Trick (Foolish Kingdoms, #1)

by Natalia Jaster

“Frankly, denying your effect on me is getting old quickly.” My head veered back to him, only to find Poet’s gaze fastened on me. Instantly, I felt its scorching effect, a tingling sort of burn, tangible in its intensity.

I had thought rendering Poet speechless had been a triumph, but I hadn’t known the half of it until I’d made Nicu smile.

“The Briar Patch told on you, Papa. You can’t walk straaaaaaight.”

“Oh, fuck my permission,” Poet hissed, then rounded on me and whisked a finger against my lips. “We’re finished talking, sweeting. So very fucking finished.” Then he grabbed my face—and his mouth slammed against mine.

A hum vibrated from Poet’s chest and into my mouth. With a groan, he pried the seam of my lips apart. His mouth clutched mine, damp heat emanating between us.

The pad of his thumb played across my lips, sketching their shape until my mouth quavered, loosening like a chink. As my lips parted of their own volition, Poet hummed in approval. “That’s more like it.”

“We can’t,” I said, the protest barely audible. “Sweet Thorn,” he whispered. “We both know better. Give this another few seconds, and neither of us will give a fuck.”

“She began as the jester’s target but ended up tricking him instead. That’s what makes her stunning, and that’s why I can’t stop myself from obsessing over her.

My excuse had my eyes, too. But he was dead.

All at once, darkness fell. Deep blues and purples swarmed the thicket, and the quarter-moon iced the treetops. My fingers came to rest on his neck, a pulse point that quickened the moment I touched him there. A defiant, ambitious, and frenzied sort of desire welled inside me. Without his concession, I thumbed the spot.

Another lapse reared its fiendish head, worse this time. Him, worn out under me, with nowhere to go. My limbs splayed over his thighs and my soft body pinning his solid frame to the earth.

He wants more. He wants me. Triumph spurred me on. I curled myself into him, branding him with my own heat. Then my mouth found his. With the lightest brush, the jester’s lips quivered, tasting of spice, wine, and rain. Oxygen pumped out of him, erratic and heavy. Then he moved in kind, meeting me halfway. We etched one other’s lips with more urgency.

And in my weakness, I found a new type of power—the means to shut him up.

The princess, comforting my son and, hence, beating the shit out of my heart.

Like that, her mouth trembled against mine, brushing the contours with a tentative and unhurried pace. I lay still, my pulse a battering ram. Our breaths wavered, suspended. My eyes threatened to seal shut, and a warning hiss got stuck in my throat.

This barest of touches did more to ruin me than any plunge into a wet and waiting body ever had.

I seethed into her mouth. “You’re playing a treacherous game, Princess.” The response trembled out of Briar like a small flame, one that could detonate into an inferno at any moment. “Then play it with me,” she dared. Wicked. Hell. We paused. Then we launched at one another.

Devil almighty, her wet tongue tasted of ripe apples, equally candied and tart—so erotically sweet.

I worked my jaw into her, my tongue slipping in and out of her mouth, making sure she felt that same decadent sensation. I didn’t care if I wasn’t inside her, because she wasn’t leaving here without knowing a hint of what I could do to her, how far I could reach. Thus, I speared in so deeply, so thoroughly, making sure this prudent princess felt every pitch of my tongue not just between her lips, but between her thighs.

My joints quaked from the impact of Briar—from the loss of her. Moreover, my head levitated, then crashed to earth as though I had been tossed from a vortex. It felt like I’d been slapped out of a euphoric hallucination that only certain petals could otherwise achieve.

Not only did I wish to help bathe her, to coast my fingers over her bare, wet flesh. Nay, I wanted to wash the muck from her hair, to rinse her skin until she tingled with satisfaction. I wanted to take care of her.

her. I wanted to target her for reasons other than ridicule. I wanted to drag her to a shadowed corner, wrench up her skirt, and take her until she combusted. I wanted to make her beg, to make her plead for more. I wanted to ply her slowly, deeply.

The east tower catches the afterlight. Whilst reading the message, I smirked. If she intended to communicate this way, she’d need to whet her skills.

I linked my fingers behind me and paused on the stair below her. “I enjoy looking up to you like this. Do you enjoy looking down on me?”

My deviant reflexes wanted to crush her against the stones and map the crease of her lips with my tongue. This woman was becoming a vice, a fixation, a stimulant—something indulgently bad for me. And I did enjoy things that were bad for me. But more than that, I enjoyed being something bad for her.

Rage and yearning fueled my actions. Daring a glimpse of that scorching red hair and those stoical features, I took a breath and a bow.

The hysterical pleasure, the crash just before it went too far, before the sensations had a chance to erupt. The lasting aftershocks of unfulfilled hunger. I may have stopped it. Yet I still felt the jester everywhere.

My pulse skittered. I plucked the missive, unfolded it, and scanned the contents. Two words looped across the paper in fluid cursive. Nothing happened.

He moved like liquid. And when he finished with an elegant inclination of his head, those eyes slid toward me and discovered he wasn’t the only one out of breath.

“Count again,” I advised. Green eyes clicked toward me. They flashed, then gleamed with elation. I wanted to tuck that visual in a box for safekeeping, to gaze at whenever I felt like it.

“I’ll lose my valuable testes, and you’ll lose your virtuous prestige, if they find you here. Now jump and moan.” “I beg your pardon?”

Realization crossed Briar’s face as it became clear. We were in my chambers, on my bed, fun-drunk, and masked in darkness.

“She’s typical,” I corrected. “You’re a thorn in my side. Also, you’re loyal, courageous, and compassionate. What’s more, brunettes are the soil, blondes the sun. You’re a redhead—every fiery, inflaming thing in between. You’re sheer magnificence.”

“I’ve engaged myself with others, mostly men. They’re safer. As for the rest, I’m cautious and creative. Bodies—hands and tongues and props—can work around the obvious, achieving heights whilst still partially dressed. There are plenty of ways to know pleasure without it amounting to fucking. And there’s rapture in restraint.”

“To answer your original question, nay,” I husked. “I’m less casual about pleasure trinkets.” “Why do you need to use anything?” “Because it’s sensuous.” My voice unfurled. “Because it feels good.”

“You broke my rules,” I said. “Now you’re in my head like a verse and a curse. You’re a plague and a fantasy. You’re there when I’m tossing and turning in bed, twisting the sheets into a heated mess. It’s you who I picture moaning beneath me, above me, in front of me. I’ve pumped my cock to those desires, and I’ll keep doing so until long after you leave this place. I won’t stop until you’ve drained me dry.” The humid words rose from my mouth. “I won’t stop until I’m so lost in your memory, your hand will tingle whilst I come.”

“You’re every bitter and euphoric feeling I have. You’re in every word I speak, every move I make. All of it is you. Whatever happens from now on, you will be my ecstasy and my downfall. “And that face of yours. How I’d like to twist it in a thousand ways, in the ink of this room. My body wants to tear your body apart, to make you sing and sigh, to fill you with incoherent noises.”

Aye, there was that. That, and beyond. It could be rebellion, the dumb rush of the forbidden, except for the hitch in my chest and the pained grooves across my forehead. For this desire felt honest and difficult, this privilege temporary. It stripped away what I’d previously known of seduction. This was me, the jester. This was me, wanting her. This was wanting.

I leaned down and seethed against her mouth. “May I touch you, Princess?”

The ribbons encircling his wrist shone in the firelight as the pad of his thumb dragged across my lower lip, his touch searing a path along my skin. “How I’d love taste your pussy and fuck you tenderly.”

The naked bridge of his cock slid between the crevice in my drawers, brushed through the curls, and rode up the groove in my core. I cried out, embers flying through the place where his unclad erection plied my bare flesh. Poet’s mouth fell open at the contact. His eyes hooded.

My moans thinned into cries. “I’m … I’m …” “Aye, my thorn,” he grated, kissing my unhinged mouth. “That is precisely what you’re going to do.”

The kohl under his lashes crimped. Those eyes flared through the half-light. Whatever he saw, felt, or thought, I couldn’t say. But something in his expression transformed as he watched me coast back to earth. Something else took over. Something dynamic, unprecedented, and tender.

Seasons help us, it kept happening. From behind a hallway tapestry, an arm shot out as I walked by. It snatched my wrist and hauled me into an alcove of shadows. I gasped as a shaft of darkness surrounded me, and a set of hands gripped my waist.

When he got his hands on me, I turned into a nymph of the highest order—daring, liberated, wild. I savored how he held me. More than that, I relished how I held him back.

“I want to see your body. I want every beguiling part of you on my mouth. But most of all …” His breath sailed across my lips. “I want to see every truth about you—everything raw and real. I want you to destroy me.” He ducked his head and met my gaze. “Show me those lovely secrets, and I promise, I’ll honor them.”

In the midst of that, Poet husked, “Beautiful.” Being lost in this oblivion should feel vulnerable, but knowing Poet watched me only magnified the feelings. Even with my vision shrouded in darkness, I sensed him there with me. The ribbon tethered us, so that I wasn’t the only one affected.

“Open them wider, sweeting,” he instructed, his voice gravely.

“The words are crude. They’re too vulgar.” “No,” he uttered. “Not from your mouth, nor from your body. They’re sexy, as is the feel of your arousal against my hand. The words are real, and they’re exquisite. ’Tis a blissful torment.”

His mouth pulled away from my clitoris, slid between my folds, and probed them open. Like that, he curled his tongue inside me, slowly so that I felt its entire length.