LATER, AMALIA WOULD likely think this through a bit more closely. Possibly beat herself up a little, because surely when a man vowed revenge, she shouldn’t throw herself on her knees and take him in her mouth as if that was the only thing she’d ever wanted to do.
But she couldn’t think about that now.
Because finally, finally, she had Joaquin in her mouth again, and she couldn’t think of a single other thing she would rather do just now than this.
Having dreamed of this at a desperate fever pitch for five long years, she did not intend to waste a single second doing anything at all but enjoying it. Enjoying him.
The taste of him, salt and man, like the sea. The thick heat of him in her mouth and the thrill of it, to see if she could stretch her mouth that wide. To test herself against his relentless length. To feel that prickle of concern that this time, she might not be able to do it—until she did.
And she knew what he liked. He had taken such care to teach her, that long-ago summer. She dropped her hands from his thighs to clasp one wrist behind her back, circling it with her other hand, well aware of the picture that made for him. And she might have worried that even that had changed, but the moment she did it his hand came to her face. He smoothed his hand over her jaw, her temple, then over her hair. Then sank his fingers into her chignon, so that he was what held her head in place.
Right where he wanted her.
And already she trembled, because she knew what would come next. Memory seemed to twine with the moment, making her burn too hot, too quick. She concentrated on the stroke of her tongue against the warm steel of him and the way he began to move, thrusting gently in and out of her mouth.
And with every thrust, he increased his pace but held her still. He set the rhythm, surrounding her with all of that heat and control, so all she could do was deliver herself into his hands and surrender to the tumult of this. The rough, raw joy.
That was the paradox of Joaquin. That was what she’d battled with all these years, longing to go and find him again despite knowing she couldn’t have him. There had been the freedom of this island that summer and she had loved not having to live with security forever within sight. But the real truth was that she’d never felt more free in all her life than when this man held her in his hands and brought them both all this pleasure, more intense and beautiful than anything else she had ever known.
Even though she had known that she could never love him in return, no matter how she felt inside. No matter what she wanted.
The only thing she had ever been allowed to love was Ile d’Montagne.
Amalia felt it again now, that tidal wave of sensation, so vivid and bright that it was hard not to squirm where she knelt. She pressed her thighs together, though it was never enough—not when he was near and she knew what he could make her feel. And even though this time, she had five years of longing built up inside her, she could only make the fire dance higher and higher—she couldn’t find any relief.
Then again, maybe it wasn’t relief she wanted. Not when everything inside her seemed wrapped tight around that same narrow column of flame and hunger, and only Joaquin could put it out.
Or make it burn on, brighter than before.
And still he thrust in with that ruthless command, then pulled out, filling her totally and then dragging himself back, so that both of them groaned.
She lost herself in the slickness, the taste, the glory of being his again. The heat of him inside her mouth and that hard hand on the side of her face, strong fingers in her hair. This was timeless, this taking. This giving. She could feel her body respond the way it always did, trembling closer and closer to that edge only he knew the contours of—
She heard him mutter one of his favorite curses. His grip tightened.
And it was only then, only when his thrusts grew jerkier, deeper, wilder and more exhilarating, that she unclasped her hands, and moved them to his hips.
So that when he spilled himself inside her mouth, Amalia shattered apart. Even as she drank him down.
Every last drop, then took her time licking him clean.
She remembered this view of him so well. She had seen it so many times. His head thrown back and abandoned, the green of his eyes hidden behind his sooty lashes.
That mouth of his that could bring so much pleasure, flattened out in sensual starkness as he took his own.
She had been the Crown Princess of Ile d’Montagne, taught from a very young age of the power that was to be hers one day and what it meant. And yet she was not certain she had ever felt more powerful in her life than at moments like this, when she had rendered this powerful, masterful man as close to putty in her hands as he would ever be.
And now, she was nobody. Just a woman, kneeling before a man, while every nerve ending in her entire body shouted out its need and longing—because the pleasure she took in sending him spinning over the edge was only a pale echo of what it was like when he dedicated himself to the task of tearing her apart.
She remembered that all too well. Or maybe it was more accurate to say she longed for it.
And still, she felt newly dizzy with her own power here.
As nothing more than a woman who could do this to a man.
Joaquin opened his eyes and she was lost again in all that hard green. More brilliant than ever, just now, like an emerald fire bright enough to dim the Spanish sun. His gaze held hers for a long, fiery moment. Then his lashes, wasted on a man, concealed his gaze as he reached down and handled himself.
Amalia sat back on her heels, glad she’d thought to toss her wrap to the floor. It didn’t disguise the stone beneath her or alter its hardness. It was like Joaquin, really. All that stone covered in softness, like a gift.
And surely there were things they should discuss. She could think of too many, right there off the top of her head, even while her heart clattered about inside her ribs and she was still battling the urge to squirm about and do something with all the sensation still storming about inside her.
Maybe this time, now that she was...herself, whoever that turned out to be, she could face him with honesty and openness. And somehow wash away the things she’d said to him five years ago so he would let her go.
She didn’t have to put limits on how she enjoyed him now. She didn’t have that ticking clock, counting down to the end of the summer and the resumption of her official duties. She could...simply sink into the marvel of the heat between them and see where it went. Wherever it went.
It felt like a new sort of freedom.
Assuming, of course, that this moment wasn’t all he wanted from her.
Amalia rather thought he would dismiss her and prowl away, leaving her to marinate in how little he thought of her now. She braced herself for his cruelty—knowing full well she deserved it—
It was relief when instead of stepping away, putting distance between them, forcing some kind of conversation or merely offering a sneer as he left her, Joaquin only held out his hand.
Saying nothing, which, somehow, seemed louder to her than if he’d shouted.
And still, there were so many things she should have said then. It wasn’t as if he’d been particularly kind to her today. Surely she should address that.
You were anything but kind to him, she reminded herself.
And anyway, she wasn’t sure she had it in her to confront him. What did it matter what he said now or what she’d done back then? What mattered was this. This overbright, almost painfully intense connection between them. It had been there from the start. And right now, all she could seem to do was bask in the fact that the years hadn’t dimmed it one bit.
So she took his hand.
More than that, she reveled in it as he tugged her up and onto her feet. The feel of his hand around hers once again. The grip she’d never expected to feel again. It was as if he was still holding her face, her head. Keeping her right where he wanted her.
Amalia was a little too invested in him wanting her. She accepted that. But then, the force of Joaquin’s wanting could, she was reasonably certain, shift the stars in the sky to make the patterns he preferred. That was what it felt like.
As if, deep within her, she was only stars he rearranged at will.
For a moment they stood like that, their hands clasped together. He still leaned there against the stone wall, his green gaze as demanding on her as his hands had ever been.
She watched a new storm track across his face and held her breath, but then he moved. He tugged her along with him as he walked through the open stone lobby. He led her out the other side from the path she’d walked from the docks and her heart took up a kind of drumming, because she knew immediately where he was headed. Sure enough, they wound down away from the hotel, on a path marked PRIVATE. Down the stone stairs that ran along the cliffs and offered views of the sea, before winding around again to the owner’s villa.
Though it was no airy villa built with tourists in mind. It had once been a dungeon, perched perilously close to the water line to give the prisoners something to think about.
Sometimes a man needs something to focus his attention, Joaquin had said the first time he’d brought her here. Though he had been looking at her, not his handiwork. And if it is not perilous, what is the point?
Joaquin had transformed the old dungeon, a complicated maze of cells that let the sea in. She had laid with him here, on that altar of a bed in his stark bedroom, staring out at the sea that raged just there.
You could have had any one of the villas on the island be the owner’s villa, surely, she had said. Why would you choose a former jail?
I am the orphan child of nobody at all, he had replied in a lazy voice that had not matched his words. Nearly everyone I met predicted I would end up in prison. Or worse. The dungeon seems appropriate.
Not that there was anything particularly dungeon-like about the home he’d built here, save its historic purpose. He had kept some of the details. The entrance, left intact, was a circular, medieval affair with bars everywhere. It had always made her laugh. Because it was all suitably intimidating, she’d thought then. It suited him, the fiercest man she’d ever met.
It still made her smile today, but that was more nostalgia than anything else. The door opened easily, a testament to the kind of money and attention he poured into every detail. No heaving and squeaking hinges here.
He ushered her inside, and everything was as she recalled it. Cool, stark whiteness everywhere, suggesting an airiness she felt certain none of the original inmates had ever felt. The stone was chilled and hinted of damp and was therefore strewn here and there with thick, richly colored rugs. There was art on the walls, most by identifiably famous artists. And instead of the thick stone walls that had once stood, every outward-facing wall was made of glass.
So that, depending on the tide, sometimes the ocean crashed right there against the walls.
It was still exhilarating, she found, as he led her from one room to the next as if he was on a mission. It was still overwhelming and exhilarating at once to be this close to the might and power of the water.
It still felt like him.
In his bedchamber, he whirled her into his arms, then backed her up. Amalia didn’t know where they were headed and she didn’t care. That, too, felt like a freedom. Because she was no longer the Crown Princess, duty-bound to put a stop to whatever happened with this man. She was no longer required to marry a man of Queen Esme’s choosing, however little they might match her own inclinations.
She was no longer required to be anyone but herself, whoever that was.
Right now, all she knew was that she could not get enough of Joaquin Vargas. That he had tattooed himself upon her years ago, and if anything, the colors of that tattoo were brighter now than they had ever been then. As if time had made the mark upon her all the more vivid.
And only he could see it.
Her lips parted on a kind of gasp as her back came up against the thick stone wall at the far end of his bedchamber, hard and cold. Then he was leaning over her, a dangerous glint in his gaze and that storm in the green of his eyes.
And once more, Amalia thought that too many things were said between them, without a single word being passed.
This close, with the light from the sea and sky outside dancing over them, she found herself studying his face. The years had only made him more beautiful, more astonishingly, bracingly handsome. Maybe there were a few more crinkles beside his eyes. Maybe those sharp, sculpted lines of his face had been drawn by a heavier hand these days.
But he still made her heart flutter in her chest and her knees go soft, no matter what stone he felt she should kneel upon.
Going on instinct, and maybe not wanting to hear whatever he might say next—not now, not when she was lost on that wave of nostalgia and need—she reached up and began to trace the bold lines of his face with her own fingers. As if she intended to sculpt him herself. She followed the line of his brow, then the dark slash of his eyebrows. Down the length of that aquiline nose, then backtracking to trace this cheekbone, then that. Then she moved over that stark mouth of his, all the more sensual because she knew how he could use it.
Finally his jaw, so intensely masculine, making him look not so much like a fallen angel, but the sin that had preceded that fall.
He murmured something dark, too low to hear. And Amalia couldn’t tell if she was sad she didn’t quite grasp his words, or just as happy that they remained opaque. Either way, she didn’t ask him to repeat himself.
And then, once more, he claimed her lips with his.
He kissed her, his hands propped on either side of her head. He held her there against that stone wall with only the seduction and steel of his mouth. His lips against hers, coaxing and castigating, as she lifted her hands to the marvel of his chest. He knew how to make her wild. He knew how to shift, at just the right moment, to make it all deeper. Hotter. To make her press up on her toes and push herself toward him, to tease and tempt her almost beyond reason.
Five years ago he had kissed her like this, on a moonless night beneath a whispering palm tree, and he had taught her what desire was.
And then he had taught her how to beg.
Then, better yet, what a thrill it was to get what she’d begged for.
When he finally pulled away now, Amalia was shaking. Joaquin’s gaze was so dark it actually hurt. And she had no doubt at all that they were remembering that same kiss that had changed them both.
Forever, she thought.
There was torment in his gaze then, and she braced herself, because surely now would come a little bit of that cruelty he’d showed her earlier. Cruelty Amalia might know she deserved, but that wouldn’t make it any easier to take.
But instead Joaquin only shook his head, then pushed himself away from the wall.
“Take off your clothes,” he ordered her, his voice rough. “I wish to see all of you.”
Amalia didn’t hesitate. She instantly kicked off her shoes and reached for the side zipper on her dress.
And her own lack of hesitation answered a question for her that had lingered, all this time.
It had been the summer, she had told herself in the intervening years. It had been her youth and inexperience. He’d been the first man who had ever really caught Amalia’s fancy, and that was why she’d been so abandoned with him. That was why she’d begged and knelt and obeyed his every sensual command.
She had tried her best to shame herself for her reactions to him as each year passed. She’d told herself that she had betrayed her people. That someday, Joaquin could easily hold that summer against her, telling all and sundry whatever salacious stories he liked that would undermine her position on the throne. How could she not have thought of that at the time? How could she have put herself in so many compromising positions?
Though she’d always known the answer to that. It was because she’d thought only of him. Only of Joaquin and the pleasure that burned on and on between them.
But even as Amalia had spent many a day lecturing herself for her trespasses, there had been a part of her that had never been cowed. The part of her that had always wanted him, no matter what happened. No matter what it cost her.
Even if it’s the throne, that part had whispered sometimes, traitorously.
That was the part that haunted her dreams. Disturbing her sleep almost nightly, leaving her tossing and turning and waking up overheated, her whole body chaotic. She would lie there, panting, tears rolling down her cheeks, while too-hot images chased themselves in her head and weighed her down in her sheets.
She’d told herself for years that she’d built all this up in her head and made it—him—into something it wasn’t. Mountains out of molehills, she would mutter at herself as she tried, and usually failed, to expel Joaquin from her head.
Especially when the Queen had talked strategic marriages.
But now she understood. It wasn’t that Joaquin was himself the mountain, though he was certainly no molehill, either. It was this thing between them. This impossible compulsion. This need. That was the mountain, imposing and majestic and theirs to climb at will. She might have been young and foolish then, but she was neither of those things now. Twenty-five was only young when a person was aimless and didn’t know what to do with their lives—not an ailment Amalia had suffered until recently.
And still, she wanted nothing at all but to please him.
Not because she felt subservient to him in any way.
But because the more she pleased him, the more it pleased her. Deep inside. Physically, yes, but it was so much more than merely physical.
And somehow, he had known that she needed that, right from the start. Amalia had spent her whole life in the service of others, but had never done so directly. On her knees. In his hands. She had never really understood true service until then. He’d given her that gift.
I don’t know why I like to do these things, she’d whispered to him that summer. I think it means something is broken in me.
He’d been holding her in his lap in the chair across this very room, having picked up from where she’d knelt before him much as she’d done today. You’re looking at this the wrong way, I think, he had said.
What other way could it possibly be looked at?
But even as she’d asked that question, she’d had her face cradled against his chest and could feel that same need coiling again inside her. Because it was never enough. No matter what they did, she wanted more. One look at Joaquin had opened up the floodgates inside her and she had doubted very much they could ever be closed again.
She’d been right. They had never closed.
But that summer, she hadn’t wanted to think about such things. Because she’d known she would have to return to Ile d’Montagne. She’d known that whatever this was, whatever he’d tapped in her, she would have to shut it off again.
If she could.
You are worrying about what other people might think instead of what you think, he had told her, his chin on the top of her head, holding her there like they were puzzle pieces made to snap together just so. I suggest you stop. There are no other people in this room, cariño. Here there is only you and me and how we feel. Nothing else matters.
Over time, she’d told herself he’d only been saying that because it allowed him that power over her. But she knew better now. He didn’t demand that power over her.
She craved it.
And so here, now, while the surf thundered outside and soaked the windows, Amalia indulged herself.
She didn’t question the urges that raced through her, making her blood feel too hot in her veins. Today she was a new woman. Today she was whoever she wanted to be, so she leaned into these things she wanted. Having left her wrap on the floor in the lobby, she thought no more of it as she stood there before him and stripped off the armor she’d worn to leave the palace.
The perfect dress that showed her femininity without highlighting too many of her assets she kicked aside. The strand of quiet pearls she unwound from her neck and let fall. Then she stood before Joaquin wearing nothing but the lacy panties that hugged her hips and the bralette she wore because though her curves were not that exciting, it had been ingrained in her that a lady of stature did not wander about with her breasts uncontained like some common harlot.
But it turned out she might very well be a common harlot, as she was, by virtue of the notably non-blue blood in her veins, common to the core.
She took her time pulling the bralette over her head. Then tugged the lacy shorts over her hips so she could shimmy then down her legs. Only when she was naked at last did she stand, find the green of his eyes again, and then unclip the hair he had messed up, but not undone, so that it tumbled down past her shoulders.
Joaquin’s gaze ignited.
She felt as if the world was roaring out the pleasure of this, the tug of this unquenchable need, and only realized when he swept her up into his arms that Joaquin was the one making that sound. But then she realized that she was echoing it, there in the back of her throat. He carried her over to his bed and lay her out on the mattress, stripping off his own clothes in the kind of haste that indicated he was as swept up in this as she was.
That only made her glow brighter. Hotter.
And watching Joaquin undress himself was a pageant.
She made herself stay where he put her, so she could enjoy the show.
But it seemed as if she only got little glimpses of that flat abdomen, the ridges that climbed from it, and the magnificence of his chest. Because almost at once he was coming down to find her on the bed. To take her in his arms and roll them both around and around, until she was dizzy and giddy and lost, and his mouth was busy on her neck, her breasts.
She wrapped her legs around him and could feel the hardest part of him there against her inner thigh, a thick, long insistence she had already tasted so well.
Her mouth watered all over again.
Amalia thought then that she might die if he wasn’t inside her. As quickly as possible.
It was possible she said that out loud.
He paused, reaching out to one of the tables beside the bed and quickly sheathing himself. Then he stretched her out beneath him, gathering her wrists in one hand and holding them up high over her head. She arched up against him, crossing her legs behind him once more, and despite five years of telling herself she would never repeat the shameful things she’d done in this bed, she was pleading with him again.
Begging him.
Again.
“Now, Joaquin. Please, now.”
And she could feel the dark curve of his mouth as if he smiled like that inside her, even as she watched it change the shape of his mouth.
He teased her, because he could. He dragged the blunt head of himself through her heat, and laughed at the noises she made.
He made them both shudder.
And only when he was ready, only when he chose, did he lean down, gather her close, and then slam himself home.
Amalia broke into a thousand pieces immediately, digging her heels into the small of his back and holding on as she bucked and shook.
He waited, every part of him taut and tight. He held himself over her as if it took every bit of willpower he possessed to let her dissolve in his arms without joining in. He looked as if it was torture.
Only when she caught her breath did Joaquin begin to move.
And everything was wildfire once more.
Only this time, both of them burned.
His pace was impossible. And glorious.
And far, far better than the dreams that had kept her alive all this time.
All she could do was hold on as best as she was able, wrapping herself tight around him as he took them both on the wildest, most glorious ride of her life.
Her nails dug into his back. Her hips rose to meet his as if of their own accord. Her head was thrown back, she was sobbing out her joy, her need, her dark delight.
And in that moment, Amalia wouldn’t have cared if the entire population of Ile d’Montagne was lined up at the foot of the bed, watching them.
Because this was beautiful. And she was entirely his.
It had been that way since the moment she’d laid eyes on him and neither time nor distance nor her role in a far-off kingdom had changed that one bit.
This time, when she shattered once more, she heard his cry as he came with her.
And she thought, as she spiraled off into nothing in his arms, that at least there was this.
Amalia might not be who she’d always believed she was, but there was still this. There was still Joaquin.
And somehow, some way, everything would be all right.