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“You want my tongue where?” His breath
set her on fire and she cried out. “If you can’t say yoni I’ll let
you say cunny. Such a sweet piece too, all plump and pink. When I
press here….”

His tongue swiped along her clit and
instinctively she jerked him closer by the hair as her back arched.
The flat of his tongue rubbed along her once, twice and pressed
down before he pulled away. “I can feel your pulse.” He nuzzled her
inner thigh. “Your heart’s beating fast, Princess. I wonder why
that is.”

“Please, Damon.”

“Say it first princess and I’ll give
you anything you ask of me.”

Silence.

Jocelyn cracked first.

“Yo…”

“What was that? I’m afraid I didn’t
quite catch it.”

“Yoni.” Her voice was small, defeated,
and pleading. Her hips lifted and arched shamelessly against the
stern line of his mouth. “I want your tongue in my
yoni.”

He gave it to her then. Eagerly. His
tongue speared inside of her and he sucked her hard and long as if
he was trying to drink from her body. Because he kept her in the
air by the strength of his arms alone he couldn’t guide her hips as
he moved to get better access, instead he let her thrust as fast as
hard as her need dictated. She took her pleasure and her abandon
pleased Damon as nothing else could have. His teeth scrapped her
clit and when she mewled from that, he placed the flat of his
tongue against the very opening of her body and lapped at her like
a cat with cream. The silky coolness of her thighs tightening
around his head as she rode his mouth made him rock hard and he had
to fight to keep himself still.

He could have lifted her, pressed her
into the ground and took her but he wanted her to experience this.
Wanted to give her this freedom and power. When her climax hit, he
felt her spasm around his tongue. Sinking as deeply as he was able
inside of her depths, he worked the tip of his tongue up and over
that magical bundle of nerve endings hidden inside her body. It had
her climax dragging on long past the point when she was begging for
it to stop and he could feel her convulsing over him. Her nails
scraped the back of his neck and along his scalp as he held her
still and ground her against his face.

She tasted like honey and
heaven.

When the shakes had abated, she
collapsed over him, her long blond hair flowing over his shoulder
and down his back as he lowered her body down his own. Then he
wrapped her thighs around his waist and held her until she lay
still.

She turned her head and smiled at him,
full lips stretching into a satisfied grin. The look was like a
beacon and he kissed her, softly at first until she got a taste of
her fluids against his lips and deepened the kiss. He knew that the
taste of her own body on his tongue excited her because she moaned
and moved helplessly against him. His laughter was cut off when her
hands traced the column of his throat and up to his cheeks. She sat
back in his arms and cradled his face in her hands. There was a
look in her eye that came sometimes when he’d been teasing her and
she’d decided to get back at him. Some men preferred their ladies
lady-like, but he loved it when he got that look. He purposefully
worked for it because it proved what a strong girl his Jocelyn was,
how perfect she was for him in every way.

“I want you to repeat after
me.”

He nodded, as happy as a child on
Christmas morning.

“Your highness--”

“Highness?” he asked with unabashed
amusement.

She nodded solemnly, “What else is a
Princess if not a Highness?”

That was true.

“Now. Your Highness.”

“Your Highness.”

“I, Damon your most loyal servant and
eternal slave….”

He repeated the phrase with a straight
face.

A miracle.

“…
would be forever grateful
if you would take my….” she leaned forward and whispered the words
against the shell of his ear, not yet brave enough to say it aloud.
The terms she used were outrageous and vulgar in at least two
continents, but he found himself preening and nearly bursting out
of his skin when he heard them. God he loved it when his proper,
shy little Princess talked that way. The fact that she did it only
with him increased his pleasure and he decided not to tease her
when her own words brought a mortified blush to her
cheeks.

Maybe one day she would get over the
embarrassment of talking that way, but he hoped she never
would.

He repeated the words.

* * * *

The second week after the accident the
wound was nearly closed though it was still tender and red looking.
It didn’t seem to faze the former soldier though, and he went about
his regular duties with even more enthusiasm than usual. With only
one difference.

Their swimming lessons were now being
done in the nude. Gathering firewood was done naked, putting new
messages in the sand was done naked. Sleeping, gathering fruit, and
hunting, all were done without a stitch on except for their shoes.
Though why he thought the shoes somehow made up for their lack of
clothing in regards to parasites, ticks, and the like Jocelyn
didn’t know. She was even forced to do her ballet warm-ups naked
because Damon had hidden her chemise.

At night Jocelyn shivered and slapped
at mosquitoes and during the day she scratched her skin to pieces
on the branches in the forest. Damon was just as bad if not worse
but he seemed to be oblivious.

She walked along the beach while he
seemed to float with stars sparkling in his eyes and music she
couldn’t hear blocking his mind to all else.

He was, she decided one night as she
tried to decide if he’d let her get away with wearing a leaf dress,
in his own little heaven.

It wasn’t until he nearly turned
himself into a eunuch with a flying stream of pork grease as he was
cooking one night that Jocelyn finally had enough. She put her foot
down in regard to clothing and turned a deaf ear to his assurances
that he was all right and how meat only fell into the fire like
that every once in a blue moon.

When Damon dragged on his britches and
watched as she slipped her chemise over her head, his face fell
into such lines of despair Jocelyn felt as if she’d just murdered a
puppy. She almost apologized before she remembered his appalling
behavior of the week before and decided that from then on she would
have to be much stricter with him lest he run wild.

When Damon wasn’t trying his damndest
to ruin her for polite society, he was talking to her. Once clothes
were again a normal part of their everyday lives he seemed to lose
whatever madness had latched onto him.

“I couldn’t make it to them in
time.”

They’d moved out to be by the barre
that day, wanting to enjoy the rare instance of cool winds and
gentle sun. She was stretching with her back to him as he lay not a
foot away in the sand and stared up into the sky. At his words her
eyes darted to him and she relaxed gracefully from First Arabesque,
arms lowering to her sides as she thought over his words. Her heart
was hammering but she refused to rush this, refused to break the
trust he was placing in her with impatience.

Because that was what this was. He was
trusting her, finally, with the whole story and by extension,
himself.

Keeping her face carefully blank she
turned away from him and commenced with her tendus stretches which
flowed smoothly into degage, both of which were a series of ankle
and foot movements designed to strengthen the muscles in her toes
and ankle.

“To who?”

She was afraid he’d changed his mind
about telling the story when her only response was the sound of his
breathing and the braying cry of the birds that visited the seaside
only a daily basis.

“My family.” He went silent again and
Jocelyn’s throat tightened with tears. She relaxed her leg and
leaned against the barre, hands clenching on the wood.

“Tell me what happened
Damon.”

“We were fighting in
Orissa…”

* * * *

He was going to be sick.

It had taken him three days and two
nights of hard riding to reach his home. When one horse died
beneath him he moved to the next with nary a flinch. He’d been
fighting with Wellesley and the remaining army when the news had
come. The Mahrattas had been pillaging the cities as they passed
through them, hitting each city harder than the last and it wasn’t
long before they reached Bengal.

Damon had wanted to leave sooner but
had been assured that the chances of them hitting his family’s
estate were slim. If the pillaging got out of control then they
would be severely punished and besides, all armies did it. It was
how they kept in supplies during a long march between one battle
and the next.

They were allies. Everything would be
fine.

He hadn’t believed. Even as he fought
and rode only to make camp and fight again, there had been a sick
churning in his stomach. A pounding in his head that screamed for
him to hurry.

But he hadn’t. Instead he followed
orders until he’d overheard a messenger coming to report to the
General about what was happening outside of the war
zone.

The Mahrattas hadn’t calmed in their
pursuits. A battalion’s worth were drunk off the battle lust and
when they’d been ordered to stand down it was found that more than
a few had gone missing. They’d crossed the Ganges and would be in
West Bengal in a day and a half.

Damon had turned on his heel, unhitched
the closest horse and rode out before the messenger was finished
with his report. He’d deserted that day and Wellesley would have to
have him executed once Damon was in custody. Somehow with guilt
already gnawing away at his insides he didn’t really
care.

Now as his current mount took him
deeper into the boundaries of his estate, he had to keep the young
thing from shying away the stench of blood. The sun was going down
and it sent an ocean of orange and red across the land, turning the
already blood soaked earth into a cesspool. The Mahrattas were
trained fighters while the men and women who’d worked for his
family had been gardeners, stable hands, an upstairs maids. The
difference in their skills was evident in the missing limbs and the
torn throats of the bodies that littered the ground. His heart
constricted when he saw Yasmine, bodice ripped nearly to her navel,
among the colorful rainbow of flowers she’d cultivated so
carefully. There, slumped against the wall with a sword down his
throat was his father. His mother’s head was missing while across
the room from her Trent lay in a pool of his own blood, eyes
sightless but staring.

Damon paused for a moment in the hall
after he left that room. Shook himself, took a deep breath and
continued on. Ellenore lay dead across the keyboards of the piano
and he wondered how she stayed upright until he saw the nails in
her flesh. Then he turned away. In the twins’ bedroom, Remy was
collapsed against the wall nearest the door, his little neck
obviously broken and his hands still clutching his favorite bear.
He’d been thrown away and Damon could guess the who and why of it
because the bastard responsible was still pumping away between the
legs of his little sister.

He went blind and his head went
mercifully blank.

* * * *

In a dim part of his mind who knew what
he’d done. He’d watched himself hauling the man off his Clara, his
baby, who was already so close to death. Saw himself shove the man
down on the ground. After that his vision, his memory was black but
when he could focus and hear and speak without screaming in rage,
he realized that he was covered in blood and bits and pieces of
brain tissue. He didn’t look down at the body, already able to see
the ruined mass of it from the corner of his eye.

Instead he focused on Clara, crawling
towards where she lay on the edge of her bed, legs dangling over
the sides. His hands left bloody prints on the floor but he
couldn’t make himself care. After all, it wasn’t as if his mother
would scold him for it, not anymore. He thought himself beyond
feeling at that point his body felt so empty without the rage to
fill it. When he saw his sister he knew that he was wrong. He could
feel something, something that shredded his insides and made him
bleed with the little girl staring up at him from the bed. She
wasn’t dead yet because she was such a fierce little thing, but she
soon would be and even as he watched her breath came in quick,
breathy pants and her face got paler and paler.

“Clare bear. Look at my baby. You’ve
gotten--” His throat closed and he blinked back tears along with an
insane urge to laugh at his own absurdity. “You’ve gotten taller my
pretty little miss. My Princess.”

Her mouth, once slack pulled up into a
grin at the sight of him while her pupils grew to the size of
marbles and the blood kept rushing from between her skinny little
legs.

He’d watched enough men die to know
that she’d be gone soon. Something in her was broken that couldn’t
be fixed and his soul, cracked at first, began to break and shatter
around him.