“Fine with me.” Malac stood, leaving his empty coffee mug for the staff to clean up. “I’m off to seduce Maari.”
“Don’t forget your assignment.” Jude really wanted to perform that particular task himself, but he knew that their concubine would not be receptive to him in the role. And Orlann was out of the question, for obvious reasons.
“Looking forward to it. In fact, I started yesterday.” Malac opened the door, then he pointedly stepped to the side to reveal that the queen stood in the sitting area outside the king’s private office, evidently waiting to speak to her husband. “Geneva.” Malac gave her a formal nod on his way out of the office.
“Malac,” she returned, her hands clasped in front of a barely-there bump at her waist. “Orlann.”
“Nice to see you,” Orlann said on his way out of the office, and Jude wondered if his wife had heard Orlann’s suggestion that he spank her, to bring her in line.
“You asked to see me?” Geneva said, as the king’s brothers headed past the receptionist on their way into the hall.
Actually, he’d demanded that she report to his office, then he’d deliberately made her wait outside for twenty minutes. Because whether or not Orlann believed it, the king damn well knew how to run his own household, including how to deal with a defiant wife.
“Yes. Come in.” Jude held the door for her, then he closed it behind her. “Sit.”
Geneva blinked, caught off guard for a moment by the brusque order. Then she sank into the leather armchair at the end of the coffee table and smiled up at her husband, with no visible sign of the tension he could feel emanating from her. In the five years they’d been married, she’d been indulged beyond reason. Until recently, she’d only seen the kind, respectful—if dispassionate—side of her husband, because she’d given him no reason to show her anything else. She’d been the perfect wife and queen.
But now…
“What can I do for you, husband?”
The king sank onto the end of the coffee table and looked directly into her eyes, giving her his full attention so there could be no misunderstanding the importance of what he was about to say. “You will apologize to Maari for what you said to her, and after that, you will have no further contact with the princess without my express permission. Do you understand?”
“Okay, I can see that you’re angry.” She stood, appealing to him with both arms out, as if she might pull him up into a comforting hug. As if he were one of her children! “But—”
“Sit!” Jude roared.
Geneva dropped back into her chair, her eyes wide and shocked.
He’d never yelled at her before. He’d never had to—not even the one time he’d had to spank her, when she’d disobeyed his order to stay away from Maari, then had refused to tell him about the threat she’d made to his concubine. That day, he’d simply informed Geneva that the consequence for disobedience would be a beet-red ass, then he’d ordered her to place herself over his lap and lift her skirt.
She’d complied, humiliated tears standing in her eyes, her lips pressed closed against both the information she refused to divulge and any cries of pain, despite the fact that he’d held nothing back in her spanking.
“If I have to bend you over my knee again, I will not use my hand on you this time,” Jude growled, and he was privately pleased to see blood drain from his wife’s face. “You will apologize to Maari, and you will make it clear that your threats to her were empty. That you lack both the will and the ability to carry them out.”
Geneva blinked up at him, fear of him swimming in her eyes for the very first time. “I…I’m sorry, Jude, but I can’t.”
“You will.” The king stood, towering over her, his fists clenched, his face flushed with rage. “I will tolerate no further disobedience from you!”
“I’m sorry. I beg you to understand. To forgive this one defiance, when I’ve tried so hard to please you in every other way. But if you can’t do that—” She lifted her chin and placed both hands protectively over the small pooch of her pregnant belly. “If you need to hit me, you just go right ahead.” But the tremor in her voice belied the fearless statement. “I’ve known from the start that the gods were going to take this poor boy from me. I just didn’t realize they’d be using your fists to get the job done.”
Fury narrowed his icy blue eyes. “Your defiance will be punished, but a spanking is not a beating, Geneva. I would never beat a woman,” Jude growled. “And unlike you, I would never hurt a child—my own, or anyone else’s.”
She flinched. “I will admit, that was not my finest moment. But you really gave me no choice. You—”
“I am responsible for your threats?” Jude demanded, shocked and enraged by her unflinching impudence. “I have shown you nothing but respect as my wife. As the mother of my children. As the queen of Stead Camden. I have spoiled you with an outrageously generous allowance and given you two beautiful daughters, as well as a son who will one day be king,” he said with a glance at the slight bump of her belly. “I have kept every promise I made to you, and you will keep yours to me! You will obey your husband and your king!”
Geneva started to stand again, but at his snarl—at the vicious narrowing of his eyes—she sank back into her chair. “You have one promise still outstanding,” she said softly. “You swore to me, husband, on our wedding night, that my son would sit on the throne. You will be undercutting your own vow to me if you let your whore give birth to a boy first.”
“You are already carrying my son!” Jude roared.
“The gods won’t let me keep this one!” Geneva’s composure finally cracked, tears filling her eyes as she clutched at her belly. “You know that! This child was conceived unnaturally. Against the will of the gods, for the First Families. For those selected by divine providence to rule. They did not give us this son, and they will not let us keep him!”
“Nonsense.” Jude spun away from her in disgust. “I took great pains to make sure you conceived first, and nothing is going to happen to our son, Geneva. I owe Maari that same promise.”
“You owe…! Why would a king owe his whore anything?”
“I am not going to debate this with you! She is here because the council sent her here, and—”
“The council?” Geneva stared up at him, the tears standing in her eyes amplifying her quiet, withering disgust. “The council didn’t give her to you. You demanded her. They intended to offer you a servant, and you threatened to reject the peace accord if they didn’t give you a princess. To continue fighting indefinitely if they didn’t hand over Maari Delayne as your pretty new plaything. Did you think I wouldn’t find that out? Did you think I don’t have eyes and ears of my own, in your palace?”
“If it was my courtesy in telling you about Maari in the first place that’s led you to the erroneous conclusion that she is any of your business whatsoever—that I owe you information about parts of my life that don’t concern you—let me correct that assumption right now.” He bent over her, one hand clutching the arm of the chair she sat in, and grabbed her chin in a bruising grip. “I don’t owe you an explanation.”
Geneva jerked free from his grip. “You owe your daughters an explanation!”
“You would dare try to manipulate me by bringing our children into this? What, in the name of the gods, do Rosa and Violet have to do with Maari?”
“You turned a princess into a concubine. Into a prisoner and a breeder. A princess, Jude! You took a high-born woman and ripped her from her family. From her home. From her station. And you brought her here for you and your brothers to rape.”
“I never—”
“I saw her, Jude. She doesn’t want to be here. She doesn’t want you. She—”
“You have no idea what you saw!” Jude stormed across the room before he could lose his temper, then he spun around to shout at her. “She’s wet for me the moment I walk into her room. She begs me to touch her. To fuck her. That is not rape.”
The look Geneva gave him seared
deep into his soul. “What will you call it when someone demands Rosa spread her legs, as compensation for your sins? Or for her brother’s?”
“That will never happen,” he growled. “I will never let that happen.”
“You’ve set the precedent! It’s okay, now, for a king to demand a princess’s virginity! To lock her up and make her bear his bastards! Your daughters are princesses, Jude! You’ve stolen every last bit of security they had.”
“No. Maari is different. She’s—”
“What? She’s what? She’s a princess, and you just took her. Why? Why, Jude?”
“Because I fucking wanted her!” he roared. “And I still want her, but that doesn’t mean a damn thing for our daughters because there’s a big fucking difference between me and Gareth Delayne.” He pointed at the severed head of his enemy, still centered on the conference table. “Between our kingdom and his. I am strong enough to protect my women. All of my women. You. My daughters. And Maari.” He leaned over her in the chair again, caging her in with his arms. “I will protect her from you, just like I would protect you from her. Or from anyone else. I will protect her children as well, Geneva. Whether or not they’re mine. They will be raised with our sons and daughters. As siblings. As cousins. They will be—”
“Bastards.” Geneva spat the word at him. “Her children will never be anything more than bastards. Human penance for what Stead Delayne did to your father, running around the palace with no titles and no security. A living humiliation. As they grow up, they will come to understand the truth, and that’s why they’re a threat to my children. Because the only way they’re going to have any security after you’re gone is to challenge my son for the throne.”
“That won’t happen. Blood doesn’t fight blood, Geneva. That’s the whole point of this.”
“And that’s what you think about Malac? You trust him because he’s blood, even with his mother whispering mutinous fantasies in his ear?”
“He’s my brother.”
“He’s your father’s bastard. That doesn’t make him your brother.”
“That’s exactly what it makes him!” Jude shouted. “Blood. Just like Maari’s children to yours, be they siblings or cousins. There will be no challenges. No fighting, beyond childhood squabbles. There will be peace in Stead Camden. There will be peace all over the fucking planet, because I have brought Stead Delayne to heel by decapitating their king! By taking their princess. And I swear to the gods, Geneva, that if you don’t walk back your threats against her children—if you don’t make damn sure Maari understands that you mean her and hers no harm—” Jude laid one huge hand over her belly. “—you better pray to those gods that this son lives, because he’s the last child you’ll ever have.”
“But you need more sons—”
“And I will have them. If you ever threaten Maari again, I will turn your nightmare into a reality. I will have you sterilized, and I will seed my concubine with as many sons as she can have. I will fill this palace with my bastards, and you will hear them laughing in the halls until the day you die.”
7
Malac
After the early morning meeting with his brothers, Malac went straight to Maari’s new suite, where he found a servant waiting for him with a breakfast cart. He quickly checked to see that his order had been delivered exactly as he’d specified, then he dismissed the servant and quietly wheeled the cart through the double doors and into the princess’s first-floor foyer.
The handmaid’s door was closed, and Malac decided to let her sleep, to keep her chores from rousing his princess before he could wake her with a leisurely orgasm. Maari, he’d discovered, was not an early riser. Especially when she’d consumed most of a bottle of wine, all on her own, the night before.
Malac crept silently up the curved staircase into her bedroom, which was still pitch black, because he’d set the large window to block sunlight, so that he could wake her himself, this morning. He could barely make out her slight form, facing away from him with the bed clothes pulled all the way up to her chin.
Moving silently, Malac stripped out of his clothes and slid beneath the covers behind her, running one hand beneath her nightgown and over her hip to splay across her flat belly.
She jerked, startled awake, then froze just as Malac realized that something was wrong. This woman had narrower hips than his princess. Her waist had a less dramatic flare. Maari’s skin was softer than the flesh beneath his hand, and she always smelled like lavender, while this woman smelled like—
Soap. The kind used on dishes, or laundry, or for scrubbing floors, for all he knew.
“Lights, on!” Malac ordered as he sat up in bed, throwing back the covers to reveal his princess’s little blond handmaid. Annah. She was a beautiful woman in her own right, yet she was little more than a hardy field blossom compared to the delicately blooming rose that was his princess. “What in the name of the gods are you doing in this bed?” he demanded as he launched himself from the mattress onto the floor, heedless of his nudity or the cock standing at half-mast in anticipation of touching his princess.
Who was somehow not in her own bed!
“Apologies, Defense Commander.” Annah scrambled off the other side of the mattress and stood with her hands clasped in front of her, her head bowed, thin blond strands of hair hanging in her face, having escaped her braid in her sleep. “The princess asked me to stay here with her last night.”
“And where the hell is the princess?”
“I don’t— I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t realize she’d risen. I’ll find her immediately and let her know you’re here.”
“Why didn’t you say anything when I—?” Malac bit off his own question. Of course she hadn’t said anything. She would strip naked and bend over with her legs spread right then and there, if that’s what he told her to do. That’s what any maid who wanted to keep her job would do, as he well knew. “You are never to sleep in this bed again, do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.” She was trembling, and Malac found her fear a satisfying balm to his anger.
“If I find you here again, I will strip you bare and throw you into the guard barracks so the men can show you what happens to maids who forget their place. Understood?”
“Yes, sir.” Her teeth clacked together from her trembling. “I’m so sorry. I—”
“Out,” he snapped. “Don’t go downstairs. Don’t bother getting dressed. Just get out.”
Annah gave him a brief nod, then she raced past him and into the second-floor foyer. An instant later, he heard her pulling at the door into the hall. With a groan, he pulled his com device from his pocket and released the deadbolt. The door flew open, and the maid disappeared into the corridor, no doubt on the way to the maid’s dormitory, where she stayed when the princess’s company was otherwise occupied.
As the door clicked shut behind her, a terrifying new possibility occurred to Malac. Maari had gotten out once before. Could she have done it again?
His heart tripping fast enough to make his vision swim, Malac jogged across the bedroom into the princess’s bathroom, where he slammed his hand down on the light panel. A quick look showed him that the large, luxuriously appointed room was empty, so he raced out of the bedroom, across the small foyer and down the stairs again.
There was nowhere in the open living area for his princess to hide, so he checked the guest bath and the small pantry—both empty—before throwing open the door to the maid’s quarters.
Her room was empty, her bed still neatly made from the night before.
“What the fuck?” Malac mumbled as he raced back up the stairs. The only room he hadn’t checked was the nursery, and Maari wouldn’t—
Yet that’s where he found her, curled up on the plush rug, sound asleep, using a giant stuffed elephant as a pillow.
“Princess…” He sank onto the floor next to her and brushed hair over her shoulder. Maari moaned and arched her back, her eyes still closed, pressing her ass against his thigh as his scent be
gan to work its magic on her, even in her sleep.
His cock already fully hard, Malac tugged her sheer nightgown up to her waist and rolled her gently onto her back. He lay on the floor next to her, pressed against her, as he spread her thighs and slid one finger down the seam of her sex.
She moaned again, and her clit swelled beneath his fingertip, peeking out from its hood.
Malac shifted to lean over her and he pushed her gown up even farther, to expose her breasts. Her eyes flew open, wide and startled, until she saw his face. Then she gave him a sleepy smile, and satisfaction brought a triumphant grin to his face in reply. “Good morning, princess.” He made another lazy circle around her clit, and Maari moaned again, her skin flushing as her pleasure—and her need—began to mount.
“It is now,” she murmured, spreading her legs wider for him.
Malac groaned, abandoning her clit for a second to dip two fingers inside her. He found her already dripping for him, and his cock swelled so hard that it ached. “Good girl,” he whispered as he bent to take her nipple into his mouth.
Maari gasped, and the sound gripped him with a soft warmth not unlike the feel of her mouth around his cock, only it was his soul she was stroking this morning. She arched into him, and he sucked lightly on her nipple, flicking his tongue over the peak as it hardened. He shifted to circle her clit with his thumb, his fingers still slowly thrusting into her, and she began to tighten around him.
“Malac…” she groaned, clutching at his arm while she undulated against his hand on the floor. “May I?”
He knew what she wanted—what she needed—and the fact that she’d asked first made his balls tighten, his own release threatening, though neither of them had so much as brushed his aching cock.
“Ask me nicely,” he whispered. “Like a good girl.”
Maari heaved an obscene groan. “Please, Malac, may I come?” She looked up at him with those gorgeous golden-brown eyes, begging as much with her gaze as with her words. As with the beautiful arch of her hips against his hand, demanding more friction. Pleading for it.
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