All the frustration he had at not being able to strike back at his father funneled into the way he picked me up and hurled me onto the bed. I landed on the mattress with a hard bounce, but I didn’t scramble out of the way when he threw himself on top of me. He bit a path down the side of my neck, creating a line of fire, and the stubble across his jaw burned as it abraded my skin.
I moaned my satisfaction darkly.
As his mouth continued to carve a trail along the edge of my bra, he shifted and moved to one side of me, giving himself room so he could shove a hand between my thighs. With the whisper-thin panties, his touch felt like there was nothing between us, and each caress of his hand sharpened my need like the stroke of a whetstone on a blade.
I wanted him to feel the same painful need I did. When his mouth closed around my nipple and sucked at me through the lace, I jammed a hand beneath the waistband of his underwear and closed a fist around the hot, hard length of him.
“Oh,” I groaned, my body bowing off the mattress as he clamped his teeth down and pulled the distended nipple away from my body. It hurt, but in a good way. Pleasure tugged deep in my belly as his tongue fluttered over the pinched skin.
I was only able to pump my fist on him a few times before he released my nipple and rolled away onto his back, hooking his thumbs under his underwear and yanking it down his strong legs. When I tried to follow his lead and take off my bra, he grunted his disapproval. He climbed on top of me, straddling my hips and pinning my wrists to the bed.
Being trapped beneath him was exciting. His cock was hard and heavy on my stomach, and I squirmed, trying to wriggle upward so he could rub it lower between my thighs. The ache for him was relentless, the craving for him to be inside me brutal.
But I wasn’t just caught under Royce’s hands. His powerful gaze held me down like gravity. He leaned in, tracing the tip of his nose at the corner of my mouth and brushing his open lips over mine. It mercilessly teased his kiss. When I chased him, he was ready for it. His bottom lip swept over my top lip. Contact, but not connection.
It only made me more insatiable.
“Why’d you do it?” Accusation hinted his tone. He was angry with the situation I’d put him in and struggling hard not to show it. “Why’d you go to him?”
“Because I want you to win.” I tried to kiss him, but he held himself back, just beyond my range. “This is what you’ve wanted all of your life. You said everything you did was to get to this point, and I love you. I want you to have it.”
Gone was his anger. The heat in his eyes morphed into something deeper as he stilled. “Ask me again why I gave you my shares.”
My heart stumbled, running faster than the rest of me, making me go breathless. “Why’d you do it?”
“Because I love you.” He declared it without hesitation. His voice wasn’t loud, but it was powerful. “Whatever you want, it’s yours, Marist. I’d give up everything I have just to be with you, and that includes my name.” His expression was devastatingly beautiful, full of love and adoration. “You don’t have to stay with me out of obligation. You can walk away from all of this . . . I just ask that—fuck—you take me with you.”
“Oh, my God,” I whispered. I couldn’t manage anything else. Tears sprung into my eyes and blurred my vision, but I blinked them back, determined not to miss the moment he gave me his heart.
I never would have believed the prince of Cape Hill knew how to plead, or that he’d be willing to renounce his throne for me, but it was the most honest and real I’d ever seen him.
I was going to tell him I loved him, and he didn’t have to give anything up. When he’d proposed, he’d told me he was an ambitious man, and eventually he was going to want it all. We could have it, I wanted to say. But I didn’t get a chance because he let go of my wrists, cased my head in his hands, and delivered a kiss that flipped my world upside-down.
Which made sense.
He wasn’t Ares now, this was Hades, the king of the underworld. I was Persephone, the mortal girl he’d stolen and dragged into his world. He’d made her fall in love with him, and now she was happy to rule at his side.