Asteria - In Love with the Prince Page 18

  He lifted his head for a moment and smiled at me, his eyes gleaming. Then he returned to his ministrations, leaving me to groan and grind my ass against the bed in frustration. I could feel the heat rising inside me, but he wouldn’t let it rise to that magic point I longed for. Long minutes passed, his tongue sometimes soft as silk, sometimes as firm as fingers, until I was moaning and thrashing my head. Then, at last, he tongued my nipples, watching me carefully. I gasped, my head coming up off the bed, gritting my teeth, ready to—

  He stopped. Then with his free hand, he pinched that super-sensitive, slickened nipple and my moans grew shrill, the pleasure somehow turning to pain and then back again, hovering on the edge—

  He stopped again, and now my whole body was throbbing, as if he’d locked in my arousal, leaving me a panting, raging mess. He used his free hand to push my panties down, leaving them midway down my thighs. He ran his hand down my body, from my cheek to my breasts, my thighs, my sex. He cupped me there, using his hand to open my thighs, and then plunged two fingers inside me.

  “You’re wet,” he told me. “I want to fuck you right now....”

  “Yes!”

  ‘...But not yet, I think.”

  He twitched his fingers, just a tiny movement, and I nearly came, right there. He smiled at my helplessness and looked around the room for a moment. “I’m concerned that you may become noisy,” he told me. “Not that the guards would come in, but it’s not fitting for an exkella to be heard screaming.” He retrieved something from the floor with his foot and then grabbed it when it was close enough. His tie. He straddled me, his weight pinning me to the bed, and released my hands. I couldn’t see what he was doing, but I assumed he was going to use the tie to bind me. Okay, I could go for that.

  He finished and lifted himself off me again, his biceps flexing in a way that stirred something dark in me. The knowledge that he was stronger than me: not just a bit, but hopelessly outclassing me, that I was helpless in his grasp....

  He showed me what he’d done. He’d tied a fat knot in the middle of the tie. “Open your mouth,” he told me. I blinked up at him for a second, not understanding, but opened wide.

  The tie slid into my mouth, the knot filling it and pressing my tongue down. He pulled the ends behind my head and tied them tight. “What? What are you—” I asked. Only it didn’t come out like that. It came out as a muffled, garbled mess. He’d gagged me.

  I fingered the safeword ring.

  “Now,” he smiled, and with one hand pinning my wrists to the bed again, he slid so that he was lying alongside me, so that he could gaze down the length of my naked body.

  His hand cupped my sex again and I gasped and closed my thighs instinctively. As he thrust two fingers into me again, the edges of his hand rubbed on my legs, deliciously hard against my soft skin. “Mmmf!” I moaned, my head going back.

  He set up a rhythm with his fingers, stroking in and out of my tightness. Red spirals of fire twisted up my body, making me grind and writhe: I wanted to grab his hand and pull it deeper, to move it faster, to be in control. My wrists yanked against the fabric holding them, and I wasn’t just playing, but the thick twists of cloth were perfect: soft enough not to hurt, tight enough to hold me fast. His hand, pinning the fabric to the bed, might as well have been a steel girder. I’d never understood bondage before. Even that night in Monaco when he’d tied me to the stool, I’d thought it was about stopping me from escaping. It wasn’t – or at least, not this time. It wasn’t to restrain me while he did something I didn’t want. It was to restrain me while he did something I wanted too much.

  His fingers moved faster...but deliberately just a little slower than my body craved. My eyes rolled back in my head, my eyelids fluttering. I could only wait and hope that he’d take me over the edge, and in the meantime hang on for the ride.

  At first, I stayed silent: I had it in my head that the gag was to remind me to be quiet. After a few minutes of teasing, I couldn’t help it: I tried to beg him - please let me come. The garbled moan made him smile: but more than that, it felt good. I’d found I could breathe easily enough around the gag, the knot soft and springy enough to fill my mouth when I let it but not to block my air. I could feel myself panting hotly around it, and as his thrusts started to pick up speed I started to groan, to beg, to plead, and eventually to curse. Every shout was a release: it kept the tension from becoming too much. It wasn’t about keeping me quiet: it was about leaving me free to scream.

  When I was a bucking, twisting wreck, he gently slid his fingers from me and I relaxed, thinking it was over. He moved up to my hands and I closed my eyes, thinking he was going to release them.

  The soft whistle of his belt sliding through the loops. Then a jerk on the cloth around my hands, and my arms were pulled straight up above my head. When I heard him walk away, I looked up at my hands, confused.

  He’d used his belt to tie my dress to the iron bed frame. The leather cinched the fabric tight, holding my wrists just as firmly as before: but now he had his hands free.

  He wasn’t done, though. He pulled my panties the rest of the way off and threw them aside. He pulled one leg out diagonally so that my ankle touched the iron bedpost. He shucked off his pants, passed one cuff through the iron frame and around my ankle and tied it tight. I watched as he pulled my other leg far apart, spreading me wide, and used the other pant cuff to tie my other ankle, leaving no slack. I was stretched out, arms straight above my head and legs open, like an upside-down “Y’.

  I stared at him as he took off his jockey shorts, his cock already erect. He didn’t come back to the bed. He just stood there, naked, and watched me. I could feel his eyes roving over my nude, bound body, even as I gazed at his naked form. The sun was setting, bathing the room in a deep orange glow and leaving dark pools of shadow. I could see him breathing, the curves of his hairless chest flexing as he watched me.

  I was helpless on the bed. This man was going to take me.

  My gaze roamed over his shoulders, so wide and solid compared to mine. Down over his muscled arms, the forearms traced by veins. His torso was lean, tight with power. I knew how it would feel, when he thrust into me, when he used that power to root himself within me. And then as my eyes sank lower, I saw he was holding himself, stroking his erection as he watched me.

  It’s like he’s already enjoying me, I thought. The conqueror, gazing on the captured maiden before he ravishes her. This man will take me, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

  I watched him swell and grow, watched the effect my body had on him. I tugged at my bonds, wanting him now, but that was the point: he was going to enjoy me as he wanted.

  He must have made me wait, thrashing and twisting, for several minutes, until my body ached for his touch. He stepped closer, his cock straining upwards, every muscle in his body hard as rock, and rolled on the condom. He climbed onto the bed between my thighs and I waited for him to enter me, feeling the emptiness like a physical pain. But he placed his hands on my thighs...and lowered his head between them.

  GOD! My back arched off the bed as his tongue caressed my inner thigh: circling inwards, unstoppable, towards my core. After so long without touch, every sensation was hyper-acute. I let out a long moan, muffled by the gag.

  He stopped and spoke, without lifting his head, so that the words themselves touched my aching, desperate sex like a phantom caress. “You know what I’m going to do now, Lucy,” he told me.

  Yes, yes! I thought wildly.

  “But you need to learn that even as an exkella, you come when I say so.”

  Was he serious? If he licked me there I was going to come instantly.

  “You’re going to hold yourself back. You are not to come until I tell you. Do you understand?” He lifted his head to look at me. I craned my head up and stared into those dark green eyes that promised so much pleasure...if I played by his rules. I nodded.

  He began.

  I’d thought it was sweet agony before, but it had been nothin
g compared to this. His expert tongue traced my lips then dived inside, parting me, and I felt the wave of pleasure rushing over me, threatening to tip me over the edge. I strained and panted, a sweat breaking out across my body, leaving me gleaming. He was licking me steadily, the pleasure stacking up behind the dam I’d built. I thrashed and groaned and tossed my head, my hair sticking wetly to my forehead; had to, to release the pressure inside me. But even with that safety valve, I knew I couldn’t last; I was being pushed, inch by inch, towards the edge, towards a climax like I’d never known.

  His tongue thrust and drove and when his fingers joined it, circling my throbbing bud, my whole body went tense. I didn’t dare move; I was like a violin string, stretched tighter, tighter, my nails digging into my palms, my wrists and ankles wrenching at their bonds….

  He lifted himself and in one smooth movement moved up my body, guiding himself into me with one hand while the other tangled in my hair. “Come,” he said simply, and thrust deep inside me.

  My world exploded.

  A deep shudder went up my body from my groin to my head, the feel of him entering me reverberating through me. My wrists yanked hard against the cloth, my body spasming under him as the climax robbed me of speech: I couldn’t even moan. I felt his lips on mine, sweet with my juices, the silk tie pressing into my mouth in a way that made me melt.

  I am his slave to control

  I am his slave

  I am his

  I felt my heels banging on the bed: I hadn’t even been aware of my legs trying to kick. I couldn’t think. I was lost in dark, throbbing pleasure and I kissed him as if his lips were the only link back to sanity.

  I flopped on the bed as the orgasm rolled away like a thundercloud. It had never, ever been like that before. He waited until he was sure I was back with him; then he started to move. Slow, glorious thrusts like ocean waves, the pleasure rolling over me. If I’d been able to, I would have wrapped my legs around him, urged him on, pressed myself hard against him. But he was in control: I had to wait and accept the pace he set, and that made it...exquisite.

  His naked body was like a machine above me, hulking and powerful, driving into me again and again, muscles bunching and flexing, his lips on my mouth, my ear, my shoulder. I gasped and moaned and eventually cried out through the gag as a second orgasm washed over me. Seconds later, he was pumping almost savagely into me as he came as well.

  There was a moment when we just stared at each other: him still atop me, taking his weight on his elbows, me gazing up at him, the gag still in my mouth. He’d rarely been so open to me, so clearly readable, as in that second: not since he’d told me about his brother. I could see the love he had for me, and it made me ache with the need to wrap my arms around him.

  He could see it in my eyes, too. His fingers worked at the back of my head, then the gag was out of my mouth and we were kissing, soft and gentle: I’m here for you. I could feel him loosening the belt above my head and as soon as it was free, I pulled the dress off my wrists and hugged him.

  The room was almost dark now, the sun just disappearing below the horizon. We didn’t mind: it was comfortable, cuddling in the darkness. I was so intent on holding him, when he went to move away I clung to him, panicked.

  “I have to untie your legs,” he told me gently, and I flushed. He massaged my ankles and then spooned me, his huge, hard body pressed tight against mine.

  “I love you,” he said, and the shock of hearing it made me worry that I’d imagined it.

  “I love you too.” I nestled even closer against him.

  “Do you still want this?” There was that note in his voice that I remembered from the limo, all that time ago. That hint of vulnerability, the concern that I might not.

  I looked down at my sweat-soaked, still-trembling body. “You have to ask?”

  “Not just the sex. Being owned. Are you sure?”

  I tried to ask myself the question honestly. It wasn’t so long ago that I’d been horrified by the idea of slaves: the notion of giving myself to someone, becoming theirs: it would have seemed crazy even a month before. But as I dug deep within myself, feeling for the truth, there wasn’t even any uncertainty. It was all about the person, I realized. In Jagor, I’d found someone I wanted to be with forever: I knew he’d never hurt me, knew he’d love and care for me. I wanted to commit to him, but it was more than that. There was something missing, deep inside me, something that maybe had always been missing without me being aware of it. When I was with him - and when I wore his collar - I was complete. I didn’t just want to be owned by him. I needed to be.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m sure.”

  ***

  The chef prepared dinner for us – trout, crusted with almonds and served with salad and a crisp Chablis. Jagor took a phone call while we waited and sipped the first glass. “Security,” he explained when he’d finished. “We’re taking on guards.”

  “Don’t you – we – already have bodyguards?” They still made me nervous, ever since the boutique in Monaco, but I was gradually getting used to them – especially Arno.

  “We’ll keep them, for normal situations. But after what happened to my father...I wanted something else in place for when we return. What they call a crash team, to get us to safety in an emergency. Military men: specialists.”

  I nodded and told myself it was probably just overkill: paranoia on Jagor’s part.

  When the butler had served us, Jagor asked me gently, “How long do you want to stay?”

  I ate while I thought. The trout was melt-in-your-mouth delicious. “A year?” I asked hopefully.

  “Are you that scared of Asteria?” He was frowning with concern, and I felt a stab of guilt.

  “No...yes.” I looked at my plate for a while. “Things didn’t work out so hot last time I was there.”

  “No surprises this time, Lucy. No hiding, either. We’ll be together.”

  “It’s okay for you. You’re their prince: they love you. I’m the interloper.”

  A flicker of concern crossed his face. Something he wasn’t telling me? “They’ll warm to you,” he told me. Then, gently, “We can’t wait too long.”

  “A week?” I pleaded, “can we stay here a week?”

  He nodded in relief. “A week is fine.”

  ***

  After a few days, I almost forgot about Asteria.

  We saw the sights. We walked hand-in-hand down tree-lined avenues and rode in a private boat down the Seine, me snuggled between Jagor’s thighs and his coat wrapped around me to keep the breeze off my bare arms.

  The apartment helped to create the illusion that we were alone – just a couple living out their lives in Paris with no commitments. There were a few more press calls, but Jagor managed to limit them to quick, evening parties we could escape early from and one posed photo in front of the Arc de Triomphe.

  One morning I woke up to find the other side of the bed empty and Asterian cursing coming from the kitchen. Asterian cursing is really quite something: if normal Asterian speech sounds like lumps of granite grinding together, the cursing is like red-hot lava bursting from fractured rock.

  I wrapped a sheet around me and shuffled into the kitchen, motioning the butler to stay back. Jagor was standing at the counter, shoulders hunched. Coffee beans lay in a carpet across the counter top and in a pool on the floor. The coffee grinder was choking out a cloud of noxious black smoke. Brown grit was gently raining down from the ceiling.

  I loved him so much, in that moment. Just for trying.

  The week felt like a holiday, which is exactly what we needed. But all holidays come to an end.

  ***

  The morning we were due to fly to Asteria, Ismelda appeared with a box covered in purple velvet. She set it down nervously. I had a pretty good idea what it was.

  “Are you ready?” Jagor asked me gently. I nodded.

  He opened the box. I sat down on the couch and swept my hair up and out of the way, so that my neck was exposed. It seemed to
grow very quiet.

  I felt the collar loop around my neck and draw snug. It was soft, like the palace collar had been, not stiff metal like the slave collar Jagor had given me at the sex club.

  I heard a clack-click behind me and Jagor’s hands moved away. I stood up.

  “Do you want to—” Jagor started, but I held my hand up, stopping him. I walked out of the room.

  There was a full-length mirror in our bedroom. As I turned the door handle I could hear my heart thumping in my ears, drowning out everything else. I stood in front of the mirror and looked, before I chickened out.

  The collar was made of a thousand tiny pieces of silver, sewn like a lizard’s scales to what felt like leather underneath. The leather was stretchy enough to be snug but not tight, expanding as I breathed and moved, the scales sliding smoothly over each other. It was only three fingers in width, but widened at the front to a downward-facing point. Dead center was the Prince’s unmistakable seal, cast in solid silver. At the back the padlock seemed to be built into the collar itself – it didn’t have to be adjustable, after all, since only I would ever wear it.

  I fingered the metal slowly as Jagor walked in and stood silently behind me. I had to fight an instinctual, animal urge to rip the thing off. That was the point, I realized. If it felt comfortable and natural, wearing it wouldn’t be a commitment.

  “Are you ready?” I knew he didn’t just mean to go out there and face Ismelda.

  Something was happening. I could feel just a tiny amount of warmth stealing into the cold silver, as if Jagor’s presence was imbuing it with some of his essence, making it more than just a thing – making it a connection between us. My need to wear it was beginning to overcome my instincts. I took a deep breath and turned to him. “Yes, I’m ready.”

  Chapter Fifteen