“So?” Malac sat up between her thighs, smiling at the flush that had taken over her face and the tops of her breasts as she lay spread out before him, still panting from the latest release. “How was that?”
“Not terrible,” she admitted. “It still feels strange.”
“Felt amazing to me.” He grinned and leaned over to open the nightstand drawer, from which he produced a small bottle of lubrication. “This time, two fingers.”
“But I did want you wanted! I came with your finger—” She bit off the rest of it, her flush deepening.
“With my finger where, princess? Say the words.”
“In my ass,” she said. “I did what you wanted.”
“What I want is for you to come with my cock in your ass. But we’ll work up to that. As I said, this time, two fingers.”
“But—”
“Be a good girl, princess. I’m doing this for you.” And in fact, his cock was an aching iron rod in his pants, demanding the attention it had thus far been denied.
Maari gave him a stiff nod and slowly let her legs fall open again.
This time, though he gave her clit a lot of gentle attention and stroked the length of her sex with his tongue, he stubbornly refused to slide his fingers into her cunt, even when she begged, her opening grasping desperately at nothing but air. But even without any manipulation of that sensitive spot inside her, Maari was obviously helpless against the influence of his tongue and his scent, and after a few minutes, she was near the edge again.
So Malac paused to apply lubrication to his fingers and directly to her puckered back entrance. Then he sucked gently on her clit again as he slid two fingers into her ass.
Again, Maari whined as he breached her muscles, opening her further this time, but despite the increased pressure, her protest was short lived.
“How does that feel?” Malac asked as he slowly slid deeper, twisting his fingers as one, feeding a little more into her with every stroke.
“It doesn’t hurt.” She sounded surprise. “It feels…good.”
“That’s my good girl.” Malac slid his fingers deeper, letting the swell of his knuckles play against her tight rim as he worked them in and out.
Maari moaned, arching up toward him, and her hands found his hair again, clutching at double handfuls as he worked her swollen clit with his tongue.
“Come again for me, princess. I can tell that you’re nearly there.”
She writhed beneath him, and he gave her clit a firmer stroke. Then he spread his fingers, stretching her wider, and Maari twitched beneath him, gasping as she fell over the edge of oblivion, yet again.
“Beautiful.” Malac slid free of her tight grasp and sat up again. “We’re almost done.”
“I’m tired.” She tried to curl up and roll away from him, but he stopped her with one firm hand on her thigh.
“I know, sweet princess. One more time, then we’ll take a long bath and nap until lunch.” Malac smiled down at her. “You’re doing such a great job today.”
8
Maari
Doubt ate at Maari as she watched Malac stroke his engorged cock, kneeling between her spread thighs. He was the longest of the three Camden brothers, and at the moment, his girth rivaled Jude’s because he’d been between her legs for quite a while, without taking any release for himself.
At first, she’d thought that was almost noble of him, even if this wasn’t how she’d have chosen to spend the morning—if she’d had a choice. But now, a familiar heavy feeling of dread twisted in her stomach at the sight of his fiercely swollen and hard length.
“You’re doing such a great job today,” Malac murmured, as his thumb found her tender clit.
“I want to stop,” she whispered, fighting the unbidden pleasure already tightening inside her again, at his touch. His scent. “Malac, please, I don’t want to do this.” His fingers were one thing, but that massive cock was quite another. “Please don’t make me.”
His gaze cooled for the first time since she’d hesitated to take him into her throat, in the nursery. “I’m offering you gentle and slow. Trying to correct the damage Jude has done.” His hand tightened around her thigh. “Don’t fight me, princess. You know you won’t win.”
“But—”
“Even if I didn’t want to take your ass right now—and I do—I have a job to do here. So let me make this good for you. You came twice with Jude in your ass, even though it hurt,” he reminded her. “Imagine how much fun this will be when it doesn’t hurt.” He reached for the bottle of lubrication and squirted a generous bit on his cock, then he stroked himself several more times to spread it and warm it. “Oh, gods,” he groaned, staring at her spread out in front of him. “I’ve been waiting for this for months.”
Maari’s heart thumped painfully, and she tried to crawl backward, away from him. But Malac caught her calf and pulled her back into place. “Just one more time, so we can tell Jude that the problem wasn’t you; it was him.”
“Is he watching?” She stared up at the ceiling, looking for the cameras she knew damn well were there.
“Probably. Spread for me, princess. As wide as you can.”
“Malac…”
“Princess. I promise you’ll like it. So stop pouting and do as you’re told.”
Maari reluctantly opened her legs even wider, and Malac used one lubed up hand to angle her knees toward her shoulders, spreading her obscenely wide. Then he squirted another dollop of lubrication on his fingers and reached down to apply it directly to her ass, working it inside her with one finger.
“Ready?” he asked as he crawled up her body, caressing her breasts with slick fingers. Teasing her nipples. Nibbling on the sensitive skin beneath her ear.
Maari nodded, but that was a lie. “So, if I learn to like it, are you going to take me together again?”
Malac smiled. “We’re going to do that anyway. Which is why it’s important that you learn to like it.” He reached down and pressed the tip of his cock against her tight back entrance, and despite the past hour spent learning to orgasm in spite of the intrusion—because of the intrusion—she felt herself tense up.
“Deep breath,” he whispered, as she clutched at him. Then Malac pressed forward, slowly spearing her with his length.
Maari whined as his head slid into her, but she didn’t dare move, for fear of pushing him deeper. Not that he needed her help for that. He felt so much bigger than his fingers had. He stretched her, forcing her open wide, and she squeezed her eyes shut.
She would just lie there and let him finish. She would just do her best to pretend this wasn’t happening, and—
“No, princess, look at me.” Malac took her chin in his hand and squeezed until her eyes opened. “Relax and let it feel good,” he murmured. “Use your hand. Touch yourself.”
There was a time when such a suggestion might have shocked her, but now—here—it was a straw she was eager to grasp at. So as he pushed slowly into her, stretching her, filling her, Maari slid her finger over her own clit, still wet from his earlier attention.
Her body responded immediately, clenching around his cock, and Malac groaned, going still inside her. “Do that again,” he demanded.
And she did, but not for him. She did it for herself.
With Malac on top of her, breaching her in a place she would not have chosen for herself, she found that as with so much else about her life in the Camden palace, there was pleasure—and power—to be found, if she were willing to take it for herself.
“Gods below, you are so tight,” Malac groaned as he pushed into her, deeper and deeper, and soon the initial pressure and burn of the breach became an oddly satisfying feeling of fullness.
Then he began to move for real.
Maari stroked her clit, her eyes squeezed closed, her head thrown back, as Malac took his pleasure, sliding in and out, filling and emptying her over and over, and the sensation—signals from the sensitive nerve endings in her tight back ring of muscle—began to complement her own effort
s. She felt her entire body tighten as that pressure built, pushing her toward an unspeakable and spectacular peak faster and harder than his fingers had been able to inspire.
“Good girl,” Malac groaned, moving faster now. “Oh, princess, you are such a good girl…”
“Oh…” she breathed as she felt the first spasm of release barreling toward her. “Oh, gods…”
“Wait,” Malac slammed into her, startled to realize she was so close. “Hold it back.” He reached down to pull her hand away from her clit. “Let me catch up.”
“You said I could come whenever I needed to,” she moaned, fighting his grip on her hand. “Please, Malac. You said—”
He released her hand with a tortured groan. “You’re right. Go ahead, princess. Take your pleasure.”
So she slid her hand back into place, rubbing the engorged little nub at the apex of her sex, and it didn’t take her long before that tension built again, pushing her closer and closer to the edge.
A guttural moan ground from deep in her throat as she came, spasming around Malac as her body clutched at him. As her hips twitched, driving him deeper.
“Oh, fuck,” he cried as he slammed into her, shooting his release deep, over and over. “Oh, holy fuck.”
Spent, Malac collapsed on top of her, his face cradled in the curve of her neck, his cock still buried deep inside her. “Princess, you are magnificent,” he whispered, as he dropped little kisses at the base of her throat. “Fuck Jude for ever making you think you wouldn’t enjoy that. You love having my cock in your ass. Orlann’s right. You are our dirty little princess.”
Maari stiffened beneath him, shamed by the bastardization of her title. “It hurts now,” she whispered, wedging her hands between them to push at his chest.
“But I know it felt good before.” He captured her wrists and pinned them to the mattress, thrusting in and out a little as he lifted his weight from her.
Maari flinched, her sensitive tissue sore, now that her orgasm had ebbed.
“You’re fine, princess. Just a second.” Malac pulled out of her slowly, carefully, and she flushed when she felt a drop of his release leak out of her to roll down onto the bed clothes. “You go use the restroom, and I’ll call housekeeping. That way when we get out of the tub, we’ll have clean sheets for our nap.”
She nodded as she crawled off the bed and headed into the bathroom, her face flushed with embarrassment, her ass unspeakably sore.
“You draw a better bath than I do,” Maari said as she sank through the bubbles into the water, sighing with pleasure as the heat enveloped her. “I tried it the other day and wound up shivering in tepid water for ten minutes.”
Malac stepped into the tub and lowered himself behind her. “There’s an art to it.” He leaned down to kiss the back of her neck, exposed by the messy bun that kept her hair from getting wet. “The same is true for sex. And war. And anything you want to get good at.”
“I don’t want to be good at war.”
Malac chuckled. “That one doesn’t apply to you. If you do your job, there will be no more war on Syrus.”
Maari tensed as Jude’s threat played through her mind again. “And if I can’t? If I don’t know how to give you a child? Jude said he will lead an allied army across Bannon, if I can’t figure out how to rein in my gift.”
Malac’s green eyes brightened. “Then, you are trying?”
“I don’t really have any other choice.”
“I’m glad you finally understand that.” He took a sponge from the edge of the tub and squirted scented soap onto it, then he began to gently wash her back.
“But what if I can’t?” Her heart thumping painfully, she twisted to face him, sloshing water over the side of the tub. “What if I fail? You lead his army, Malac. Would you do that, if he told you to? Would you slaughter my entire kingdom? My family? Would you kill a million people for him, because I can’t figure out how to control my own reproductive system?”
Malac blinked at her, the sponge bobbing in the water between them. “It’s not going to come to that. I have faith in you. I have faith in us.” He leaned forward to kiss her, stroking his tongue against hers until her breath caught in her throat and her nipples drew into tight peaks, beneath the surface of the water. “If you just open your heart to me, all of your problems will be solved.”
Maari swallowed around the painful lump lodged in her throat. “And if I don’t know how to do that either?”
His eyes narrowed as dark clouds seemed to roll in behind them, and Maari’s pulse spiked painfully. “I’m afraid I won’t be the only person who gets hurt if you shut me out, princess.”
9
Maari
“Where are you taking me?” Maari asked, as Malac led her out the first-floor foyer into the hall, three hours later.
He closed the double doors behind them. “You’ll see.” His green eyes lit up as his gaze roamed over her. “I’m sorry Jude ruined the last dress, but you look beautiful in this one.”
She ran both hands down her sides, smoothing the new material. This was a proper dress. A snug, pale pink knee-length sheath beneath a sheer layer that hung open in the front, yet brushed her ankles in the back. This was a dress for going out. For seeing people. For being received. Not for a trip down the hall to another of the dozen dining rooms in Jude’s palace.
Considering the dull ache in her ass, Maari felt like she’d damn well earned lunch out. But she knew better than to ask for something Malac couldn’t deliver.
He took her hand, and she followed him, wobbling a little on her new silver stiletto sandals, because she’d hardly worn shoes—much less heels—in months. They walked the length of the long hallway her suite sat at the end of, then turned right. Two more long corridors later, Malac led her into a hallway almost identical to her own, which ended in a beautiful set of double doors very much like the ones leading into her new first-floor foyer.
“Is that where we’re going?” she asked, nodding at the double doors.
“Yes.” Malac leaned in to kiss her neck, his grip tightening around her hand. “I hope you’re hungry. Lunch should be waiting.”
In fact, she was starving.
At the end of the hall, Malac knocked on the left-hand door, and it was opened almost immediately by a maid in a formal gray uniform, with a white apron. She welcomed them into an open space encompassing both living and dining areas, lavishly appointed but obviously lived in, and Maari began to understand that Malac hadn’t just taken her to another random dining room.
He’d brought her into someone’s home.
“I’ll let her know you’re here.” The maid gestured for Malac and Maari to make themselves at home in the sitting area. But as she turned to head deeper into the apartment, another double set of doors opened to reveal a beautiful woman with laugh lines around her mouth and just a hint of crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes—clearly the apartment’s occupant.
Maari knew with one glance at the woman’s brilliant green irises that she was looking at Cecily, the late King Cedric’s concubine.
Malac had brought her to meet his mother.
“Malac!” Cecily entered the room with a brilliant smile and open arms, her narrow waist and generous curves wrapped in a pale blue sheath dress with a tie accenting one hip. Malac stepped into her embrace, returning it warmly, then he turned, one arm around his mother’s shoulders, and waved the princess forward.
“Mother, this is Maari Delayne, Princess of Stead Delayne. Princess, this is Cecily Botello. My mother.”
Maari’s heart thumped painfully as she extended her hand. She was unprepared for this social interaction.
If she’d come to dine with someone new a few months ago, back when she was still a real princess—a national treasure—there would have been formalities. Introductions used to be events, planned by an entire team of diplomacy experts. There would have been a presentation of gifts. Formal, if archaic curtsies. Prescribed greetings.
Of course, back w
hen she was a real princess, she would never have been introduced to a concubine.
Now she was one.
“A pleasure to meet you,” Cecily said, impeccably poised as she took the princess’s hand, and Maari tried not to be insulted by the brevity of the contact or the omission of her formal title. A greeting that insulted a princess would probably still be considered prestigious for a concubine.
Cecily’s gaze roved over her, assessing, and Maari found herself lifting her chin to give the impression that she was somehow looking down at the taller woman, a skill she’d used often, when she’d represented Stead Delayne during official state visits. When she’d needed to appear poised, prepared, and important.
She had no reason to care what this woman thought about her. Yet she found herself oddly concerned with making a good impression.
Finally, Malac’s mother smiled, an expression the princess was far from sure she could trust. “I hope you’re hungry,” she said as she led them across the sprawling open living area toward a table that had been set for their meal.
Maari grabbed Malac’s hand and held him back, rising onto her toes to whisper into his ear. “You didn’t tell me I was going to meet your mother!”
“That would have ruined the surprise.” He dropped a kiss on her nose, his green eyes sparkling with excitement he seemed to think she should share. Then he tugged her into the dining area, where Maari noticed with a sudden bolt of alarm that the table was set for two.
“You’re not staying?” She clutched at his hand, staring up at him. Begging him with her eyes to correct the mistake. To ask the maid to set the table properly.
Malac shrugged. “I thought you could use some girl time. A ladies’ luncheon. Since you’ve pretty much been stuck with my brothers and me since you got here.”
Actually, Maari had spent most of her time with Annah, since Jude had forbidden Malac from staying the night with their concubine. Every time one of the princes took his leave, Annah was there to pick up the pieces. To clean up the mess and put the princess back together again. She’d become a valued friend.
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