Twin Heirs to His Throne(25)

She was lapping his arousal, more rushes of molten agony flooding her core as she wondered how she would accommodate that much demand, when his hands on her shoulders stopped her. She cried out in frustration, only to find herself on her back again. She held out her arms, hurrying him, hands flailing over whatever she could reach of him. Chuckling his gratification at her urgency, he drowned her in a luxurious, tongue-mating embrace, before he suddenly started extricating himself from her clinging limbs. She whimpered, tried to drag him back, but he restrained her hands.

“Patience. This time, I’m doing this right.”

She tried to drag him back with her legs. “You did it right the first time and every time. Just do it again.”

He bit into one of the thighs clinging to him. “I will do it, again and again. But I want to do something first.”

Getting off the bed, he strode out of sight, then suddenly the chamber was plunged in total darkness.

Her heart thudded. Was he still loath to make love to her while she saw all of him? Or maybe now that he had let her see all of him, he needed the respite of darkness?

Suddenly silver light engulfed the whole bed. It took her several stunned heartbeats to realize he’d thrown the drapes and inner shutters of the enclosed balcony open to the night sky. The full moon was framed in the middle of the paneled windows. The moonlight was so intense, she could see nothing outside its domain, didn’t know where Leonid was now.

“This is how you should be showcased...” She lurched at his bass rasp as he seemed to materialize before her moonstruck eyes, a colossal shadow detaching from the darkness, made of mystery and magic. “A goddess of wanton desires, of rampant pleasures, waiting for worshippers to come pay homage, glowing, ripe, voracious, spellbinding.”

She was all that?

She could only murmur, “Look who’s talking.”

He came into the moon’s spotlight, the stark illumination casting harsh shadows over the noble sculpture of his face, turning it from regal to supernatural. His skin and hair glimmered with highlights as he pushed her back on the bed, loomed over her, the full moon blazing at his back, turning him into a magnificent silhouette. Only his eyes caught its silver beams, glowing like incandescent sapphires. She went limp beneath him with the power of it all, the sheer brutal beauty of him, of these moments.

Her chest tightened one last time over the jagged pieces of the past, the terrible memories, before it let them go, then swelled with the new and uncontainable hopes and expectations. Those of having him again. This time, forever.

Crying out, her desperation shattered the last shackle holding him back. He lunged between her eagerly spreading thighs, letting her feel his dominance for a fraught moment.

“Moya boginya...” Gazing into her streaming eyes, calling her his goddess, he plunged inside her with one long, hard thrust.

Her body jerked beneath him as the hot, vital glide of his thick, rigid shaft in her core drove her into profound sensual shock. She clamped her legs around him, high over his back, giving him full surrender, delirious with witnessing the pleasure of possessing her seizing his face. He ground deeper into her until his whole length was buried inside her, filling her beyond capacity. Sensation sharpened, shattering her. She cried out again, tears flowing faster.

He started moving, severing eye contact only to run fevered appreciation over her body, watching her every quake and grimace of pleasure, all the while growling driven, tormenting things.

“How could there be wanting like this...pleasure like this?”

She keened as he accentuated every word with a harder thrust. He devoured the explicit sounds, his tongue invading her mouth, mimicking his body’s movements inside her.

Her sanity burned with the friction and fullness of his flesh in hers, the fusion, the totality of it, now that she knew it was indeed total, and would never end.

Her cries grew louder as his plunges grew longer, until she clawed at him for the jarring rhythm that would finish her. Only then did he build to it, his eyes burning, his face taut, savage with need, sublime in beauty. She fought back her own ecstasy, greedy for the moment his seized him.

Realizing she was holding back, he growled, “Come for me, moya koroleva, let me see what I do to you.”

Her body almost erupted hearing him call her my queen.

But she held on, thrashed her head. “Come with me...”

Roaring, he thrust deeper, destroying her restraint. Release buffeted her, razing her body in convulsions. Those peaked to agony when he succumbed to her demand, gave her what she always craved. Him, at the mercy of the ecstasy of union   with her, pleasure racking him, his seed filling her in hard jets. She felt it all, and shattered.

Time and space vanished as he melted into her, grounded the magic into reality, eased her back into her body.

Everything came back into jarring focus when he tried to move off her. She caught him. His weight should have been crushing, but it had always been only anchoring, necessary. Like he was.

But he’d never let her have his weight as long as she wished, insisting it burdened her. He now rose on outstretched arms, his eyes gleaming satisfaction over her ravished state.

“Koroleva moyey zhizhni.” He trailed a gently abrasive hand over her, eyes worshipping. “Queen of my life.”

A vast thankfulness expanded inside her so hard, she could barely speak. “How do you say ‘king of my world’?”

His whole face blazed with pleasure and pride, his drawl painfully sexy and harsh with emotion. “Korol’ moy mir.”

“Korol’ moy mir.”

Whispering the pledge against his lips, she could say no more as perfect peace, for the first time in her life, dragged her into a well of contentment where nothing else existed...



Live classic Zoryan music woke Kassandra from a delicious dream filled with Leonid.

The royal band was rehearsing in the seafront gardens again for the coming ceremonies.

Though the drapes were securely drawn, and the chamber was dark, she just knew. The sun was shining today.

It had been shining the past two weeks. Everyone she met insisted it was the blessing of the new king and his twin stars. Kassandra was ready to believe it. If happiness like this was possible, then maybe it bent the very laws of nature to itself, too.

It had changed her on a fundamental level. Her heart beat to a different rhythm, her skin had a richer texture, colors had magical hues and life tasted and smelled of him.

Leonid.

Even if she was back in her quarters, and he hadn’t been sleeping beside her this past week, practically had no time for her at all in his consuming preoccupation with preparations, she felt him all around her.

And as if he hadn’t been insanely busy enough, he was now preparing living quarters for them, not his or the ones she was currently staying in, but something totally new and theirs, now that their marriage would be real.

She’d refused to even see where it would be, wanted him to surprise her. Even as a designer, her imagination could never match what his love would bestow on her.

Now he was running against time so it would be ready on the day of the combined rituals: his coronation, and their wedding.

God...their wedding!

She still couldn’t believe any of this was happening.

When she’d asked him to marry her, she’d thought they’d elope, since they’d told everyone they were already married. But Zorya’s newly reformed royal council wouldn’t sanction an undocumented marriage as proof of the twins’ legitimacy. Leonid had said if she hadn’t proposed that night, he would have the next morning. Zorya was demanding a wedding to fix their lack of documentation. And from what she was seeing, it was going to be the royal wedding of the century. Her family, who would come two days before the rituals, were all beside themselves with excitement. Yes, even her father.

Everything felt like a fantasy. Far better than one. She constantly found herself wondering if she was having a ridiculously extravagant wish-fulfillment dream and would wake up to the bleak reality of two weeks ago.

Could everything really be this perfect?

Suddenly, her heart contracted with foreboding.

Pausing until the spasm passed, she wondered at the far stronger than usual attack. Seemed the approaching ceremonies and the superstitious bent of this land had her spooked.

Pushing the ridiculous and unfounded anxieties away, she rose and rushed through getting ready.

Hurrying to the girls first, her mood soared again as they concluded their morning rituals. Afterward, she left them with Despina and Anya and went in search of Leonid. Though she’d been leaving him alone to take care of his endless details, she had to see him today. Just touch and kiss him, before leaving him to his urgent affairs.

As she reached his stateroom, Fedor informed her that Leonid had a surprise visit from an important royal family member.

Before she told Fedor to ask Leonid to touch base with her when he could as she didn’t want to call and disturb him, the door opened, and what she thought a Valkyrie would look like walked out. And it was clear she was not happy.

Suddenly, Leonid appeared after the woman, and the expression on his face froze her heart. He looked...pained.

The woman turned to him and they shared a charged moment. She was clearly angry. He appeared to be doing all he could to placate her.

Refusing his efforts, the mystery statuesque blonde turned away, leaving him looking more distressed. In a minute she passed Kassandra as she stood in the shadows. Surprise flickered in the woman’s eyes before she impaled her on a glance of hostility and walked away.