Chapter Seventeen

They hadn’t technically broken any of Gideon’s rules by leaving the estate, but Maricela seemed so enchanted by the idea of sneaking back in that Ivan couldn’t stop himself from indulging her.

Indulging Maricela was quickly becoming his favorite pastime.

“How.” It wasn’t even a question. She repeated the word, wide-eyed, as she dropped to the bench at the foot of her bed and tugged off one dusty boot. “I mean...the guards are everywhere, all the time. It’s impossible to get past them.”

She was so giddy he couldn’t tell her that they hadn’t. One royal guard had winked at Ivan from his secluded post--a new addition demanded by Ashwin, who had surveyed the residence’s defenses and identified weak spots. If it hadn’t been impossible to get into the Rios estate undetected before, it sure the fuck was now.

Makhai soldiers apparently got even scarier than usual when they were expecting babies.

But Maricela’s flushed cheeks were adorable. Ivan settled in a chair and tugged at his own boots. “You should see me scale the outside wall sometime.”

She paused, her cheeks growing even redder, then threw a sock at him. “Okay, now you’re just teasing me.”

He loved her blushes. And her laughter. “Are you doubting my stamina?”

Her other boot hit the floor. “Not after last night.”

His body tightened. Desire slid through his veins, a heat as powerful as if he’d done a dozen shots of O’Kane’s finest whiskey. He knew his doubts would return the second he stepped outside the intoxicating sphere of her magic, but it was so easy to rationalize here as he stripped off his boots and watched her eyes darken with anticipation.

She was sparkling. She was happy. How could anything that made her shine like this be wrong? The world owed Maricela Rios a little joy.

She swallowed hard as he stood and stripped off his shirt. Her eager gaze raked over him, but then she lifted a hand to her hair. “I’m grungy. I need a shower.”

A beautiful image filled his head--Maricela, naked, water from the enormous showerhead cascading down the curves of her body. “That shower’s big enough for two.”

She opened her mouth, closed it again, then tugged at the top button on her shirt. “I’ve definitely never done that.”

No, she probably hadn’t. Her lovers were here to worship a saint, not have dirty, messy, hot sex with a woman. Ivan could all too easily imagine their horror at the idea of pushing the Rios princess up against the tiles of a shower wall and fucking her with their fingers until her knees gave way. Only a month ago, he would have been horrified, too.

Turned the hell on, sure. But horrified.

Weeks of close quarters had shattered all those saintly illusions. Not because Maricela wasn’t as perfect as he’d imagined, but because she was, and all that damn worshipful distance was slowly killing her.

Maricela didn’t need reverence. She needed the thrill that filled her eyes as he stalked toward her and pushed her hands away from her shirt. He found the second button, working it effortlessly as he backed her toward the bathroom. “Soap makes everything slippery, you know.”

She moaned. “I can’t tell if that’s a promise or a warning.”

“Both.” He got her shirt open and took his time sliding it from her shoulders, savoring the soft skin on her arms and how she shivered at the slightest touch. “How much of a warning depends on you.”

Her hands dropped to his belt. “On how far I want to go, you mean.”

“Mmm.” They stepped into the bathroom, where the tile was cool under his feet. “That’s why I’m always with the questions. If you want to have really good sex, you have to ask the right ones.”

She tipped her head back. “Such as?”

She was under his spell now, hanging on his next words. Ivan backed her up against the open shower door and leaned in, whispering into her ear as he cupped her breasts. “Does this feel good?”

“Yes,” she breathed, then frowned. “Wait, were you asking me, or telling me the right question?”

“Both.” Her bra was deceptively simple, lacking a lot of frills and ruffles but tailored to her and hand-stitched. He worked the hooks and drew it down her arms, baring her breasts.

Her nipples were stiff under his palms, and he caught them between his thumbs and forefingers and pinched hard enough to drag a gasp from her. “Do you like it a little rough?”

She shuddered. “I don’t know.”

Of course she didn’t. How could she? No one would ever dare handle the precious princess with anything but the gentlest of touches. He tightened his fingers on her nipples until she was squirming between him and the shower stall, her breathing quick and unsteady. “Do you want to find out?”

“Yes.” The word tore free of her as she arched off the shower door. “Fuck, yes.”

He released her long enough to pop the button on her jeans and haul the zipper down. “Take off my belt.”

Maricela was tugging at the buckle before he finished the sentence, her fingers trembling on the leather. “Do you?”

“Do I what?”

Her eyes locked with his. “Like it rough.”

He could still feel the scratch of her nails over his back. He wanted it again. “Sometimes, yeah.”

Maricela hummed softly. She left his belt hanging open and stretched up on her toes, far enough to reach his mouth. Her teeth closed on his lower lip--gently at first, then hard enough to sting.

Pleasure rushed through him. Ivan shuddered and slid his hands into her loosened jeans, under her panties and down to cup her ass. He dragged her to him, grinding his painfully hard dick against her. “You learn fast, don’t you?”

Her sigh blew over his ear. “Only from you.”

He could get drunk on words like that. He nipped her earlobe and shoved her pants and underwear down over her hips to her thighs. “Get in the shower.”

She reached in and turned on the water before shedding her clothes. By the time she was naked, steam billowed out of the open shower, and she arched one eyebrow in challenge as she backed under the hot spray.

Ivan kicked off his pants and followed her. He couldn’t not. She was made of impossible contrasts, her eagerness to be taught clashing with a lifetime of giving commands. Her brazen curiosity about sex twined in and around a sheltered innocence. She was bold and blushing, pliable and demanding. Sometimes all in the same breath.

It was the hottest thing Ivan had ever seen in his life.

He dragged the shower closed behind him, and he’d been right--there was a lot of room in here. More than enough to maneuver as he backed her up against the swiftly warming tiles.

So many possibilities. Her skin was slick. Hot. He pressed his erection to her hip and let his hand glide over her curves, lingering to flick a thumb over her nipple and tease the indent of her belly button.

Every wriggle and squirm ground her harder against his dick, but that would only make it better when he finally sank into her. “Give me your hand.”

“Just one?” She placed her right hand on the center of his chest, curling her fingers just enough for her nails to score his skin.

A prick of pain, but still gentle. He covered her hand with his and pressed her fingers harder into his skin. “Rougher. Scratch me up. I like feeling you the next day.”

“Now that you mention it...” She wrapped her other arm around him and lightly traced one of the cuts she’d already left on his back with her fingertip. “I noticed.”

That shiver of contact over the sensitive marks only wound him tighter. Ivan lifted her hand from his chest to his mouth and dragged his tongue across the pads of her first three fingers. Her eyes widened, and she murmured his name, but she didn’t pull away.

She moved closer.

He nipped the tips of her fingers before guiding her hand down. The water beat against his shoulders, sliding down his arms as he coaxed her fingers to dip between her thighs.

Then he stepped back and leaned against the opposite wall. The view was stunning--the colorful tile was a vivid backdrop for Maricela’s naked body. The water beaded on her light brown skin and sluiced down her curves in rivulets. Her long hair clung to her shoulders and breasts, but her nipples peeked through, tight little buds he wanted to taste.

Her cheeks were flushed with more than the heat of the water. Her chest moved with every unsteady breath, and her fingers trembled against her pussy.

His cock ached. He wrapped his fist around it, partly to remind himself to be patient and partly just to see her big brown eyes get even wider. “If you want it rough, first you have to get yourself ready for me.”

She licked her lips. “How ready?”

The hunger in her expression must have stripped away the final controls on his tongue, because the words that came weren’t suitable for a sheltered princess. “When you’re riding three of your own fingers, I’ll take you.”

“That won’t take long.” Her fingers moved, a slow stroke that she met with a sinuous roll of her hips. “Or it could take all night.”

“It could.” He waited until her gaze dropped to his hand, then indulged himself with one slow, careful stroke. “But you won’t have this inside you.”

“True.” Her voice caught. “I thought about this. At night, alone in my bed. What it would feel like to have you watching me.”

That wasn’t going to help him maintain his control. Now he was remembering the last time he’d distracted himself from a raging hard-on by polishing his knives--and imagining her on the other side of the door, stroking herself to a silent climax.

“Show me,” he commanded, and it came out so rough it might as well have been a snarl.

She shuddered against the tile. Her hips moved faster, and she lifted her free hand to her breast. Her fingers squeezed tight on her nipple, twisting lightly.

Harder than he’d done it. He committed the preference to memory before his gaze dropped back to her other hand, and the rhythm he could already feel in his bones. She liked it steady, a long, careful build to an explosive, inescapable finish.

He could give her that. “Use another finger.”

Her gaze flicked down his body, and she licked her lips again. “Getting impatient?” she panted.

“No,” he lied. And because she seemed to like his inappropriate words, the cruder the better, Ivan channeled Reyes at his most obscene. “I just like watching you work those fingers into your pussy. I like imagining how much you can take.”

Maricela froze. “You don’t have to imagine it.” Slowly, she angled her hips to his view and worked one slender finger into her body. “You could find out.” Another finger. “You might even help me discover that I can take more than I thought.”

He’d do any damn thing she wanted. “I know you can.”

She made a soft noise of anticipation that hit him like a caress. The rainfall sound of water hitting tile couldn’t quite cover the slick sound of her plunging her fingers deep. Hers weren’t as wide as his, and even three wouldn’t be overwhelming. He locked his muscles to resist the urge to lunge across the shower and replace her hand with his own, to work his fingers into her and feel the tight clench of her body as she shuddered and came--

“Three,” he rasped. “Now.”

Finally--finally--she obeyed, pushing three fingers into her pussy with a sharp cry.

It was too much. Not for her, but for him.

Ivan shoved away from the shower wall and all but fell on her. He caught her next cry with his mouth, muffling it as he kissed her. Wild, a little out of control, but the noises she was making--eager and frantic, trembling on the edge of release.

He tried to help her get there. Everything was slippery now. Her skin. His hands. He slid them up to her breasts and caught her nipples, tugging at them the way she had. Maricela went rigid against him, then started to shake, her back arching as she came long and hard.

Groaning, he dragged her hand away from her body and pinned it to the tile next to her head. “Last question,” he ground out. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” she moaned. “Yes, yes, ye--”

He hauled her up the wall and drove into her.

And there was nothing but her. Her pussy clenching tight around his cock, still fluttering with the aftershocks of her release. Her strong legs winding around his hips. Her hand on his shoulder, her fingernails carving sharp little points of pain as she clung to him through his first rough thrusts.

She gripped his head, her nails raking his scalp through his wet hair. “Harder.”

It was a royal command, and Ivan had never been happier to obey. He hoisted her even higher, bracing his legs wider for leverage, and drove into her. “That’s it,” he groaned. “Take everything. Everything you want. All of me.”

“Don’t.” She yanked his head back. “Don’t say that.”

Because it was too much. He was a Rider, and a Rider’s future was never their own. He couldn’t make promises or give her more than this--a few weeks of raw, filthy fucking before his stint as her bodyguard ended.

But he’d give her as much of it as he could. The passion, the pleasure. A glimpse beyond her gilded cage.

He fought her grip on his hair until the pain slid through him, hot and intoxicating. He managed to seize her mouth, driving his tongue between her lips to part them as he fucked into her body. Maricela moaned into his mouth, lower and more intense with every thrust.

She bit his tongue when she came again, but even the sudden, bright shock of pain couldn’t eclipse the sensation of her pussy squeezing him impossibly tight with every pulse of her orgasm.

He told himself to hold on. To fight the wave of pleasure, to fuck her harder. Longer. Forever. But Maricela had been studying him, too. Her nails scraped over his skin, her other hand jerked at his hair, and her teeth sank into his lower lip--three bright spots of pain that melded into the clenching, shuddering pleasure without getting lost in it.

His final thrust slammed her back against the tile, and fire flooded him. He groaned her name and buried his face in her throat as he came.

She stroked his back, whispered something against his skin, then lifted her mouth to his ear. “All of you.”

It sounded like a promise. Ivan raised his head, serious words on the tip of his tongue. But staring down into Maricela’s flushed face, he couldn’t find it in him to remind her that all of him wasn’t very much, not when most of what he could be was already sworn to the Riders.

He didn’t have much, but everything he had was hers.

Moving slowly, he eased from her body and coaxed her legs down. When he was sure she was steady, he left her only long enough to find her shampoo and turn her so the water cascaded over her.

She was silent as he lathered her hair, speaking only as he rinsed away the shampoo. “Nita is coming tomorrow for a visit.”

“Is she?” There was conditioner on one of the shelves, something sweet and floral. He worked it through the long strands of her hair. “Is she back at the temple, or still at her family’s estate?”

“Still at home. That’s why I invited her here.”

Nita was a smart girl, but very few people in Sector One could go toe-to-toe with Estela Reyes and come out triumphant. “Is her mother giving her a hard time?”

“Always.” Maricela leaned in to his touch. “It’s too much pressure.”

“I know.” He wouldn’t even resent Nita stealing a few of the precious hours he had with Maricela before this affair ran its course. “I could talk to Reyes. Maybe he can get their mother off Nita’s back.”

“No.” She turned in his arms. “When he tries, they only fight, and that stresses Nita out even more.”

Another unfixable problem. Heiresses seemed to come drowning in them. Ivan tilted Maricela’s head back and drew his fingers through her hair to rinse it. “I’m better with problems I can punch. Or throw a knife at.”

“Or kiss breathless.”

His lips twitched, but he forced a serious expression. “I probably shouldn’t kiss Estela Reyes.”

Maricela squinted at him. “Don’t joke. You might like it.”

Ivan couldn’t help himself. He laughed, and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that. Sometimes Zeke and Reyes provoked groans or snorts or, at the most, reluctant chuckles, but a heavy weight had always existed somewhere inside him--a smothering blanket of darkness that numbed every emotion before it could fully form.

And he hadn’t known. He hadn’t known how much he was missing until Maricela crashed into his life, shining so bright the darkness didn’t stand a chance.

He finished rinsing her hair and stood patiently as she found his soap and worked it into a lather. Her touch was light across his back and shoulders, a sensual tickle interrupted by the sting of hot water over the scratches she’d left.

No one had ever spent so much time touching him before. It wasn’t even sexual. Her fingers slid over his skin, soft and gentle, petting and caressing until he felt like one exposed nerve. By the time he got them out of the shower and had her wrapped in a giant, fluffy towel, it was a struggle not to drag her to the tile floor and drive into her again just to drown all this sweet affection in something comfortably carnal.

It only got worse when she reached up and ran her fingers through his hair. “You’ve never let it get this long before.”

The scrape of her nails over his scalp made it hard to keep his eyes open. “I used to do it myself, but Ana’s aunt told me I was terrible at it. She usually cuts it when Ana and I stop in on our intel runs, but I haven’t done one in a while.”

“I can trim it for you, if you want.”

He bit back the instinctive urge to agree. She made it too easy to forget why he was here. That he was a bodyguard with a mission, and this was only a temporary affair. For all her power, she was still so young, so sheltered. She could build this sweet, intimate little world where they acted like husband and wife, but at the end of the day...

He was still what he was. And so was she. The last bodyguard who’d dared to love a Rios princess hadn’t just ended up dead, he’d been erased from the sector’s history, an embarrassing, desperately ignored footnote.

One of them had to remember that.

So he distracted her with a kiss, deep enough that she let the towel slip down her body to pool on the floor. He followed it, dragging her to the cool tiles that quickly warmed under his back. He pulled her on top of him, showed her how to ride his cock to her pleasure and gritted his teeth against his own when her head fell back and she came hard around him, muffling her cries against her own hand.

It didn’t help. Even with his thumb working her clit and her pussy squeezing him tight as he whispered the most obscene things he could imagine, the sweetness was still there. The intimacy. Fucking didn’t drive it away, it made it worse.

When her fingernails pricked his chest and dragged downward in eight perfect lines of fire, Ivan gave up. He fell into the fantasy with her. And fell. And fell...

The landing was going to be a bitch. But Maricela was worth it.