Then his thumb abandoned her clit as his soaked fingers slid free from her pussy, one of them sliding toward her sore back ring of muscle.
“Wait, don’t—”
His free hand landed on her stomach, holding her down as his tongue flicked over her clit again, drawing an agonized moan from her, despite a mounting new apprehension. “Now, you may come.” He closed his lips over her clit and sucked as his wet finger slid into her ass.
Maari screamed, bucking beneath him on the bed as she came, her pussy clenched around nothing but air while her ass clamped down viciously on his finger. The sting was immediate, but not as sharp as the night before. And though she would not have admitted it, after being made to hold back her orgasm for so long, the burning pressure pushed her over the edge instantly.
“Beautiful,” Malac whispered, stroking her clit with his other hand so that aftershocks made her clench around his finger as he slowly withdrew.
“You said you weren’t going to do that.”
“No, I said I wasn’t going to release into your ass.” Malac lay on the bed next to her, and when she tried to close her legs, he stopped her with one hand. Then he stroked that hand down the side of her face, pulling her close for a kiss. “Stop pouting. I know how hard you just came. I could feel it.” His hand wandered lightly down her neck over her breast, caressing. Squeezing. “And anyway, you won the game.”
“So, I can go outside?” The thought brought a smile to her face, in spite of the residual soreness in her backside.
“Yes. We’ll get you dressed in just a minute…” Then Malac pulled her beneath him and slid inside her, leaning down to kiss her as he gently thrust in and out. He took her almost tenderly, gradually coaxing her back to the edge with slow, thorough strokes, his slightly curved length perfectly positioned to caress that sensitive patch inside her, his pelvis brushing her clit with every movement.
Malac sucked on her earlobe and nibbled his way down her neck, setting off a cascade of sensation amplified by the irresistible pull of his scent, like the undertow at high tide. Unseen, but overpowering. Inescapable.
Maari came again with a soft gasp and a bliss-drunk sigh, clinging to him, her legs wrapped around his hips, riding out a lingering, quietly euphoric orgasm while he grunted softly, spilling inside her almost leisurely. As if he had all the time in the world to fill her with his seed.
Afterward, he lay curled around her, running one hand up and down her arm, his nose buried in her hair. Breathing her in.
“That was wonderful,” Maari sighed, still swimming in the intoxication of his scent. In the erotic afterglow of his attention. The entire room felt warm and bright. She lay one hand against the side of his face, feeling the slight stubble. “Why can’t it always be like that?”
“It can be,” Malac whispered into her ear as his hand stole over her stomach. “Let me in, Maari. Really let me in. Give me a child, and I swear to the gods it’ll be like this every day. Breakfast in bed, while I caress you. A new dress every morning. Games and lunch in the garden. Wine with every dinner, once you’ve had the baby. You will be adored. Fussed over. Spoiled rotten. And all you have to do is love me.”
She bit her tongue and snuggled into his chest. He was speaking nonsense, of course. Making up fantasies, as if the reality didn’t involve both of his brothers and their right to her body. As if that garden weren’t just as much of a prison as her room was. As if the queen weren’t determined to have her children smothered in their cribs, executed for the sin of existence.
Nonsense, every word of it. But it was beautiful nonsense. A lovely lie she wanted to believe just as badly as she wanted to pretend that this Malac was the real Malac. That that other man, with violent eyes, cruel hands, and a demanding cock, was just a bad dream.
But she knew better. Even with his scent lulling her into a lustful, optimistic fog, she damn well knew better.
Malac was all of those things. Both the good and the bad.
“It isn’t that simple,” Maari whispered.
“It is. It can be. You’ll see.” He rose onto one elbow and pressed a kiss to her cheek, then he crawled off the bed, and she heard him pulling his clothes on. “Let’s get you dressed. I have our whole day planned.”
When Malac smiled, the whole world smiled with him. It hadn’t taken Maari long to learn that, and it didn’t take her long, that day, to discover that the palace staff understood the mercurial nature of the bastard prince’s moods even better than she did.
Every servant who waited on them in the garden seemed delighted to find him in a good mood, but beneath their eager-to-please smiles and swift service lurked an obvious tension. A wariness, as if they were prepared for his temper to appear at any moment.
But that never happened. Malac was as good as his word. They played horseshoes, and croquet, and lawn bowling, surrounded by colorful autumn blooms. When the second sun rode high in the sky, Malac took Maari to a secluded corner of the garden, where Annah stood waiting beneath a large shade tree with a picnic basket full of gourmet sandwiches, chilled berries and cream, and champagne.
After lunch, Malac escorted her around the entire garden, along every single winding path. He showed her where he’d played as a kid and where he hadn’t been allowed to go, and she could see in the satisfaction shining in his bright green eyes that he relished the chance to walk with authority, as an adult, where he’d been banned as a child.
Dinner was served to them on a wrought iron table in the middle of the garden, near enough to the central fountain that the sound of flowing water relaxed her, but not so near that stray droplets could splash onto her plate. Or into the single glass of white wine Malac offered her.
“This looks delicious,” Maari said as she sank into her chair facing the fountain. “I love cold pasta salad, but what is this?” She poked a beautifully toasted pocket of bread with her fork.
“My favorite,” Malac told her. “Summer rolls stuffed with chicken, artichoke, and cheese. Even though it’s autumn. You can just pick them up and eat them with your hands.” He demonstrated, taking a huge bite from the corner of his roll, and she laughed when a strand of cheese stretched from his food, then broke and clung to his chin.
“Cute. But I think I’ll use my fork.”
“Because a princess is too dignified to eat with her fingers?”
Maari’s brows rose. “I’m afraid that very little of what I’ve done since I arrived in Loborough qualifies as dignified. But yes. Stretchy cheese does seem a bit…messy.”
“I like messy.” Malac’s green eyes sparked with mischief.
Her left brow rose even higher. “I am aware.”
It was easy to smile at him from across the table while she ate good food in the rosy warmth of the setting suns. It was easy to pretend this was all real. In fact, in that moment, with a full stomach and a wine-muddled mind, it was difficult to remember that this wasn’t her real life.
It certainly had been, once.
She didn’t realize she’d sighed aloud until Malac tilted his head, studying her expression. “It could be like this all the time,” he said again, and she silently cursed herself for letting down her guard. For letting her thoughts show so blatantly on her face.
Maari’s next inhalation felt unsteady. Her lungs refused to expand, as she carefully considered her reply. “It can’t, though, Malac. You have a duty to your kingdom. You can’t spend every day pampering me, and—”
“I could pamper you every night. I could spoil you with pleasure. And I could spoil the children.”
“—and this isn’t my home. Not really. This is a very lavish prison.”
“It won’t be if you accept it. You’ll have more freedom if you’ll just open yourself to it.”
Her smile faded. “Yes, I guess that’s really the only choice I have. But that’s difficult for me, because I…” She was supposed to be a bride. Then a queen.
“Because you don’t really understand the arrangement yet. Right? Your father didn�
��t have a concubine, did he?”
Maari blinked, caught off guard by the question. “No. Not one in the palace, anyway.” She was under no delusion that her father had truly been faithful to her mother, but— “The men of Stead Delayne don’t openly flaunt their infidelities.” Malac’s gaze hardened, and she set her glass down, reaching across the table to take his hand. “I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant that you’re right. Things work differently, where I grew up.”
His hand relaxed in her grip as his focus softened. “Here, a king having a concubine isn’t considered infidelity. Because a king doesn’t—”
“I know. A king doesn’t swear fidelity to his wife.” She’d heard it over and over. And as cruel as it sounded, Maari had to admit that it also seemed…honest. In a completely fucked up way.
“But I would.” Malac captured her gaze and held it with a piercing, searingly intimate intensity. “If you married me, you would be the only woman in my life.”
“Even if you couldn’t be the only man in mine?”
“Yes. I would swear it before the gods and the entire wedding party. I would have it tattooed on my body, anywhere you like. I would ask Jude to have it written into Stead Camden law. That Malac, the Camden bastard, may take no other woman for the rest of his days.”
And she believed him because, at least in that moment, Malac truly believed what he was saying. But just because he meant it now didn’t mean he would mean it later. Not that that mattered. Even if she’d wanted to marry him—and she didn’t…
“I can’t marry you, Malac. Jude said—”
“I know what Jude says. But eventually, I’ll talk him into it. For now, though, I want you to understand that there is no shame in your position.” He waved one arm toward the hunting grounds and the kingdom that presumably stretched beyond. “There are a million girls out there who would love to be a royal concubine. My mother was one of them, and she got her wish. My father saw her when she was younger than you are, and he was smitten at one glance. He took her from her parents—after generously compensating them—and whisked her off to the palace to live like a… well, like a queen.”
“But she wasn’t the queen.”
“No. Thank goodness. My father was no fonder of his wife than Jude is of Geneva. But he loved my mother. He fucking worshiped her. Queen Lenora was the woman that duty—and his parents—required my father to marry, but my mother was the woman he chose for himself.”
“And you believe that’s what I am for you?”
Malac gave her a bitter smile. “I am not a king. You are the woman Jude chose for himself, and he wants from you what he cannot have with Geneva. What my father had with my mother. And if you give it to him, he will give you the world.”
“And you?” An odd ache pulsed in her chest. “What am I to you?”
“Everything. You are everything to me, Maari. I didn’t get to choose you, but I have you now, and because I am not a king, I’m not saddled with a wife I don’t want. You won’t have to share me. You’ll have me all to yourself. And all you have to do is give me a baby. One baby.”
She sighed, trying to understand how everything could be so starkly simple from Malac’s perspective, while the same circumstances were cruelly, bitterly complex, from Jude’s.
Malac was like a child, in the way he viewed the world. He wanted to hold something soft and beautiful in one hand while he crushed skulls in the other, and he saw no conflict between those two desires, because the thing they had in common was that he wanted them. But what he wanted more than anything, Maari suspected, was to be loved unconditionally. Whether he deserved that or not.
And a child who did not get what he wanted would throw a fit.
A child who was twice her size and prone to fits of rage…
“Even if I got pregnant, we wouldn’t know it was yours.” She was careful to keep her tone soft. Conciliatory.
“I’d know.” He took both her hands in a bruising grip, but she knew better than to pull away. To even appear to be rejecting the bastard prince. “Jude told us about your gift. You won’t get pregnant until you fall in love, and you don’t love Jude. You can’t love Orlann. But you can love me. And then you can give me a child, and I don’t even care if Jude thinks it’s his. I’ll know better. You’ll know better. We’ll be a family.”
She blinked at him, grasping for some way to explain that her gift didn’t work that way. That falling in love would just mean she could no longer refuse to ovulate, but that once an egg was released, it could be fertilized by anyone’s sperm.
Not that any of that mattered. She had no intention of falling for any of the Camden brothers.
“I know. It’s a lot to think about. And I’m not going to rush you. But I do have one more surprise for you.” Malac stood and dropped his napkin onto his empty plate, then he offered her his hand.
Maari let him lead her down the winding stone path toward the entrance to the palace’s sunroom, as the last rays of daylight warmed the back of her head. She swallowed past the unease trying to swell her throat shut at the thought of where he might be taking her. Short of sending her home, there was no way for Malac to improve upon the day—the gift—he’d given her, which meant that this “surprise” wasn’t likely to be something she would actually enjoy.
“Where are we going?” she asked as he led her into the sunroom, then down the broad hallway, opposite the direction they’d come from that morning. The direction of her room.
At the end of this new hallway, Malac led her up a spiral set of stone stairs that looked and felt identical to the set in her wing of the palace. On the second floor, he guided her to the left and down another long hallway with far fewer doors than the corridor where she lived.
In the palace where she’d grown up, hallways like this contained not individual rooms, but large suites. Entire apartments.
Her chest suddenly tight, Maari pulled Malac to a stop, her hand clenching around his. “Please tell me we’re not in the family wing.” That was Geneva’s territory.
“No. Of course not.” Yet his eyes practically sparkled with excitement.
“Then where are we? Why are we here? Am I being moved?”
Malac frowned. “You certainly know how to spoil a surprise.”
The princess exhaled slowly, schooling her expression. Struggling not to look disappointed. It wasn’t that she objected to a new room, but she’d hoped that if and when that time came, she might have a room on the first floor. One with access to the garden. Or to a small garden of her own.
She wanted to be allowed outside, on her own terms.
Malac’s gaze darkened. “I know that look. You’ve already decided you aren’t going to like it, before you’ve even seen it.” His frown deepened. “Don’t spoil a beautiful day by acting ungrateful, princess.”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.” She forced a smile. “Please, show me the room.”
Unconvinced, Malac led her to a door on the right, near the end of the hall. The deadbolt slid back as he approached, triggered by the com device in his pocket, and he opened the door and held it for her.
Maari stepped past him into a small sitting area—more of a wide hallway, really—with a door opening to her left, and one to her right. But before she could develop any interest in what lay behind those doors, her gaze found the balcony at the back of the sitting area, and beyond that, a tall wall made entirely of windows.
“Oh!” she breathed, racing toward the railing to peer over it. To her utter delight, she found that the balcony opened into a curved staircase leading down into a formal living room, which looked out over an enclosed garden, through the two-story wall of windows. One of which was actually a steel-framed glass door.
“This is for me?” Maari spun around, ready to throw herself at Malac in gratitude—but the bastard prince was no longer there.
In his place stood the king.
4
Jude
As he worked, returning messages and monitoring the tasks
being completed in Maari’s new suite, Jude kept the feeds from the garden open on his small com device. The one dedicated to watching her. Because the cameras in the garden were security feeds, they only captured the perimeter and the central spaces, so he lost track of her every time Malac took her deeper into the beautifully manicured outdoor space. And even when he could see them, he couldn’t hear what they were saying over the whistle of the wind, the buzzing of bees, and the aggravatingly upbeat chirp of birdsong.
Still, the occasional glimpse of her in the garden was better than nothing. And it was certainly better than watching Malac make tender love to her in her room.
Jude took his evening meal alone in his office while he watched his brother ply their concubine with dinner near the central fountain, and when Malac rose to show her his final surprise, Jude rose as well. Determined to beat them there.
He waited in Maari’s new bedroom, in the dark, and when Malac escorted her into the second-floor sitting area—when she rushed right past the darkened doorway he stood in to peer over the balcony—Jude emerged and wordlessly waved his brother out the door.
Malac scowled, but he knew better than to argue with the king. Especially when he’d already been allowed free reign with their princess for an entire day.
“This is for me?” The stunned quality of Maari’s voice—the unmitigated gratitude emanating from it—turned his cock into a marble rod straining against his zipper. She spun around, clearly ready to thank Malac through whatever method the Camden bastard desired, but then she froze when she saw Jude.
Her hands fell limp at her sides, her eyes wide and startled, and he could practically see her curl into herself.
She was scared. Of him.
Jude’s cock grew even harder.
“Yes,” he said. “This is for you. All of it.”
Maari crossed her arms over her chest, maintaining her distance, though she’d been ready to throw herself at his little brother. “Is this from you or from Malac?”
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