In the Flesh (16 page)

“She couldn’t hear me and you damn well know that.”

He twisted free of his father’s grasp and moved to kneel beside Katie. With a gentle grip on her chin, he angled her face to ascertain the extent of her injury. Her right eye was swelling shut and her cheekbone was discoloring, but not one tear fell.

The fierce look Wulf shot Duncan’s retreating back promised retribution. His brother was heading toward the healing rooms, a route the young man would find familiar, if he ever thought to touch Katie again.

Assisting her to her feet, Wulf tucked her protectively into his side. His gaze burned over their audience. “No one is to discipline this woman but me. Do I make myself clear?”

The king’s lip curled. “And what do you consider a suitable punishment? Fucking her into submission?”

Wulf turned away in disgust and gestured to the captain of the palace guard. “Take her to a healing chamber.”

It pained him to part with her now, but he had no choice. His insubordination to the king had to be addressed and Katie needed medical attention immediately.

As the captain led her away, Katie said nothing to anyone.

Anders ran both hands through his hair. “Do you realize what you’ve done, Wulfric? You’ve
undermined the authority of your king and your brother in order to defend the enemy.”

“She’s not the enemy.”

“Would you feel differently if I told you she deliberately selected
your
personal guardsmen to retrain? She’s a serpent waiting to strike. Ransom her or send her to a detention facility. That’s a royal command.” Anders marched away.

Wulf was left alone in the center of the courtyard, struggling with a riot of emotions he had no clue how to deal with. The last few weeks of his life had changed him in ways he could never have prepared for. He’d almost died, then found himself in the arms of a beautiful woman. The life he’d regained was irrevocably altered by his affection for her.

“Katie.” Irrational though it was, he wanted her promise that she would stay with him. He could manage the worst of days, if she soothed his nights.

He headed toward the medical wing of the barracks with rapid, impatient strides. Turning a corner, he walked directly into Duncan, who emerged from a healing room.

“Wulfric, damn it.” Duncan stumbled before regaining his footing. “What the hell was that all about?”

Wulf inhaled a calming breath before responding. “Don’t ever touch her again. Do you understand?”

“Father said she’s the enemy!”

“She is a woman first and foremost. I won’t tolerate the beating of women. And regardless of who she is, she’s
mine
. I will see to her.”

The corners of Duncan’s lips dipped petulantly.
“You didn’t have to beat me half to death to make your point.”

“I lost my temper, but I won’t apologize for it. You were wrong to strike her.”

Lifting his gaze, Wulf looked over Duncan’s shoulder at the next healing room, where the captain stood guard at the door. His brow furrowed. As he attempted to pass, Duncan blocked him.

“In lieu of an apology,” his brother said, “how about a boon?”

Wulf returned his attention to Duncan. “What kind of boon?”

“I’d like to purchase some contracts of my own and have my own
seraglio
.”

“Fine,” Wulf agreed gruffly. “You’re old enough now.”

“Can we go to the trader’s in Akton tomorrow?”

“No. I have too much that needs to be attended to. But you may visit my concubines and see if any of them would have you. You may begin your own
seraglio
with whichever ones are willing. I will release them from their contracts.”

Duncan’s face was almost comical in its astonishment. “Are you jesting?”

“You’d be doing me a favor.”

The next door slid open. Katie stepped out, attired in a white robe. Her gaze locked with his, devoid of any emotion. Then she turned, heading rapidly away from him. Clarke obediently fell into step beside her.

Wulf brushed his brother aside. “Katie.”

Her pace quickened.

“Discipline, brother.” Duncan’s tone was snide. “The prisoner doesn’t seem to know who’s in charge
around here. Her insubordination could be contagious, if you’re not careful.”

Katie pivoted abruptly and stalked back toward them. “Run, boy.” Her voice was filled with soft venom. “Before I finish what your brother started.”

Duncan stumbled backward a few steps. Wulf shoved him aside to intercept her. “Go, Duncan. Now.”

With a steely grip on her arm, Wulf jerked Katie away from danger, dragging her in the opposite direction. “You forget yourself,” he said curtly.

“Excuse me?” She gaped at him.

“He is a prince of D’Ashier.”

She stopped and ripped free from his grip. “I don’t care if he’s the king! He’s nothing to me.”

Wulf pinned her to the wall. His hand wrapped her neck, careful to be gentle, but needing to drive his point home. His mouth dropped to her ear so they would not be overheard.

“You must obey,” he ordered in a furious whisper. “You must be courteous. You must show respect. For your own safety.”

“I will not. I am not a slave or a prisoner.” She attempted to push him away, but he held tight.

“Your position here is perilous. Your connection to your father and the King of Sari makes you suspect.”

She began to struggle against him in earnest. Her robe fell open, exposing her nakedness to his gaze. The sight of talgorite adorning Katie’s nipple and navel rings heated his blood. He pressed the heated length of his body against her, remembering the sight of her outside the healing chamber that first day. And last night, when she’d worn red.
His
color.

As his cock swelled against her belly, she froze.

“Let me go.” She looked at him with luminous dark eyes. “Send me home.”

He waved Clarke’s towering presence away.

Her throaty voice throbbed with emotion. “You know we’ve run out of time.”

“We can’t be out of time. I still want you.”

“You can’t always have the things you want, Wulf.” Katie began to struggle anew, her lush body writhing against his aching cock.

Inhaling deeply, he attempted to calm the need that clawed at him. Instead, he found his nostrils filling with the scent of her skin. Cleansed of the fragrance of Draxian lilies by the healing chamber, she was still uniquely appealing to him.

“Katie, stop. I’m not…myself. I’ll fuck you against the wall, if you don’t stop rubbing against me.”

She pushed against his shoulders. “You can’t keep me here against my will. I’ll find a way to go home.”

His heart thundered in response to her words.

“I’ll make you want to stay.” His tongue rimmed the shell of her ear. He reached between them and pushed down the waistband of his trousers, freeing his dick. It bobbed between them, straining and so hard it hurt. “I’ll make you burn as I do.”

Sapphire’s gaze was riveted by the sight of Wulf’s penis, so thick and long, thrusting brutally upward between them. He was so blatant in his desire, baring himself shamelessly out in the open air.

As Wulf’s free hand drifted beneath her robe and cupped her hip, she gasped in both fear and
pleasure. His sensual threat hung in the air between them, causing her to shiver. It made him doubly dangerous that he knew how much she desired him and didn’t hesitate to use it against her.

“What the hell are you doing?” Her chin lifted.

His smile didn’t reach his eyes. “My father thinks you’re a spy or an assassin.”

“I don’t care what he thinks.”

“I do.” His tone had an edge that stilled her. “And yet I’ve defied him, embarrassed my brother, and placed D’Ashier in jeopardy. For you. Yet you don’t seem to feel as I do. You remind me often that it’s easy for you to throw me aside.”

Sapphire was unable to move with Wulf’s hand at her throat, his leg between hers, and his body pinning hers to the wall. She cursed and bit his ear hard enough to draw blood, but he held her fast. “What do you want from me?” she demanded. “My love? My devotion? Knowing that we must part and that it would kill me to do so if you meant more to me than you do right now?”

“Yes,” he growled. “For all that I’ve risked for you.”

He released her throat. Slipping his hands around the back of her thighs, he lifted her up—

“Wulf!”

—and with a tortured groan, dropped her onto his rampant cock.

Sapphire moaned as the thick head forced its way through tissues not yet ready for him. She was moist, but not wet. He held her to the wall and pumped his hips, working his way into her, fighting for every burning inch he claimed.

“You’re hurting me,” she whispered.

Wulf froze.

Her hands drifted to his shoulders and felt the thick muscles clenching beneath her palms. She arched against the intrusion of his body into hers, pressing her breasts into his chest.

Shaking, he pressed his damp forehead to hers. “You’re
destroying
me. You give me no quarter. You could stay or go. You don’t care.”

“I can’t.”

“You won’t let me in.”

“If I didn’t care, things would be different. They must be this way because I do care.”

“I am unmanned by my lack of control with you,” he snarled, his tone filled with self-disgust. “I almost killed my brother for hurting you, then I do worse. Trying to get inside you the only way you let me.”

“I forgive you.” Sapphire cupped his nape and pressed her temple to his. He held her with effortless strength, poised with only half of his cock throbbing inside her. “You almost died. I was the first thing you saw afterward and—”

His grip on her waist tightened. “You understand nothing, if you think
this
”—he punctuated the word with a flex of his cock,—“is gratitude. I wish it was. I could gift you with jewels and other trinkets, and be done with you. I could have left you as you asked and considered your freedom recompense for your hospitality.”

With shaking hands, Sapphire turned his head toward her. She could feel his teeth gritting through his cheeks. His pupils were dilated; the emerald green mere rims around the black center. His large frame shook against her, belying his claim that he
lacked control. He was in rut, yet managed to hold himself at bay.

His gaze was fever-bright when he said, “I have never wanted to be anyone other than who I am. Until now.”

“I would never change you.
Never.
I adore all that you are, just the way you are.”

You won’t let me in…

Reaching between them with one hand, Sapphire began to rub her clitoris with slow, gentle circles of her fingertips.

“Katie…?”

“I want you in me.”

His breath caught, then he lowered his head to her breast. His tongue curled around a jeweled nipple and stroked the underside. He aroused her swiftly, with breathtaking expertise. She became hotter. Slicker. Enabling her pussy to slide over his cock like a custom made glove. He seated to the hilt inside her and the tension left him in a harsh exhale that puffed hotly over her damp breast.

For her, the sense that she’d connected to the interlocking half that made her whole was profound. The sensation was becoming as necessary as breathing. Too swiftly. Too frightening.

She hadn’t known. No one had told her that sex could give more than physical pleasure. She’d thought the enjoyment would be greater and the need more acute, but there’d been no way to prepare for the feeling of oneness that came from making love to a man on an emotional level.

Sapphire knew it was the same for Wulf—a volup
tuary so locked into his role as crown prince that only the prospect of death had freed him.

“I knew it would come to this,” she breathed, balanced on the point between physical pleasure and emotional pain. “I knew we would be forced to choose between the rest of our lives and each other. And I knew how we would both decide. I tried to be strong…”

“I love your strength.” He kissed her, long and slow, a melding of lips and tongue that made her pussy clench around his hardness in hunger. Breathing harshly, he spoke against her mouth, “But I need to know that you have a soft spot for me.”

Locking her ankles at the small of Wulf’s back, Sapphire lifted up, tightening her inner muscles so that she hugged the length of his cock from root to tip.

He groaned. Sweat dotted his brow. “Take me. I’ve already taken too much from you.”

She lowered back onto him, hissing with pleasure at the feel of him gliding endlessly into her. “I like it when you take me.”

When she was with him, she could be a creature of passion. No thought or calculation. It was a sort of freedom she had never known and had already grown addicted to.

Leaning back against the wall, her arms fell away from him, knowing his strength was such that he could bear her weight with ease. She opened herself to him in every way, showing him with her eyes and defenseless posture that she was his. If only for now.

Wulf began to fuck her. First, with short and shallow digs. Then, with greater force and speed, his
arms straining in time with his hips, pulling her down as his cock tunneled up.

It was savage and wild, and she loved it. All of it. From the hasty and desperate beginning to this rampaging drive to the finish.

Rocking her hips, Wulf ground her onto him, his thick cockhead so deep in her that her toes curled and cramped. He stroked over and over the spot deep inside her that made her insensate with pleasure, made cries spill from her lips that only spurred him further.

“The sounds you make,” he growled. “I hear them even when you’re not with me.”

The smell of his skin, musky and exotic, intoxicated her, as did the feel of his waistband rubbing rhythmically against her inner thighs. She moaned, her eyes closing.

“I’m coming,” she gasped, everything tightening up inside her. The tension broke in a violent pulsing climax. Her pussy clasped at Wulf’s thrusting cock and rippled along its length, milking the thick shaft in ecstatic clenches.

Wulf cursed and crushed her to the wall, his chest heaving against hers as he pumped his semen into her in hard, fast spurts. It was delicious. Decadent. The feel of him erupting inside her with such ferocity.