to get rid of you. May I test that theory?”
“May you . . . ?”
He pushed her thighs apart slowly and sank even further into a crouch, rubbing his beard against the sensitive skin of her inner thigh. “Have a taste?”
When she nodded, he began to kiss his way up her thighs, his warm breath and the cool air stirring the curls between her legs. He didn’t inch the gown up, but ducked his head beneath it, and this action seemed somehow more illicit than the fact her husband was about to have her as a late-night snack in the backyard of a goddess’s temple.
Shanti’s whole body went tight with need as Sanyu dragged his lips back and forth over her skin, teasing her. He lifted her right leg over his shoulder, and then her left, and gripped an ass cheek in each hand, squeezing hard.
“Sanyu, please,” she whispered, grabbing onto his shoulders.
His voice was muffled by both fabric and her folds when he responded, the vibration of his words thrumming through her clit. “Hold on tightly, my queen.”
She gripped the bench with one hand and his shoulder with the other, and only just managed not to shout when he licked into her hard. He’d told her he wanted to work for it, and he did—teasing her with tongue and mouth and fingers until her toes curled and she couldn’t muffle her moans.
Sanyu licked and sucked until a body-jangling burst of pleasure crashed through Shanti and she almost tumbled back off of the bench. Sanyu tugged her toward him to right her, and Shanti made use of the momentum to slid off of the bench and into her husband’s lap. She tugged the fabric of his robe away to find the hard length of him, his groan of pleasure telling her all she needed to know. She stroked him once, neither of them in the mood for foreplay, and then lowered herself onto him.
Shanti clamped her lips onto the flexing muscles of his shoulder as he filled her, another orgasm already tearing through her.
“Gods, Shanti,” he growled into her ear, and then there was no more talking, just the sound of their skin meeting and their mouths clashing and their mingled cries as he thrust into her hard and they shuddered through their release together.
Later, after they’d given each other pleasure under a blanket of stars more times than she could count, Shanti lay panting with a huge smile stretching her face and an adoring husband draped over her. She reached up to stroke Sanyu’s neck.
“Okay, orgasms achieved. Are we going to talk politics now or what?”
Sanyu let out a booming laugh that pressed her deeper into the ground, and she joined him. “By Amageez,” he growled, rolling her on top of him to look up into her face.
“What’s our next step?” she asked as she settled comfortably onto him.
He told her, and after he did, she leaned up on her elbow and grinned down at him with pride.
“I approve, my king.”
Chapter 22
Sanyu had discovered something in the weeks with Shanti before he’d nearly ruined everything—coming up with a plan for how to handle things helped keep the not-fear at bay, and it turned out that he was actually good at planning. He hoped to become better at following through with said plans, so he took the new one he gave Shanti very seriously.
The first step of his plan was “Honeymoon, Part 1.” His kingdom was in crisis, so he didn’t have all the time in the world, but the day after their outdoor escapade, he borrowed Gertinj’s minivan and took Shanti on a tour around the north of the kingdom. There wasn’t very much to see apart from bogs and cliffs and dreary landscape, but it was their first real date alone outside of the palace and gave them time to talk more. To just . . . be.
When they had to pull over during a downpour, they also got to learn how flexible they were, as the seats in the back of the minivan did not fold down. Gertinj eyed them suspiciously when they returned the car cleaner than it’d been when she gave it to them, but didn’t say anything.
It was one date, and not a full honeymoon, but there would be others—that was part of the work he planned to put in for years to come, in making sure Shanti chose him and was making the right choice in doing so.
She would tell him he didn’t