"You suck." My retort is weak, but it's all I have.
"I'll spend a hundred years making up for it," he promises.
I'm about to tell him I'll be dead in a hundred years, but he's taken my mouth again.
His commanding kiss and the light touch of his hands could drive me insane with yearning. I run my fingers through his soft hair, treating him like he's mine to play with. Mine to savor. Mine to tease. I nip at his lower lips and he snaps. Zale takes both of my thighs below the knees and lifts me up on the wooden countertop. I wrap my legs around his torso and he grunts, leaving my mouth to watch me.
Zale fists several of my curls and lowers his nose to my hair, inhaling my scent. "You want me," he says half smug, half wonder.
I wrinkle my nose. "Doesn't everyone want you?"
"No one else matters."
He can say the sweetest lies. I reward him for it with a kiss along his neck, then under his ear. Releasing his head, my hands toy with the top buttons of his black shirt, closed for once. I can count on this contrary man to have too many buttons fastened when I want them gone.
"I should have taken you in the royal chamber." Abandoning my hair, his hand skims the length of my neck, dipping lower and lower, returning to my parted thighs. "On a bed of silk and feathers, covered by roses. I should have ripped all your pearls off and claimed you then. I certainly wanted to."
"That fucking dress," I groan.
"I'll have you wear it again." Zale's finger grazes the band of my pants and slides below. "So that I can tear it from you."
I'm chuckling one moment and gasping the next.
The Ravelynian king is a shade of sinful and filth, well-schooled in the arts of pleasure. His fingers tease the nub at the apex of my thighs, slips between my heated folds and back to my sensitive clit, featherlight, teasing as he takes my mouth, deeper, harder.
"Zale!"
He grunts against my lips, sensing my growing need in the furnace that is my core, and curves two fingers inside me, seeking my burning insides with harsh, purposeful force. My entire body tightens. My spine arches, throwing my head back and my chest forward. I pant, this foreign body of mine racing toward an inexorable release at a blinding, almost painful speed.
Zale's free hand slips underneath the fabric of my tunic to seek one of the taut, sensitive breasts that I didn't realize were crying for attention. I scream when he touches them, ever so soft and gentle. Then he drags the entire top up, bunching the fabric over my bare breasts, and lowers his mouth to one of my hard, pointed nipples. I don't understand how his cold skin can burn me, but it does.
I'm not in control of any of my limbs, flailing helplessly like I'm a puppet under someone else’s strings.
In and out, faster and faster, his fingers take me, and his thumb runs in slow, lazy circle at my clit. And his mouth. And his hand cupping my breast. It's all too much, and I can't control it. I tumble over the precipice, with a scream.
Zale moves my limp, slack body against his chest, and carries me upstairs. I don't even attempt to move until he's lowered me to my familiar bed.
Then I blink in surprise.
"Sleep," he tells me, kissing the top of my head.
Though weary, sleep holds no appeal for me as I watch him stand to leave.
I've never been this thoroughly fucked, and Zale is still entirely dressed and too composed. I didn't even manage to undo more than three of his buttons.
That won't do at all.
Before he can turn to leave, I hook my finger in the top of his pants and sit up. He's so ridiculously tall, but with the added height of my bed, I reach his crotch on my knees.
"Helyn." There's a warning in his tone, and the way his blue eyes change to green.
I choose not to heed it, making quick work of his one silver button and his zipper next. His hard cock springs free, pointing straight where I want it.
He's larger than life everywhere, but still, his cock is the most ridiculous part of him, too long and thick, curving upward proudly. Perfect.
Pale fingers brush under my chin and lift my head so that I look straight into his bright green eyes, ripe with magik. "You don't need to do this."
I keep my gaze fixed on his and open my mouth, wrapping my lips around his thumb first. "I very much do, Zale. I may expire if I don't have you in my mouth right now."