My Royal Hook-Up
My throat goes bone dry. “They would hang you in the palace square.”
“Perhaps,” she says. “Or worse. It would be justified. That would be up to the king and queen to decide.”
It would be up to her parents to decide whether or not to kill their only child for the crime of fucking me.
“This is the only time in my life that I get to decide, Damien. Let me choose who gets to take the most precious gift I have to offer. Because I choose you.”
She reaches beneath the skirt of her barely there dress and tugs her panties down her thighs, over her knees and ankles until they lie in a ball on the Alfa Romeo’s floor.
My nostrils flare. There it is again, the faint tang of her sweet, intimate scent.
“No one knows I’m here,” she says. “And by the time they find me, you’ll be long gone.”
She takes my palm, places it high on her thigh and simply says, “Please.”
Somehow, with one hand, I maneuver the car into Reverse and onto the road as my other hand skims soft skin, sliding higher, until I’m there.
I dip one finger between her soft, wet folds, and she cries out, bucking in her seat.
“Fucking hell,” I growl, then put the pedal to the floor, speeding off to certain death.
Juliet
I’m going to die.
No, really. I’ll be dead before my next breath.
My back arches and my hips circle to an uninhibited rhythm.
Damien takes another hairpin turn, one-handed, because he’s delved the other between my thighs. His palm dances over my clit, working me until my sensitive skin throbs in time with my pounding heart. When he plunges his fingers into my tight slit, the Alfa Romeo wheels aren’t the only things squealing.
My whimper dwindles to a soft pant as I writhe, drenched with an unfamiliar need. Damien can’t maintain expert control of this sports car and me all at the same time. It’s too much. No man is this dexterous. He’s going to drive us off a cliff to our doom.
But his long, relentless fingers plunge inside my folds, filling me up, taking me to the gates of Heaven. My front teeth clamp hard on my lower lip. I won’t tell him to stop. Death might be close at hand—but by the old gods and new...mine shall be a glorious end.
“Jesus, doll. You’re a hellcat, aren’t you?” He does that magic swirling trick with his fingers again, confident and in control, playing me like a virtuoso violinist, and my scream is a sound between a breathless yelp and a squeak of delight. My whole body begins to shudder. My derriere clenches as my thighs tremble.
Good lord, what is happening to me?
“Fuck, I love a woman who makes some noise while she comes,” he growls.
Another perfectly aggressive stroke, and my inner walls pulse in a series of mind-blowing contractions that milk his fingers. When I grow still, he cups my sex and teases my silky strands with a soft tickle.
“You have a fucking amazing pussy,” he growls.
But I’m too greedy for games, and too starved for touch.
“More.” I grab his wrist and grind my pelvis against his palm without a shred of decorum. I can hear my wetness sucking against his rough skin and don’t recognize this woman, wild and roused, filled with savage yearning. I’ve touched myself before. A couple awkward fumbles beneath my quilt in the dead of night, but I never knew exactly what I was doing.
It’s humbling that Damien seems to know my body’s responses better than I do.
“Shit,” he snarls, slamming the brakes. We skid to a stop in the middle of the road. I turn around, tensing at the anticipated impact of another car, but the hour is late. No other vehicle is in sight.
“Climb aboard, love. But be a good girl and grab the bottle of lube in the glove box.”
“Excuse me?” Climb aboard? Lube?
“Time to get your sweet ass out of that seat and straddle me. You want to fuck? Fine, but we’re going to do it my way, Princess. And behind the wheel is my favorite position.”
I blink once. Twice. But he says nothing, just regards me with those magnetic steely eyes.
Oh my god. He’s not joking. I try to swallow. “Let me get this straight. You’re planning to drive while having intercourse with me?” I grew up riding horses, but something tells me that losing my virginity to a man behind the wheel of an Italian sports car is nothing I could have possibly prepared for.
“Are you up for the challenge or not, Princess?” His eyes are dark as sin. “Because if the answer is no, I can turn this car around and take you back to the club.”
“No! Wait!” I cry. “Don’t do that.” My hand trembles as I move to unbuckle my seat belt, nerves churning my stomach. But despite my unease, I want this; I want him—badly.
In for a penny, in for a pound.
“Hold up. One final thing.” His voice is a warning, silk sliding over gravel. “Have you heard everything the maids said about my...prowess?”
“Just that you are an expert in the arts of lovemaking.”
There is no humor in his chuckle. “And what do you think of my nickname?”
“Nickname?” I frown.
“The Backdoor Baron?” He sounds exasperated. “Ring any bells?”
My frown deepens. “I do not understand. You are a baron? Weren’t you stripped of all titles? And what’s all this about a back door?”
His intense gaze threatens to undo me. “You really are a sheltered innocent, aren’t you? The nickname is a joke, but not without an element of truth. I give women pleasure, but when I’m inside them, I only enter one way. Through the back door.”
I wait for him to elaborate, but nothing is forthcoming. “You speak in riddles.”
“Are you joking?” Two lines crease between his brows. “Isn’t this why you sought me out? To have me give you pleasure while keeping your technical virginity intact for your husband?”
Confusion presses against my skull. Silently I curse my parents for keeping me so cloistered and ignorant of the world. And I curse myself for letting them.
He huffs a curt sigh. “All right, look. When I fuck, I don’t do it here.” He reaches under my dress and enfolds my sex. “I do it here.” He slides his hand away and squeezes my backside.
Clarity hits me like a bolt of lightening.
Backside. Back door. Like...butt.
Oh!
My cheeks are surely turning the color of rubies. “People do that?”
“Sure.” He winks. “They do with me.”
“I...no...no... I do not want to try such a thing. I wanted... I mean... I expected...the front door?” I grimace. This conversation is by far and away the most awkward dialogue I’ve ever endured.
Beep! A loud horn breaks the quiet night, and a Porsche swivels around us, the driver making a vulgar gesture as he passes.
“Right back at you, buddy.” Damien hits the accelerator, resuming our journey. He quickly glances in my direction before looking back to the road. “I’ve met your betrothed, you know. The Duke of Wartson. We’ve played poker together once or twice.”
“Oh?” The sudden change of topic confuses me.
“You really have to marry that horny old goat?”
Tears prickle in my eyes. “Indeed.”
He’s quiet a moment before breathing out a rough sigh. “Fine. I’ll give you what you ask for. But not here. Not while I’m driving, and not in the back door. For you, I’m going to make an exception.” His smile is rueful. “Consider it an early wedding present.”
He drives slower, but just as masterfully. The perfect, chiseled lines of his face are made for brooding. I find myself hypnotized.
“Damien?” I ask at last. It’s strange how his name tastes so familiar on my tongue. “Why do you only ever take women in the...back door? Have you never tried the, uh, front door either?” A mad sort of hope flickers in me. Perhaps I’m not so stupidly naive and innocent. Perhaps he is like me, a virgin.
That faint glimmer of hope is doused by his bitter chuckle.
“Yes, Princess. I’ve tried the front door. But only ever with one woman.” His knuckles go bloodless on the steering wheel. “A woman who is now dead.”
Realization dawns on me. “Your brother’s fiancée. Your once future queen. You seduced her, didn’t you?”
“Technically, Victoria seduced me,” he rasped. “But I suppose I should be proud of my notoriety.”
“She was your lover?”
“I had rather thought that she was my one true love.” A shadow falls across his face. “But I was nothing but a boy, and it was all a lie. Yet when it came to our lovemaking...sex meant something with her. And I’ve never felt that way about another woman. So I still fuck. I just do it on terms that make it bearable.”
My heart aches at the pain lacing his words.
We arrive at an exquisite hotel, and he pulls past the main entrance. Instead, we approach a gated drive from a side street. He punches a pass code into a keypad, and the great brass doors swing wide open. He pulls forward.
“So what makes me different?” I don’t look at him. I focus my gaze on the ten-story hotel before us. I breathe a small sigh of relief that although we are in a public place, no one will see me enter. I don’t want to be found out before I get what I came here for.
“I’ve been asking myself the same question,” he mutters. “And I don’t have a good reply. At least not an easy one. So why don’t we go inside and see if the answer is hiding in your perfect pussy?”
CHAPTER THREE
Damien
WE RIDE THE elevator in silence. With any other woman, I’d have made her come at least twice before we reached the top. But something about Juliet is different, and it’s more than knowing she is Nightgardin’s virgin heir. I can’t place my finger on it, but I want to take my time with her.
When we reach the hotel’s penthouse, the doors slide open, and Juliet sucks in a breath.
Rich mahogany wood covers the floor that leads us to the main living space where the sofa—the color of the deepest ocean—sits before a roaring fire.
“How did you...?” she asks, and I grin.
“I tip well,” I tease. “And in return, I get special—favors.”
She blushes, then moves toward the couch, running her fingers across the lush fabric. She’s barefoot now, having removed her one good shoe, and something about her seems so casual and comfortable in what must be the most foreign place she’s ever been—a strange man’s home.
I stride up behind her. “The only thing better than Italian velvet against your skin, Highness...is me.” I brush a soft kiss on the nape of her neck, and she shudders. Then she spins to face me.
“Damien?” she says, demure and shy.
“Princess?”
She licks her lips, then reaches behind and unzips her dress. It drops to the floor.
“God in heaven,” I say, my strangled voice unrecognizable.
That same flush from before creeps up her neck to her cheeks, and she grins. “Do you—like what you see?”
I take my time drinking her in, ignoring my cock’s urgency to free itself from my jeans and plunge between those lithe legs.
Her full breasts are milk white, her pale pink nipples pebbling at their tips. Beneath the left one is a constellation of birthmarks that, if connected, would draw an arrow straight to her heart. I trace the shape with my index finger.
“You should be allowed to love,” I say, not knowing where the words are coming from.
Her breasts rise and fall as she breathes in and out.
“I will learn to love my husband,” she says flatly. “It is my duty.”
I brush my thumb over her nipple, and she bucks into my hand.
“I want to see you,” she says, her voice barely more than breath. “Before you do any more, I want to see you while I still have my wits about me.”
I nod, but because I am a greedy bastard, I dip my head quickly and swirl my tongue around that perfect, hardened peak.
She cries out, and I step away, grinning.
She narrows her eyes at me, then takes a bold step forward as she starts to unbutton my shirt. She opens it, running her palms over my chest, and pushes it off my shoulders until it falls to the floor.
Her hands skim over my biceps and my forearms. They slow as her fingers run over the raised scars I’ve made invisible beneath the ink.
She looks up at me, wide-eyed.
“There was a lot of shattered glass in the—accident.” That last word tastes so bitter on my tongue I wish I could spit it out. Or take it back. Because I was behind the wheel. I was the one responsible for taking the life of another. Accident is far too kind a word for what I did. The Royal Police blamed the weather and absolved me of any technical crime. But I know the truth, as does my brother Nikolai, the man who loved Victoria too. If we hadn’t run, she’d still be alive.
She reaches for my face, and I flinch. But she is not deterred. Her gentle hand traces my most visible scar, the one that runs from my left temple to the line of my jaw. The one no one ever talks about anymore because what is left to say? Every time I look in the mirror, I’m reminded of the monster I truly am.
“You punish yourself,” she says.
“Stop,” I tell her, but she shakes her head.
“Maybe you aren’t as free as I thought you were. Maybe,” she continues, unbuttoning my jeans, “we’re more alike than I ever could have imagined.”
I step out of my shoes and let her lower my pants and briefs to the floor. Then I step out of those as well.
“Oh!” she says, staring at my erection. Then, “Oh.” This time with less shock and something more like reverence. “Can I...touch it?”
I chuckle, grateful for her act of levity, even if she didn’t mean it.
“Here,” I say, taking her hand and wrapping it around my shaft. I growl at the feel of her gripping me, and her mouth falls open in a perfect O.
“What now?” she asks, her voice cracking on the second word.
“Stroke it,” I demand. “From the root all the way to the top, keeping the pressure firm.”
She obeys, teasing me as she moves achingly slow until she reaches the tip, precome leaking onto my sensitive skin. As if she’s done it a hundred times before, she swirls her thumb over my slick skin.
“Fucking hell, Princess,” I grind out over gritted teeth. “Are you sure you haven’t done this before?”
She lets out a nervous laugh, and her dark eyes meet mine. “It’s instinct, I guess. And something about you makes me feel at ease.” She slides down over my length and repeats the movement again. Then again. And Christ if I don’t think my knees are about to buckle.
“Me?” I say, my voice rough. “I make you feel at ease? The monster of a prince who isn’t even welcome in his own country? You want me to take the most precious gift you have to give?”
Because suddenly this isn’t a game anymore. It’s real. So fucking real my chest hurts. Because this woman deserves better than I could ever give.
Pleasure, yes. I have plenty of that in store. But how can that be enough for her when she knows what her future holds beyond this night?
She tugs me toward her, and before I know what is happening, I’m between her legs, my tip stroking her folds as she sucks in a series of sharp breaths.
I groan. She’s wet, warm and soft as silk. “What the fuck are you doing?”
She presses her chest to mine, squeezing my cock between her thighs.
“There’s no such thing as love at first sight,” she says, echoing her words from the Lovers’ Leap. “Take me, Damien. However you want.”
Before I can say anything in response, she tangles her fingers in my hair and pulls me to her, crushing her lips against mine.
You’re right, Princess. There’s no such thing.
Juliet
Damien feasts on me like a man possessed. Moaning, I surrender to his tongue’s wicked assault, savoring each possessive glide. His mouth is everywhere as he treats my body like a triple-scoop chocolate fudge sundae with a cherry on top. I am reduced to making halting, mewling whimpers like a lost kitten.
My entire life I have felt alone, but in this moment, I am found.
“What happens next?” I gasp as he licks up the side of my belly. “You insert your penis in my vagina and we commence procreation?”
“Procreation?” he barks out a laugh. “Jesus, Princess. Imagine taking the Nightgardin throne with an Edenvale bastard in your belly.”
I flush, reality returning for an unwelcome moment. “I’m sorry. Growing up I was never allowed to call sexual congress by any other word than procreation.”
He stands and tilts my chin so I am staring up at him dead-on with no escape. No shame either. I’m utterly naked and at his mercy, and yet feel safer than I have in years.
“We’re not having sexual congress either, my lady.”
“No?” My voice is husky.
He shakes his head and leans in, his lips pressing to my ear, nipping my sensitive skin until an enticing heat spreads down my neck, radiating to my breasts. “This is the part where you say, ‘Fuck me, Damien.’”
The word surges through my core like a jolt of electricity. “I... I don’t say such things.”
He smugly arches a single brow. “Too bad then. Because you don’t get my cock unless you ask. No, scratch that. Unless you demand it. Because tonight’s lesson is this...” He strokes the ruddy erection standing at attention between his muscular legs. “This isn’t a penis. It’s a cock. My cock. And I don’t just put it in you.”
I press my hip bones against him. “What...do you do?”
He feigns a solemn expression, but by now I know better. “Utter the secret password and you’ll discover all.”
“P-password?” I stumble.
“Fuck me, Damien.”
I lick my dry lips and avert my gaze to his biceps, perfectly sculpted and coursing with thick veins. Goose bumps pepper my skin as I mumble the words.
“I’m sorry,” he replies coolly. “I didn’t quite catch that.”
I repeat myself a fraction louder, my hands balled against my sides.
He kisses me deeply, his tongue teasing mine in leisurely, long licks. “Still not quite hearing you.”
I grab his chin and force him to look me straight in the eye. “Fuck me, Damien,” I announce, loud and clear—so much so that I don’t recognize my own voice. Because no such words would ever spill from my lips. Yet here they are. “Fuck me...hard?” I add the second part to my question on impulse, but it makes me achy and wet all the same.
He growls his approval. “Good girl.”
He scoops me into his arms before I can draw another breath and carries me to a bedroom with an impressive king-size bed.
I expect him to toss me down and ravage my body like a depraved animal.
Instead, he eases me onto the mattress as if I am a rare and delicate gift.
“You are every inch a queen.” A low rumble vibrates through his chest. His gaze full of dark promise...and something that I’d be tempted to describe as wonder.
Sweat mists my fevered skin as invisible flames fire through my belly. I know, I know, that I don’t believe in love—especially with someone I just met—but at that moment, I swear I fall for him...just a little. Enough that I’m dizzy and giddy at the thought of his hands on me again.
“What do we do now?” I ask.
“Now I get some protection so we can fuck without doing any of that procreating you are all so fond of in this realm.”
He turns and walks to his dresser, opening a top drawer. I admire his firm, masculine ass. I memorize the indents on either side of his buttocks and the way his hard quads bulge with muscle.
When he returns, he clutches a small silver square.
“How does the protection...work?” I grimace. But in this such case, I was never meant to be protected, for what queen would want protection from her king?
“Watch and learn.” He rips the corner with his teeth and removes an object that I don’t recognize. Then he places it on the edge of his...cock...and rolls it down.
“Oh, I understand!” I exclaim, catching on at last. “You are going to use that to catch all of the semen.”
His laugh is no more than a single gruff bark, but nevertheless, it’s genuine. “You’re an odd little duck, you know that?”
I raise my chin. “No one addresses me like that.” But then I drop the fake imperious routine and crack a grin. “All right, all right, you win. I am as odd a duck as there ever was. Sorry.”
“No. Never apologize.” His nostrils flare. “Your innocence, it’s a rare thing this day and age.”
“Perhaps, but I’d rather it wasn’t my sole value.”
Something flashes deep in his eyes. “I understand. And I’m not just turned on because you are a virgin. I... I...need you to know that.”
I’m surprised. I never expected to see this notorious playboy seem uncertain.
“Here’s the deal,” he says. “I don’t know what’s happening here. But since I saw you in that alley, it’s as if I’ve left the real world and entered some kind of dream.” He crawls over me, tangling his hands in my hair. “Life suddenly feels brighter. I swear I smell roses and hear snippets of music. What the fuck are you doing to me, Princess?”
“This.” I wrap my legs around his trim hips, and he presses right at the center of me, positioning himself at my wet, but tight, entrance.
“You’re sure you want this?” He searches my face, and I do the same with him.
I know what he’s really asking. Do you want me?
And god forgive me, I do. I really, really do.
He is so beautiful, scars and all. “I wanted you before I knew you. After all, you’re very handsome,” I admit shyly. “But now after meeting you... Damien. I need you. I need you to be the one.”
He presses his forehead to mine, and as he gives me a deep, lush kiss, a shudder rocks him. “I don’t know what the hell I’ve done in my shitty life to deserve you, but whatever it is, I’m grateful.”
I laugh softly. “You promise you won’t go for the, you know, back door?”
The corner of his mouth quirks into a roguish grin. “I am a man with sexual urges. I make no apologies for that,” he says. “But I’ve only been inside one other pussy, and that was a long, long time ago.”
“I imagine it’s like riding a bike,” I say, fighting for a levity that I do not feel.
His eyes darken as his tip parts my intimate lips. “Gorgeous, trust me. It’s nothing like riding a bike.”
And then, slowly, inexorably, he begins to enter me, inch by slow inch.
“Oh!” I gasp. There’s a sharp bite of pain and then... “Oh.” I moan. “Oh God.”
He starts slow and gentle, sliding in to the root and then out again with such care it makes me ache.
Ache for him. For more.
“Christ, Princess,” he says, sinking into me again, and I run my fingers over the taut muscles of his arms, his abdomen. And then I squeeze that perfectly sculpted ass.
It’s glorious.
“I didn’t know.” My voice shakes. “I didn’t know what I was giving up. And now that I do—”
He gives me a searing kiss before I can finish, and it’s a good thing. Because if I spoke what I know now is the truth, I’d damn us both.
I don’t ever want to give you up.
I’m being cared for. Revered. Worshipped. Damien slides a hand between my legs and works my sensitive pearl while filling me with every last perfect inch of him.
Sweat sheens our bellies. I can’t be quiet. I try, but it’s impossible. You might as well ask me to catch a rainbow between my fingertips. I buck and arch, my body moving like a wild thing that cannot—that from here on out will not—be tamed. I’m drenched and swollen with need. My inner thighs soaked with my own arousal, creamy for his granite erection.
He pulls me up and falls back on his knees, still joined to me and takes my breast into his mouth, sucking at my hardened peak in hot, confident pulls until I cry out, a sound so guttural I wouldn’t know it was human if it hadn’t come from my own lips.
“Fuck me, Damien,” I whimper, and he raises his head, his eyes meeting mine, his gaze narrowed and intense.
“Louder,” he orders.
“Fuck me!” I command, riding up then slamming down over him until he’s filled me to my core.
He answers me with an animal roar, lifting me off the bed completely and pinning my ass against the wall, his cock still buried inside me, nestled against some hidden bundle of nerves.