The Goblin King (The Kings) Read online

  Her fingers were back at the lapels of his jacket, clutching hard as his hands moved up, shoving her shirt up with them and lighting a trail of fire across her flesh until he reached the underwire of her bra. There, his fingers curled tight around the material – and she knew what was coming.

  The world had become a fevered race, her dawning, yearning, craving pleasure the starting gun. Her mind went white with heated anticipation.

  He ripped the bra apart, tearing it between the two tight grips of his hands.

  Her sensitive peaks were at once exposed to the cool air of his castle. Her back arched as her nipples drew so taught it was slightly painful. But Damon’s hot-burning body eased the cold away, his searing hands moving across her abdomen and chest to gently cup the globes of her breasts. At the same time, his kiss deepened, taking her breath away.

  She felt delirious when his fingers deftly tweaked the nipple of one breast, his thumb brushing over the sensitive bud, sending fireworks in a trail down her body, where they alighted between her legs and caused her to buck against him.

  He broke their kiss, pulling away gradually and taking her bottom lip between his teeth for a moment before he released her and was moving downward. Diana’s eyes opened long enough to catch the nearby hearth fire reflected in the raven-esque shimmer of his black locks, and then her fingers were delving into that silken mane and her eyes were shutting tight once more as his lips closed over her tortured nipple and sucked hard.

  She made an incoherent sound, drawing in air with a hiss and releasing it with helplessness.

  Teeth came next, clamping down on the taut instrument of his attentions. Diana’s fingers curled into fists in his hair and Damon’s free hands slid lower on her body to find the waistband of her jeans.

  With his teeth on her nipple, she dare not move as his hands curled around the band. For a half-second, she thought he might rip them open, and she couldn’t have cared less. But as she held her breath and swam in the sweet misery of sensation his mouth was unleashing on her, his deft fingers worked the jeans button loose and unzipped the pants to expose the small edge of lace that bordered her white panties.

  He released her tender nipple which pulsed with every beat of her heart and sent wave after wave of fire to her core – and kissed his way to her other breast. Now painfully impatient, Diana un-fisted her hands from his hair and gripped his strong shoulders. Her nails dug into his jacket, carving half-moons into the leather.

  His mouth closed over her breast, his teeth brutally gentle, his tongue like a whip, her skin crying out at the demise of every last one of her nerve endings. She arched again, playing into his cruelty with surrender – and Damon accepted her surrender with the victorious actions of an absolute ruler.

  He shoved the jeans roughly over her hips, pulling her slim body up as he did so to ease his progress. With firm and ruthless impatience, he rose off her, leaving her breast throbbing and her chest heaving. He then swept his arm across the center of the table, sending more platters and glassware flying. They slammed into surfaces somewhere else and shattered into careless pieces.

  Damon slid Diana further up on the table until she was resting fully on the polished wood. With a wave of his hand, her boots and socks were gone. The cool air caressed her naked thighs as his hands rid her with dizzying speed of her jeans. He tossed them carelessly to the side.

  Suddenly, Diana froze under his stark and burning scrutiny. She was almost thoroughly bared and utterly defenseless, laid out in nothing but her little panties on an altar for him to devour. He was a black-clad tower of a man gazing down at her with a hunger unequalled – and something else. It was akin to ownership.

  He looked at her as though he was about to ruin her for any other man.

  She felt more vulnerable than she ever could have imagined. She also felt hotter and more wanton as she propped herself up on her elbows and her round breasts jutted out – teasing.

  Damon hastily shrugged off his leather jacket, exposing the taut, bulging muscles of his arms and chest where they pressed against the thin material of his black shirt. Then, as Diana held her breath and her mouth watered like mad, he curled his fingers under the hem of that shirt and lifted it over his head, exposing the perfect, rock-hard anatomy of his chest and abdomen.

  A number of curse words, intermingled with incoherent nonsense, rushed through Diana’s head as she gazed openly and longingly at every ridge and ripple of the Goblin King’s perfect physique. But her courage faltered just a little when he went for the buttons of his jeans next.

  As if he could see the sudden fear in her eyes, Damon popped the top button on his jeans with one hand, and braced his other on the table – between her long legs. His knee came next. With the grace of a very large and very deadly cat, he crawled onto the table and over her, easing her thighs apart as he did so. She fell back, her gaze locked in his as he moved up her body.

  His hand wrapped around the top of her panties a millisecond before she heard the sound of them ripping and she felt them bite briefly into her flesh. And then there was absolutely nothing between them but his victorious, twisted smile and the inferno of his singular eyes.

  Diana parted her lips and drew in a breath, preparing to say something, anything, that would help her to release even a small bit of the sexual tension he’d filled her with, but Damon’s mouth crashed down on hers before she could mutter a sound. She cried out against his lips when his hands were back, this time on the insides of her thighs.

  Oh gods! she thought, feeling crazed. She’d lost all control – given it freely to the man who now took her over like a conquering soldier.

  She bucked, tried to move away, tried to move toward him, as his hands continued in their caressing and massaging until finally, finally, his fingers brushed against the tender folds of her opening and she cried out a second time only to have her pleasure swallowed by Damon’s brutally demanding kiss.

  She started to fight then; it was an instinct inside her, forcing her body to go wild, to push, to pull, to curl her fingernails into claws and rake them across the perfect skin of his back. She drew blood, she knew. She was strong and trained.

  But he was stronger. Though she pulled at him, begging him with her body to just take her and stop teasing, Damon maintained absolute control. He slowly broke the kiss and moved to her neck, suckling her throat and no doubt marking her as his own.

  Diana’s overheated, sweat-covered body responded to his manipulations all on its own, rising to meet the maddeningly gentle touch of his fingers between her legs, pleading with him to penetrate.

  To go deep.

  But she could not control the fae king.

  Please! her burning mind begged. Then she said it out loud, breathlessly, hopelessly. “Please….”

  Damon’s hot, talented fingers slid smoothly into the slickened canal of her wanton core, eliciting a moan from so deep within her, it was animalistic. He pressed deep, filling her tightness. One finger… two….

  Diana screamed in frustration and pleasure and everything in-between. Her head dropped back, her throat working, a sigh escaping her lips. Her arms slid free of his shoulders and back, and her fingers once more curled into the soft thickness of his hair. She wanted more of him. She wanted all of him. “Damon, please.”

  Damon Chroi stilled above her – for only a moment.

  Then his fingers slowly pulled free, leaving her writhing beneath him. He rose on his elbow, allowing his body to lower against hers, and cupped her face in his hands. She opened her eyes. Lust blurred the edges of her vision as she found herself once more caught in the inescapable pull of his gaze.

  He held her there, watching her, staring into her eyes, as he moved over her – and Diana felt the hard and hot evidence of his desire touch against her slick opening.

  She braced herself, her hands gripping his wrists, her lips parted, as he pressed forward.

  Pain comingled with the throbbing, heated sensations swirling through her. He was so hot, he almos
t burned, and the size of him stretched the walls of her womanhood with a merciless, building pressure.

  Her fingernails dug in once more, her breathing ragged and gasping, and yet he continued his tender, relentless assault, all the while not allowing her to look away. Deeper and deeper he slowly sank, filling her with a pulsing, solid fire that scorched her from the inside and branded her for life.

  She had lost sense of time and was aching, throbbing all around him with tight, pulsing pleasure-pain when he finally stopped, embedded deeply within her. For half a second, she thought he was finished, that she’d somehow managed to take all of him.

  But then he lowered his lips gently across hers, kissing her with a tenderness like a butterfly’s wings… as he pulled back just enough – before shoving brutally into her, sinking the remainder of the way into her body and forcing a cry of painful surprise from her throat.

  There he finally waited.

  The world receded. The only thing Diana knew was their joining, that pulsing, throbbing, overfilled space where Damon had penetrated and claimed her as his own. It hurt. It hurt like the most wonderful, blissful, undeniable pain the universe had ever created. She wanted more. She knew it would kill her, but she was addicted now… to this pain. To this perfect, Damon Chroi kind of pain.

  As he placed those tender butterfly kisses across her mouth, Diana’s breathing slowed, her body relaxed, and the heat that had coiled relentlessly in her middle began to take over once more.

  She returned his kisses, and as she’d wanted to do since she’d first met him, she placed one atop the scar running through his upper lip.

  He rose just enough to look down at her – and something unfamiliar but truly wonderful reflected in the fire that danced in his eyes.

  She felt him retreat below, pulling at her with that blissful pain, before slowly – so slowly – pressing back in. She bit her lip, and no longer able to keep her eyes open, she squeezed them shut as she felt him do it again. Each time, the warmth in her belly became hotter and pulsed harder. Her breathing quickened as he pulled further away, and thrust deeper.

  There was a familiar rising need blossoming inside her. She’d brought herself to orgasm enough times to recognize it, but never had it been this strong. Never had she almost actually feared climaxing. As if it might… destroy her somehow. As if it was so good, it was dangerous. Deadly.

  Damon’s teeth nibbled at her collarbone. He pulled out – pressed in. Diana’s hands fisted his hair, pulling with need. His hand cupped a breast, fondling the nipple, first gently and then hard enough to force Diana to rise to meet him. She cried out as he twisted it just enough and then thrust into her again, this time sparking a light on the edge of something that felt like an ending…. It was the thing she almost feared.

  It was drawing nearer.

  He became cruel then, as if he knew she was close – as if he was too. His caresses became more insistent. His fingers dug into her flesh, his teeth bit down deeper, and his thrusts quickened and invaded.

  Diana held on tight and let him ride her. He laid waste to her senses one after another, until she felt that spark he’d ignited catch on and burn, branding her. Damon slammed his hands onto the table and rose, his teeth bared, his eyes like two maelstroms of hell.

  Diana was caught in the conflagration; she threw back her head, and her voice broke free as the magma-like tidal wave of euphoria washed over her, ringing spasms from inside her, one painful flux after another. Her scream hit the ceiling and walls, and was joined by Damon’s animalistic cry as he emptied himself into her.

  He incinerated her.

  Diana felt as though she’d combusted and had been turned to ash only to be reborn as something more beautiful. Something forever changed.

  It took a short forever for the spasms of her orgasm to cease racking her slim body, for her heart to slow from its racing, and for her breathing to return to semi-normal. She opened her eyes to find Damon gazing steadily down at her, his strong arms still braced firmly on either side of her on the table.

  The expression on his handsome face was a mixture of what appeared to be hope and awe… and there was that something else there again as well.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  Diana didn’t know how to answer that. She was more than all right. She was different. She was alive.

  So all she did was nod. Then she saw the blood she’d drawn in the raked marks on his shoulders and across his back, and she felt suddenly ashamed. “Are you?”

  But Damon only laughed. His smile was the most genuinely happy smile she had probably ever seen a man wear. He nodded. “Oh yes,” he said. “And if I’m not, you can just heal me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Damon ran a slow, satisfied hand through his hair as he left the long corridor that lead to the master bedroom and re-entered the great room of his castle. It was raining again, beating down as heavy and forlorn as it ever had. It had begun raining the moment his young queen had slipped peacefully into her restful slumber.

  He’d tucked her in, knowing she desperately needed the rest, and quietly left the room. Next, he sent out a call to the other fae kings.

  Now he waited. The stained glass windows of the massive room were fogged where they were trapped in the battle between warm and cold. The clouds hung low in the dark gray sky. Lightning crisscrossed a land that appeared to be mourning.

  It was Diana. When she was awake, the kingdom celebrated, the sun shone, and the land dried. And when she slept, it missed her, weeping for her return.

  She’d been there all of one total day, and already she was tied irrevocably to the land and its inhabitants.

  “Good day, Your Majesty!” came a familiar crackling voice from the fireplace.

  Damon turned toward it and eyed the tiny fire elemental with a narrowed gaze. “Pi,” he greeted.

  “Where’s your friend?” Pi asked.

  “I had a feeling you were there,” Damon accused softly. “Spying is a nasty habit, Pi.”

  “I left when you kissed her,” Pi said defensively. “I’m not a peeping flame.” He crackled and popped excitedly for a moment and then settled down again.

  Damon put his hands on his hips, waiting.

  “Besides,” Pi continued. “She’s the first human you’ve ever brought to the castle… or to the kingdom. So she sort of stands out. Not like the other kings. Especially the Unseelie.” He made a derisive sound that hissed because it was made through fire.

  Damon bit the inside of his cheek. “And I suppose you know this because your brethren spy from their fireplaces as much as you do from mine.”

  Pi didn’t respond to that. He crackled and wavered a bit, and Damon chuckled softly.

  “But not you!” Pi continued, glossing over the accusation as if Damon had never made it. “She’s the first. And can I just say, wow!” The little fire elemental laughed, his cackle shooting sparks that simmered away before they could hit the cold hard floor. “I knew you could charm a keeper if you put your heart to it.”

  “Oh?” Damon asked softly as he made his way to the couch and sat down, lifting his legs to cross his boots at the ankle on the coffee table. “You did, did you?”

  “Oh yeah,” said Pi. “You were banished for a reason, right? Your equals are jealous and scared.” The miniscule fire elemental actually appeared to shrug in the hearth. “Jealousy and fear don’t fill a man’s heart when his competition is ugly or powerless.”

  Damon blinked. He’d known Pi for years, but this was possibly the first time the fiery little guy had shown a depth that went past coal and smoke.

  His words struck a nerve though.

  Pi was right. Damon had been banished. It might have occurred thousands of years ago and under different rule in the fae kingdoms, but the banishment still held. It had been enforced by royalty and was kept in place by the blood and magic of people now dead, so it could not be reversed.

  It was why he waited there on his couch in his own great room in
his own castle – for the other sidhe kings to arrive. They had to come to him for audience because he couldn’t go to them.

  It irked. It hadn’t irked until just then. Until then, he couldn’t really have cared less that he wasn’t allowed across the borders of the other two fae kingdoms. Apart from the cooperation each of the fae kings gave as three of the 13 Kings, he had no dealings with Avery and Caliban. There was no reason to interact with them, and it hadn’t really bothered him that this was the case.

  But it bothered him now.

  Because if I am banished, then my queen is too.

  He just didn’t like the way that set with him. It wasn’t as though the Goblin Kingdom wasn’t vast. It was an illusion of sorts, appearing to be a massive island, but in fact stretched extra dimensionally in all directions.

  It was only that he wanted to give the world to Diana. All of it.

  Damon sighed. “I appreciate the vote of confidence, Pi.”

  “It is grossly misdirected.”

  Damon leapt off the couch and spun, simultaneously using his magic to call the Atrox Ferrum to him at once. The gleaming, deadly sharp sword appeared in his hand as the stranger who had just spoken stepped out of the sheltering shadows of the far corner of the great room.

  Damon had to reinforce his mental constitution when he found himself facing off with his own likeness. It had happened once before – during a meeting with the other kings. However, that single experience made this one no easier.

  Damon and his supernatural equals had come to call these copies of themselves the ka. They were doppelgangers created by the god Kamon, Amon Re’s brother. They were exact replicas of the 13 Kings – down to every last detail.

  They possessed the same bodies, the same faces, the same memories, and the same powers. This was clearly the case, as Damon’s ka would not be standing there in his great room otherwise. Only the Goblin King had the ability to transport into and out of his kingdom without permission. Even Avery and Caliban had to be invited.