He strokes my forehead with a thumb. ‘You put yourself in terrible danger, Princess, if you do this. The Dark Prince isn’t a man many would cross.’
‘I’d rather risk it than face the certainty of having to spend the rest of my life with that brute.’ I drop my voice to a whisper. ‘Do it for me. Take my maidenhead for me.’
‘Gods, Princess, I … it’s not …’ He struggles.
I watch the weighing-up process through his shrewd blue eyes. I see it all – doubts, temptations, fears, rationalisations, temptations again, settling finally into outright lust.
I seize my moment. ‘Take me.’ I let my spine arch and my leg rub against his. ‘Let my first time be with a man who knows how to pleasure.’
‘Princess …’
‘Let your cock sink into my tight sweet embrace and …’ The florid language isn’t coming so easily now. I want him too much. My imagination is failing, hamstrung by my need to be shagged, good and proper, with my wrists tied and my pretend hymen breached. ‘Look, just fuck me, all right? Just give me what I need.’
With a growl, he almost tears off his shirt then rolls himself over me, palms flat by my ears, his milky freckled chest hovering over my straining breasts. He dips his head and takes the bodice between his teeth, wrenching it down over the small portion of my chest that remains concealed. He buries his face between my breasts, consuming and devouring, suckling the nipples and biting the soft flesh.
‘I’ll give you what you need all right. Get ready.’
He rears up on his knees, yanking his belt through its loops, snarling down at me. My body sings with triumph at the light in his eyes, the hard gleam that shows he has gone past the point of caring about anything but sex. I have him.
He frees his cock then takes my buttocks in his hands and yanks my thighs wide, lifting me towards him.
My tethered hands want to grab the back of his head and pull him down on top of me, but they can’t. I know what’s coming, but I want to have it quicker, harder, more urgently than is even possible. I manage to hook my knees around his hips, drawing the tip of that fat feast of a cock into me.
‘You know this might hurt, yes?’
‘I don’t care. I hope it does. I want to feel it. I want something to remember you by.’
‘Here it comes then.’
He crouches over me and pushes in, slowly at first, oh, too slowly. I try to remember that I am meant to be virginal, but I am so eager I just can’t wait.
‘Do it,’ I gasp.
‘Hot little bitch, what do they teach you at the palace? Oh God.’ He pushes through and I rejoice in the blunt force of it. ‘Oh fuck. They teach you how to use your cunt, I think. Jesus, you’re tight, so wet.’
‘Oh, you feel good; you’re so big. You fill me right up. This is what the peasant girls get. Why can’t I get it too?’
‘You’re getting it now.’ He thrusts, deeply and steadily, in and out, dropping lascivious kisses that leave teeth marks on my neck. ‘Oh yes, you’re getting it. You’re feeling that, aren’t you?’
‘Oh.’ I can’t say much more. ‘Yes.’ The air mattress rolls and waves madly underneath me. I hammer my heels on the tight cheeks of his arse.
‘Remember this, Princess.’ He seats a brutal thrust, buried so deep inside me that I feel impaled. ‘It’ll be the fuck of your life. Your princes and courtiers won’t know what a princess really needs.’
I have time for one luxurious moan before he speeds up, jackhammering like a red-headed blur, pounding me to my second orgasm.
His face in the torchlight contorts in a sort of pain. I feel the tension, then the ecstatic release beneath his skin as he pours himself into me, roaring.
His stalwart strength drains from him and he flops on top of me, groaning and shivering. I kiss the top of his head and think how lucky I am not to be that princess really. For one thing, what if she got pregnant? Imagine the king’s face. Whatever kind of face he had.
No, I much prefer being a twenty-first century woman with a lover whose filthy-mindedness matches my own. I never thought I’d take to relationships, but this one actually seems to have some mileage in it.
Lloyd stirs and rustles among the sleeping bags, then unties my wrists. ‘Did that work for you?’ he asks with a yawn.
‘You know it did.’
‘I know how you love a forced seduction.’
‘And you don’t?’
He chuckles guiltily. ‘Bang to rights.’
‘In fact, I’m considering a sequel. I want to know what happens when she turns up at the Dark Prince’s lair now. I’m imagining lots of pointy towers and turrets on the side of a crag. She’d turn up and the Dark Prince would subject her to a virginity test.’
‘Surely he’d just go ballistic and run her through with his mighty sword?’
‘Well, yeah, running through with your mighty sword is always good, but my Dark Prince isn’t as dark as all that. He’s miffed, of course, but he’s still interested in the dowry the Princess brings, so he decides to go through with the wedding.’
‘Really? You think he would?’
‘He wants that alliance. But the wedding night would be pretty fierce. Quite a BDSM scene, I think. Some punishment, maybe a bit of bondage. And anal sex. He wants to take a virginity, even if it isn’t the traditional kind.’
Lloyd exhales heavily. ‘Don’t turn me on again, Sophie. I seriously think you’ve broken my cock, what with all that shagging al fresco on the forest floor earlier.’
‘Aww.’ I reach down and fondle the poor little semi-tumescent soldier. ‘I won’t make you fuck me again,’ I promise. ‘Not tonight. But that scene has to be played sometime soon.’
‘Oh yes. I’m not arguing about that.’
He removes my hand from his cock and puts an arm around me, drawing me against him so that we make one big bundle of satiated sleepiness.
‘Soph,’ he says, just before I nod off.
‘Hmm?’
‘Do you think we’ll ever get into a rut?’
I am amused. ‘Our relationship is one long rut, isn’t it?’
‘You know what I mean, Oscar Wilde. Do you think you’ll ever get bored with this?’
‘What, with a metric tonne of quality sex? I don’t think so.’
‘It’s just … I can’t help wondering why you carry on paying rent on that flat when my suite at the hotel is big enough for –’
Ah. This again.
‘Lloyd. I said I’d think about it. I’m still thinking.’
‘Your thought processes are seriously slow. You said that six months ago. You can’t fob me off forever.’
‘I won’t.’
‘I know you, Sophie Martin.’ He turns, props himself on an elbow and puts a finger to my protesting lips. ‘You will.’
He’s right. But I don’t understand the big deal. We see each other all the time – we work together, for heaven’s sake. We couldn’t be any closer. Why do we need old-fashioned symbols of commitment to prove it? I’m a person who lives for the day, and the day is sunny right now. It makes no sense to change that.
I can’t be bothered to argue though, so I mentally prepare myself for