cupped them, teased her nipples. For why hold back? Why make slow what had been on the verge of boiling over for all these years?
She gasped, and he took advantage of that. He ate deeper into her mouth, before abandoning her lips and blazing a trail down her vulnerable throat. To her collarbone. He kissed one rounded curve of her breast before taking her nipple deep into his mouth and sucking.
She whimpered, spearing her fingers through his hair and holding him there. As if he would abandon her. As if he would abandon her now that she was finally his.
The only sound in the echoing chamber was their breathing, the gentle sound of the water lapping against their skin. He moved his hands down her body, to her hips, and then, between her thighs where he found her wet and slick and perfect, just waiting for his touch.
His own body pulsed with need. He had never known anything like this. It consumed him.
It was a temptation that surpassed anything he had thought was possible. And the fulfillment of it was beyond anything he had imagined.
Centuries of duty could crumble all around him, he didn’t care.
He didn’t care.
He moved his hands to her thighs, lifted her up and urged her legs around him, carrying them both up out of the pool.
He walked them both round the bend, to the end of the winding pool. There were low cushions, a cabana of sorts with plush pillows and fabric draped around.
Privacy that was unnecessary, here in this place shared by no one other than royalty.
And as he lowered her down onto the cushions, he asked himself... He asked himself if perhaps he had known that she would be here.
For of course he had given permission for her to use this place to ready herself for the ball.
He had not known when...
But it would stand to reason that she would have been down here. And perhaps he had known.
Perhaps he had always known that in this place, for royalty alone, he would send her to meet her fate.
For if he must be damned by it, then perhaps she should be too.
He stood, looking down at her, her skin pale against the dark red of the cushions. The thatch of curls between her legs aroused him beyond the point of reason.
All of the blood in his body had flowed into the source of his desire, and he felt that he would die for not having her. Which was exactly why he was going to make himself wait longer.
Years.
There were spare few things in this world that he had ever wanted and not been able to have.
He wanted his brothers back, and he could not reach beyond the veil of death to make it so.
And he had wanted Tinley Markham.
Beneath him, astride him, in front of him. However he could have her.
From the moment she had become a woman.
He had wanted her in spite of the fact that she had worn his brother’s ring, in spite of the fact that their fathers had decided she would be most suited to marry Dionysus, and not Alex, because God knew the men could’ve made that determination. It was what Tinley’s mother had wanted.
She was correct, in that, the cold hard facts were neither man thought she should be Queen. For had they, she would have been put in the position to be Queen.
And still, he wanted her.
But he was savoring the moment. Savoring the moment where control failed and desire ruled. For this time...this time nothing would stop him. Not when she wanted him as he did her.
Only her.
He knelt down before her, a king on his knees, and brought her body to the edge of the raised cushion, pressing a kiss to her ankle, to her calf, the inner part of her knee. To her side, where she shook beneath his lips.
“Alexius?” She said his name like a prayer, like a question.
Supplication on her lips.
“You know what I intend to do,” he said, his voice a growl. “I intend to devour you.”
He knew then, that when she had been standing on the edge of the wood, she had been weighing these things. Whether to run into the forest and be devoured by what awaited there, or stay here and be eaten by him.
He was very glad she had chosen the latter.
“I bet you taste sweet,” he said. “I have wondered. These long years, I have wondered, what it would be like to feast on you. What it