Page 63 of Artemysia

“You don’t have to be the only one to save the world,” he says. “Let someone else do it. Or at least let someone help. Let me .”

“You said you don’t care about saving the world.”

“That was before you. For you, I’d burn down the world. Or save it. Whatever you want. Anything for you. It’s you I need by my side, Elphie.” With his breath hot on my ear, his words pierce my heart.

With a bruising grip on my waist that sends a rush of adrenaline through me, he swings us away from the window. He lifts me onto the high bed and sprawls over me, splaying my knees with his.

“Maybe for the next hour, you let me give the orders. You might like it,” his voice husky with desire. The lust behind his words goes straight to my nipples, which tighten into sharp points.

His hands slide down to yank up the soft fabric of my skirt as I sink deeper into the bed, his rough touch sending a spark of heat through me.

“It’s up to you.” He hooks two fingers in the waistband of my underwear and drags it partway down my shins before lowering his warm lips to kiss away the cool air around my inner thighs.

My eyes pop open, and a moan slips out. A purr of approval rumbles in his throat.

The need to spread my legs more increases, but his hands and my underwear keep me from moving.

He lingers, waiting for me to decide.

I reach down to unbutton his shirt, and he shucks it off the rest of the way.

I love staring at his powerful chest and can’t help tracing my fingertips in the soft hair between his broad pecs.

He shivers at my touch.

“Let you be in charge?” I ask, grinning.

He’s on his knees. “Perhaps you’d listen to me for a bit.” His tongue lashes up my center, slick and wet, and my legs jerk in the air as I writhe against his mouth. “For one night.”

“I—I’m listening,” I stammer. My spine goes rigid, arching, as he continues to lap at me, circling around my clit. I grasp a bedpost, anchoring myself in place.

“And…you’ll let go? With me? Be completely mine?” His eyes overwhelm me with a fiery, lustful glow from within.

I want to answer honestly. I know what he’s asking. To be his means to be attached to him, body and soul—to let go of control of my heart.

“Yes.”

“Yes? Then, will you—” His voice is uneven, a sudden look of vulnerability flashes across his face. “When I’m in you, will you tell me…that…” He pauses, slowly pulling back.

He clears his throat to start again. “Never mind. Forget it.”

I give him a stern look. “Don’t shut me out. You said that to me. You don’t allow me to do it to you.”

“Alright, fine. Will you tell me again, what you said earlier…that I mean something to you? That I’m not nothing?” he blurts.

He can’t bring himself to ask for the exact words, but I know what he wants.

He’s asking me to tell him that I have feelings for him during sex.

Because no one ever has.

I think hard. Not because I don’t want to, but because I consider whether I am capable of letting myself surrender to my deepest emotions for the night. Especially this night.

Everything has changed. Our world is upside down .

But…if everything has changed, I can too.

“You mean everything to me. I’ll keep telling you until you believe me. I’m yours.” I’ve admitted feelings in the past but didn’t truly feel them. Instead, I say what I’ve never said before to anyone:

I’m yours . Because my heart truly belongs to him.

“You are?” The raw emotion in his voice wrecks me.

“I’m yours.” I’m more certain of this than anything I’ve ever felt before in my life.

He kisses each of my knees before sliding off my underwear the rest of the way. “Spread your legs. For me—never for anyone else. Ever again. You’re mine.”

His possessive words send a quiver down my spine and a rush of warmth and dampness between my thighs.

I reach to unlace the top of my dress, but Riev clears his throat, correcting me with a silvery glint from his heavy-lidded eyes. “Leave it on. I’m going to fucking unravel you, bit by bit.”

I’m already unraveling, and I want him to fill the empty tightness down below.

I squirm and strain on the bed. “Hold still.” His fingertips graze my drenched folds and slide up to my clit before dipping back down.

As he repeats the motion, my legs quake even as I splay them wide for him, and suddenly his fingers are curving into me.

He thrusts his fingers, his thumb caressing my clit with each rough stroke.

He hisses through his teeth. “Fuck. You were ready for me.” With his other hand, he skillfully unweaves the ribbons on the top half of my dress, exposing my breasts, but stops there.

“I’m going to rip the rest off you later.

” Those lust-filled eyes are going to destroy me.

He unbuckles his pants, pulling out his lengthy cock.

Every inch flawless, ridges and all. He palms himself, growing thicker and harder as I watch.

With his cock in his hand, he surges into me, hard and fast, with a roughness only those god-sent ridges can provide, and I gasp as he fills me all at once, our bodies colliding.

I clamp around him and cry out, not caring about the noises I make, not caring if the guards outside hear me, not caring about anything except for the intense, delicious stretch where we’re joined.

He snakes a forearm behind me and flips us so I’m on top.

His trousers aren’t all the way off, so he shifts to kick his legs out of them, but not before slipping the knife from his belt. The cold steel of his blade glides back up, lifting the prince’s diamond necklace off my throat. “Did he give you these?”

“Borrowed. Does it make you jealous?” I goad.

“You don’t care about jewels. You can have my entire collection—a king’s ransom—if you want it. I don’t want anything of his on you. It makes me insanely jealous, yes.” He spins his blade to cut it off of me.

“Wait, no. These belonged to his grandmother. Don’t…” I reach back to unhook the clasp before gently dropping the pear-shaped diamonds on the nightstand.

“I’m going to fuck you hard and deep for that. For making me jealous. For wearing another man’s jewelry.” The ravenous look on his face, coupled with his covetous words, have me dripping wet. “Sit on my cock,” he orders.

I spread my knees around him and groan the entire time I slide down the length of him, until he’s fully sheathed inside me.

He rocks his hips, thrusting up, once, twice—the thickness of him a burning stretch. With a low cry, I throw my head back, my eyes rolling back.

My palm goes to his chest for leverage, leaning forward to rub the edge of that lower ridge on my inner wall.

“Mhmm, fuck, Elphie.” His pale eyes peer through dark lashes, his gaze never leaving mine as he traces the point of his knife dangerously down my throat, to my chest, and in one precise slice, splits the front of my dress while simultaneously reaching behind me to rip it off me.

I gasp at the sensation of the fabric roughly tearing away as he drives ruthlessly deeper into me from below.

When I cry out again with the next hard thrust of his hips, he curses and stabs his knife behind him into the carved headboard.

The sudden impact jolts me, but when I arch back, his hands are on my breasts. He draws a nipple into his mouth, coarsely teasing pleasure from me with each suckle, each jut of his hips.

As I’d promised, I let myself go and sob out his name as I come, pleading with him to keep pounding into me as I tumble into wave after wave of release.

“You’re not done yet, my love.” He flips me off of him, turning so I’m facing away. “Hands and knees, like you’ re crawling.”

Guiding my hips, he begins pressing into me again from behind. I’m still tight and pulsing inside from my orgasm, but he doesn’t stop.

I’m about to shatter again from this deeper position, but he slows, and I beg him to keep going. “Make me come again. I’m close. Please.”

“You will. But first, you’re going to be my very good girl and let me take control. I promise you’ll come harder than ever before.”

His fingers slide across my backside and he widens me with his knee, splaying my legs farther apart. “You can hold on to the headboard if you need something to grip.”

I’m not sure why I’d need to hold on to anything, but I feel one hand pull my ass cheek aside, while his other fingers slip further down, brushing across the pucker of my rim.

He slides up and down, circling gently around the hole, his touch becoming firmer, more concentrated with each circle.

I feel myself clenching, tightening, when he applies more pressure.

I let out a frayed groan.

No one’s ever touched me there before. And I don’t want him to stop with just a light touch.

As if he senses this, his finger stops at the opening, and then he presses in, sending a shock into the core of me, jolting up my spine. It hurts, but he slows when I whimper.

“Grip me,” he orders me, as I bite back a gasp. “Squeeze.”

I clamp down around the pressure.

“That’s my girl. Harder.” His voice is growly, gruff, but guiding.

I do as he says while he holds his finger in my ass.

“Fuck, you’re so tight. Everywhere.” His erection grows in me as he thrusts his hips, slow and torturous.

I’m panting, from the exhilaration of his touch, from the effort of squeezing him.

“Let go, Delphine,” he rasps, and when I obey, he pushes his finger deeper inside my ass, and guides his cock all the way into me at the same time.

Oh my gods! I yell out incoherently from the friction, the intensity, how godsdamn full and owned I feel. Pleasure, and a hint of pain, but pleasure most of all.

“Good girl, beautiful,” he rumbles in response, his voice low and deep and dark. “This is how you learn to take something bigger, next time.” He knows exactly what I need to hear as his touch sinks deeper.

I greedily imagine more, yet the impossibility of taking more wrenches a shudder from me.

I flood with a wet heat that drips down the inside of one thigh.

I’d do anything right now to hear him praise me that way again, though.

Fuck me. My crude thoughts don’t even bother me.

I must be losing my mind. Holy hell, is this what it feels like to let go?

It feels amazing. I sob out an incoherent plea to let him know I want more of it. Whatever he’s going to give me.

And he’s not done. “Squeeze again. Everywhere you feel me.”

He slaps my ass with a cupped palm, and I strain to tighten around his finger, his cock—everywhere I feel every inch of him in me.

“More,” he demands.

I want more, so I obey, letting myself go, thinking of nothing except for chasing my own mind-numbing gratification.

“Again,” he commands, wanting my attention on where he stretches me, and it’s an order I can’t refuse.

He hums with approval when I moan loudly from the effort and pressure I feel back there. It makes Riev grow harder inside me, setting my skin ablaze, a frenzy of tingling from where he preps me to go deeper. I crave it.

Finally… “Relax, my love,” he says, and this time he shoves his finger all the way in, knuckle-deep. He holds it there as I cry out a string of curses I rarely use, lifting my ass to him as I bear it.

“Fucking good. Show me you can take more,” he growls out.

I can only reply with panting breaths. How much do I like being held in place like this, with him in me?

“Mhmm. That’s it. You’re doing so well. Look at that beautiful ass stretching for me like it wants more.” He starts to plunge in and out with both finger and cock, and I’m losing my mind.

I hear myself scream in ecstasy. I’ve let go completely, and it’s not a feeling I’ve ever had with anyone in bed. Panting, blood rushing to my face, vision blurring. The only thought in my head is how incredible I feel.

“That’s my girl. Now enjoy it. I’m filling your holes and you’re going to enjoy it until you can’t take any more orgasms and you’re begging me to stop.”

I can’t imagine ever asking him to stop .

My knuckles are white from gripping the headboard, just like he’d warned me I would need to do, because I’ve never felt such intense shocks of pleasure.

Whatever he’s doing back there, I’m trembling.

My body jerks as the pressure builds, and I’m on the edge of a blinding orgasm.

When his free hand reaches around and pinches my nipple, I’m done for.

He rolls and twists, roughly teasing the sharp point, and before I know it, I’m coming, muffling my shrieks into the pillow in front of me.

With each of his mercilessly deep thrusts, my tits are thrown back and forth, my knees lifting, because he’s not holding back. He drives me deeper into the mattress, and I love the feel of his weight behind me.

I feel the widening of the ridges on his cock that pull and hold me to him, and he gently, slowly, withdraws his finger from my ass. The sensation almost has me coming again.

As he finds his release, he pitches forward, his chest flush against my back, the heat of his exertion radiating off of him. He wraps his iron arm under my ribs and his breath shudders against the nape of my neck.

“Fuck, I can’t believe I lasted this long with you like this,” he grinds out.

“Oh gods, Riev. You’re everything to me,” I sputter, breathless, unable to contain myself as he quickens his pace. “I’m yours. I’m yours. I’m yours!” I bawl out with each thrust.

He stops for a heartbeat to whisper my name. “Elphie.”

He slows but the bulging ridges stay hard, latching us together, drawing out the last of my orgasms.

He stays in place inside me, even as he drifts into a calm, sweaty haze. “Delphine Julian. I’d burn the fucking world down for you—or I’d save it. Anything, for you,” he rasps.