The Prince With No Heart (4 page)

“I can help,” she said.

Her words dried the prince’s mouth. Oh, she was old enough. The voice that issued from her was soft and husky, as seductive as pussy willows dragged across skin. Had she been hideous - which perhaps she was - those smoky tones would have called to him. He suddenly wanted to hear how she sounded murmuring bed pleas.

He cleared his throat, unwontedly embarrassed. “Do you ... need assistance with your horse charming?”

“If you would hold him,” she said, “I could actually reach his ear.”

“We’ll wait out here,” the stable master said, his mouth suspiciously near a grin. “Balthus likes you best anyway.”

Hell
, Augustin thought, eyeing his stallion’s skittering steps. He turned to pin the beggar girl with his gaze. “Stay well behind until I’ve got him.”

Getting him wasn’t easy. In the cursing, snorting battle that ensued, Balthus gifted him with a few bruises. At last, Augustin had the warhorse’s neck wrenched down in a wrestler’s grip. Balthus was still pretty far off the ground. The beggar girl put her hand on the prince’s shoulder so she could lean up. The warmth of her little fingers was a sensation a man like him couldn’t fail to note. Less enraptured, Balthus’s ear flicked an irate warning.

“Violet loves you,” the girl whispered into it.

Whatever powers she called upon, they
were
magic. Balthus released a long horsey sigh, every muscle in his great body relaxing. Cautiously, the prince let go of his neck. The horse’s ears settled and his tail. His nose bumped Augustin’s chest in the friendliest possible manner, as if to ask what all the fuss was about.

“Good Lord,” breathed the prince, stupefied.

The beggar girl dropped her hand, leaving his shoulder cold. Balthus nuzzled her for good measure, lipping the sheaf of astonishingly red hair that had slipped from beneath her hood.

“Stop that,” Augustin said, swatting the stupid beast even as he noticed how very beautiful the lock was.

The girl stepped back as soon as her hair was free.

Augustin looked at her. She’d drawn her hood back around her face, hiding herself from him. Too bad for her he was a connoisseur of women. He had no trouble spying pretty hands underneath that dirt, or the pretty tip of a nose.

“So,” he said, after which he unexpectedly had to swallow. “Shall I -”
kiss you?
supplied the baser side of his nature. “Why don’t I find you a place to -”
lie back and spread your legs
“- wash up and, er, break your fast and rest?”

“She could take the sleeping bench in the loft,” one of the stable boys volunteered, his mockery changed to awe. “Since Balthus likes her so much.”

There was hay in this small barn’s loft. And blankets. And plenty of privacy. The prince’s prick hardened at the thought of helping her wash up.

“I’d be grateful for a place to stay,” the beggar girl admitted.

Was her gorgeous voice a trifle huskier than before, or did the prince simply wish it were?

“Is Violet your name?” he blurted.

She nodded, and for no good reason his pulse quickened. Violet was a beautiful name. Surely the girl who held it was not ugly. His face felt hot, his scalp prickling with sweat. Within the shadow of her rags, her eyes lifted and locked on his. What color they were didn’t matter. The air in his lungs thickened.

“I’m Augustin.”

One of the stable boys said something he didn’t catch.

“Come on, lads,” said the stable master. “The prince can take care of this from here.”

* * *

Madrigar’s prince had mesmerizing deep blue eyes. For that matter, he had mesmerizing shoulders and arms and thighs, muscles packed onto them so perfectly one inch more would have been too much. Violet didn’t think she’d ever seen a man so purely beautiful: from his guinea gold hair, to the health-flushed skin that poured over his chiseled cheekbones, to the way his calves filled his tan breeches. He smelled amazing, which didn’t seem fair to her, a mix of meadow and man and leather that flew up her nose like a love philter.

Considering how little her body needed love philters, that was unfair as well.

“This way,” he said hoarsely, pointing to the loft ladder.

She went up first with him close behind her. He seemed not to be breathing right, as if he were trying to hide how quickly his lungs wanted to go in and out. Violet’s pussy began to melt. She was hardly breathing right herself.

She stumbled slightly as she stepped off the final rung.

“Careful,” he said.

By the time he was up himself, she was steady on her feet. He took her elbow the same as if she were teetering. Violet didn’t object. Even through her cloak, his touch shot tingles all the way up her arm.

The scent of hay swirled into the scent of him.

“Your sleeping bench is there,” he said, his gaze apparently unable to leave hers. “And a little shelf to set out your things. I believe there’s water in that basin, but it might not be fresh.”

“Thank you.” Her voice was thick with arousal. Prince Augustin’s beautiful eyes went dark.

“I’m sorry,” he said, rather hoarse himself. “I left your packet of food back down in the barn.”

Rather than leave, he continued to stare at her, his breath coming faster as it escaped his ability to control it. Violet’s cheeks grew hotter, and also other parts of her. The prince’s body seemed to struggle before he turned away, as if invisible iron chains had been holding him where he was.

“I’ll get it for you,” he said, stepping toward the loft ladder.

“Don’t.”

Her arm flew up of its own volition, the tips of her fingers brushing his bare forearm. The prince froze in place. He wore a snug hunting shirt with the sleeves pushed up. The gilded hair on his arms was silky, the strong tendons underneath warmer than she expected.

Stay
, she thought.
Be with me
.

The prince had lowered his head. He turned it back to her, the gaze he slanted from his hooded eyes so hot it made her shudder. “Don’t play with fire, Violet.”

His warning rumbled from his chest. Violet couldn’t speak. She wet her lips, part nervousness, part intense attraction to this beautiful stranger. Augustin spotted the small gesture. His muscles tightened as his face flushed darker.

“God in heaven,” he said.

His hands seized her head, one to either side of her ragged hood, pressing it to her ears. As tall as he was, he looked down a height to her. With her head tilted in his palms, she supposed he could see her face.

“You
are
beautiful,” he murmured.

She wasn’t more than pretty, but when he said it, she believed. Feeling awestruck, she gazed back at him. His golden brows enchanted her, the tiniest furrow marking where they drew together. Even more fascinating were the eyes they shadowed. She didn’t understand how they could look simultaneously peaceful and pained.

Something in
her
eyes must have affected him. The little crease deepened on his forehead.

“Violet,” he said. “I’m not an ordinary man. There are things about me that could hurt you.”

She didn’t care. She stretched up on her toes and pulled his head down to hers.

He was groaning by the time their lips met. His mouth brushed hers, his hands on her upper arms, gripping the muscles hard. “Open,” he said, nudging her with those beautifully sculpted lips. “Violet, kiss me.”

She shivered and let his tongue slide into her mouth.

The kiss shook her like an earthquake without being the least violent. Slowly, delectably, Augustin penetrated her with his tongue. The surface of his lips was soft, the muscles that moved them firm. She was tempted to run her tongue across them, but that would have interfered with what he was doing. She couldn’t help but feel he was claiming her, thrusting that wet silken spear slowly in and out, savoring, teasing, as if his tongue were a much different part of him.

This would have been enough to charm her, but he had other sweets to offer. With a blissful rumble of enjoyment, he changed angles, luring her tongue into his mouth with a spate of delicious suckling that simply could not be resisted. Violet hadn’t expected a man so handsome to have such skill. That he could have been more forceful was obvious. Without the slightest effort, he lifted her off her feet to spare his neck the crick it had to be getting. Held safely in his arms, Violet wrapped her legs around him, her eternally aching pussy loving the hardness of his flat muscles.

When she rolled against them, he grunted into her mouth.

It must have been a grunt of approval, because a heartbeat later one big hand was covering her bottom and her back was squashed to the hayloft wall. He wriggled her down so that his big erection rubbed the
v
of her thighs.

Even then he was careful not to hurt her.

“You’re so little,” he breathed. “I cannot wait to get inside you.”

She couldn’t wait either. She kissed him harder as he turned them, lowering her back on a pile of blankets laid over wooden planks. Still kissing her, the prince’s hand tugged her skirts higher up her legs. He caressed her ankle, her calf, the lean muscle of her thigh. Violet gasped as his hand slid inside the gap of her linen drawers. He’d closed his fingers around her pussy, palm squeezing her wetness, thumb curving directly over her distended clitoris.

“Christ Almighty,” he swore, tearing his mouth free of hers.

She blinked at him, then blushed furiously. She knew what he was feeling.

“You’re swollen,” he said. “You’re a fucking strawberry drenched in cream.”

She twisted to get away, but his hand tightened on her flesh, the sudden massage he gave her trapping her where she was, a prisoner to the lust she could never slake. If he did what he was doing a little harder, she was going to come.

“I’m sorry,” she burst out, then bit her lip against groaning. “I can’t help the way I’m reacting.”

If anything, the prince’s hand squeezed her harder. “Violet,” he growled. “This is the fucking most gorgeous pussy I’ve ever had the privilege of touching.”

He kissed her before she could respond, his tongue plunging deep. Then he wrenched his lips off again. The grin he flashed as he retreated was the wickedest she had ever seen. “You
know
I have to taste you.”

Flinging up her skirts, he dragged down her drawers in almost the same motion. She was leaning back on her elbows, her lower legs dangling off the blanketed sleeping bench. Augustin pushed her knees wider and drew in an appreciative breath. The flaring of his nostrils reminded her just how sweaty and mussed she was.

“No,” she gasped.

Augustin’s dangerous grin broadened, somehow all the more seductive coming from his crouched position between her thighs. His thumbs ran up and down her drenched labia, pulling them wider with the motion. That simple indirect stimulation was sufficient to drag a mortifying whimper from her.

“Yes,” Augustin countermanded, then sealed his mouth atop her desperately throbbing pearl.

* * *

If Augustin could have fallen in love, he’d have fallen for this girl’s pussy. Her clit was so engorged with blood it was hot. It rolled like satin against his tongue, as tart as a ripe berry. He suckled it, then tongued it, then rumbled out sounds of rut he could not hold in. When her little hands shoved his shoulders, he barely registered the pressure. The scent of her arousal soaked his brain, the thought that his rigid prick was going to plunge into this treasure.

“Please,” she said. “Please, I need to wash up.”

“Shush,” he soothed, backing off far enough to speak. “You don’t smell any worse than my horse.”

Her sudden silence warned him he’d committed another of his infamous faux pas. “Thank you very much!” she huffed once she’d recovered.

Her eyes were laughing, so he pressed a light kiss to her berry.

“Oh,” she said breathlessly.

He grinned and tickled her most sensitive spot with his fluttering tongue.

“
Oh
,” she said, much lower.

On confident ground again, he sank his mouth onto her. Her
ohs
turned to sighs and then into ragged moans. He had to plant his forearms on her hips, because she was soon thrashing desperately. When she came for the first time, the small of her back arched a full two hand spans off the blankets.

“
Anhh
,” she cried, the wail of a forest cat.

This delighted him so much, he had to make her do it again.

Her hands fumbled to his head, fingers tangling awkwardly in his hair. She seemed like she wanted to urge him closer, but perhaps was embarrassed to. More than happy to help out, he worked his thumbs in firmer circles around what his mouth was doing.

“Oh God,” she gasped, hips bucking up at him. “Please keep doing
that
.”

He laughed even as she came, as happy as a drunkard in a wine cellar. Women were always swooning underneath him. This girl was made of sterner and apparently lusty stuff. It seemed too much to hope for, but her desire for pleasure might, just maybe, run neck and neck with his.

Grunting at that awe inspiring thought, he shoved both forearms under her bottom to tip her pelvis to a more advantageous slant. That he could tell she liked. Her arms flew out to grip the edge of the sleeping bench.

“
Augustin
,” she groaned.

Augustin didn’t think he’d ever been this excited, like a stallion scenting his ideal mare. His prick thrust out from his loins like an iron truss, tenting the front of his clothing. His balls were sucked so tight against his root they ached, and his blood sang hot in his veins. He hurt with his longing to touch his cock, but he couldn’t bring himself to take his hands off the girl. He had her at the perfect angle. She was quivering in his arms. For once, his release could wait. He’d pour it into her as soon as she finished. Swamp her with it. Overflow her tight little quim with seething jets by the score.

All right, he’d have to pull out the same as always, but for this moment he could dream.

The blanket tore when she came this time. She’d fisted her hands into it and strained too hard as the spasm hit. Her wail was music to him. When she finally settled, still not swooning, he thought he’d never been so pleased with his skills.