Chapter 23: Merciless Prince: Chapter 22

“Get naked.”

I’ve been his captive long enough to know that there’s little point in resisting. If Aiden wants me to undress for him, then that’s what I’m going to do. Otherwise, I’ll be punished.

Punishment is the last thing I need right now. If I’m ever going to get out of here, I need to submit.

When Tara first told me about the tunnels that run underneath these hills, I was worried that I wouldn’t be able to gain enough of Aiden’s trust to ever get to them. But right now, that’s not my main worry. As I slip off my light summer dress, my fears are split on two very different matters

The first is the look in Aiden’s eyes. He’s ravenous for me. This might finally be it. The beast is going to fuck me. Take the last thing I have left of my old life. My virginity.

But what almost scares me more isn’t the massive swell in his pants, or the carved muscle that throbs beneath his black tattoos. What scares me most of all is that I might just actually want him to fuck me.

When he first stormed outside to confront me and Mr. McCabe, there were a dozen disastrous thoughts racing through my mind. His shirtless body was more terrifying than it was alluring. A missile of pure envy and anger.

But the second we were alone, he changed. When it was just the two of us, he made me do something that I never thought he’d make me do. Laugh.

Aiden Kilpatrick made me laugh.

What else can he make me do?

Right now, he’s making me want him. His eyes, his lips, his body, his cock. They make me wet. There’s no hiding it.

I stand tall and straight as his greedy eyes plunder every inch of my exposed skin. He’s brought me back to my own bathroom. My knees are dirty, as are my hands, but neither compare to just how dirty my thoughts are.

It scares me.

Aiden is as perceptive as ever. “Don’t worry, little flower. There’s nothing to be afraid of. I’ve told you this before. I’m not an animal or a savage. If you don’t want me to fuck you, I won’t. This isn’t that. This will be just like our times before, but wetter.” His gaze wanders to my thigh gap. It’s hard to imagine the huge bulge beneath his pants fitting inside of me. Next to him, I feel so small and fragile.

But that doesn’t stop the heat.

“I’m not afraid,” I lie.

“Then let’s get that sweat and dirt off of you,” Aiden says. He opens the glass shower door and turns on the water, then he motions me forward. “Take them off.”

Gently, he takes my hand, brushing down to my fingers, which he leads to his belt buckle.

I try to think about anything else as I help free his monster. But nothing else will stick. Freedom seems cold and lonely. All I want now is to see what comes next.

Soon enough, I get my wish.

Aiden’s cock slips free from its confines and takes my breath with it. “Is this the first cock you’ve seen, princess?”

I gulp. “Yes.” Aiden’s penis is thick and veiny and it curves up towards my belly ever so slightly, as if begging to impale me with its girth.

“I told you that I want you. This is my proof. Now, let’s clean each other.”

But when the water falls over my hair and down my shoulders, I don’t feel like I’m cleaning up. Instead, I feel dirtier than ever. Arousal weighs heavy in my core, pooling up like the water below.

“So dirty,” Aiden teases, laying his hands on my shoulders. “What were you doing out there, little flower?”

I flinch at his touch, but his rugged skin is warm and tempting. “Gardening.”

When Aiden releases me from his grip, a stone of anxiety replaces the weight of his hands. Immediately, I’m worried that he may take offence to what I was doing.

No one is allowed to tend to it but him.

That’s what Tara told me. She repeated that warning when I told her where I was headed this morning.

Bree Kilpatrick’s garden.

But Aiden’s hands aren’t gone for long. Quickly enough, they return, lathered in shower gel. With great interest, he smoothly starts to rub me down.

“Gardening what?” he asks. His giant hand slips under my arm and he smothers my breast in his palm. My heart goes wild. In between the slippery vice of his fingers, my taut nipple is pinched with increasing delight.

“The garden on the outskirts of the lawn,” I deflect, hoping he’ll drop it. The throbbing heat of his cock tracing at outline on the small of my back is making me delirious. With the steam rising up from the shower bed, it feels like I’m slipping into a lustful opioid dream.

“Who showed you that garden?”

I don’t want to get Tara in trouble. This morning, she wouldn’t even join me in the garden. Though, I think a bigger part of that might have been that she was up all night setting up my escape tunnel. “I stumbled upon it.”

“And no one stopped you?”

“No. Why would they?” Playing dumb comes much easier when my mind wants to drift off into the clouds.

Keeping one hand on my tit, Aiden slips his other down between my legs. His hot breath cuts through all the other heat in the shower, pebbling my skin twice over as he leans down and plants the trace of a kiss on my shoulder.

“You’re lying to me, princess.” He slips a finger into my pussy and I whimper from the painful pleasure.

“About what?”

“You knew what that garden was. And you knew you weren’t supposed to be there.”

Another finger enters me and I cry out, grabbing onto Aiden’s forearm for support. “It was a mess,” I sigh. “I was just trying to help.”

“I don’t need your help.” With a powerful thrust, Aiden presses the length of his cock up against my back. A conflicted gasp escapes my lips. “You aren’t to go back there. Understand?”

I don’t respond. Despite the despair surrounding the semi-wild garden, my time trying to clean it up was the best I’ve had here so far. For the first time, I actually felt useful.

But Aiden isn’t going to let me forget that I can be used in other ways. His fingers start to pump, gushing through my arousal with a hypnotic rhythm.

As my legs weaken, my grip around his forearm tightens.

“What do you want, princess?” he whispers into my ear.

You. Your cock.

That’s what he wants to hear.

Freedom.

That’s what I want to say.

The truth is, I don’t know anymore. Aiden’s touch has me fevered. At least the fear is mostly gone. In its place is desire. My hips even start to sway in response to Aiden’s question. That seems like a good enough answer for him.

With all the quickness of a jungle cat, he slips his fingers out of me and latches onto my waist. I’m flipped around to face him just as he descends into a crouching position.

First comes his tongue, then his lips. He sucks my swollen clit and I cry out from the pleasure. His wild wet hair bundles under my fingers and I desperately try to stay upright. I’m not strong enough. But just before I fall, Aiden digs his hands into my ass and squeezes. The pressure is insane. It’s like he can’t get enough of my pussy. His tongue flickers and his teeth graze and his palms press me further into his greedy lips.

It’s enough to send me over the edge. I cum all over the handsome prince’s face, spasms erupting through my body. If it weren’t for his hands on my ass, I’d be a crumpled pile of rosy flesh on the shower floor by now.

Instead, I’m propped up against the wall as Aiden rises again before me. “Did you learn your lesson, little flower?”

These punishments of his only seem to be getting more pleasurable. I’m frenzied. “I’m thinking of going back tomorrow.” It’s a stupid thing to say, but my brain might as well be dripping through my nose right now.

Aiden only smiles. “So, you do like to be punished?” His dimple isn’t as deep as the one I witnessed out on the lawn; that’s how I know he’s being more sly than genuine. Still, the memory of him finally stealing a laugh from me only makes my heart swell in the steam.

“No, I don’t like to be punished.”

“Now who’s the liar?”

I shake my head and place a hand on Aiden’s muscular chest, making it clear that I’m ready to push him away. “Tell me a truth,” I ask. “And I’ll tell you one too.”

Aiden licks his lips. “Fine, I want you, Elisa. I want to fuck you hard, right now.”

I sigh, looking down at his throbbing cock. “No. That’s not a confession. I know that. it’s clear.”

“Then what do you want to know?”

There are so many questions I could choose, but in a moment this intimate, there’s only one I can think to ask. “I want to know where you got those scratch marks from.”

It’s hard to tell if Aiden is angry or delighted with my question. The jealousy is palpable. It must be feeding that already enlarged ego of his. But he’s also already told me not to worry about it. Aiden doesn’t like to be asked about the same thing twice.

“I got them at work,” he says. His fingers wrap around my wrist and he brushes my palm against his mountainous chest. The scratch marks are hardly visible anymore, but I feel like the heat is still there.

“What does that mean?”

“It means I was punishing someone for putting my business at risk.”

My cheeks flush. “Just like you’re punishing me?”

Aiden’s stony façade falls for a smirk. “No. Only you get punished like this, princess. No one else gets the privilege.”

I can only roll my eyes and try to hold back a smirk of my own. “How modest of you.”

“It’s the truth. That’s two truths from me. Now, what’s yours?” He steps forward, expectantly, and the heat of his cock refills the pressure pooling in my core.

A heavy weight comes over my heart. There’s so much I could say, so many things that would break this moment and send me back to square one. But I can’t go backwards.

I think of how sleepy Tara was this morning, and I imagine all the hard work she’s putting into giving me an opportunity to escape. If I let it go to waste, then I may be truly trapped under Aiden forever. No matter how alluring that sounds right at this exact moment, I know that ridding myself of the opportunity will only lead to misery and regret.

Plus, there’s something else I want to say.

But it doesn’t involve words.

I’m not ready to be fucked by my beast. He’s too big. I’m still too fragile. Too afraid. If I give into that now, then he might truly be able to break me into so many little pieces that I’ll never be able to pick them all up. And I know that If I leave a single morsel of myself here when I make my run for freedom, I’ll never really be free.

But there’s something else. Something just as intimate. Just as precious. Just as untouched.

With my hand still on Aiden’s chest, I lean forward, eyes closed.

I give him my first kiss.

The moment our lips meet, I’m engulfed in flames. The plan was a quick peck, but as Aiden wraps his arms around my waist and pulls me in tight, I can’t help but melt into place.

He kisses me back and I’m trapped. Between his arms, between our families, between his lips. There’s no going back. There’s only forward.

For freedom, I kiss him back. For lust, I kiss him back. For the life of me, I can’t stop kissing him back.

But all of me is never enough for Aiden Kilpatrick. His hands explore more of my body, then they take control of my hands and pull me to explore more of him.

“Che meraviglia.” The rhythm of those Italian words spoken in Aiden’s deep voice catches me by surprise. At first, I hear only what it means. How wonderful. Only a moment later do I realize that my Irish prince has just praised me in my mother tongue.

“You speak Italian?” We’ve barely stopped kissing, our lips hover mere inches from each other’s. It feels like I’ve drunk up Aiden’s declaration.

“A little bit,” he says, low and simmering. “That’s what happens when you grow up around Italians.”

“Do you always say che meraviglia when you steal a girl’s first kiss?”

“I’ve never stolen one. Still haven’t.”

There’s no hiding that I leaned into him. That my lips fell onto his. That I gave him what he wanted. Not the other way around.

But Aiden Kilpatrick is the kind of man who takes a mile when you give him an inch.

He wraps up my wrist and leads my hand down from his chiselled chest and over his sculpted stomach. Teasingly, he stops at his flat pelvis.

“What else do you want, princess?”

Again, a thousand proclamations rush through my weightless mind. But only one settles, and it’s just as frustrating as my last one.

“I want to know what my life will be like once we’re married,” I say. “More of this? More of me being trapped while you’re gone for days? More of me never knowing which version of you will return? More of being left alone in the dark?”

Aiden brushes his thumb over the back of my wrist. “When we are married, there will only be one version of me. Your husband. And I will take you wherever I go. Wherever that is.”

“Where do you go during the day?” That’s another question, but Aiden is feeling generous.

“I go into the city, but that’s not where I’ll take you. By the time we’re married, all the people in the city who need to see that you’re mine will have seen it. Next, I’ll need to show you off to the world. Ireland. Italy. Greece. The Ukraine. They’ll all know that you’re mine.”

My heart pounds as I imagine actually seeing the world, but a thread of sadness tugs at my chest too. “Is that all they’ll need to see? That I belong to you?”

Aiden’s emerald eyes hold me hostage. “Marriage means we belong to each other.”

“And you believe that?”

“Take this as my promise that I do.” Without further ceremony, Aiden makes up the space between my fingers and his cock. The girth of it makes me sigh with arousal, and without second thought, I’ve wrapped a fist around the thick beast. “This is what we do for each other.”

Aiden leads me by the back of the hand. Up and down his shaft. His thunderous groans fill up the steamy air as I’m sped up. “Like that, princess. Harder. Faster.”

When he releases my wrist from his grip, I don’t let up. When he takes my chin and presses my mouth back onto his, I don’t let go. While we kiss, I jerk him off. Lust fuels me.

Pleasure of my own sparks up from Aiden’s hard cock. The faster I pump, the deeper his breaths become and the heavier the pressure in my core grows.

Our tongues tangle and our breaths meet in a thunderstorm of building ecstasy. Then, just when it feels like the world is about to split into two, Aiden pulls back and grabs my wrist again. He squeezes, keeping my hand in place as an explosion of cum shoots from his throbbing head.

My deep breaths become high whimpers as the last of his pearls drip onto my toes. The whirlwind calms and Aiden takes one final breath. I match him with one of my own.

But then the mood changes.

Ice freezes over the salty storm and my prince becomes stone once more. I don’t even get the courtesy of one last glance before he pushes past me, escaping the warmth of the water and leaving me alone in the suddenly cold shower.

What just happened?

Did I do something wrong?

Of course I did, I let my guard down.

Conflict ravishes my soul as I slink down onto the tiles and hug myself. Despite the emptiness I’m left with, the memory of what just happened still lingers.

Aiden took my first kiss.

No.

I gave it to him.

To buy myself a chance at freedom.

No.

Because I wanted to give it to him.

There’s no lying to myself. What we just did, I liked it. Maybe even more than just liked it. That kiss was balm to my soul. The passion felt so real.

But if it was real, why didn’t it last? Not for even a second after it was done. Just like that, the beast was back and I wasn’t a partner anymore, I was a captive.

I still am a captive.

Nothing has changed. But suddenly everything is different.

For even just a moment, I felt myself fall for the devil. I gave him a laugh and my first kiss. He drank them both in and then he threw me aside.

He knows I wanted more. But he didn’t give it to me.

Why the hell not?