Free Possessing Allura by Reese Gabriel Page A

eavesdropping silence. ‘I can give you a kingdom,’ she whispered.
    â€˜You have nothing to give me, Allura,’ he countered. ‘You are ruined.’
    â€˜I am still the crown princess,’ she argued.
    â€˜Without my favor you go to the auction block,’ he reminded her. ‘Or that of the executioner.’
    The man was like ice. Would he respond to a show of feminine helplessness? ‘Please,’ she offered meekly, ‘you cannot let that happen to me if you have any honor, any sense of mercy.’
    â€˜Mercy?’ He laughed dryly. ‘Like you showed your good friend Saraveeta?’
    Allura reddened in fury. So he knew the story. No doubt the treacherous slave had told him other things besides. ‘Just tell me,’ she stiffened, ‘what I must do. Every man has a price.’
    It was a vicious insult and she feared it would spell her doom. But Montreico merely smiled thinly, pirate that he was, and delivered a counterattack, decisive, degrading and absolute. ‘We will have a kiss, Allura, and then I shall reconsider.’
    â€˜Go to the demons,’ she hissed, snatching her head to one side a fraction as he touched her cheek.
    â€˜You will look fetching in a collar,’ he went on, undeterred.
    His touch made her insides melt, but she fought against her traitorous reaction. ‘You will die for that insolence, Montreico. Defiling me is the same as defiling the state.’
    Montreico retracted the fingers at his leisure. ‘I am surprised, Allura, that someone of your intellect should come across now as such a stupid girl. You are not the state. You are a slut; your body is already forfeit, to me or whoever else buys you. The choice is yours.’
    Her heart pounded. She ached to swoon into his arms, to be done with the words and simply let him have his way with her, but she was determined to fight him too, and when that was no longer possible, to mislead and deceive. ‘One kiss and then we shall marry,’ she bartered.
    â€˜No bargaining. The kiss is merely the cost of keeping the negotiations open.’
    â€˜Very well,’ she tried to keep her breathing under control, ‘get it over with.’
    â€˜No,’ he rejected her waiting lips, ‘you will kiss me. Passionately and with abandon.’
    Her heart caught in her throat. ‘But you are asking me to…’
    â€˜To appear as a whore before the court?’ he supplied. ‘But that is what you are. Unless I marry you and make you mine.’
    â€˜I hate you,’ Allura let him know. ‘And I shall always hate you.’
    She rose on tiptoes, terrified to encroach the protective distance between them. Far worse than the shame of the act was what it might do to her inside, to that part of her that wanted to beg for him to take her virginity.
    He yielded not an inch, forcing her to do all the work, pressing her breasts against his hard chest. The first contact was like the crackle of fire. Instant combustion. She did not wish to yield to passion, but she could not help but crave more.
    Montreico seemed so unmoved and unresponsive. She was afraid he did not like it; was she doing it wrong? Did she not know even how to kiss a man properly? But why should she care? If he hated it, all the better. Maybe then he’d just leave her alone and go back to where he came from.
    But she could feel his cock now, pressing against her tummy. They were in their own world, just as they had been last night; the court and her uncle gone. There were no disputes, no struggles, only the rightness of physical lust. And she knew that he knew it, too, that she was ready and hot and completely primed. He need only whisper in her ear, or better still just lower her to the floor and she would tear willingly at her clothes, baring herself for him.
    But he did not intend to leave her in this world, this comforting place of security under the cloak of his power. He intended to expose