In the Flesh

  “I’m hungry,” she said. “And I want a bath. Then I want to see my mästares.”

  “So you’ll stay?” Wulf came to her and searched her face.

  “For a time.”

  “How long is that?”

  “As long as it pleases both of us.”

  She moved away, creating the necessary distance between them by walking through an archway into a private bath beyond. The massive room was stunning, the walls covered in jeweled tiles. Fountains sprayed a steady stream of warmed water into the bathing pool. Bubbling jets pulsed from the depths, releasing a subtle fragrance into the humid air. The ceiling was made of low emissive glass, revealing the night sky above them, while simulated candlelight shimmered along the colorful walls.

  It was a voluptuary’s paradise; therefore, it suited Wulfric perfectly. He had a ravenous appetite for life and lived on the extreme end of every spectrum. He was wild and unrestrained, which both lured and repelled her. What would it be like to tame such a man? She doubted it was possible or that she would like the result if it was.

  Stepping into the warm water, Sapphire dove beneath the surface and swam to the opposite side. When she came up for air, she noted Wulfric’s frown. He slipped into the water. She waited until he neared, then she moved willingly into his arms.

  “Katie…”

  She silenced the inevitable questions with a kiss, tilting her head to better seal her mouth over his. Her tongue caressed his before she caught him between her lips and sucked.

  When he moved to pin her to the edge, she slipped under the water and went to the semi-submerged ledge where various bath oils and soaps waited in fluted glass bottles. As she reached for a container that was less full than the others, she felt Wulf’s hands glide over her hips.

  “I can bind you to my bed and keep you,” he threatened.

  Pouring the liquid into her hand, Sapphire tossed an arched look over her shoulder. “If you make me a prisoner, I’ll deny you and fight you. Never doubt it.”

  She built up the richly scented lather, then turned and worked it over his chest. He watched her with dark, hooded eyes. “I can hold you without chains.”

  “Will you enslave me with this magnificent body?” She caressed his deeply bronzed skin with soap-slippery hands.

  “Can you be enslaved?”

  “Why would you want such a thing?” Her fingertips stroked over his broad shoulders and down his well-defined arms. She admired the hard ripples of his abdomen, then stepped around him to wash the corded length of his back. The skin of her palms tingled and burned from touching him. The force of the attraction shortened her breath. It was insanity, but she couldn’t fight it. “Isn’t my desire and admiration enough?”

  As she kneaded his muscles, he groaned, his head tilting back. “No.”

  Soaping her hands again, she ran them through his hair, massaging his scalp with her fingertips. “Would you prefer I wail and wring my hands over you while you’re away? Then cling to you when you return because you’ve been gone too long? You don’t strike me as the type of man who’d appreciate drama from a lover.”

  Wulf turned and caught her, tugging her beneath the water and pressing his mouth to hers. With a powerful lunge, he propelled them upward, breaking the surface with an explosive splash. She sputtered and pushed her wet hair out of her eyes. He chuckled before kissing her again. “I risk a war for you. I want more than your desire in return. A little drama wouldn’t hurt.”

  “I didn’t ask for this.” Sapphire wrapped her arms around his shoulders, which pushed her breasts against him. His gaze darkened.

  “I didn’t ask for this either.” He reached down to wrap her legs around his hips. “I don’t have time for obsessions.”

  “You need a foreign princess with excellent political connections.” Her voice was low and raspy, an audible sign of how it affected her to cling to his big, naked body.

  “Someday.” Wulf thrust one hand into her wet hair and arched her neck. “But right now, it’s you I want. And I won’t be satisfied until you want me the same way.”

  “What makes you think I don’t?”

  “You’d leave, if you could.”

  “Not for lack of wanting you.”

  “Prove it.” His smile made her toes curl.

  Sapphire smiled back. Straightening her legs, she once again stood on the pool floor. “Let me finish washing you.”

  “More work?”

  She linked her fingers with his and drew him to the shallow steps. “I’m not working. I’m touching you because I’ll take any excuse to do so.”

  “You don’t need an excuse. You don’t even have to ask.”

  With gentle urging, she maneuvered Wulf into sitting on the shallow first step. She began to wash his legs, kneading the muscles of his calves and thighs. She worked her way up to the eager jut of his cock and paused. He was hard and thick, as if he hadn’t just screwed her into exhaustion mere hours ago. It looked delicious. Her mouth watered at the remembered feel of him sliding over her tongue.

  “Katie…” The way he said her name made her shiver. His voice—always dark and deep—was laced with a sensual threat. “Keep looking at me like that and I’ll give you what you’re asking for, right here on this step.”

  She finished washing him quickly, understanding by the high flush on his cheekbones and the fists clenched at his sides that he was close to following through. Delicious as the thought was, Sapphire had something else in mind. She rinsed off the soap with handfuls of water splashed over his hips.

  Wulf was nearly prone, his body taut, his eyes heavy-lidded but alert. He presented such an erotic sight, spread out before her, his chiseled features austerely handsome.

  She bent her head and took his cock in her mouth.

  He bowed upward with a grunt, his hands thrusting into her hair to urge her closer. She suckled deeply, keeping the thick head trapped between the moist heat of her tongue and the curved roof of her mouth. Gripping the base of his cock with one hand, she cupped his scrotum with the other, rolling the twin balls with gentle fingers. She moaned when he swelled and throbbed with the beat of his heart.

  Wulf began panting harshly, his fingers flexing against her scalp. “Temptress…that hot little mouth…”

  He held her head still and bucked his hips, fucking through her suctioning lips. Then, suddenly, he pushed her away, slipping into the water with a vicious curse.

  “Wulf?” Her mouth tingled in frustrated longing. Her blood was heated and pumping fast with her hunger.

  The glance he shot her was furious. “You want to reduce this to nothing but sex.”

  “It can’t be anything more than that.”

  “It can be whatever we make it.” He collected a jar from the shelf and swam toward her, his jaw set mutinously.

  Wulf clearly hadn’t heard the word “no” often enough.

  “Why do you want it to be?” she asked. “You said it was my desire for you in the healing room that caught your interest. Desire leads to sex.”

  Wulf halted before her. He removed the lid of the container in his hand, releasing the scent of Draxian lilies.

  “It was your desire that revived me,” he corrected. “But it was the blade at my throat that first fascinated me, and the way you hid me from your father.”

  “Moments of insanity.” Against her will, her hand lifted and came to rest lightly on his hip. The rumble of approval that rose from his chest made her fingertips knead restlessly into his firm flesh. The urge to press herself against him was difficult to resist.

  “Yes. And the moments continued, stringing together, turning into days of madness where I thought of nothing but you, and you thought of nothing but me.”

  “Given time, we would forget.”

  “Before I left for my last patrol”—he soaped his hands—“I asked Sabine to select four of my concubines. I was undecided, so I made no decision at all.”

  The images that filled Sapphire’s mind made her jealous.
br />   “I remember they possessed different colored hair,” he continued, “but when I walked into the seraglio today, I couldn’t remember who they were. If all the women were lined up before me, I doubt I could pick them out. As pleasant as the debauchery was, it was forgettable.”

  He cupped her aching breasts in both hands and squeezed.

  Sapphire’s breath caught.

  “But you…” He smiled. “I know you have a birthmark on your hip and a freckle on your shoulder. I know the way you smell, the way you feel. You are unique to me. Vivid. I want you for more than sex. I want to do more with you than fuck you.”

  She watched him, riveted, as he caressed her in progressively smaller circles. When he reached her nipples and plucked them into stiff points, a low moan of pleasure escaped her.

  “I want to learn more about you,” he murmured. “The outside and the inside.”

  He washed her body slowly with the same attention she’d paid to his. As blissful languor weighted her limbs, he reached between her legs and rubbed her swollen flesh, cleansing her. Teasing her. Making her grip his shoulders to keep from falling.

  There was nothing beyond her ability to withstand—except a tender Wulfric. Did he know what he was doing to her? Was he doing it deliberately?

  “Rinse,” he ordered.

  When she emerged from the water, he was waiting for her.

  “Come here.” His tone was coaxing. Gripping her waist, he lifted her onto the edge of the pool, leaving her legs dangling in the water. He parted her knees.

  She knew what he intended. Her eager pussy welcomed his attentions with a rush of slick moisture. Her breathing grew shallow; her heart raced. Wulf smiled wickedly, knowing damn well what he did to her. She notched her heel at the back of his calf and tugged him closer.

  He sat on the steps and spread the lips of her sex with his thumb and forefinger. “You want me.”

  “Some parts of me do.”

  His smile widened. “I won’t rest until every part of you does.” He rubbed her with his fingertips in a leisurely back-and-forth glide. “Look how slick you are. Insatiable.”

  “Wulf…” She mewled as he bent his head to her pussy and gifted it with a lover’s kiss, pushing his tongue inside her. Stroking. Tormenting.

  “I want to know you here.” He licked her again, his verdant eyes lit with primitive masculine need. “I want to memorize the taste and feel of you.” He drew her clitoris into his mouth and suckled, fluttering over the tight bed of nerves with rapid flicks of his tongue.

  Her legs began to shake. Sapphire cupped his nape and pulled him closer. He tilted his head and fucked her with his tongue, his thick, wet hair tickling her inner thighs. Her body was on fire, her hips rocking and straining for the orgasm he deliberately kept out of reach.

  It was all so new to her—the seduction, the lack of control, the gift of doing nothing but accepting the attentions he doled out so freely. She watched him with narrowed eyes, enamored of the sight of so handsome a man—an enemy prince—servicing her so intimately. Wulf growled his pleasure and the savage sound freed the knotted tension in her womb. It burst in an intense, shattering release. She cried out, her chest tight with emotion. Gratitude. Longing.

  “Beautiful,” he praised, his tongue gentling her down from the last tremors of her orgasm.

  “Stop,” she begged, too sensitive to bear his expert lashing.

  Instead, he started over, working her quivering flesh until she climaxed more fiercely than before. Then he began again. And again.

  “Please.” She pushed him away. “No more.”

  He studied her intently, his lips swollen and glistening. “Are you satisfied for now? Ready to enjoy a meal and conversation?”

  Sapphire smiled. “I’m ready for a nap.”

  Wulf gripped the ledge of the pool and levered himself out of the water. He stood over her, dripping, fisting the heavy length of his cock. His hand pumped hard and fast, milking the engorged shaft she coveted. Semen beaded on the tip before spurting thickly across the tile. As he finished, Wulf’s chest heaved. Then he smiled wryly. “I haven’t done that in years.”

  “You didn’t have to do it now.” She was willing, even if overly satisfied. She would have taken him gladly and he knew it. He was making a startling point—he intended to give as much as he took.

  “Yes, I did.” He bent and rinsed his hands in the water. Sapphire slid in, washing again before exiting the pool by way of the stairs.

  Wulf was waiting for her there, extending his hand to help her out, then pressing his lips to her forehead in a quick, hard kiss. He laced his fingers with hers and led her to the far corner, where a drying grate waited. As the warm air spun around them, he pulled her close. Sapphire urged him even closer, so that no air intruded between them.

  He was tender, his strength held in check, his large hands caressing the length of her spine with such reverence. Tears leaked from beneath her closed eyelids, but the heated air whisked the evidence away.

  When they were dry, he dressed them both in his robes and led her out to his bedchamber.

  “Food and wine,” he told the palace Guardian. Then he proceeded to order a meal she would have ordered herself; a feast of all her favorite foods. He’d paid attention, she realized, and took pains to remember. Or perhaps it was easy? Perhaps it was just a matter of being highly alert, as one would expect a warrior prince to be.

  “As you wish, Your Highness.”

  And so they ate a light meal of various sweetmeats, fruit, and cheeses before Wulf ordered Sabine to join them.

  “Rise, Sabine,” he instructed after she had proffered a box and prostrated before him.

  The chamberlain rose. “I brought clothes for the new concubine. I also brought talgorite, Your Highness, and this,” she held out a long, thick golden chain with a cylindrical charm on the end of it, “as you specified.”

  Wulf extended his open hand and Sabine draped the necklace across the palm. He turned to Sapphire and drew it over her head, then arranged it around her neck.

  “Your Guardian’s chip,” he explained.

  Lifting the charm from where it rested between her breasts, Sapphire looked at it, admiring the shield of the royal family of D’Ashier engraved in the gold. She shot Wulf a quizzical glance.

  He shrugged. “I have a soft spot for that Guardian.”

  Sabine bowed. “The king respects your wish for privacy, Your Highness, but he urges you to meet with him at your earliest convenience.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Go see him,” Sapphire urged. “He must have been worried sick about you.”

  He raised a sardonic brow, but an easy smile curled the corners of his mouth. “You’ve forgotten where you are, Katie. I don’t take orders here. I give them.”

  “Not to me you don’t, Your Royal Arrogance.”

  “Is that so?” He leaped across the bed, catching her in his arms. She squealed, then dissolved into peals of laughter when he tickled her.

  “Stop!” She smacked at him. “Oh, stop it…Please, Wulf.”

  He laughed. “Begging. I love it.”

  “And you call me ‘insatiable’?”

  “I’m exhausted from keeping up with you.”

  Locking one leg around his, Sapphire twisted and gained the top. She straddled his hips and he allowed her to pin his hands to his stomach. “You probably have a lot of things to take care of, having been gone for so long.”

  “Nothing that can’t wait until morning. After tonight, I’ll be very busy. You won’t see much of me during the day.” While his tone was light, his expression wasn’t.

  “Perhaps your father has new information about the attack against you.”

  “If he needed me urgently, he’d say so.”

  “You aren’t the type of man who ignores duty for pleasure, yet you keep doing it for me.”

  Wulfric frowned. “There’s too much I can’t explain. I need time to think before I see him.”

  “And you
can think around me?” she teased. “I’m envious. I can’t think at all around you.”

  Pulling her hand to his mouth, he kissed the back. The look he gave her was rife with promise. “Fine, I’ll go.”

  “Good.” She brushed his hair back from his forehead, then slid off him. “I’ll see you when you return.”

  “You’d better be here.”

  “Where would I go?” Sapphire batted her eyelashes with mock innocence. His gaze narrowed.

  Wulf rolled from the bed, shrugged out of his black bathrobe, and slipped into the dark red robe Sabine held out for him. He moved to the armoire and entered the code that released a secure drawer containing his crown—an understated golden circlet liberally encrusted with talgorite. When he turned to her with his royal robes billowing behind him and his black hair shining in the simulated candlelight, her heart lodged in her throat. His lean waist was cinched with a golden clasp, leaving a V-shaped opening that revealed his powerful chest and sun-dark skin.

  “You take my breath away.” Her mouth curved wistfully and she sheltered her racing heart with her hand. Wulfric was the embodiment of every fantasy prince she’d ever imagined—except Wulfric was more sexual and far more dangerous. The determination with which he pursued their attraction was both endearing and devastating.

  He stilled. His emerald gaze arrested her with its roiling emotions. Desire. Confusion. She knew exactly how he felt.

  “For the rest of my life,” she said, “I’ll remember you looking just as you do right now.”

  Wulf spoke hoarsely. “How the hell am I supposed to leave when you look at me like that?”

  “I just wanted you to know what the sight of you does to me.”

  He stared at her for so long, she began to doubt that he would go. Finally, he turned and departed without another word.

  Sighing inwardly, Sapphire turned her attention to Sabine with a smile, wanting very much to find a friend in this foreign place. The chamberlain approached her hesitantly.