All the King's Men (12 page)

He watched with growing arousal as Nelina fought them. She
clawed and kicked, punching with utter abandon at anyone who came near. Her
desperate, angry cries slid through the room into his cock, making his already
pounding erection ache.

In the end, the only thing she succeeded in accomplishing
was ripping off Thor’s face mask. His strong profile showed off a square jaw
dusted with the hint of a golden beard. Far from looking unkempt, the facial
hair gave him a savage appearance that only intensified the raw glint of lust
in his eyes.

The men held her down on the bed with ease, using no added
force aside from the pressure of broad hands on her shoulders. Her hair hung
like a dark curtain around her flushed face. She panted, her narrowed eyes
flinging poisoned darts in his direction.

Kirel ignored her fury. “The mating Trials are divided into
three parts. The lessons will follow the same path. We’ll begin with the first.
The Test of Submission.”

There was no mistaking the nervous squirm that had her
pressing her legs together. No matter how much she tried to hide it, the
strength of her arousal was too strong to be denied. Oh how he’d enjoy making
her face up to what her body already accepted.

She tilted her chin up. “I won’t submit to anyone. Not to
you, not to these men and definitely not to your king.”

Defiant to the last, his Nelina. He loved that about her.
Gods, who was he kidding? He loved
everything
about her.

The thought was so unexpected and unwelcome it made his
heart clench. He stifled the longing and tender anguish that coiled in his gut,
pushing it down to the deepest recesses of his soul. He had a job to do. And
the only way he could do it was by keeping his emotions where they belonged.
Locked away. Forever.

“Right. Because you don’t want us.”

She clenched her jaw. “You’re finally beginning to
understand. How wonderful for you,” she ground out between gritted teeth.

“Then you won’t mind if we find out for ourselves.” Not
waiting for Nelina to reply, he nodded at Thor and Domenic. “Strip her.”

The men did as they were told. Their fingers dug into the
creamy skin of her shoulders as they reached for her white blouse. She squirmed
and thrashed against the mattress, fighting them every step of the way. The
fabric ripped audibly, revealing full breasts, the perfect spheres heaving with
the force of her ragged breathing. Her dark nipples stood out in sharp contrast
to her skin, taut and ripe for his mouth.

“The skirt too?” Domenic asked.

Nelina’s body went rigid. Her stomach muscles flexed and she
tried to yank her arms out of the men’s grasp but succeeded only in causing
them to tighten their grip.

“No,” Kirel said.

Nelina’s tense shoulders relaxed a fraction. Something that
looked more like disappointment than relief flashed across her face but she
smoothed her features into a haughty mask before he could call her on it.

“The skirt’s mine. As is the proof I’m looking for. Hold her
legs.”

“You’re unbelievable!” Nelina cried out. “Is this the only
way you can have a woman now? By having your goons force her legs open for
you?”

A smile tugged at his mouth. “Hardly. But if you’d be kind
enough to open up for me willingly, we can end the game and get on with the
training.”

She pursed her lips together. “Never.”

“Have it your way,” Kirel said.

Nelina refused to make it easy on him, so he had to wait
until the men adjusted their grip. She used her body and those maddeningly full
breasts to her best advantage, sliding against the velvet sheets, her flesh
slipping and gliding away from the Guardians’ questing fingers.

After what seemed to Kirel like an eternity, they’d managed
to pin her down into the mattress. Each man had one arm hooked around the back
of her knees, and they lifted her legs off the bed. The folds of her skirt fell
between her open thighs, hiding her sweet cunt.

Kirel climbed on the bed and kneeled between her spread
legs. Throwing his hood back, he began to unlace the mask.

“I’m going to ask you one more time,” Kirel said. “Do you
want us to train you? To fuck you? To show you pleasure unlike any you’ve ever
experienced?”

The muscles in her throat constricted as she swallowed hard.
She couldn’t hold his gaze. A low distraught noise came from her throat. “Moon
Gods take you! I’ve told you before.”

He slid his hand beneath the hem of her skirt and gently
caressed her inner thigh. He could feel the heat emanating from her core and
knew what he’d find when he finally brought the game to its inevitable
conclusion. “No. You lied before. I’m asking you for the truth now.”

He felt the tremor that shook her and knew without a doubt
she wanted this as much as he did.
Maybe even more
.

He swallowed past the lump that formed in his throat. If it
were up to him, he’d send Thor and Domenic out of the room and he’d fuck her
senseless until they were both sweaty and spent, limbs tangled in the wrinkled
bed sheets. And then he’d take her away from here.

But neither fantasy was possible. He had his duty. And she
had the mating Trials to prepare for. Neither of them could delay any longer.

When she didn’t reply, he inched his fingers forward along
her hot, satiny skin. It wasn’t long before he found the moisture that had
leaked from her pussy down her inner thigh. The evidence of her arousal was all
he needed yet he pushed on, unwilling—no,
unable
—to stop.

“Tell me again how much you don’t want us,” he taunted as
the tip of his middle finger brushed against one velvety fold. Her entire body
jerked. Her eyes were closed now, her head thrown back on the pillow as though
she’d already lost the fight. Kirel pushed a fingertip inside her slit. The
soft, tender skin of her cunt wrapped around the intrusion, welcoming him home.

His finger slipped inside her with ease. As he’d expected,
she was soaked through, her cream drenching her labia and dripping from her
fevered cunt. Her tight channel was like an inferno of white-hot embers that
clenched around him, milking him, tugging at his self-control with every
squeeze.

“I don’t—”

“Stop.” Thor held a finger to her lips, silencing her.
“Enough. If you want to hurt him, find another way. You’re meant for the king,
Nelina. Whether you want to admit it or not, you’re royalty. A queen in the
making. And we’re here to worship you as loyal subjects should.”

She swallowed hard. Her eyelashes fluttered, casting long
shadows over her pale cheeks. She glanced down between her legs at Kirel and
ran the tip of her tongue over her bottom lip. “Why couldn’t you just say
that?”

A scoff escaped his throat. He wasn’t the kind of man who
relied on flowery words and poetry to get what he needed. For that matter,
neither was Thor. So where on Aris had all that come from?

Could it be that the other man knew what Nelina needed to
hear even more than Kirel did? Had he been so self-absorbed that he’d been
unable to realize how much farther tenderness would get him than commands and
barked orders?

Kirel scowled. Regret swept through him on the heels of a
wave of turbulent loathing. Did the Fates truly hate him so much as to
repeatedly taunt him with everything he couldn’t have? Nelina was meant for
Shivar. Kirel could learn to live with that. But it seemed even Thor knew how
to get to her better than he did. That realization grated on his last nerve,
leaving bloody furrows in its wake.

When he spoke, his voice came out savage and raw. “You want
to be worshipped, my queen?”

She sank her teeth into her lower lip and nodded almost
imperceptibly. It was enough. With a growl that broke free from somewhere deep
in his chest, Kirel tossed her skirt up over her waist and bared her glistening
cunt.

Gods, she was stunning. Still kneeling, he inhaled her
musky, feminine scent and let his gaze linger on the path from the tips of her
small, delicate feet, up the length of her long legs. When he reached the curls
at the apex of her thighs, his throat constricted. She was even more perfect
than he remembered. Pink pussy lips protruded slightly from between a thatch of
dark silken hair. Dewy moisture dotted the curls and slicked them to her skin,
betraying the arousal she’d tried so hard to hide.

“The Test of Submission is all about proving to the Council
you can be trained to accept everything that’s given to you,” Kirel said while
he feasted on the sight of her. “A good queen to Aris must be able to
graciously receive every pleasure granted to her by her position. But more
importantly, she must be able to find bliss in every situation, to enjoy each
development, no matter how foreign. Do you think you can do that, Nel?”

“No.” The word came out as a breathless squeak.

“The Guardians will teach you. That’s our duty, and like
everything else we do, we’ll perform it mercilessly, with single-minded
determination.”

“Failure isn’t an option.” Although the lilt of Domenic’s
teasing tone brought a touch of light to the heavy tension in the room, it
wasn’t enough to relax the chains constricting around Kirel’s soul.

He lowered his head until he could breathe in the aroma of
Nelina’s arousal. It filled his nose and mouth, enveloped him in her sweet,
musky scent. It seemed to curl through his veins, sink low into his belly and
then continue lower to slip inside his balls and fondle him mercilessly.

Despair wrapped dark tendrils around his heart. There was a
tumultuous hunger inside Nelina just waiting to be unleashed. While she basked
in the training that would consume the rest of her nights, it was his duty to
see to it that she grew to accept and desire the Trials to come. And all it
would cost him, all that the Tradition asked from him, was his heart, his soul
and everything in between.

He closed his eyes. The tip of his tongue swept out and
barely brushed Nelina’s folds but it was enough to allow her flavor to seep
into his tongue. His heart soared, crying out with recognition. He’d dreamed
about tasting her and now here she was, her cunt flush with his lips.

His balls drew up tightly in his sac, pulsing with the need
for release. The sensations flooding his senses were almost too much to bear.

“This is your pleasure, your fantasy.” Thor seemed to speak
from somewhere far away, his voice providing a welcome distraction from the
ache spreading through Kirel’s limbs. “Look into the mirror. Watch Kirel’s
mouth move against your folds. Watch him, Nelina. Watch him lick your pussy.”

Slowly Nelina turned her head. For a moment, her brain
refused to make sense of what she was seeing. The scene reflected in the
full-length mirror was so carnal and unabashedly deviant that it couldn’t
possibly be something she’d ever be involved in.

She looked sinfully disheveled. Her struggle with the
Guardians had left her long brown hair a tousled mess. Her face was flushed a
deep shade of pink that swept down over the column of her throat to tint her
full, quivering breasts. Her lips were parted on a sigh. And her nipples… Gods,
she’d never seen her nipples so hard. They stood peaked and stiff, throbbing
with an inner fire that traveled through her veins and left molten lava in its
wake.

On either side of her hips, a man held her down. Thor’s
broad back was turned to the mirror and she could make out the delicious flex
of his buttocks beneath his tight uniform. The sight was pure male and
absolutely mouthwatering. His massive physique blocked Domenic’s body from
reflecting in the looking glass but it revealed her legs flung up in the air.

Kirel knelt between them. The curve of his back and the
sensual line of his hips encased in black fabric sent prickles of anticipation
coursing down her spine. She couldn’t see his head and at that moment, she
desperately needed to.

“Move.” The word was a breathless whisper murmured on a
sigh, but it was the most she could manage.

Thor glanced down at her. Nelina stared back, resolve
steeling her gaze. She didn’t speak but Thor nodded as though he understood. He
released her leg and swept his fingertips over the curve of her hip to settle
on the underside of her breast. Moving up to kneel behind her head, he removed
the remaining barrier standing between her and the sight of pure, masculine
sin.

“Release her,” Thor said. “She’s done fighting.”

Domenic hesitated. She saw the fire raging in his eyes
reflected through the opening in his face mask. His cock jutted upward just
above her right hip, tenting his pants. He pressed his groin against her,
letting her feel the thickness of his erection.

Kirel chose that moment to delve his talented tongue deep
into her slit.

Nelina’s cry echoed off the walls of the room. Tingling
rivers of sensation swirled through her body, starting in her clit and traveling
out to blossom on her overheated skin.

A heartbeat later, she was thrown completely off balance.
Domenic released her and her limbs felt laden down, quivering with sudden
uncertainty. Before she could place her heels on the mattress, Kirel took over.
He grabbed her legs and slid them over his shoulders.

A sigh escaped her throat. She wrapped her ankles behind his
head and thrust her hips upward toward his mouth. The motion was instinctual,
driven by desire rather than any coherent thought.

His warm tongue ran slow, maddening circles over her soaked
folds. Biting her lip to hold back a whimper, she dug her nails into her palms.
Her gaze remained glued to the mirror, fascinated by the erotic imagery playing
out before her.

The muscles in her stomach rippled with every thrust of
Kirel’s tongue. Her breasts bounced slightly, the trembling mounds swinging as
though pushed by an invisible force. Thor’s tanned fingers stood out in stark
contrast to her pale skin. He feathered a thumb over one peaked nipple, drawing
a moan from her throat.