Page 129 of His Realm

“You feel the same,” I managed to get out. “Now could you please just have me.”

He shoved home, to my core, and I nearly crowed with happiness, so happy to be trusted, taken at my word, and most of all, loved.

His thrusts were hard, and I begged for more as he took my cock in hand and stroked me as he pounded into me from behind. When I was close and he felt my muscles tightening around him, he bottomed out, in as deep as possible, and bit down into my shoulder, taking blood and giving me his cum at the same moment.

I came thick and hot into his hand, bucking in his grasp, the tears of no consideration as I came apart, lost to the aftershocks, to him drinking and to his heart beating against my back.

I called his name, over and over, until he turned my head and kissed me. I had offered up all that I was, heart and soul, and he claimed them as his. I felt like me again, and that was the best gift he could have given me.

“Oh, Jason,” he said, panting against my sweat-laced skin, “I feel like myself. Finally. My love is returned, and so am I.”

When he eased gently from my body, I turned in his arms and wrapped tight around him, chest heaving, heart pounding, shivering with the closeness and the heat rolling off his skin.

“You’re mine, all mine, and all that I am is yours.”

“Same,” he teased me, chuckling in my ear as he held me tighter. “You’re my soul, Jason, and this is how it was meant to be.”

I couldn’t stop smiling.

We stayed in bed for the rest of the day and night, and I told him all about seeing Nerilla and my plans to ask Keres to carry our child. He thought it a bold choice and wasn’t sure if she would consider it, but he assured me he would find a surrogate to carry both.

“Both?”

“I would want a child with half of you and half of Nerilla as well.”

“That’s not as important.”

“It is to me. I would see your beautiful, kind eyes on another.”

“That was pretty good,” I told him.

He rumbled in my ear and kissed me some more.

Later, he watched me eat, then asked Dae-Jung if he’d ever been tempted to eat any of the clearly delectable food he made.

“No, my prince,” he said, sounding disgusted. “The idea of chewing does not appeal.”

Varic nodded, turning to me, both of us at the table in the kitchen with Dae-Jung, in jeans and T-shirts, just being comfortable. “I’m with him,” Varic said. “The chewing is not for me, though somehow watching you eat is quite sexy.”

I winked at him, and Dae-Jung grimaced like we were causing him pain.

Cirillo showed up to see me and hug me and tell me how happy he was that I was whole again. Varic had not been himself.

“I bid you speak of something else,” the prince commanded. Varic was very much of the mind that once something was over, it didn’t need to be talked about again. He preferred to focus on the future. As long as one learned from the past, I had no problem with that.

I told Cirillo how proud of him I was, and he said he had made Vidar, the father of little Hilda, whom we’d saved, one of his new council members. Vidar had been thrilled to find out Cirillo was newly in charge, and thus honored to take a place on his committee. It was a very good thing, in my opinion.

Keres arrived, and we hugged and laughed, and then I proposed that she carry the prince’s child, if she agreed.

“Oh, my consort, no. It would be a scandal to have one such as I⁠—”

“We’re not doing that,” I told her. “You’re a citizen of the realm, of Varic’s realm, and as such we choose you, if you would do us this great honor.”

The tears came fast, and she shook her head.

“Yes,” Varic told her. “You would honor me, us, but only if you want to. No one in my realm will ever be made to do anything they don’t want to do ever again. That is my promise as king. It will take time and the right people to see it all done, to put everyone in place, but that is my goal as sovereign.”

She stood up, staggered over to me, and fell into my lap. “I would be honored to be your surrogate and wet nurse, and to help watch over your children when I am at court.”