thing she had been hungry for in a relationship all her life.

  “Thank you,” she said, with deep sincerity. “Thank you. I’m not sure anyone else has ever felt that way.”

  “Then the other people in your life are fools. And if my brother is one of them, so is he.”

  They let go of talk of Gunnar, and instead enjoyed lunch, until Astrid’s phone rang. She picked it up, her brows shooting upward. “Really? You are sure. You are absolutely certain. Because if this is a hoax of some kind... No. I understand. I’ll tell her.”

  Astrid hung up the phone and leveled her gaze at Latika. “Ragnar is dead.”

  And just like that, her world, that had seemed right for a moment, turned itself on its head again.

  * * *

  Latika waited. She waited until darkness fell. And Gunnar was still not home. Then she procured the use of his private plane, which was available to her even when she had been Astrid’s assistant, and was now unquestionably available to her as his wife.

  She flew to Italy. Then requested the jet be sent back home.

  From there she got a ticket through a commercial airline and flew to England.

  She had money in accounts there. And she knew that if he really wanted to, he could likely find her. But, it would take a little bit of time. Because she had secured her money using an alias, as she had done with her credit cards. Saving them for an emergency. For years, she had no need to spend her earnings as
Astrid’s assistant that she had socked away, hidden from both her parents and Ragnar.

  Ragnar was dead. Something so benign as a heart attack seemed so bizarre given how things had been. But that was what had killed him.

  And because Ragnar was dead she did not have to stay with Gunnar.

  She booked herself into a hotel room near Piccadilly, cursing the proximity to such insanity, but also grateful for the last-minute availability.

  Then she collapsed onto the bed.

  And this time tears came.

  And when they began to fall, she feared they wouldn’t stop.

  She was free now. Free from everything. But it didn’t feel like freedom. It felt like nothing she would’ve ever wanted for herself, and for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why.

  Gunnar.

  She didn’t want to believe it.

  Didn’t want to believe that a man who would say those things to her, who would reject his own child like that, could possibly be the reason she suddenly felt like she didn’t want the thing she had been craving all her life.

  “I have no obligation to anyone,” she said into the empty room. “I am free to go where I want. To do what I want.”

  She waited for that truth to sink in. Waited for it to make her feel good.

  It never did.

  * * *

  When Gunnar arrived back home in the wee hours of the morning, something felt strange in the apartment.

  But he had spent the evening working at an office that he owned downtown in the capital city of Bjornland—completely unnecessarily, as he could easily work in the palace, or at home—and he was exhausted. He collapsed into bed without investigating the source of the feeling.

  He woke the next morning, it persisted.

  Typically, he was out until after Latika went to bed, and she was gone by the time he woke up. So the emptiness in the apartment was normal enough. He went to look at her room, and found everything as it should be. Her clothes were hanging in the closet, her shoes lined up.