“Why not? Your hair is as soft as I imagined it would be. Move in front of the stool so I can stand on it and reach the laces. First, though, call off your royal eunuch, and trust that your scars will not repulse me. I wish to serve my prince—my Master—in every possible way.”
Her touch was warm, soothing, yet incredibly arousing, her suggestion mesmerizing…hypnotic. He spoke into the communicator by the bed. “Hikaru, wherever you are, I no longer require your service. I will summon you after—”
“After he services his mate—properly this time.” Her husky promise made Arik’s cock twitch to life, though it had shriveled at the sound of her distress a moment earlier.
He moved in front of the stool, sighed and awaited the horrified reaction that always accompanied anyone’s first sight of him. No words could adequately prepare her for what she was about to see, but he had to try. “Be careful of the right side. I’ve lost an eye. Some of the scar tissue around the socket is still sensitive.”
“You aren’t going to scare me off, Master, so you may as well save your breath. I wanted a prince for a mate, and now that I’ve got you I intend to keep you. Have you any idea how jealous it made my sisters when Meredith matched me up with you?” Emerald’s banter eased Arik’s fears while the feel of each lace giving way to her gentle fingers fed them. Damn it, he could barely breathe.
By the gods, he wanted her to accept him. He’d never before met a woman willing to defy a prince’s order—or one so determined to impose her own will on her Master. When he’d told his father he’d sooner fuck whores from the Street of Pleasure than take a mate chosen by a matchmaker, he had been wrong. In one day the beautiful redhead who now had his hood loose and was about to lift it off his head had captured more than his animal lust—she’d engaged his emotions.
He’d never been so scared, not even when the three mercenary craft had circled him off the small planet of Eastphalia, shooting their lasers with deadly precision, determined to destroy him and take his small transporter down. Or when he’d come to in a primitive clinic on that planet in a haze of pain that almost but not quite dulled the revulsion he felt, looking for the first time at the charred stump of his right arm, realizing that was only a small part of what had happened to him when he’d crashed his burning ship.
He’d give all of Obsidion’s wealth to keep Emerald from seeing it now. “Wait,” he told her, lifting his hand and trying to grasp the loosened leather but succeeding only in putting pressure on the tortured flesh beneath it.
She stayed his hand. “It will be no easier later. Let’s do it now.”
He couldn’t watch. Couldn’t bear to see the horror in her eyes. But he couldn’t deny her right to see the man she’d mated with, the father of the child who even now might be growing in her belly. Defeated, he closed his eye. Then he lowered his head and steeled himself to hear her scream.
All he heard as the concealing leather fell away was her swift intake of breath and a dull thud when her body hit the marble floor.
Chapter Five
Half-conscious now, Emerald lay not on the floor but on Arik’s bed, trying desperately to recall why she’d fainted.
Softly, so softly, he was speaking to her as though she were a frightened child. How long had she been lying there? She had no idea. It could have been mere moments—or hours.
Though his words hadn’t stuck in her mind, she’d never forget the tear that fell from his eye and lingered on her cheek—a warm, wet kiss from her Master. A kiss that held regret, resignation and disappointment. One that made her want him more than ever, even more than she wanted to experience a repeat of the delicious climaxes he’d brought her yesterday.
No! Fate couldn’t have played such a cruel trick. Shame washed over her, for she sensed that by fainting she’d hurt him as badly as the injuries that had mutilated him.
I shouldn’t have insisted he bare himself. Should have kept my curiosity under wraps. Curiosity, nothing, I wanted all of him, needed him to bring me pleasure, not just with his cock but with all of him. I couldn’t be satisfied with him fucking me, and his royal eunuchs doing what he would not, could I?
She heard voices, Arik’s and Hikaru’s? She felt someone tying silky-feeling scarves around her wrists and ankles. I told you I won’t run away. You don’t need to tie me to your bed. Although she wanted to speak, her voice wouldn’t work and her eyelids felt too heavy when she tried to open them.
“I believe she’s waking up, my lord.”