And staring between my thighs.
“Do you touch yourself?”
I hesitated only a moment before whispering, “Yes.”
He hummed. “But no one has touched you, correct?”
“Correct.”
I waited, my stomach tightening. As if knowing he was tormenting me, he seemed pleased as he said, “Would you like me to be the first to touch your lovely cunt, sweet creature?”
My next breath caught. Skies stab me, he was unmerciful.
And it would seem I wanted nothing less, a heady anticipation and impatience rushing through my body in the form of venomous heat.
“Yes,” I croaked.
“Then open nice and wide for me.”
I did as I was told, which earned me a soft hum of approval that swept over my skin like a whisper in the dark.
I tried to watch him, every part of me strung tight as the warmth of his touch hovered over my core. But as the first drag of his finger stroked through me, parted me, my eyes closed.
Bright light flashed behind my eyelids. My hips bucked.
“Do you wish for me to stop?” Humor thickened his question. He already knew what my answer would be.
“No,” I said instantly.
His finger returned, trailing from my clit and opening me slowly as it moved to my entrance. He paused there. “Your thighs shake already, butterfly.” A gentle dip inside me with the tip of his finger. “And you’re so fucking excited.”
His touch left me again.
I opened my eyes to find him sucking my arousal from his finger. His eyes closed as if he was savoring the taste of me. My stomach fluttered when I heard the low and almost imperceptible rumble in his throat. When I noticed the slight tremor of his broad shoulders.
His eyes opened. A blue so bright they matched a sunlit sky.
Our gazes locked. The tension in the room bubbled.
Then, with his eyes still on mine, he returned his hand to my core. Featherlight, he stroked his fingers over the sensitive skin of my inner thighs and tickled them over my mound. “Tell me, sweet creature.” His voice was different, hoarse and sharp. “What would you do in order to get everything you desire?”
I couldn’t concentrate. Not with his expert touch blinding me to all else.
He pressed the pad of his finger right above my clit and applied the slightest pressure. A rasped moan flew through my lips, and then he paused. “I’ll resume when you answer me.”
“Anything,” I breathed, desperate for the pleasure to return and for all I’d ever wanted.
My answer apparently pleased him.
Enough that he dropped to his knees before the bed. His hands gripped my thighs, bruising as they dragged my body forward and straight to his hot mouth.
“Skies,” I almost shouted, my back curling off the bed as the king dug his nose into my core and rubbed it up and down.
He inhaled deeply, his exhale a ragged groan against my slick flesh. “Fucking divine.” Then warm, velvet heat dragged from my entrance to my clit. There, he circled and lapped as though I were a treat he would take his time to devour.
The sounds that left me would have been mortifying, had I any ability to care.
I had none.
But I clenched the bedding to keep from reaching for his hair as one thing repeated with sparkling loops in my starlit brain—he was a king.
A king of Faerie had his face buried between my thighs.
The room twirled. A cool sweat broke out over my skin. His hold on my thighs grew more painful. Burning—I was igniting from within and seconds away from feeling the flames dance all over my skin when he stopped.
Breath panted from me. Before I could protest, a fingertip gently pressed into my body.
I tensed, and Florian felt as much. He withdrew and pushed the tip of his digit back in. He would go no farther, only allowing my body to swallow his fingernail. I whimpered for more, my hips rolling.
His wicked words were steeped in unbending promise. “When I break you, it will be with my cock, and certainly not in a rotting pleasure house.”
Then his mouth latched onto my clit, and everything within me seized.
And exploded.
He held me firmly as a storm of pleasure assaulted in waves. From my scalp to my toes, it roared through me. I writhed, moaning and breathless and attempting to make him stop.
He didn’t.
He seemed intent on torturing me. His eyes, still a brighter blue, glowed with satisfaction beneath low lids.
Uncaring who he was, I reached down to make him end such exquisite punishment. Yet as soon as my fingers encountered his thick and shockingly soft hair, I surrendered.
As though he’d been waiting for just that, he ceased torturing me and crawled over my body on the bed. The size and darkness of him was a threat I couldn’t find the energy to be wary of. He’d ensured I was nothing but rapture-wrung limbs and uncatchable breath.
“I will give you everything,” he said, low and coarse directly above me. “And I will take everything in return. That includes every drop of pleasure I draw from your body.”
Unable to speak, I could only stare up at him in a daze.
His words ricocheted through my mind like a warning. A warning I would ignore, even if it had been more blatant. For the way he looked at me, large hands braced on either side of my head as he studied my flushed face, my heaving breasts straining against my filmy slip…
It made me want him all over again.
It made me desperate for everything and anything he was willing to give.
His nostrils flared, and his eyes darkened. He lowered his mouth to mine and rasped, “You are the sweetest fucking nectar I’ve ever tasted.” Our lips grazed with each word. “Kiss me.”
I did so gently. Once, twice, and on the third press of my lips against his, my confidence blossomed. I licked my own essence from his upper lip and ran my fingers over the thick material encasing his torso. My hips rose for my bare body to meet his clothed erection.
He hissed between clenched teeth and tore away with a light growl.
It didn’t escape me that he’d visited a pleasure house, yet I was the only one who seemed to be receiving pleasure.
I was about to ask if he did not wish to be touched in return when his earlier words about breaking me came back. Fighting off a shiver, I pulled my slip down over my thighs and sat up.
The king of Hellebore poured himself a drink, his fingers steady but his jaw ticking. “I think it’s time for me to admit to being somewhat…” He set the stopper in the decanter. “Deceptive.”
Not alarming, considering who I was dealing with. Still, a nervous patter in my chest began to overpower the lusty fog he’d left me in.
“I require a bride.”
Those words cut through the fog and the room like an iced wind.
He turned and leaned against the liquor cabinet to assess my reaction.
There was no hiding my shock, nor my confusion. I blinked ceaselessly and stammered out, “Do you mean me?” He couldn’t, surely.
I was a nameless nobody from a land he and his fellow royals despised.
He sipped the whiskey. “There is no one else in this room, butterfly.”
My cheeks threatened to stain with heat. The outrageousness of what he was saying kept it from happening. “But…” My voice dried. I shook my head and cleared my throat. “I’m a changeling. I have no noble family. I have no family or name at all,” I said, almost wincing at hearing myself spill the sad truths aloud. “I don’t even have friends.”