Gladiator by Kate Lynd Page B

who had given up on life. I was just angry and grieving and the only two outlets I had were fighting and fucking. Your sister wasn’t the only woman with whom I had angry sex. Every time I drove into her I was trying to make her feel the way my Hope felt in her last moments. I’m not proud of it, but your sister always got off on it. It was never romantic, it was never intimate, and it was never loving. Not with her or any of the others who paid a price to come to me. Rich, horny women are easily satisfied into submission. And then…they dump you in my cell and tell me not just to gain your trust, but to kill you…”
    “Were you going to do it?”
    “I may be a Gladiator but I am not a cold-blooded killer. And when they threw you in there I was sure we were both done for. You, because you were just unlike anything I’d ever seen, and me, for refusing to do it.”
    “I have a lot to be grateful for. I have your children. I have you. So I have to give something in return for these gifts I’ve been given.”
    “It may be your destiny to save the world. But when they threw you in my cell a year ago, it was proof you were meant to live. You said I was the only one who could kill you, but that if I wanted to, I could save you. Our destinies are connected. For good or bad, and for better or worse.”
    She lay there for a minute, pensive. Then she spoke her mind. “I know you call me your wife, but… I want a ceremony. Even if it’s just us and Lucilla and Isaiah and the babies. Out here, before we set out again.”
    “A wedding? It wouldn’t be official.”
    “Why? Because the Crown doesn’t recognize it? I love you and I want to make it real.”
    “I don’t have a tux. You don’t have a dress. We don’t have rings…” He tried to make light of it but she wasn’t having that.
    “None of that matters to me. My mother told me if I was lucky I would find a good man to love me, the right man to protect me, a soul mate to stand by me. I was looking for a Protector. I got the whole thing right the first time around.”
    He pressed her fingertips to his lips. “I never sought redemption. And I was never given a promise of salvation. But you, Alexandra, you landed in my lap almost literally!—and showed me there are some things worth living and fighting for. There are things worth dying for. And in you, and our small family, I’ve rediscovered that.” He placed her hand over his heart. “I am yours. I am forever yours.”
    She rolled him to his back and began to kiss down his stomach. He groaned as she took his already stiff cock in her mouth and began to lick and suck, flicking her tongue up and down his shaft as she cupped and fondled his balls. She took him deep into her mouth, sucking so hard he knew he was coming before he could be inside her. But that was her intention. This was her way of submitting to him. She wasn’t a submissive lover very often, and as she lavished his cock with the wet, velvety feel of her tongue on his sensitive head, she tugged lightly on his balls and he came, shouting her name. As the sensations gripped him he surrendered to her every touch…and when she swallowed, his own yearning to be inside of her was heightened to an exquisite agony. He parted her legs and burrowed his face between her legs. Inhaling her scent made his abdomen tighten and he ran his tongue over her clit and drove his tongue inside her relentlessly, digging his fingertips into her ass as she rode him wildly, writhing against his face. Panting, quivering, moaning, he wanted her at his very mercy and when she came he licked her hungrily. When she cried out he worked her down from the heights of bliss to the gentle waters of his embrace.
    They kissed, tasting one another on each other’s lips. She nuzzled him at his neck and held on tight. Tacitly, they realized they had to go back and confront Veronica and Oliver. It was akin to a death-wish. But first they had to get the twins to safety. While he and Alex