Prince of Pleasure (5 page)

Rossi increased his speed, pushing the edges of his limits, and crashed into the woman, wrapping her protectively in his arms as he turned his body, changing their direction on a moment’s notice. Instantly his nose filled with the sweet scent of the female he held and his body reacted in a way he was not prepared for.

Groaning, he held her tighter, flying as if he did not believe there was a tomorrow, a deep gnawing feeling of foreboding settling over him. If he remained in the area with the woman, bad things would happen.

He knew it as plain as he knew his birth order. He knew something else as well. No harm was to come to the woman, for she was his.

Mine?

The proclamation nearly caused him to loosen his hold on the woman. But he didn’t. He held her to him, cradling her in his arms, the fog of his mind lifting enough for him to realize she was holding tight to him while shouting what he knew to be human obscenities at him. He had heard Paige, Sachin’s wife, say many of the same. They were not nice words and certainly not words a lady would use. But they were words a human would use.

Human?

This time, Rossi did let go of the woman, unintentionally, of course. Shelby’s warning played again in his head. His mate was human and he was to meet her today.

This female is my mate.

She dropped away from him and he recovered her quickly, her obscenities weaving an even deeper pattern. One that threatened to make even him blush, and he was not a man known to do such a thing. And what was that accent she had? He had heard it before.

Ah. Yes
, he thought.
She is Southern.

Rossi landed in a clearing, far enough from the border to make him feel secure in his choice. No sooner did the woman’s feet touch the ground than she twisted in his arms, bit his upper shoulder and then kneed him in his most prized area.

His cock.

Doubling over, Rossi saw everything in pairs for a second as pain radiated throughout his lower region. He managed to reach out and snatch hold of the woman’s outer garment of clothing before she could run from him. His ears rang, the pain of her assault still fresh.

“Let go of me, you dick with wings!” she shouted.

He held tighter to her garment.

She was suddenly free from it and turning, her blue gaze wild and determined. For the first time since grabbing her from midair, he was able to see just how lovely she was, even in her agitated sate. She was simply stunning and his breath caught, his sore groin hardening quickly.

She puffed out her very blessed chest, making the word
Rebel
, which was stitched onto her article of clothing, seem wide and prominent. He smiled. She was indeed a rebel, so defiant.

So perfect.

So…thoroughly annoyed?

She swatted at him, her small fists striking his bare chest, barely affecting him. She continued, both with strikes and a line of curses. Rossi held her with one hand, his other cupping his groin, an amused smile easing over his lips. It would appear humans did indeed fall from the sky within his realm. Rather ill-tempered ones at that.

Thankfully, she was most pleasing to the eye.

Her full lips formed a pout and she tipped her head, her sable hair falling over one shoulder. “Are you laughing at me?”

“Perhaps,” he replied, liking the sound of her voice, especially when she was not cursing him, his gods, any gods, his man parts, his species, and so forth.

“That’s not very nice,” she scolded.

He pursed his lips, wanting to touch her cheek and the tiny dusting of freckles that went up over her nose. “Neither is striking my groin.”

She pouted, and the action sent fire to the very groin he’d only just spoken of. Her long hair fell over one shoulder, covering part of the Rebel word on her clothing. “I suppose that isn’t very nice. I thought you wanted to murder me.”

He lifted a brow. “Dare I ask why?”

“The other guys who grabbed me looked an awful lot like they had bad things on their minds, followed by murdering me. Figured you were the same,” she said, glancing over her shoulder as if she feared another would be there.

Rossi thought harder upon her words. “What others?”

“They had black wings. And their wings were also shaped different from yours.”

Anger pulsed up and through him. He pulled harder on her than he had intended and she stumbled against his frame. She gasped and he released her at once.

She stayed pushed against him. “You’re hard as a rock.”

He was, but he doubted very much if she meant his dick, so he refrained from commenting. His brothers would never believe he had not seized the chance to make lewd remarks to a female.

They would first have trouble believing you saved a human.

He cleared his throat and lifted his arms, fearful he’d touch her in ways he should not as she had not granted him such liberties. He drew his wings into him, and he knew that should she look upon his back, there would be no signs he even possessed such gifts of flight.

Her eyes widened and she took only the smallest of steps back from him, looking him up and down. “It’s you! I know you.”

He did not recall having met her before. He would have remembered her.

She shook her head slightly. “Prince Charming is real.”

He had never been referred to as such before. Most females whispered he was the Prince of Pleasure, but if she wished him to be charming, he would try to accommodate.

“I knew you were real,” she said, and then paused. “But you haven’t aged a day in all these years. How is that?”

“We have not met,” he said, the urge to call her his love again nearly winning out.

She huffed. “I was little and with Pappy. I thought you were Prince Charming.”

Rossi stilled. It could not be. The child he had seen was a grown woman already? The magik of his people left them aging so slowly that it took hundreds upon hundreds of cycles for one to reach what was considered adulthood among his kind. Humans aged in the blink of an eye.

The truth of that stood before him now, no longer a small child, no longer pointing at him with wide eyes and child-like wonder. Though, she called him the same thing again—Prince Charming. Yes, he remembered now that that was what had prompted the older man to laugh.

Lucy’s bottom lip quivered, and she knew before the first tear fell that she’d lost her ability to look like a hard-nosed bitch who could handle anything. She could not handle this. Who could?

Being flown away to another place and then threatened by men strong enough to lift her with ease? No one she knew could handle that stress and still function. She’d gone in search of creatures she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt were real. While she’d been right, she took little comfort in the knowledge. She wanted to be back in her small bedroom, listening as her roommates discussed boy problems. She no longer wanted to be on the hunt for men with wings.

The shiny had certainly worn off the passion quickly.

Well, all except for her Prince Charming. He’d been real and he’d managed to save her life. If he hadn’t caught her after she’d foolishly tripped over the edge of a cliff, her victory in reaffirming the existence of men with wings would have been short-lived.

Very short-lived.

“All I wanted was a picture to prove birdmen were real,” she said, the tears coming quickly. Defeat settled into her bones and she felt her shoulders slumping, her body admitting what her head had only just come to understand.

Life, if she got to keep living it, would never be the same. And all because of her stupid curiosity. She wanted to take back her obsession. Take back her endless stat-tracking and late-night, deep-woods expeditions. She wanted to be normal.

Whatever the hell that was.

The tears came faster and soon, she was sniffling and wiping at her face between hiccups and sobs. She wanted to be held, told everything would somehow be all right, and that maybe, just maybe, her curiosity had not landed her in the middle of some bizarre nightmare.

“Do not weep,
ta’konima
.” The man before her kept his arms out and she wasn’t sure what he was doing. All she did know was that despite her initial reaction and quick rise to violence against him, he meant her no harm. She sensed as much.

She hiccupped more as she cried, unsure what the heck a
ta’konima
was. “Just one lousy photo.”

The next she knew the man wrapped his large arms around her, his manly smell enveloping her, stirring her womanly regions in ways they’d never been stirred before. There was nothing about this man that said beta. He
oozed
alpha male so much, had it been something one could see dripping, her shoes would have been covered in it. As unpleasant as that thought was. It was true.

She hated herself a little for the way her hormones seemed to waken near him. Yet she found herself holding him, sliding her arms around his waist, putting her chest to his blazing hot chest. She could hear his heart hammering and wondered if her own was matching his pace.

“They just picked me up and took me,” she whispered, liking the feel of his body against hers in more ways than one. The man’s comfort was something she’d been missing in her life. She didn’t have anyone who held her anymore. No one who offered anything real in the way of comfort. This stranger, this man with wings, somehow managed to do what others hadn’t. “They weren’t very nice at all. They were dicks with wings.”

His shoulders moved, and when she realized he was laughing, she couldn’t help but smile. She wiped her cheeks and looked up at him, soaking in just how handsome he was. She hadn’t imagined that either when she was younger. No. He was certainly all male and super hunky. At her current age, she could appreciate that fact much better.

Alice would have given her a double thumbs up and demanded she try to get between the sheets. Well, so long as Alice didn’t know the guy had wings.

That would probably result in panic and screaming.

Lots of screaming.

Her roommates screamed if they saw a spider. A birdman would make them faint dead away. A mental image of what Mary Ellen and Amber Lynn would react like should they encounter men with wings came to her, making her mood lighten to a degree.

Smiling, she wiped her cheeks again for good measure and took a small step from the safety of the man’s embrace. She lifted her head and put her best Southern Charm smile on her face. “I’m Lucy. Sorry for hitting your junk.”

She held out her hand.

He stared at it for a moment before holding out his as well, looking awkward as he did. “Rossi.”

Lucy took Rossi’s hand and gave him a good, firmer-than-a-lady-should handshake. “Nice to meet you. Thanks for saving me from the douches.”

“What is this douche you speak of?” he asked, his hand still in hers, engulfing it.

She thought about how to best describe what a douche was and then thought better of it. “Not nice men.”

“Ah, I see.” He tilted his head more, his long hair moving in the slight breeze. “And what is this junk you mention?”

She moved her gaze down the front of him and then made a silly face as she glanced at his package. It took the guy a moment, but he seemed to follow along then. He cupped the front of his leather pants with one hand, the bulge there somehow managing to get bigger. What in the world was the guy smuggling in those snug pants?

An anaconda?

Heat rushed through her neck and cheeks as her body thought about what it would be like to have him inside her. As if that would ever happen. Still, the apex of her thighs didn’t seem to get the memo as moisture pooled there. She’d never be near a man this gorgeous again, so she couldn’t really fault her hormones for kicking her sex drive into top gear.

The man’s gaze settled on the front of her sweatshirt. She swallowed hard. “Rebels are my university’s team.”

He appeared confused. “Then you did not name your breasts rebels?”

She thought for a second he was serious. Then he winked and she nearly melted. Crap. She was in a boatload of trouble if a guy this hot had a sense of humor and could flirt with that much ease.

It took all of her to gather her wits about her. “The other guys, can they find us? The ones who took me?”

He glanced over his shoulder and then back at her. “Want that I kill them? I would be more than willing to defend your honor,” he said, his speech patterns making her fight a case of the giggles.

She didn’t doubt for a second this hulk of a man would indeed kill someone. “Maybe later. For now, I think I’d like to go home.”

“And home is?” he asked.

“I’m guessing far from here,” she said, biting her lower lip. “Mississippi.”

His brows lifted. “I have heard not of this kingdom in the human realm.”

She did giggle out loud. Mississippi was hardly a kingdom. “Well, if we’re talking football, there is a dynasty there, at least if you ask the state residents.”

He seemed lost. “The vultures brought you from the human realm through an unregulated portal. It will take me a bit of time to track which. I could take you through the nearest one, but those who live in that region do not speak as you speak—Southern.”

She smiled. “What do you know of Southern?”

He grinned and she could have sworn he blushed slightly. “I know the sound of your voice pleases my ears and my body,
ta’konima
. It makes my cock hard as does the sight of your breasts as they bounce when you move. I have not seen a woman so gifted in that area before. I wish to remove these garments of clothing from you and bury my face in the soft mounds of your flesh as I sink deep into you. I wish to pound into you, soaking in your beauty as you look upon me while I bring you endless pleasures.”