Page 44 of The Princess Tied

The neck hold, she loved him doing this. They were in the middle of a banquet of enemies, and yet she responded to him, sexually.

“Look.” He bent his knees to be closer to her level, slid both hands down her arms and pulled them to the front, clasped her hands together, squeezing them as he spoke, as if squeezing her hands were punctuation.

“If… you do this… if…”

A frown was building.

He straightened, sighed.

“We can say this outside.” The servant at the doorway was watching, so he marched her through and outside. The soldiers on patrol were obvious. He guided her into the shadows of the marquee, against the canvas. A web of tent ropes played deeper lines on her face and body.

With her back to the marquee, Po inhaled, exhaled. “Say this. I will listen. I am calmer.”

“Of course you will. You think you’re smart? This idea of yours is terrible. You said this yourself, earlier. Reveal yourself to the prince, and you will be a hostage. You know this.”

“I do. Go on. Though… at least I wouldn’t be humiliated. If he finds out who I am, after I strip, he will have that for ammunition, as well as who I am, but if—”

“Once he has you a captive, knows who are, he’ll do whatever strikes him as useful to his country or fun. Or both. Humiliating you over and over may serve all sorts of purposes. Or executing you. We don’t know. Also, I plan to leave before he discovers the truth.”

“There is no way of telling who might know me, here, now.”

“No one, or this would be far worse than it is.”

There was someone coming but she didn’t know it. They had five days. That had to be enough.

“I will promise to get you out of here in time. You will be forgotten within a week as one insignificant, if beautiful, slave girl, naked for a few minutes before the prince. That happens daily for him.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

Again he took her hands in his. She was trembling, and he realized why. This was such a departure from her normal reality, even more so than what he’d done to her. That had been isolated, forced on her, and pleasurable. This had the potential to wreck her world, to rip her away from everything she knew, permanently.

An overwhelming need to save her from that swelled within… and so did his rude, haughty cock. To keep her safe meant he could do all those dirty things he wanted to—to make her cry out in climax because of what he had done to her.

He’d done it once. Why not?

He’d promised. He’d changed. That wasn’t him, remember? And there was Xander…

What if Xander had never meant to share? Maybe for once he loved a woman enough to not share.

Anger, that spawned anger at her for losing him his brother.

“I’m not wrong.”

Fuck this, being nice. He should make her his, then sort out the consequences. If they survived.

When they survived.

“How can you be sure?” she asked.

His thoughts drowned him, blotted out sound. There was only her, him, and his carnal urges to screw with this princess until she went to her knees and begged him to take her. Right, wrong, who cared.

He did, should, might. He shut his eyes for a moment, feeling her small hands move on his. He was sure could sense the beat of her heart, and he smelled her with every breath he took. Not perfume—just her, nubile, sexy, fertile.

The problem was he’d never been a good man. He opened his eyes and realized he’d bared his teeth.

Gentler. Gentler, for now. Though he craved teaching her the many and varied ways a man could love a woman.

And the ways a woman could take a cock inside her.