Out.
In.
Out.
In.
The slow, thorough penetration brings me to the edge of something… something only he draws from me. That feeling—my own release. I didn’t know I could have one, until he showed me.
My eyes flutter shut against the intensity of his blue stare. Pushing his cum into me, he plants it deep. He collects more from my pelvis and repeats the action.
When I can no longer bear the slow thrusting, I clench for him to stay deep. To give me my sweet release.
A husky chuckle leaves him—deep and dangerous—and rumbles around the small space between us. “Okay, little creature.” He slides in until his knuckle touches my lips and stirs, spinning my nerves and wrapping them around his finger. Just one finger. One thick, rough, long Xin De finger coiled with the fibres of my pleasure.
My hips circle with his motion. “Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes,” I stammer again because I actually don’t know what I’m answering—he didn’t ask me a question. “Yes, to everything. Everything you do to my body.”
“I never gave you a choice, sweet creature.” He rotates his finger. “Can you feel my cum inside you? You’ll always be filled with me, your pussy, your womb, and your mind. You occupy so much of mine I demand the same from you.”
Do all males speak such heated words? How can words consume me so entirely? How can mere speech turn me around, flip my stomach, and force my core to pulse? I like it.
Moaning as he strokes inside me, I let the raw words seep in as he brings me over the edge, no, throws me over it. I shake and shudder around his unhurried penetration.
“You ripple so beautifully when you come for me. My cock is viciously jealous of my finger right now.”
And as the pleasure blooms, unfurling me, and my insides massage his fingers, wanting them to stay there forever, I realise I might love him. That it’s okay to admit it to myself. Nothing lasts forever, but right now, I love him.
Nothing lasts forever.
The lovely feeling mellows.
Rome’s finger is still deep inside me as I gasp for air and slump further into the mattress.
“I know what you say—” I pant, licking my dry mouth to get the words out. “All the ways you’ll take my body, force me, but I see what you do.” I open my eyes to his, stunning blue beacons. “And you could have done that tonight, forced me open, even as I am sore, but you didn’t. You don’t want to hurt me, my king.”
His eyes narrow on me, amusement and menace both dwelling within their azure depths. “True,” he purrs. “I do not desire to hurt you, sweet creature. The thought of your pain… angers me. I’m not sure what to make of it.”
A small smile hits my lips, and I store that sentence away for when… ‘nothing lasts forever.’ I ask, “But my body is just yours to use? Is that all it is? I feel so much… more.”
His hand moves to the side of my face, and his thumb meets my lower lip. “No,” he purrs, eyes roaming my face, surprising me with their softness. “Your body is not just for me to use. Inside you is when I feel most human.”
Nothing lasts forever.
I’m okay with that.
I have to be okay with that.
“And I bring you peace.” I turn my head into his bicep, nuzzle his warm skin, and inhale his scent to store that along with his words. “You’re at odds with peace, but I see it.”
“I am not at odds with peace.” His gaze rolls over me, soft but pained. “I am suspicious of it. If I let it live inside me, even when with you, my humanity will not survive losing it.”
“Nothing lasts forever,” I whisper, drifting.
I think I might be in love with you, and that is quite fine. I can love you now and wish you farewell when the time comes.
Senseless for him in this moment, high on him and us and everything we are right now, that when he moves away from me, I almost lunge for his arm. But I do not.
He stands, then slides the gold sheet over my body, looking down at me, defiance moving in his blue eyes.
What did I do?
I sit, the sheet sliding down again, exposing my nipples to the bite of air. “My king…?”
My hope gutters as he stares at me, eyes empty and cold, his looming figure a brawny, detached silhouette.
“Nothing lasts forever?” He chuckles coldly. “Very well. Tomorrow night, little creature. No need for the veil. I want you gazing into my eyes when I fuck you, when it hurts, so you remember me when I send you away.”
Chapter Eighteen
Rome
The Missing Moon must be at its highest peak in the sky, though I can’t see but a muddied glow of its presence.
I avoid sleep, her, and “nothing lasts forever.”
How willing she is to accept this. How brutal her words were after I shared my need for her. Dammit—that ‘I breathe better with her.’ Fuck.
And she will retire to a Sired Mother, leave this dark, murderous chasm I carry around, and take all my air away, leave me suffocating on her memory…
‘Nothing lasts forever’ imbeds deeper than a bullet.
Well, that is quite fine, little Silk Girl. The perfect product of The Trade. Not an individual.
Not mine… But theirs.
I snarl. I told her I would kill the man who interrupted us, in turn, it was me. Always me. Self-hate found a home within me the day Tuscany was mutilated, and it’s been breeding ever since. I no longer recognise it as hatred, but as a part of me.
She must already see it.
Must already want to be rid of it.
Soft, rhythmic music sails through the piazza, coiling around my entertainers, moving them to its seductive rhythm. They share intimate encounters. Dancers, House Girls, clad in barely-there slips of fabric, touch each other and moan.
I lean forward on the throne, rubbing my jawline, watching them, finding them boring, unattractive, even. Pointless. This entire hedonistic last-moment gathering was my attempt to sabotage whatever feelings I have before it is too late and I am unwilling to let her go.
A memory slams into my mind, further foregrounding everything I expect from her once she sees me for who I am, once she sees the bleak, black chasm of my heart.
My bloodied hands shake with rage and my teeth bare on a growl as I enter Tuscany’s quarters with the dripping head of our father.
I scan the room, and, as always, the bed is made and empty. The kitten she was gifted months ago is now taxidermized on her nightstand.
I stomp into the bathroom.
With her back to me, she lays in the glossy ceramic bathtub, her slender arms draped over the lips; the water is as still as her body.
A hysterical scream bounces around the small, tiled bathroom as a member of The Queen’s Army gapes at the severed head of their king in the tight fist of their prince.
But Tuscany doesn’t even flinch.