The Dare Collection September 2018. Stefanie London
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her fists against my chest, berating me for ruining her?
“I’m free of disease, if that’s something you’re worried about,” I say, aiming to reassure her when the truth is that she doesn’t seem the least bit nervous, and I wonder if it’s not my own apprehension I’m trying to assuage. “I’ve always been safe with—” Saying it aloud now seems too boorish.
“With the countless other women you’ve taken from behind?”
Juliet finishes the thought, my bold little princess.
I nod. “Why is it different with you?” The question is more to myself, but something in me wants her to know that the second I buried myself inside her, everything changed.
“I don’t know,” she answers. “I sought you out for what I thought you could do for me physically.” She kisses my forehead, her taut nipples brushing against my chest. My cock pulses in reaction. “But you were kind and caring the second you approached me outside the club.”
“You were hurt,” I say, curtly.
“And you could have left me to fend for myself. But you didn’t.”
She strokes my hair, her gaze unblinking and fixed on mine. Then kisses the tip of my scar at the side of my jaw, and my chest tightens. I’ve survived for years on the rush of fast cars and the types of encounters with women that allowed my heart to remain numb.
I rest my hands on her hips, my fingertips kneading her soft skin.
“I wasn’t supposed to feel,” I admit, realizing I’m treading on very thin ice. Because feeling something for this woman is not an option.
“Do you want to know what I feel, Damien?” But she doesn’t wait for me to respond. “I feel trust.” She lifts my palm to her chest, my fingertips tracing the arrow of birthmarks, placing it over her heart—and her beautiful bare breast. “Right in here. And I feel safe.”
I let out a bitter laugh. “You’re deluding yourself, Princess. No one is safe with me.” Of this I am certain.
She climbs over me, balancing so the tip of my cock teases her opening.
“If you could keep from hurting me, would you?”
“Yes,” I admit with zero hesitation. “But we both know that isn’t an option.”
“This is, though,” she says, sinking over me like a custom-made racing glove.
She gasps, and I growl.
“Juliet... Jesus... Do you not...understand...what just happened?” I can barely speak because I am inside her with no barrier, her rich, tight warmth driving me out of my goddamn mind. “If your little chart doesn’t work, I could have put you at more risk than you ever anticipated.”
She pushes my shoulders, urging me onto my back.
“I understand three things,” she says. “The first is that it will take days for anyone to find me, as my governess believes I’m spending the weekend cloistered at the royal church praying and thanking God for the good fortune of my match.”
This makes me grin. “You really are an evil genius in disguise. Do you know that?”
She raises a brow. “The second is that I’m not ready to give you up for my duties after only one night. Not yet.”
I grip her hips tight and pulse inside her.
She writhes.
“And the third...” She pauses, and I watch that now-familiar flush creep up her chest, to her neck, and finally to her cheeks.
“Just say it, Princess. It can’t be worse than asking me if we were going to procreate.”
She lets out a nervous laugh, then leans down, pressing her breasts to my chest, her lips a breath away from my ear.
“The third is that when I do go home and marry Rupert, I’ll have the memory of my short time with you—the closest I will ever get to being passionately, ass over elbow, in love.”
I flip her over and kiss her with the hunger of a man starved of food, of water, of air, of anything and everything essential to the most basic survival.
Because she is all of these things and so much more. And so, for the next two days, I eat, drink and breathe nothing other than Juliet. I worship her body, and she nourishes my soul. She has unlocked a gate I thought no longer had a key, and hell if I know how the hell I’ll ever close it back up.
On the morning of the third day, we languish atop my plush duvet. I pepper her skin with soft kisses from her ankles to her lush pink lips, then back down again. I pause mid journey for a quick taste of her tangy sweetness.
She gasps.
“I could survive on this alone,” I say.
She laughs, pushing up on her elbows to look down at me. “You’d starve eventually.”
“It would be worth it,” I tell her, then give her one long, slow lick.
She fists the duvet, then collapses onto her back as she writhes against my lips.
“We’re never leaving this room,” she says.
“As you wish, Princess.” And slip one finger inside her, then two, as I suck her swollen clit between my lips.
She bucks and thrashes, and I have no choice but to drive her the rest of the way home, taking immense pleasure in doing so.
“Damien!” she calls out as I do, and I realize there is no sound better than my name tearing from her lips.
I slide my hand free and crawl over her limp yet satiated frame, admiring the blissful smile spread across her face.
I put that there.
I lean down to kiss her, but before my lips reach hers, the bedroom door bursts open, wood splintering as six men rush into the room.
The Nightgardin Royal Guard, better known as the Black Watch.
Juliet screams as two of the men haul her from the bed. It takes the other four to restrain me. Even then, they’re barely able to do it. My fight-or-flight reaction takes hold, and all I know is I will fight for this woman.
“Damien!” she screams, and I seethe as I watch her naked form being dragged toward the elevator.
“You fucking bastards,” I hiss at my captors, but they say nothing. “Juliet!” I call after her, our eyes meeting as another waiting guard wraps her in a throw from the sofa. “I will come for you!”
She opens her mouth to respond, but one of the guards covers it with a less-than-gentle hand. She struggles against his grip. When the guard swears and snatches his hand away, I grin.
She’s bitten him.
But my joy is short-lived, because they are in the elevator now, the doors already closing.
“Damien!” she cries one last time.
“I swear it, Juliet! I’ll find you!” I yell just as the doors seal and she slips from view, and I know now that I was wrong. My name tearing from her lips in abject terror will haunt me for the rest of my life.
One of my captors punches me in the face before I can completely register that she’s gone.
Then the truth of it all sinks in. They aren’t just here to take Juliet to the king and queen of Nightgardin.
They’re here to kill me, and there’s not a goddamned thing I can do about it, not that there would be any point. I’ve committed an act of treason, one I knew was punishable by death. Yet I was fool enough to think that whatever connection Juliet and I forged would be stronger than the law.
Two of the guards pin my arms behind my back, but I no longer struggle as the two men before me trade punches in quick succession. A rib breaks. Maybe two or three. One of my eyes