But the woman he’d conjured in his mind had not screeched. She’d not been spoiled. A sharp tongue she’d still had—but also a warm and generous heart.
The woman he’d conjured would not murder a king or buy a kingdom for the cost of her virginity.
But that was not a price Aruk would truly demand. No night with this princess would he have. For he had no intention of killing her father. Only of escaping this island.
In all his dreams of Jalisa, never had he imagined that it would be she who rescued him. But it was for the best, if time spent with the princess could cure this obsession that ailed him. For even as she’d screeched, his cock and his heart had ached with need for her. As she’d dangled marriage and a lifetime in front of him, so badly he’d wanted to take them.
Yet she seemed quite pleased that he didn’t.
No time had they wasted before leaving. Only two days’ voyage it was back to Savadon, so no need to stock more provisions. Aruk studied her now as he rowed the dinghy to the sailing ship anchored outside the shallow cove. The princess looked as if she might have truly spent six months on an island with him. Sun and wind had pinkened her pale skin. Her hair was a wild tangle. Eyes closed, she sat in the boat with her face lifted to the rising sun, a soft smile on her lips.
“What did you mean when you said I offer you true freedom?”
That smile widened, as if simply the thought brought her renewed joy. “Only that I would not have to be what was intended for me. Instead I will be what I choose to be.”
“You do not wish to be a queen?”
“A queen? That would mean nothing in my father’s kingdom.” Now she looked at him, her gaze so direct. “Never would I rule after my father died. The husband my father chose for me would. The only purpose intended for me is to breed heirs.”
“Is that not a queen’s duty? You do not want children?”
“I want children when I am ready to have children. Not because a husband is ready to get heirs upon me. So I would like to be queen, warrior. What I do not want is to be a bride, whose only purpose is in marriage and breeding and looking pretty.”
“You do not wish to marry?” No husband then would Aruk have to hate.
Or kill.
She shrugged. “Not if it means always bowing to the wishes of a husband or marrying a man who wants the throne more than he wants me. So perhaps I will not marry at all. Perhaps a string of lovers I will take.”
Lovers? Aruk couldn’t stop his snarl. His hard pull on the oars sent her swaying backward and forward as she laughed at him.
“You disapprove, warrior? After demanding to be the first of them?”
She was right to laugh. A fool’s reaction it was. Yet jealousy filled his gut and Aruk wanted to demand that he would be her first and her last and her only.
And he would not even be her first. Still he said to her, “You are a virgin. Do you truly know what you agreed to, and what I will do to you?”
“Of course. You will spread my thighs and shove your cock into me and then rut until you spend. Though I hope you will not spend inside me.”
Spilling his seed deep within the hot, wet clasp of her. His shaft stiffened at the mere thought.
Yet that could only be fantasy. “Never would I spend inside a woman who was not my wife.” A woman he could not stay with, if he got her with child.
“Then we are agreed.”
“I do not think we are.” Except in the broadest of details. He hauled back on the oars. “Your legs I would spread. Then I would settle my head between them and feast on your cunt until sweet honey dripped down your thighs.”
Her breath caught. Lips parted, she stared at him.
Another stroke of the oars. His firm grip on them was all that prevented Aruk from reaching for her. “And when you are wet and soft and swollen with your need, then I will sink my cock into you. Again and again. Full deep, never stopping until I feel the hot squeeze of your cunt as you come.”
Her fingers rolled into fists against her thighs. The shift she wore had dried, no longer transparent, yet still he could clearly see the hardness of her nipples.
“Why would you?” she whispered.
“Why would I fuck you? It is the fee.” One he would never collect. Though he’d begun to wish her father was a tyrant in truth.
“Why make me come? Why care whether I enjoy it at all?”
He frowned. “What sort of man would not care?”