The Once And Future Prince (Castaldini Crown 1)

She couldn’t bear it. “Talk. And take me, dammit.”

He started to shake. He was…he was…laughing.

She struggled beneath him until he flopped on his back beside her, exposing her to his beauty as he surrendered to the throes of unbridled amusement. She twisted around, lunged over him, gulped his laughter into herself, reached for his hardness, stroked him until he was grunting and thrusting into her hand.

She purred against his lips, “Still feel like laughing?”

“If you mean the laughter that indicates happiness, I do. Like a hyena, albi coraggiosa.”

She giggled. “Your brave heart? We’ll never hear the end of my heroism, huh?” She bit his jaw, dipped her tongue in his dimple, pouted. “Not feeling heroic right now.”

“Feeling hot and bothered will do for now.” He surged up, turned her onto her back, ran hands and eyes heavy with appreciation and hunger over her, until he reached her core. Then he slipped two fingers between her folds. She mewled, threw her legs wider, thrust up for more. He gave her more, pumped her with his fingers, his thumb pressing and circling her nerve bundle, bringing her to the edge. Then he withdrew. She shrieked in frustration. He laughed again, licked his fingers, growling his enjoyment. “Now I know you’re ready to be surprised.”

“I could have told you that.”

“I asked. Nicely. You had to go ask me to keep talking. I’m a man of action.” He submitted to her playful thump in blatant pleasure, then in one move, wheeled over her, sprang to his feet, had her wrapped in her sheets and up in his arms.

She squirmed when she found him striding out of his quarters, which she’d been sharing with him since the fire. It was one thing for everyone to know she was sharing his bed, another for them to see him hauling her around half-naked. He soothed her as he forged through connecting chamber after columned arcade, passing by fountains and winding through corridors lit by torches. She should have known he wouldn’t embarrass her that way. The place was deserted.

“Is that the surprise?” She looked up from the comfort of his shoulder, trying to stem the pounding between her legs. “You sent the twelve hundred people populating the complex to buy you a soda? So we can make love any-and everywhere while they’re gone?”

“While that is a brilliant idea for another time, which part of surprise don’t you get?” He turned another corner, then started to ascend a spiraling stairwell lit with lanterns.

She gasped at the drapes hanging from its top down. A hundred-foot cascade of heavy damask in such vivid colors and intricate patterns they seemed to leap out in three dimensions against the stone wall.

She tried to wriggle down. She was no lightweight. Not that he seemed at all exerted. When he pinched a buttock and told her to be still, she sighed. “Seriously, where did everyone go?”

“To buy me twelve hundred sodas, where else?” He kissed her lids closed. “And no peeking. Until I tell you to.”

She didn’t peek. It only sent the rest of her senses into hyperdrive. Scent, bypassing his smell to overload on the mixture of frankincense and musk, burning candles and night air laden with sea salt and jasmine and a hundred flowers and fruits. Hearing, skirting his heartbeats and breaths to lose itself among the sensuality of water sounds, trickling, lapping, the flow of music that seemed to originate inside her head, the trill of a lute, the hypnosis of languid percussive instruments.

Then touch took over. He slid the sheet off her body and it caressed every tight inch that begged for his ferociousness, slipped between her trembling legs, over her throbbing core. She arched into his assuagement, but he put her down and her feet sank in coolness…sand!

She panted, her toes dipping in the sensation as he urged her on. After two dozen steps, the medium beneath her soles suddenly became soft as down…grass. Then two dozen more steps and she was wading in warm water over the massaging smoothness of stones.

He was exercising his power of sensory overload on her. And she was too inflamed, too wide open. She couldn’t take it anymore.

She begged. “Please…”

He scooped her up from behind, until she straddled his arousal. “Don’t say please again. Tonight is for you. Say please tomorrow, when things will be back for both of us.” He put her down, stepped away. “Open your eyes, hebbi preziosa.”

He might have let her go, but she felt his words hugging her again. My precious love. Another unique combination in his ongoing quest to tell her in how many ways and to what levels he loved everything about her, about them. Putting everything that filled her being into words. Words she’d been unable to rival. Her lion man was too inventive to keep up with.

Joy mushroomed inside her again as she opened her eyes.

She blinked, to make sure she wasn’t imagining the sight before her. Not that she’d ever imagined so much.

This had to be the harem. She saw a gigantic chamber, at least two hundred feet across, with a towering, complex system of domes for a ceiling, with openings of uniform sizes near the top of the opposing walls below which galleries supported on arched columns were reached by two spiraling wrought-iron staircases on opposite ends of the chamber.

And in between ceiling and ground—the latter divided into areas that seemed to represent earth, reflecting pools for seas, sand for deserts, and grass for meadows—there were a dozen levels made of marble steps, slopes and platforms that seemed to represent mountains and valleys. There were couches and chaise lounges in the same vivid colors as the drapes of the stairwell. There were sunken tubs and massage platforms. And through all the levels was a winding path where water ran like a miniature river. Incense burners hung from macramé holders, and everywhere there were candles. Thousands. Flickering in the circulating night breeze.

Everything engraved itself on the pages of her mind.

“You sure kept this place maintained,” she whispered.

“It looked nothing like this before I was done with it. This is all for you. But in case your feminism objects to the concept of what it used to be, this wasn’t where a king kept wives and concubines. This was for all royal womenfolk, children and female servants. It fell into disuse when women wanted their own domains, even if smaller and less opulent. Which turned out to be to my advantage.” He started running his hands over her back, fingers pressing into all her triggers. “Now I can do everything I want to do to you in every corner of this place that’s been designed to pamper a woman.”