Courted: Gowns & Crowns, Book 1 (17 page)

“One size fits most,” he offered. But per her instructions, he turned away and pulled off his own shirt, aware from the sounds behind him that she’d stopped to watch him do so. He unbuckled his pants, and she started scurrying again, only to stop once more when he removed both his pants and briefs and strode naked toward the water. He didn’t stifle his grin as he stepped up on the rocks. “It’s deep enough to dive here, but be careful of the bottom. It can be rocky.”

Whatever response she gave was lost as he plunged into the crystal-clear pool. By the time he surfaced, Emmaline was at the water’s edge, looking dubiously over the side. “No matter how I hit the water, this thing is going to come flying off me,” she grumbled, tugging on the edge of the suit. It looked, as he’d expected, absolutely perfect on her. But it would look much better off.

“I’ll watch for it.”

“I bet.”

Surprising him, she took a few steps back from the edge of the pool, then raced forward, hurtling over him and curling her body into a ball such that she landed with a tremendous splash. The burst of water had him turning away, and by the time he spun back around, she was stroking hard and sure across the water, toward the falls.

He propelled his body forward to swim after her. The sun on his back, water sluicing around him—it was as if he had been granted another unexpected reprieve. Whenever he thought of Emmaline in the years to come, he would always think of her as this: a final reprieve between the life he’d been born to live, and the life he was forced to take on.

Chapter 12

Emmaline surfaced in front of the crashing sheet of water. Estral Falls was a pretty straightforward waterfall, a torrent spilling over sheer, high cliffs.

As she regarded the watery wall, Kristos barreled into her and answered her question about what lay beyond the foaming falls. They burst through the cascading water into a narrow, tranquil pool beneath filtered sunlight, framed by cliff walls. Kristos turned with her in his arms, his head cocked as he peered up into the shadows.

“What are you looking for?”

“Just looking. It’s been a while since I’ve come here.” He glanced back to her as his treading stopped. “Don’t kick hard—the rock juts out to form a ledge, and it will damn near break your feet if you aren’t careful.”

Em braced her hands on his arms as she tried touching down. She could reach the bottom, but not easily. “I’m not quite tall enough,” she spluttered, coming up for breath.

He grinned. “I’ll guess I’ll have to hold you, then.”

Before she could say anything else, he dipped his head toward her. At first, he kissed her lightly, almost as a friend, then his arms tightened and he pulled her close. With the buoyancy of the water, Em lifted her legs easily and locked them around Kristos—remembering too late that he wasn’t wearing swim trunks. His dark golden eyes flashed as she pressed up against him.

“You’re still overdressed. This is becoming an unfortunate trend.”

“It’s your fault for choosing such sturdy swimwear for me.” Em circled her arms around his shoulders and leaned back from him. “I totally thought it would—hey!”

Kristos’s right hand returned to her side, his left smoothly drawing the remains of her swimsuit bottom out from between her legs. “Another benefit of the string bikini,” he murmured as he tossed the suit toward the falls. “Easy access.”

He shifted back against the smooth cavern wall then, in an act so unself-conscious she wondered, fleetingly, how many women he’d brought up here over the years. She didn’t kid herself into thinking she was the only one. Prince Kristos might have been the younger brother of the royal pair of heirs, but he was fierce and hot-blooded, and his body—
God, his body
. He’d been so worried about her reaction to his brutal scars, but how could anyone not be impressed by the evidence of his strength, his intensity, his dedication to his country? He was a walking dream come true.

And she was in his arms.

“Do I want to know what you are thinking?” Kristos’s gaze was hard upon her again, and Em tilted her head back.

“Maybe I was wondering what was taking you so long,” she said, laughing as his eyes widened in surprise. “Marauding prince, visiting maiden, magical lake, disappearing swimsuit…”

“It definitely seems like a situation to be taken advantage of.”

They both seemed to shift at the same time, and then the hard length of Kristos’s shaft nudged up against her, exactly where he needed to be, and her body was more than ready for him despite the strangeness of the water all around. As time seemed almost to suspend in place, he slipped in and out of her body slowly, adjusting perfectly when she sighed and angled herself to take more of him inside. Still, with another shift he seemed to shudder, and he clamped his hands on her hips, closing his eyes and tightening his jaw with such focus and concentration that it took her a moment to realize why.

No condom.

She closed her eyes as well so he wouldn’t see her surprise—or the completely non-PC sense of triumph that surged through her. They weren’t using protection. And
she
was always the careful one, with all those dotted i’s and crossed t’s. She chose her boyfriends with equal care, and what they lost in the excitement department, they made up for in the safety zone.

But Princess Emmaline Aurora Grace didn’t have to worry about things like safety. Not with a vaunted prince of the realm.

“Are you worried, Emmaline?” Kristos murmured. “I won’t let things get that far.”

“Oh, really?” she teased, though hearing him speak her name in his heavily accented voice made any ideas of safety completely unappealing.

“Really. But you, on the other hand, should feel free to go as far as you’d like.” He shifted her weight to one side and slipped a hand between them, chuckling as she tensed.

“You don’t like to be touched?” As he spoke, he pressed his fingers against her sex, just above the point where their bodies met. At the unexpected pressure, her body constricted around him, heightening the sensation and causing her to suck in a shaky grasp.

“I like—yes. I like to be touched, God—stop that.”

He chuckled. “I’ve always been very proud of my understanding of English, but you lost me there.” He drifted his fingers over her thighs and back to the center of her, brushing her clit and moving on despite her sharp intake of breath. As he continued the slow underwater exploration of her body, he swelled within her, his hips thrusting smoothly and rhythmically, carrying her higher on a tide of need. When he returned a third time, he didn’t stray.

Em bent up to him as he pressed his fingers home, his shaft seeming to thicken further, and the delicious pressure building within her suddenly became too full—too great. Too much to manage with the strange buoyancy of the water and his fingers
right there
, the sensation of him surrounding her body, becoming one with her in every sense of the word. She shattered in his arms like cheap glass, and he held her, his legs braced, his arms locked, his jaw working. His rough gasp of urgency made her feel like the most powerful woman in the world as she clenched around his shaft, the crash of water streaming all around them.

“Emmaline!” Kristos managed, and her head snapped up again, her dazed eyes finding his. Instantly, she realized he was shaking—his body practically vibrating against hers.

“What’s wrong?” She immediately tensed up, and his hands gripped her so hard, she suspected they’d leave a bruise. “What did I—did I do something wrong? Did I hurt you?”

“Move…very slowly. Backward.”

Awareness flared through her. “So I
do
have some effect on you.”

“Some,” Kristos gritted out. “More than you will want if you are not very, very careful.”

Em considered that. The tiniest, most perverse corner of her mind urged her to be even wilder, more dangerous than she had been already, but she instantly rejected the thought. She slid backward until she felt Kristos’s shaft slip free of her body, but when he turned away from her to sag against the cliff wall, panting like he’d just completed a marathon, she wasn’t about to let him recover so easily.

Taking advantage of his heaving lungs, his shivering distraction, Em moved behind Kristos, then curled her hand around the hard planes of his hips. Before he could shift, her questing hand found his shaft. When she wrapped her fingers around it, he straightened, as if suddenly realizing he was trapped.

“Emmaline.” His voice was harsh.

“What—you don’t like to be touched?” She threw his own words back at him as she drew her palm along his shaft, but as Kristos sighed in tight frustration, she wanted—needed more. She needed him inside her, whatever way she could get him. Em looked beyond him to the fall of water.

“Kristos? Would you do me a favor?”

His laughter sounded wrung out. “Anything.”

“Close your eyes?”

Frowning as she turned him, he nevertheless closed his eyes and allowed her to move him away from their ledge, splashing deeper into the shimmering pool as they neared the curtain of the falls once more. One of the large stones had been worn to a slant under the torrent, and as mist billowed up all around them, she treaded water, pushing Kristos forward. “Open your eyes now.”

He did, his hands bracing on the rock as water cascaded down, his gaze confused as it locked on hers. “What are you doing?” he demanded. But when she moved his body up against the rock, farther out of the water, he understood her intentions, and he grinned. “This is
me
granting
you
a favor?”

“I like it when you grant me favors.”

Power pounded through her with the same force of the water crashing around them. Kristos moaned in a guttural sound of pleasure as she positioned herself in front of him, pressing close, lifting herself out of the water to take his shaft into her mouth. It was still thick and heavy, and she thrilled to the realization that
she
had done this to him, that without a doubt he
wanted
her, at least for now—even if only for now.

Because now was enough, she decided. Now was more than enough.

Em slipped Kristos’s shaft into her mouth, then completely withdrew, freeing him to press her lips to the inside of his thigh. She watched his muscles spasm beneath his skin, saw the clenching of his fist, but to his credit, Kristos neither stopped her nor urged her on. He let her explore his body as he’d explored hers, as if he could wait the rest of the day for her to finish him.

If she didn’t put her mouth back over his cock soon, he was going to explode.

Kristos tightened his jaw and fought to keep from swearing as Emmaline traced kisses he could barely feel over his thighs—and then his eyes almost crossed as she laved his sac with her tongue, the pressure of her hand coming up to carry its weight as she shifted higher again. Her feet must have gained purchase somewhere, because as she fitted her mouth once more over his cock, she lifted her right hand as well, her fingers encircling the base of his shaft in a tight hold.

That about did it. He’d already been wound up by plunging into Emmaline without protection, the feel of her body filled with his better than he could have imagined. And now, what she was doing to him…

Emmaline seemed to sense it too. She began to move in a sensual rhythm, taking him so deeply into her mouth that her lips touched her fingers, then moving back and forward again, back and forward, until the blood pounding in Kristos’s head matched the thudding of his heart.

This sure as hell wasn’t the first time a woman had placed her mouth on him, and yet he felt like he might as well be a frantic teenager the need built in him so quickly. Then again, a few short minutes earlier, he’d watched her break in front of him with a kind of transported ecstasy that he’d never seen before. It was as if she’d allowed herself to think of nothing but the sensations she was feeling, sensations he had caused—had felt as he’d filled her to the brink, her body as tight around him as her mouth was now. A mouth that was hot and wet and perfect and—

He convulsed with a ragged cry, Emmaline and his need and desire all fusing together for an impossibly long moment of crystal clarity. It was quite possibly the best orgasm of his life, or of anyone’s lifetimes, anywhere. Dizziness swamped him, his sight flaring with pinpricks of light, his heart pounding in his ears. He felt like he’d died and gone to heaven.

Hell, maybe he
was
dead.

Either way, he wasn’t going to be found lying dead on this goddamned rock. With the last of his strength, he pushed Emmaline off his body and slid, almost boneless, into the crystal pool.

After a long moment of blissful weightlessness, a soft giggle somehow reached his ears through the fog. Kristos pawed the empty water, reaching for Emmaline, knowing she would be exactly where she most needed to be. On his second swipe, his arm encountered her shoulders, and he pulled her to him, still refusing to open his eyes.

“Are you treading water in your sleep?” she asked in a mock whisper. “Do they teach you that in your military?”