The Kraken King, Part 7 Read Online Free PDF Page B

threw her head back and keened his name. His control frayed.
    With a ravenous growl, Ariq fisted his hand in her hair and captured her panting lips.
His wife.
He couldn’t love her any more than he did.
    But he would. He knew he would.
    And that was what the Empress’s Eyes would see. His need. His desperation. His heart.
    Ariq didn’t want to share it with anyone but Zenobia.
    Carrying her with him, he surged to his feet. She gasped against his mouth, then moaned as his first step pushed his cock deeper. Her thighs tensed around his waist, and he almost dropped to his knees when she began to ride him, pumping shallowly as he walked. Tried to walk. Her teeth sank into his shoulder. He staggered past the screen.
    The bed was too far. The wall was closer.
    He pinned her against it and shoved deep. She cried out, her slick sheath tightening around him. Her nails dug into his biceps, and she looked up at him, her lips swollen and her eyes like polished jade.
    â€œZenobia.”
He loved the breathless, whimpering sound she made when he rocked against her. “You want rough and merciless?”
    Though gasping, pushing back against him, she still managed a laugh. “So long and hard we’ll need three days to recover.”
    As he’d promised. But three days or three thousand, it didn’t matter. Ariq would never recover from this.
    He gripped her bottom and slid her higher up the wall, and thought of the invisible wall surrounding her.
Long and hard.
If he battered against them long enough, hard enough, one of these walls would fall.
    Ariq prayed the wall would be his wife’s. Because if it didn’t crumble, he would never recover from that, either.

Chapter Twenty-six
    Even if a long, hard bout of coitus against a wall had actually required it, three days of quiet recovery would have been too much to hope for. By the second morning, anxiety had a constant hold on Zenobia’s chest, gripping her heart in a tight and heavy fist. Though Ariq appeared as calm as ever when they watched the sunrise from the eastern terrace, he hardly touched his breakfast before Ambassador Auger arrived and they boarded the airship that would carry them to their first meeting of the day.
    Oh, but this worry was all so foolish. At least
now
it was. Later, they might have reason. But even if Mara and Cooper flew over Krakentown and immediately turned around, they couldn’t possibly return to Nippon before midday. Zenobia was determined to put fear aside and write until then.
    But she found herself staring blankly at her typesetting machine, and before long, she found herself standing on the western terrace and searching the skies for a sign of them.
    Also foolish. How would she recognize their hired airship among so many others? Yet she couldn’t force herself to go back inside, and every time an airship flew near the quarantine her heart thudded . . . then fell with disappointment when the vessels docked on other levels.
    So she remained on the terrace, standing in the shade of a potted palm and sketching the scene that lay before her. It was work, of a sort. Her current story wasn’t set in Nippon, but maybe someday she would write one that was—and the imperial city was not all impressive coral towers. Fields and clusters of homes lay to the southwest. Near the beach, houses were more densely packed and docks crowded the shoreline, as if a fishing village had been plunked into the midst of the city. Each day, from the balcony in her chambers, she’d spotted boats leaving early in the morning and returning late in the afternoon, tiny dots floating atop turquoise swells.
    As in the Red City, the larger residences with their walled gardens and expansive courtyards had been built farther away from the water. But as grand as some were, none compared to the imperial palace.
    Another small city within a city, but it could never be mistaken for a fishing village. Sprawled atop a hill in a