Total pages in book: 29
Estimated words: 27631 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 138(@200wpm)___ 111(@250wpm)___ 92(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 27631 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 138(@200wpm)___ 111(@250wpm)___ 92(@300wpm)
His boots scrape to a stop at the edge of my pallet, my neck craned all the way back, so I can keep my gaze on his irritated face. “How am I going to protect you if you’re running off when my back is turned?”
“I don’t understand. How can you protect me when you’re not here?”
“I’m staying, Princess.” I’m still trying to process that statement when he kneels down in front of me, cupping the side of my face. “I’m not leaving you. I wanted to make sure the queen agreed to my full-time protection of you before I made any promises.”
“Really?” I whisper.
To my horror, a tear slips free, splashing down onto his thumb. “No, baby. Don’t tell me you’re up here crying over me leaving.” All it takes is a slight nod from me, pain burdens his face. “No.” He tilts my face up and kisses away the tear. “Nothing gets through me, Greta. Not bullets, not acts of nature, not shrapnel or blades.” He pauses, his lips brushing side to side over mine. “But you did. You cut right through me.”
I tremble in the wake of that vow, my pulse chugging loud and noisily. “Does that mean you like me now?”
He smirks. “‘Like’ is a mild word to describe what I’m feeling.” He guides my face forward, laying his mouth over mine at an angle and kissing me long, slow, his tongue licking into me in a breathless rhythm that makes the ocean sounds recede, leaving it in the background while my heart booms faster, drowning it out. “I’m here to service you in every way, Princess,” he rasps in between kisses, both of us already beginning to run short of breath. “If you lie back on that cushion, I’ll fuck you with my tongue until me leaving is only a distant memory.”
I moan into his mouth, my hands roaming over the brawn of his chest, drugged by the skill of his lips, the hunger being exuded from his rugged frame. And I know I want more with him. I know his mouth between my legs will give my body pleasure, but my soul wants to give everything. Wants to offer itself fully for his consumption. “I would rather feel you move inside me, Commander,” I whisper, kissing his chin while I unfasten his pants, my palm skating down over his stretched zipper. “I don’t want to be a virgin when the sun comes up tomorrow.”
His groan echoes around the stone room, his body pushing mine back onto the pallet. I fall there, beneath him, being kissed like I’m the most desirable woman in the world—and I am that to him. He tells me with every hungry stroke of his tongue, the way he unbuttons my shirt as if the sight of my breasts will grant him eternal happiness. And I swear, that’s exactly what his expression becomes when he pushes apart my blouse and unsnaps the front closure of my bra, exposing my breasts to the balmy evening air, exhaling rockily as he frames them in his hands, kneading them. “What of your plans to be married, Princess?” he asks thickly, something black and dangerous snapping in his gaze. “Listen very carefully. You will not fuck me now and marry another man later. I won’t allow it.”
Can’t he see I don’t want that, either? “How will you stop it?”
“Death.” The commander falls forward, rubbing his face in the valley between my breasts, suckling my right nipple and then the left. “He will not see it coming. Nor will the next one. Or the one after that.”
His drawing of my nipples is causing my sex to pulse in the most deliciously uncomfortable way, his mouth tasting me like I’m a delicacy, reveling and kissing and sucking. “You would kill to keep me unwed?”
Conrad laughs darkly, his open mouth creating a wet path up my throat to devour my mouth. “I would paint the streets red with blood to be the only one with the freedom to come in and out of your bedroom. To be the only one who kisses away your tears. Or holds you during a nightmare. Guards you.” Looking me in the eye, he unsnaps my riding pants and lowers the zipper, plunging his hand inside and taking rough hold of my sex through my panties, causing me to gasp. “This already belongs to your Daddy, but once I’ve been inside of it? Princess, every man in this realm and beyond has a deadly new enemy. Are you still offering to spread your thighs for me?”
I don’t understand why referring to himself as Daddy makes me feel even safer, more coveted. Sweet and cherished. I only know I never want it to stop. That he unearthed and understands a part of me I didn’t even know was there. I’ve never been on the business end of someone’s possessiveness before and to have it be this undefeatable hero? I am vibrating from head to toe in my need to be owned. To be his and no one else’s.