**Blog Tour & Review** His True Queen by Jodi Ellen Malpas

“You’re lying to me.” Josh shouts. “You’re lying to yourself. You’re lying to every single person in this fuckin’ world.” He stomps forward, and I blindly stumble back, catching my foot on a stray branch. I lose my footing and fall to my arse in a pile of dry leaves.

I don’t yelp because it doesn’t hurt—I’m numb to everything except Josh—but I do curse to high heaven, further cementing Josh’s claim that I have a vulgar mouth. “God damn it.” With my palms splattered on the muddy ground behind me, my knees bent, I look up at the man looming over me. “This is all your fault.”

“I take full responsibility,” He says. “For everything.”

Everything? “Like what?”

“Your fall. My feelings.” Josh offers his hand, but I ignore it, getting myself to my feet and brushing myself down of dry leaves. “For your feelings,” he finishes softly.

My hands falter midway down my jodhpurs. “I do not have any feelings,” I grate, ignoring the unrelenting…feelings. The warmth, the disappearance of my woes, the heady sensations of want manifesting within me. Me. Him. The potent cocktail of chemistry we create, just being in each other’s presence. The woodland surrounding us is drenched in it. The atmosphere is thick.

I glance up when a few moments have passed, silent moments, and meet his eyes. The amber swirl of desire sparkles madly. My heart kicks. He licks his lips, and I follow the path of his tongue from one corner of his mouth to the other. “Stop,” I whisper, to who I don’t know. Him? Me?

My hands come up to my head, my fingertips pushing into my temples, as if I’m trying to force every reason why this can’t happen to the front of my mind. I look for my father’s words, but I find other words instead.

You will be ripped apart. Eddie will be ripped apart. Your father’s and brother’s memory with be tarnished.

But…I fell so madly in love with a man, and now I am being forced to disregard that. Can I? Should I?

I swivel on my boots and run. I can’t trust my head to talk reason, can’t promise I’ll even listen to my reason if I find it, so I’m depending on my legs to take me away as quickly as they can.

“No thumbs down,” he growls, snatching my wrist and yanking me to a stop, spinning me to face him. My face is grabbed with one brutal hand, and his mouth is quickly on mine. He’s gone low, way below the belt, and worse still, we both know it will work. My universe seems to align, positive and negative working together, our lips glued by an invisible, highly powerful force. Then I feel his tongue sweep through my mouth and explosions of the most calming kind erupt in my soul. My keen hands find his hair and force him closer, our kiss crazed and messy, but so utterly calming and immaculate. I let him guide my backward steps, I let him spin me away from him, and I let him thrust me up against a tree trunk.

The scratchiness of the bark on my forehead doesn’t faze me. I’m too blindsided by the reminder of what we share. Hips pushed into my arse, his wet mouth by my cheek, Josh holds me tightly. Possessively. Like he owns me. And I don’t care. He’s the only thing in this world I don’t mind controlling me.

He reaches to my hips and slowly draws my jodhpurs over my backside. His lazy approach could be mistaken for giving me time to deny him. It’s not. He’s merely prolonging my agony. I want him so badly, and he knows it. His hand on my arse. His mouth all over me.

Bringing my arms up to the tree, I rest my head on them to lessen the risk of grazing my head when he strikes me.

Thwack!

As is always the way when Josh tans my backside, I don’t cry out in pain, but rather moan my way through it, being carried to another world. A world where I am not me, but just his. And then his fingers are between my thighs and he’s massaging me gently, my flesh wet and ready for him. “Some things don’t change,” he whispers, biting at my cheek, circling his fingers, plunging them deeply, scissoring my swollen clitoris. “Thank God. Tell me you’ve missed me, Adeline.”

“I’ve missed you,” I say on demand, my pleasure making it more of a labored whisper than a sure proclamation, as my pulse races and my desire for him multiplies unstoppably. I start to roll my head, my knees becoming weak. And when I reach the pinnacle of pleasure, I feel like every shitty thing in this world pours from my body with my climax, my whole being relaxed for the first time in weeks. I’ve needed this so much. Needed him.