The Emerald Lily Read online

  After a moment’s pause, she unpinned her hair and shook out the waves around her shoulders.

  “Come to me, Mikhail,” she beckoned, and he was sure his soul slipped from his body at her command.

  “Did you accept him?” he asked yet again, softer but shaking, gripping the arms of the chair.

  “Come to me, and I’ll tell you.”

  Slowly, he shoved out of the chair and stood, then strode toward her with long, hard steps, stopping only when he was mere inches away. She didn’t reach up to touch him. And he didn’t reach out to touch her.

  He couldn’t understand the expression on her face, both adoring and somber at the same time. “I did not accept him. Because you’re right. I belong to another.”

  He couldn’t move, relief washing over him so fast his vision hazed.

  “You asked me once what it was like when I was in the bloodless sleep.” She licked her lips, emotion shaking her voice.

  “Yes.”

  “There were times I could hear people moving in the room around me, even talking like I wasn’t there, like I was invisible. While I lay there in pain.”

  Mikhail wanted to break the bones and slash the throats of every man in that tower. Again. He kept his fisted hands at his sides while she continued.

  “Other times, I drifted in this dreamy place where the sun shined and the birds sang. And then there were the nightmares where monsters chased me, trying to pull me down and devour me. But every time I had one of the nightmares, a faceless man would come and save me. I called him my dark prince.” She reached up and skimmed the tips of her fingers along his defined cheekbone and down his chiseled jaw. “Then you did come. You…my dark prince…son of Christov Romanov, grandson of Rodin Romanov, and great-grandson of Rodin Varis, the rightful, good king of the Glass Tower. Of the Varis Empire.”

  He couldn’t breathe as she whispered his secret and traced the lines of his face, the pads of her fingers sliding over his lips. The secret he and Dmitri had kept, lest they be murdered like their great-grandfather, the twin brother and first victim of Queen Morgrid.

  “How did you know?” The rolling timbre of his voice sounded like the low rumble of thunder before a storm.

  “While you’ve been thinking I was downstairs courting Lord Rathbone, I’ve been visiting with his father.”

  “The old man who wouldn’t stop staring at me all night?”

  “Yes.” She smiled, her hand sliding down his throat, where she began to work on the buttons of his shirt. “He was staring because he recognized you.”

  “Me? I never forget a face. I’ve never seen him before.” His attention shifted to her fingers. “What are you doing?”

  His shirt gaped open. She skimmed her delicate hands over the ridges of his abdomen and the planes of his chest. He flexed beneath her touch, holding himself rigid as stone.

  “I need you, Mikhail,” she whispered—hesitant—the sound of her desperation cracking his shell of stone. “Please be my dark prince again. Be the man I need…and desire.”

  Mina skated her hands up over his bare shoulders, sliding off his shirt till it fell in a soft whoosh. But she went no further.

  The look of yearning in those ethereal pools of blue brought him to his knees. He could no more turn away than he could tear out his own heart. And yet, that’s exactly what this felt like. Ripping through sinew and bone, exposing the vulnerable, raw part of him he’d kept behind a wall of vengeance and rage. He’d only had room for his brother, the Bloodguard, and the fervent will to annihilate Queen Morgrid and her order for so many long years. To the great disappointment of his mother, he rarely returned home. How could he? When his father was not yet avenged?

  But now, the world fell away, his body and soul demanding he take what was his, divined by auspicious stars and bewitching fortune, tempting him to break every vow and promise, if only to have this woman as his own.

  Lightning swift, he lifted her by the waist and backed her into the wall. Sliding his hands up over her ribs, skating her breasts, lifting up her arms and smoothing his hands up till they were palm to palm, he laced his fingers with hers and pressed them to the wall.

  “I’m thinking you’ve ruined me.” He nuzzled her lips but didn’t go in, then dragged his mouth across her jaw to her ear and settled his weight against her, letting her feel every hard inch of his body pressed to hers. “Whatever plans of ambition and justice for the Bloodguard, for my family, that I had, they are now gone.”

  “I wouldn’t take that away from you,” she said breathily. “You don’t have to give up anything for me.”

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s too late.” He scraped the tips of his fangs along the tender spot beneath her ear down to her pulse point, pressing hard enough to mark her but not enough to draw a drop of blood.

  “No, Mikhail. It isn’t.”

  Bending his leg to slide between her own, he pressed his thigh to her hot core. “I tried to keep away. Tried not to touch you. Impossible.”

  He trailed his tongue from her pulse down the curve to her shoulder. Clamping his teeth on the end of her ribbon, he pulled the bow free. The tie fell, the flap over one breast falling with it. He shifted back to gaze at her rose-pink nipple, puckered and waiting, the rise and fall of her lovely chest, the roundness of her eyes, filled with yearning. For him.

  “But I’m done, Mina mine. I’m going to touch and taste every part of you.” Dropping his head down, he sucked her taut nipple on a groan, then lifted back up till his lips whispered gruffly against hers. “I’m going to drive so deep inside you, you’ll forget everything but me”—he stroked his tongue along the seam of her lips, prying them apart with erotic leisure—“and when you’ve come on my tongue and on my cock for the fourth or fifth time, you might finally understand what it feels like to be me. To be utterly devastated with need.”

  He crushed his mouth against hers, unlacing his fingers from hers to cup her face and hold her hard. He kissed her roughly. Thoroughly, wholly, deeply. Her fangs sharp, she pulled back and nicked his lips with a lust-filled gleam in her eyes. Her aroused scent filled his nostrils, hardening his cock to pain.

  He twisted her around and flattened her palms to the wall. “Keep them there.”

  He wasted no time jerking up the hem of her chemise, sliding his hand over her hip, dipping his fingers lower between her folds, over her tight bud. He wrapped his other arm across her chest and slid his hand under the chemise to squeeze her breast and tease her nipple.

  “Please,” she whispered, grinding her hips against his hand, the globes of her ass brushing against his cock still constrained in rough leather.

  “Who do you belong to, Mina?” he grated in her ear.

  With her hands planted on the wall, she pushed back more forcefully, drawing a hiss from him when she ground against his crotch. “You, Mikhail.”

  “Yes.” He rolled her nipple between index and thumb more roughly. His need for possession amped his blood to liquid fire, his body hardening in response, ready to plunder and mark her deep. “Mine.”

  She moaned in response.

  He pushed a finger inside her—so tight—planting rough kisses along her neck. “Soaking wet, Princess.” She tilted hear head to one side for him, her hair sliding away so he could see, hear, feel her rapid pulse humming in the air. He was drowning in the musky scent of her arousal and the call of her blood.

  “Fuck.”

  The need to be inside her blacked out his brain and any other thought. Making short work of his laces, he gripped his thick cock and stroked the head into her folds just once without breaching her. A virgin, for certain, he kept hold of the reins, coating himself in her warm heat. A slow glide through her cleft tore a sweet whimper from her throat.

  “Yes.” She arched her spine, lifting her bottom higher.

  He slid in just enough for his tip to be fisted tight. The agonizing torture it took to restrain himself nearly broke him. His beast urging him to thrust and take. Not like this.

>   Withdrawing, she released a plaintive cry, arching back to offer more of herself. He stripped to nothing in a blink, then swept her up into his arms. She made a giggle-gasp in surprise, wrapping her arms around his neck, her warm breath on his cheek.

  Stretching her out on the bed, he ripped the chemise up over her head and tossed it away. She lay back, her golden hair spilling over the sapphire counterpane, half-lidded eyes glinting bright, fingers clawing into the fabric beneath her, moon-pale skin a delectable feast for his eyes.

  He knelt above her, gazing his fill, in utter rapture at her erotic beauty. She stared up at him as if he were a conquering king, finally taking what was rightfully his. Perhaps he was. Her perusal swept down his face, his chest, and torso, stopping at his stiff cock. It hardened even more under her widened gaze. Taking himself in hand, he stroked as she watched, her slickness still there, the musky scent an aphrodisiac he inhaled deep.

  “See what you do to me.”

  Sweeping his thumb over the tip, he slicked himself more, coating his cock. There would be no foreplay tonight. He’d taste her after he came hard inside her body. That was paramount.

  “I’ve been like this since the moment I touched your lips in that tower.”

  He recognized his voice had dropped to a dangerous, grating decibel, but she showed no fear as his vampire reared forward in triumph that this moment had finally come.

  “Aching for you.” He stroked, his cock growing impossibly thicker. “Like fucking torture.”

  Her gaze lifted, her pink tongue darting across her lips as she raised her arms, “Then come to me and let me ease the pain.”

  “Open for me, Mina.”

  She spread her legs, and he was lost. Falling forward onto one hand beside her head, he lifted her right leg over his hip. Notching his cock at her entrance, the heat of her pulling him in just an inch, he groaned like a dying man, bracing his forearms on the bed, caging her in.

  “This may hurt at first.”

  “Good.” Her eyes glittered with sensual mischief, her fingers gripping his broad shoulders. “I want it to hurt.” She added, breathlessly, “I want to remember this first time, the first man entering my body.”

  A guttural growl rumbled from deep in his chest as he spoke so close, their lips brushed. “I am and will be the only man, Mina.” Then he thrust up inside her body, tearing past her barrier with brutal force.

  She cried out, her neck arching, vampire claws biting into his shoulders. Her perfect small breasts pressed up, peaked nipples grazing his chest.

  Primal desire pulled his mouth down to her alabaster skin. He licked a line along the curve of her neck and shoulder, finding her rapid pulse with his tongue. Holding his cock deep, not moving, her tight sheath stretched around him.

  “Mina.” He ground her name out like a curse to the heavens or a prayer to hell, hoping his sanity didn’t slip as he bit into her soft flesh, his fangs sinking hard.

  “Ah!” She dug her claws in deeper till Mikhail scented his own blood. A primal possessiveness exalted in the beauty of her beast rising up to meet his. This would be no gentle coupling but one where a vampire queen and vampire king bound themselves to each other with sweat and blood and a primitive conquering of each other.

  Mikhail groaned in ecstatic pleasure, sucking her blood into his mouth. The sweet tang flooded into his limbs, sending a pulse of power through his entire body.

  As he drank and his elixir poured into her veins, she rocked her hips up, willing him to move. He obliged, pulling out to the tip and gliding back in on a groan. Finally unlatching his fangs from her flesh, his lips found hers.

  “You undo me, woman,” he breathed, cupping the back of her head in his palm, stroking in slow inside her.

  “You make me whole,” she whispered, then he opened his mouth over hers and started to move.

  Pumping inside in a slow but steady grind, he swallowed her moans, stroking his tongue along hers. She encouraged him with soft sighs as their mouths came apart, as they drifted into each other in a way he’d never experienced with another woman.

  He lifted away, hovering close to see the look of ecstasy in her eyes shining back at him, her mouth ajar, full lips swollen, canines long, curved, and sharp. Keeping her body immobile with his chest, he stroked deeper, harder, furiously pounding his thick cock, the erotic sound driving him to the brink.

  A fierce look of determination crossed her face as she planted her hands on his shoulders and pushed. He let her have her way, rolling with the momentum till he was on his back and she was mounted on top of him like a golden goddess upon her erotic throne. A bark of laughter slipped free from his throat, melting into a rough groan when she ground her hips down hard.

  “Come on, then,” he murmured, spreading his hands on her slim hips, “take what you want.” He thrust upward, her eyes slid closed. “Fuck me good,” he commanded, even while her beast reveled in taking the reins.

  Her hands on his chest, pushing her pert breasts together, pink nipples jutting up, she rode him, accepting the rhythm he set beneath her. He leaned up to lick and suck one nipple, which spurred her on to rock faster. Feeling her orgasm quicken, he fell back to watch—the look of carnal pleasure sweeping her face, the beauty of her lithe body moving on top of his, the slick eroticism of his cock entering her heat.

  Then she cried out, mouth open in pure ecstasy. Holding her hips down, he groaned as her tight cunny pulsed around his cock until the ripple finally ebbed and her sated gaze found his. She lay her sweet torso atop his, her silken hair trailing on his chest, and tilted her head forward, her mouth at his ear.

  “I want to feel you come inside me.” Without warning, she bit into his neck near the shoulder, her slender fangs a mere pinprick. But then her elixir. Pure, raw, sweet ecstasy.

  “By the stars, you’re going to kill me.”

  Sliding his hands to cup the globes of her ass, fingers digging into her flesh, he drove up harder, his entire body sleek with sweat. “Yes,” he groaned, still pumping hard. “Drink from me, Mina mine. Take it all if you want to. My heart…my fucking soul, too.”

  He was lost. Gone. Undone. Riding on pure erotic bliss and a headier, stronger emotion he knew could only be one thing. For it filled him with a terrifying kind of joy.

  She wrenched her mouth away, though careful not to mar his flesh, her head falling back with a swing of her golden hair, the tresses sliding over the backs of his hands squeezing her ass. The ripples of her second orgasm milked his cock to the point he could hold back no longer. With one long, slick stroke, he speared her deep, burying his face into her neck as his cock pumped his seed, hot and hard.

  For a long moment, he simply held her there as she draped herself on top of his chest.

  When he could finally draw breath slow enough to speak, he admitted, “I’m a bloody fool.”

  She propped her cheek in her hand, elbow on his chest. “Why?”

  “No man living and breathing could deny you anything. I promise, Mina mine. I won’t deny you ever again.”

  She smiled, a pretty pink flushing up her neck to her cheeks. “If I’d known that’s all it took, I’d have seduced you back in that cave in the Novak Mountains.”

  He laughed, one that echoed the absolute joy blooming inside him. Yes. This woman could certainly command a kingdom. Just as she now commanded his heart.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Mina didn’t know she could feel like this. She lay with her head on Mikhail’s bare chest, his fingers languorously tracing lines from her hip to the small of her back then repeating the trail. His lovemaking was intoxicating, but the man himself? Riveting. Mesmerizing. Like she’d fallen under the sweetest of spells. And this time, she didn’t want to wake up.

  But more than that, this man, this emotion burning through her with meteoric fury, felt like being shot into fate’s precarious hands. She was focused only on what the stars deemed important. And at this moment, that was her dark prince. Not the war. Not her coming confrontation wit
h the lords in the House of Arkadia. Nothing at all but this precious gift weaving her into a sensual web.

  The rough pads of his fingertips as they swirled over her skin, the soft rise and fall of his chest as he breathed, the strong thud of his heartbeat beneath her ear—this was where her destiny lay. She was sure of it.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked, voice rumbling deep.

  “You.”

  His fingers stilled, then began roving again. “Good things, I hope.”

  She lifted up onto one arm, her loose hair falling down to his chest. “The best.” She smiled.

  He reached up and cupped her cheek, fingers combing into her hair. “Then what worries you?”

  He seemed to always know. She couldn’t tell him she feared now that she’d found her purpose, found him, that he would disappear. And she’d fall back into that slumber where everything was cold and quiet. No life at all. She didn’t want to rule without him at her side.

  “You can tell me,” he urged. But she wasn’t quite ready to voice those fears.

  She turned to thoughts of Lord Petrov again, gliding her fingers along his pectoral and sternum, her fingers lazily dipping and rising in the hard grooves.

  “You know, Lord Petrov told me of a white witch visiting my birth celebration. I remember when I was a little girl, my nurse used to say that a white witch visited me as a babe and made me the fairy girl that I was. Then she was taken away from me, and I forgot. Or I thought it was only a tale to make me laugh. It didn’t seem important then, and I’ve heard no one speak of it since.” She paused her exploration with her fingers, meeting his gaze. “Have you heard of that before?”

  “Yes. I know those who dare to speak of that witch. But not many do. It’s as if Queen Morgrid cast a spell to make everyone forget.”

  “How do you know about it then?”

  He smirked. “I made a point to discover all I could about you when the queen set her sights on using you as a pawn in her plans.”

  “You did?” She was surprised he’d investigated into her past before they’d met. “Why did you do that?”