To Protect a Princess by Jess Michaels

Chapter 10

Jonah’s mind was spinning as he followed Ilaria into the antechamber and they stopped at the station to check in. He knew what he was doing was wildly irresponsible. For her, for himself. And yet he couldn’t stop. He could tell himself a hundred times that he was doing this to overload her senses, to let her have everything she wanted so she would know it was too much…

But that was a lie. He had taken her here because he wanted her here. Because he wanted her, full stop. He was driven to take this path and the consequences be damned.

“Welcome back, Mr. Harlen,” the man at the desk said, checking his name off. “And Miss Crawford.”

Jonah swiveled his head to look at Ilaria but found her staring straight ahead, cheeks bright with a blush beneath her mask. She had chosen his name to be her false identity? Out of all the names in the world? He couldn’t believe she hadn’t done so it for some reason. He had certainly chosen his own name with a thought to the meaning.

“Will Miss Crawford be joining you on your membership, sir, or purchasing her own?”

Jonah forced himself to focus. “Er, on mine. Thank you.”

“Excellent. Do you need a reminder about the rules of the club?”

“No,” Ilaria said, so softly that the word almost didn’t carry.

The man inclined his head and then motioned to the door. “Enjoy yourselves.”

Ilaria gave Jonah a quick glance and he saw her nerves. Strong as she tried to be, as she was, this was a challenge to her. Which was what he’d claimed to want when he allowed for this ridiculous plan. But seeing her pupils dilate, her tongue come out to wet her lips, her hands shake at her sides, he wanted to protect her, not break her down.

He placed a hand on the small of her back, feeling the flutter that worked through her when he touched her so intimately. He was exquisitely aware of how her spine straightened, how her body leaned back just a fraction to increase the pressure of his fingers.

And he wanted to fuck her so badly he could almost taste her surrender.

The doors opened and the cacophony of sounds from within swirled around them as they entered the bright chamber. As with the previous night, they had come late enough that the debauchery of the hall was well underway. Half-naked bodies writhed on the dancefloor, a game of strip whist was being played with a mixed group of men and women who were touching as much as playing. And against the back wall, a woman was being given enthusiastic oral pleasure by another lady while a small crowd watched.

He saw Ilaria’s gaze flit and hold on that particular image and another shudder worked through her. He marked the interest and guided her to the edge of the room.

“You want to look,” he said, leaning down to whisper close to her ear. “Look. You want to touch…”

“No,” she said, glancing up at him, eyes wide. “I don’t think I want to…to touch a stranger. Not yet at any rate.”

“You think you might wish to do so at some point?” he asked. He waited for jealousy to arc through him, but the idea of watching Ilaria receive pleasure was a potent one. At least in the realm of fantasy. Reality might be harder to take, though he had no place to tell her what to do or not to do so long as she was protected during her games.

That was what he was here for, wasn’t it?

“I don’t know,” she whispered. “I want to look.”

He nodded and let her do so for a while, guiding her around the room, marking what made her breath hitch or her cheeks pinken with high color. Eventually he motioned her toward a side room where a woman writhed on stage, mimicking masturbation as she stripped item after item of clothing from her body. They stood in the back of the crowd, watching. Well, Ilaria watched the show.

Jonah watched her. It was impossible not to do so when her increasing desire was slashed across her face. Powerful. Potent. She weaved ever so gently on her feet until he caught her elbow and held her still.

She stared at his fingers clenched against her elbow and then slowly slid her gaze up to his face. They held stares for what felt like a lifetime as everything in the room faded but her. He cleared his throat.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

She swallowed hard. “Unsteady,” she admitted before she lifted a hand to his chest.

Her fingers curled against his jacket. Three layers of fabric and she might as well have been licking his skin, the reaction was so strong. His cock, already at half attention from the moment her breath caught for the first time, came to be fully so.

“Like I want more,” she murmured, leaning against him with no subtlety. No hesitation. He felt the warm length of her molding to his side, the way her leg lightly crooked around his, just as it would if he were driving between them.

He shook his head. He had to stop this madness some way, any way. “Then come with me,” he said, and guided her from the room and back into the main hall.

* * *

Ilaria forgot how to breathe as she staggered after Jonah through the crowded, sweaty hall. All around her were moans and sighs, and it was like every sound sent a shiver through her, sent wet heat to settle between her legs, sent electric sensation into every nerve. She felt so tightly wound that she feared she might pop.

But he didn’t hesitate, and she realized he was maneuvering her toward those back rooms again. The place where they had been alone before. Where he had kissed her and made her want so much more from him. From them.

“Jonah,” she whispered, a harsh sound. A desperate and needy sound that left no question about the desires in her body.

He held her tighter, drawing her against him as he said, “The hall,” to the guard.

The man arched a brow and nodded, then got up and led them not to a room, but to a secret door. He unlocked it and motioned them inside. “You’re the only ones at present.”

“Very good,” Jonah said, his tone a little garbled, as if strained.

“What are we doing?” she whispered as he took her hand and led her into a narrow, dark space lit only by a few candles set high on the walls and shafts of light coming from someplace she couldn’t determine.

“You want more,” he said, and led her to one of those shafts. “This is more.”

He turned her toward the source of the brightness, and she gasped. The light was coming from one of the private rooms—this was a peeping place to look into the chamber.

“This is what you were doing when…” she began, looking over her shoulder at him.

She couldn’t see the fullness of his expression, but he nodded. “I closed the barrier the last time we were here so no one in this hall could see us.”

She moved closer to the opening and lifted a hand to cover her mouth. A man and woman were in the room, and it was obvious they had been there for a while. Both were naked from the waist up, her gown drooping at her full hips. He was bent over her, sucking hard on her nipples as she arched beneath him, moaning softly with every lick.

“Jonah,” Ilaria whispered, and staggered away until her back hit the opposite wall.

He leaned in closer and the light from the room hit his face, giving her a half-view of his taut expression. “We can leave.”

“Do they know I’m watching?” she murmured.

He shrugged. “They know someone might be. Some people like that. A lot of people, as you can see from how they behave in the public room. But here it’s more intimate. Is that what you want, Ilaria?”

He was testing her, that was clear. But his voice was rough, filled with desire even though he wasn’t even sparing a glance for the couple in the room behind him.

She swallowed and looked over his shoulder through the little window again. The man had stripped the woman’s dress off and knelt between her legs. His head bobbed as he pleasured her with his tongue and her moans turned to keening cries.

Ilaria found herself moving closer, eyes wide as she stared at the two. She’d had a lover before, back in Athawick. The son of a courtier who she’d always found somewhat handsome. He’d been bound to go to the continent for his education and so they’d both known nothing more would ever come of their attraction. It was for fun, nothing serious. No emotions had ever been involved, just a drive for the heady first blush of pleasure. Neither of them had been very experienced. He’d certainly never done that. Her body thrummed at the sight, her sex gripping against nothing as she stared.

She felt Jonah move behind her, his heat at her back, and she couldn’t resist. She leaned into him, her back to his chest, her bottom pressed against his pelvis. She felt his cock there, hard and ready. Proof that he wasn’t as unmoved as he sometimes pretended to be.

The woman in the room came with great, gulping cries and the man between her legs never let up as it happened. It was only when she went limp against the pillows that he shoved his trousers away and took her. Ilaria watched as his backside pumped, as her legs latched around him, still shaking from her first orgasm, clearly building to a second.

Jonah’s hands touched her hips, and she gasped as she realized she had been grinding back against him in slow circles. She thought he would stop her, but instead he pulled her back harder, increasing the friction. She reached up, cupping the nape of his neck, arching against him and seeking the same pleasure she watched the couple in the room find.

“Please,” she murmured, shoving a hand against her skirts and between her legs. “Please.”

Jonah went still for a moment, his entire body quivering with desire. He turned her to face him, his gray stare glittering in the dimness. “You want this.”

She nodded without hesitation. “Yes.”

He closed his eyes and she saw the fight on his face. The uncertainty. The drive to keep up whatever he called honor.

“Please,” she repeated softly, tracing a finger over his jawline.

He grunted rather than answer, and then he pushed her, pivoting her so her back was against the wall opposite the window again. He leaned into her, letting her feel the full length of him as his mouth lowered to hers, not with gentleness or finesse, but with animal passion. Heated desperation. Reluctant surrender. She lifted into him, trying to pull him closer, trying to make him a part of her because that was what she needed so desperately was this man driving inside of her the way the man in the room was doing to the moaning woman he took.

Jonah broke the kiss. “Just once,” he said, she thought more to himself than to her. “Just once.”

She didn’t know that she agreed to that statement. But she didn’t get the chance to argue because he surprised her by pressing his mouth to her throat, dragging it lower, over her collarbone, her still-clothed breasts, her stomach, her hip. He dropped to his knees before her and looked up at her as he began to slide her gown up her legs.

His palms were warm, even through her silky stockings, and she pressed her hands against the wall behind her as if she could somehow maintain sanity by gripping the rough surface of the wallpaper.

“Watch them,” he ordered, glancing up at her even as he lifted her skirt over her knees.

She forced herself to do so, looking across the narrow hall back into the chamber. The man had shifted to his back on the bed and the woman now straddled him, hands pressed to his chest as she slowly ground down over him.

Jonah pulled her skirt up to hip level and then caught one of Ilaria’s hands. “Hold this,” he said.

She caught the fabric and shifted her attention to him. He chuckled as he fingered the edge of her stockings. “You aren’t wearing drawers,” he said, his face very close to her naked sex.

She shook her head. “I…never…do,” she gasped out.

He glared up at her. “Of course you don’t. And now I know it and it is all I’ll think about every time I see you. That and…” He leaned in closer and let a puff of warm air blow across the apex of her thighs. “This.”

He stroked his fingers there and she widened her stance immediately, granting him better access. He leaned his head forward and rested it against her hip. “You’ll be the death of me, Ilaria, one way or another.”

He pressed a hand to each of her inner thighs and gently pushed, making her stand even wider still. He let out a ragged sigh before he pressed his mouth to the flesh of her thigh, licking languidly, sucking gently.

Ilaria gripped at the wall with her free hand, trying to find purchase when it felt like everything in the world was spiraling to focus on the place between her legs. Especially when his tongue glided higher, teasing the spot where her leg met her pelvis. Then he pressed his mouth to her sex and everything stopped.

It was a fairly chaste kiss as kisses went. Closed mouth, no tongue, but she was on fire. He was kissing her between her legs. Like she’d seen outside, like she was watching right now, for the couple in the room had switched positions yet again and now the woman ground down against her partner’s tongue even as she took his cock deep into her mouth.

Ilaria flexed her hips against Jonah’s mouth, and he parted her folds with one hand and licked her as an answer. She nearly came apart right then, with that perfect pressure stroking across her clitoris. He cupped her backside beneath her skirts, pulling her more firmly against his mouth. She ground down against his tongue, watching the scene in the room across the hall, then squeezing her eyes shut because what he was doing was infinitely more arousing and intimate than anything she could watch.

He swirled his tongue around her, over and over, keeping just the right pressure there. She rode the sensation, gasping out moans and cries in the quiet hallway. Perhaps those in the rooms could hear her. She didn’t really care. She just wanted this, wanted to come for this man.

And he clearly wanted the same thing. He didn’t tease her, perhaps because they were in the public hall, perhaps because there was little time, perhaps because he just didn’t have the desire to. He drove her forward, always toward the cliff edge she could feel in the distance. He did it without effort. It was like he knew the instrument of her body, like he’d played this melody before even if they’d never touched like this.

Whatever it was, it didn’t matter. She writhed against him, the pleasure building, arcing through her, making every inch of her tingle and clench and lean toward the pleasure about to overtake her.

He sucked her clitoris, and the explosion was immediate and powerful. She rocked against him, her back bowing, her fingernails raking the wall behind her as noises unlike anything she’d ever heard escaped from deep within her chest. He continued to torture her, never easing his tongue until her knees buckled. He cupped her backside harder, supporting her she leaned against the wall and stared down at him.

“Come here,” she whispered.

He hesitated a moment but then pushed to his feet. She wrapped her arms around his neck and lifted her mouth to his, tasting the sweet and salty flavor of herself on his tongue. She shuddered at that and the kiss deepened. She wedged a hand between them as he pressed her more firmly against the wall, and cupped the hardness of his cock. She had very much enjoyed his mouth, but this was what she wanted.

But he pulled away rather than taking the next obvious step in this encounter. “Ilaria,” he whispered, an admonishment rather than an endearment.

She blinked. “You won’t?”

He shook his head slowly. “I won’t try to lie and tell you I don’t want to. It’s obvious I want to.”

She stroked him again and he muttered a curse.

“Then why won’t you?” she asked. “Here in the dark, no one will know. No one will see.”

He rested his forehead on her shoulder for a fraction of a moment. “I want to protect you, not make everything worse. Or more confusing.”

“You don’t think licking my pussy until I spasmed in a hallway was making it more confusing?” she asked.

He stiffened at the language she had chosen, not out of offense, she didn’t think, but desire. Her bluntness aroused him. She would file that fact away.

“Probably,” he admitted. “And that’s why I can’t go further.”

He stepped away then, raising his hands as if to show her he wasn’t armed. He wouldn’t hurt her. Only that wasn’t true. He hurt her every time he refused her. Every time he drew her close only to push her away.

She smoothed her wrinkled skirt, letting it fall to her ankles to cover her again. With as much of an air as she could manage, she thrust her shoulders back and arched an eyebrow at him, though she didn’t know if he could see it in the dimness of the hall.

“I’m not confused,” she said. “Just so you know. If you are, that’s on you.”

She pivoted then and moved away from him, back toward the exit into the main hall. She heard his frustrated sigh, but he said nothing else as he followed her, a few steps behind back into the light. As if the whispered pleasures in the dark had never happened.

As if they had meant nothing to him. But she knew that was a lie. She’d felt how much they meant in the moments when she lost herself. And she wasn’t about to forget that, even if he wanted to.