Princess (19 page)

He lowered his head and began licking her nipple in delicate circles as his clever, coaxing fingers worked a slow, sensuous magic. He made her wanton. She couldn’t help it. She spread her legs wider for him, arching helplessly against his slick, perfect touch. He took her breast in his mouth and suckled her. She could feel her wetness ooze lusciously between her thighs, and knew only Darius could have made her body respond this way.

She clung to him, her arms around his neck, as he slowly penetrated her with one finger, then two, then she was mindless. She was wholly under his control now, and she reveled in it. His hand was wet and hot with her juices. Her every muscle was poised for the splendid cataclysm that was still an unknown mystery to her. Her eyes were closed in intense, breathless concentration on the totality of her sensation, but she could feel him watching her.

“God, you are so beautiful,” he whispered.

She moaned his name. Wrapping her arms more tightly around his neck, she returned his kiss fiercely, taking his mouth, stroking his tongue with her own as he had done to her, thirsty for him. The taste of him was pure and clean and sheer male. A soft moan escaped her at the sweetness of him.

She still could not believe she was kissing Darius Santiago.

It was without question the greatest event of her life.

Suddenly he moved atop her, lying between her legs. He braced himself on his arms over her.

“Touch me,” he commanded, panting, his voice roughened with want.

She was eager to obey, caressing his hard belly and chest, but he grasped her wrist and, with a sultry little smile, showed her that wasn’t exactly what he meant.

As she molded her hand over the bulging outline of his manhood in his trousers, her lashes swept up to lock her gaze with his, her lips parted with daring, wanton joy. His face was harsh with raw need. Then he closed his eyes as she caressed him through his clothes, stroking the throbbing rod that spanned a width almost as wide as her palm and so long it nearly emerged from the waist of his trousers.

The little, deep groans that escaped him fed her want. She marveled when his hips thrust slightly against her touch. His desire made her bolder still.

“I want to see it,” she whispered.

He laughed breathlessly, arching his head back over her. “My naughty angel. I don’t think that would be wise—”

But she was already carefully unfastening his trousers.

Eyes flickering with black flame, he made no attempt to stop her. She slid her hands inside his falls. He drew in his breath, and she watched ecstasy steal over his finely chiseled face, his eyes drifting closed, his lips parting.

Then he hung his head, the forelock falling into his eyes again.

With both hands, she explored him in wonder, eager to please, and too curious to be timid. No wonder he was so virile, she thought. His sex was like a cylinder of steel swathed in finest satin. She recalled some gossip among the palace ladies, who all agreed he was tremendously well endowed.

It angered her that they should know that. No doubt any one of them would have had a better notion what to do at a moment like this, she thought in frustration. The man of her dreams was in her arms and she had only the sketchiest theoretical knowledge of how to satisfy him.

“Darius?”

He glanced down at her.

She gave him a look of frustration, embarrassed by her ignorance. “I’m sorry,” she began.

Understanding flashed in his dark eyes. “Don’t apologize, angel. I love your innocence.” With a tender little smile, he leaned down and kissed her, while lower, he wrapped his hand over hers on his smooth shaft, teaching her his pleasure.

“Mm, that’s very good, Serafina,” he breathed as he removed his hand.

He ran his fingers through her hair as she squeezed and stroked firmly, kissing his chest now and then, flicking her tongue over the tiny circles of his nipples. He moaned softly, his hands wandering down to cup her breasts, squeezing her nipples lightly between his thumbs and forefingers. At the pleasure he gave her, she quickened her caresses upon him.

The faster, rougher pace seemed to arouse him exceedingly. He hung his head, slid against her touch, his muscles working in pure poetry. After a few minutes, he gripped her shoulders suddenly.

“No more. You’ll make me come in my britches like a schoolboy,” he panted, dragging his heavy-lidded eyes open to hold her in a decadent stare.

“What does that mean?” she asked, wide-eyed as she leaned up on one elbow.

A lazy half-smile curved his scarred lips. “Keep that up and you’ll find out.”

“Maybe I will.” Watching his face, she squeezed harder, testing his response.

He gasped low, then bit his lip, eyes closed. “You’re ruthless, Serafina. And very, very talented.”

“Thank you.” Gripping him in both hands, she applied herself to intensifying the look of passion in his face, smiling to herself with a drifting sense of wonderful debauchery. She wanted him drunk and helpless with pleasure, as she was.

He clenched her shoulder, moving against her hands, his compact hips thrusting with her.

“
Unh,
God, I have no control with you,” he moaned. “Serafina, this is torture. This has already gone further than I intended. We have to stop.”

“Shh,” she whispered, quieting him as she lovingly stroked him.

“I want to be wet with you,” he said with sudden urgency. His hands were shaking as he pushed his trousers farther down his hips and lay between her legs.

“Oh, my!” she gasped, shocked by the pleasure of his member throbbing hotly against her, then she blushed bright red when he ran his fingers deep between her legs and slicked his towering hardness with her pearly fluid. Glancing down to watch, she quivered at the sight of his hand wrapped around himself, smoothing her wetness up and down over his manhood.

He lay atop her again, and she shivered under him as his silken length glided upright against her teeming flesh.

He groaned. She arched again. He pressed.

Her heart was pounding.

“God, I want you.”

“Yes,” she said.

“I cannot bear this,” he breathed. “I need to be inside you.”

“Please,” she groaned.

“Don’t say yes. Ah, God, Serafina. This is torment.”

She wanted to help him. In a trance of pure erotic instinct, she reached down and caressed him, holding his member, throbbing and rigid and wet, against her passage.

“No, no!” he whispered. Pulling back, he stopped her in breathless desperation, looking shocked, wild. “We can’t do that. We can’t. I won’t.”

“Why not?”

“No, Serafina. No!”

“Come back,” she purred with a wanton smile. “We’ll just pretend.”

He looked down at her like he wanted to devour her.

She lay back, gripped him in her palm, and slowly began moving against him, hips lifting to ride up and down the bottom curve of his shaft. She squeezed him rhythmically in her hand all the while, pleasuring him and herself by rubbing his hard flesh just where she wanted him, letting her body guide her.

“You’re amazing,” he breathed.

Moments passed. They were frantic together. Her body was a fire wrapped around him, consuming him; she gasped for air like a hungry flame, but after a few minutes more, she stopped and stared up at him in sudden, unbearable frustration, not knowing what it was she wanted.

“What is it, angel?”

She nearly pouted. “Please, Darius, make it stop.”

“Oh, my poor baby,” he whispered, smiling down at her in fond amusement. “Yes, I think it’s time.” He moved back, then lay down beside her.

She stared at him in distress as he gathered her into his arms. “You must help me. I am going mad.”

He laughed very softly and ran his smooth, sure hand down her hip as he kissed her ear. “You’ll recover. I promise.”

She moaned loudly, her fingers raking the coverlet, her whole body undulating when he laid his hand over her woman’s flesh, pulsing so deeply it ached. He stroked her gently.

“What will happen, Darius?”

“You’ll see. You’ll like it, trust me.” He kissed her fevered brow.

She put her arms around him and held on for dear life, heart racing, her whole body rigid.

“Ah, Serafina, you are everything beautiful and good to me,” he murmured in a husky voice as he dipped his fingers smoothly in and out, thrusting deftly, his thumb swirling in fantastic circles over her center.

She moaned helplessly, writhing with his touch.

“That’s right, angel, let it go. Let it all go, give it to me,” he whispered.

She clutched him tightly, gasped suddenly in a strangled cry, as explosions of shattering pleasure burst in a series through her body, radiating from her feminine core.

Darius’s breath was harsh at her ear.

Light seemed to rush through her limbs, racing along her nerve endings, flooding her body with sensations that went on and on, blinding colors behind her eyelids in the dark. She felt like she was dying and then, just as suddenly, she went limp in his arms, gasping with the aftershocks of pleasure, but before she could quite comprehend what had hit her, Darius leaned toward her, kissing her in hot demand.

When he took her hand and wrapped it around him, this time she understood what he needed. His hand guided hers in rough, urgent insistence, then he sank slowly from his side and lay on his back, completely under her command. Her power over this magnificent, deadly male awed her in that moment. She felt his hardness swell and pulse as he thrust through her grip again and again, his muscled body rippling under her touch. Gripping her shoulder so tightly she thought there’d be bruises, he pulled her down for a frenzied kiss, then he only held her near as he panted, eyes closed, a look of tantalizing pain on his chiseled face.

“Don’t stop,” he gasped out helplessly.

She stroked him, wholly focused on pleasuring him, when suddenly he gave a low, anguished cry of release, she a barbaric gasp of triumph, and his hips lifted—he was like steel in her hand, discharging the hot, shooting glory of his seed, raining it on his hard, flat belly.

She stared, amazed. He groaned. His body went perfectly rigid, then slowly eased slack as all the tension flowed from him.

He lay on the bed, spent, panting, his expression one of exhausted bliss.

She watched him in fascination.

He cast a forearm over his brow and, still panting slightly, swept his lashes open and gazed at her from under his arm. He laughed a little when he saw her, or perhaps he was laughing at himself, but his onyx eyes were shining with silver stars.

Well, I must have done it right,
she thought.

His hand idly caressed her knee. “Where am I?” he murmured dazedly after a moment.

“Rusticating,” she whispered with sparkles in her eyes.

CHAPTER TEN

A short while later, they bathed together by candlelight, Darius behind her, Serafina sitting between his legs, leaning back against his chest in luxurious indolence. Lazily, he soaped her arm while she rubbed her foot idly over his under the tepid water. They barely spoke, communicating through the silent language of touch as they washed each other.

After their bath, Serafina sent for an elaborate midnight snack of cold sliced meats, cheese, bread, and wine. By that time, all the servants in the household had figured out what was going on, so they abandoned any pretense otherwise. Lounging in her bed, both of them in their robes, they ate, picnic-style, and fed each other bites of their simple feast.

She coaxed him into speaking of his travels in distant lands. She listened, taking the tray away when he was done eating. Idly smoking a cheroot as he leaned against the headboard, one knee bent, he told of his stint training troops for Ali Pasha in the lonely, windswept mountains of Janina.

She picked up her silver-handled hairbrush and returned to sit, cross-legged, on the bed near him. She began brushing her hair as she listened, fascinated by the complexity, intelligence, intensity, and wry mischief of the hidden man who was revealed when the great Santiago cast off his arrogance. At length, his voice trailed away midsentence, and he just gazed at her, looking mystified.

“What is it?”

“I feel more at ease with you than I ever have with anyone in my life.”

She smiled at him, her heart soaring. “And this surprises you?”

He pensively flicked his cheroot over the ashtray. “No. But you’re different than I thought you’d be.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t explain it.”

“Better? Worse?”

“Stronger,” he said. “Yet softer.” Then he crushed out his cheroot, set the ashtray on the floor beside the bed, and moved toward her, taking the hairbrush out of her hand. “Turn.”

Delighted, she obeyed. Gently, slowly, he began brushing her hair.

He is the sweetest, tenderest man,
she thought as her eyes drifted closed in relaxation. He was ever so careful not to pull her hair, patiently sorting through any tangles he came across.

“May I ask you something, Serafina?”

“Anything. Whatever you like.”

He considered in careful silence. She smiled to herself as she sensed him struggling with his shyness.

“Yes?” she prodded him.

“I can’t seem to figure out . . . what you see in me.”

She turned around and looked at him in blank amazement. “Can’t you?”

He stared at her as though he couldn’t speak, his eyes full of emotion and vulnerability. Her astonishment softened to tenderness. She touched his cheek. “Yes, you need to hear it, don’t you, my love?”

He lowered his head, as though ashamed.

She stroked his cheek. “It’s all right, Darius. I’d be glad to tell you, but it may take a while.” She smiled a little. “There are a lot of reasons.”

She turned forward again, and tentatively, he resumed brushing her hair. He said nothing, but his attention was acute. She could feel it. She closed her eyes, feeling strangely protective toward him.

“I love it that you choose to stay blind to the faults of the people you care about. You are so incredibly loyal and selfless and giving,” she said slowly. “You have a very fine sense of honor and justice. You’ve got a brilliant, if devious, mind. Indeed, it’s lucky for the world you’re a good man, because you could have been a master criminal instead of the brave, wonderful hero you are.” She sighed, wrapping her arms around her bent knees. “Of course, you are gorgeous and a very good kisser, but we won’t talk about that,” she said archly. “Ah, and you can be very funny! How I relish seeing you deflate some of those pompous asses of the court with your cool, cruel wit! But if any poor underdog is ever outnumbered, you will always go to his rescue.”