The door clicked shut.
Maxence related the entire scandal to his friend Gustavo, including Celestine’s apparent interference in Monaco’s princely election and the coordinated attempt by a Russian bratva to do the same.
The pope was silent for a moment, and then he sighed. “I wish I could tell you I don’t believe you. Pray for our Holy Church today.”
“Yes, Holy Father.”
Gustavo sighed again, agony and anguish filling his breath. “At least there are no innocents involved in this one of Meinhard’s scandals. We were too merciful last time, allowing him merely to abdicate the papal throne.”
Maxence had nothing kind to say about Pope Celestine VI. His involvement in the entrapment that had led to Celestine’s abdication and installment as a pope emeritus was not known outside of a few people in the Vatican. “I am sorry to lay these two problems at your feet, Gustavo.”
The pope sighed again. “It goes with the territory and the job.”
“I am especially sorry that I did not know myself well enough to have not bothered you and your predecessors all these years.”
“Bah,” the pope said to him. “I am very glad you and I attended the same seminary, and thus we have become friends. Monaco and the Holy See have always enjoyed a close relationship, but now you and I will do great things together.”
“You always knew I wouldn’t make it, didn’t you?” Max sighed.
“Oh, my Brother Maxence, ordination as a priest is not a prize that you win or a race that you finish. You have tried all these years to be the most perfect Jesuit so that we would have to allow you to take the next level of Holy Orders. It’s not that you weren’t worthy. You were worthy, but it wasn’t right for you.”
“I tried to change myself to be right for the Church,” Maxence told him.
“I have always seen how hard you have tried, but you shouldn’t have to try that hard. I came to the Church and the Society of Jesus with joyous, open arms. I prayed for you that someday, you would feel it, too.”
If a pope praying for you didn’t do the trick, nothing would, but Maxence’s shoulders still slumped as he sat in his chair.
Gustavo continued, “The sacraments are personal commitments of love. Ordination is a sacrament, and the closest sacrament to it is marriage. A priest marries the Church. As we have always known, the Church is female, and the Church becomes his spouse. A priest has to love the Church like a man loves a wife, to want to protect and nourish and cleave to his wife to the exclusion of all else, to have passion for his wife, which is what gives the priest the freedom to love the rest of humanity with the love of Christ and not as a spouse.”
Maxence’s hand curled on the desk. “I thought I did.”
Pope Vincent de Paul said, “I know you love the Church and our living Christ, but your love for the Church always felt to me like the love for a sister. It is deep and true, yes. It is a lifelong bond, but it is not the bond that a husband feels for his wife or a priest feels for the Church. Go in peace, Brother Maxence. Remember this season of your life fondly, like a time when you lived with a sister in familial affection, but your true love lies elsewhere.”
Chapter Nine
And the Beginning of Another
Dree
Carving time out of their schedules to go to New Mexico so he could ask her daddy for her hand was taking a few days to arrange, which was logical. World leaders, even ones who hadn’t officially been crowned yet, were busy.
And yeah, it was patriarchal and weird for him to ask her father to allow her to marry him, but Max did lots of strange stuff, too, so he could lump it.
Dree’s mom talked about how romantic it had been that Dree’s dad had done everything in order because he wanted everything to be just perfect for her, so maybe that was it.
But it was taking a while to schedule it.
“But you said you could get the plane ready in a few days.”
“I’m sorry, chérie,” Maxence said. “We will travel as soon as we can. Casimir and Arthur are waiting here in Monaco to go with us rather than going home to their families, and Arthur’s wife is about ready to shake him until his teeth rattle for staying out so long. He’s been gone almost a week.”
Dree wasn’t going to stamp her foot at his delays. She wouldn’t. She had decided that she wouldn’t, so she wouldn’t. “Are you waiting for Arthur and Caz to go home so they won’t go with us? Because I will send them home.”
“It is just that between the enthronement, moving my established charity organization to Monaco from Rome, settling the religious sisters and my two goddaughters, and another errand, scheduling a trip to New Mexico has become difficult. I just need a few days to settle affairs.”
“If my daddy thinks we’re just having an affair, he’s gonna settle you.”
One of Maxence’s eyebrows drifted up slightly, and his mouth curved in an amused smile. “Is that a threat?”
“Would it help if it was?”
“Not at all. I was merely determining if it was a threat. Your threats are rather like being threatened by a hamster. You’re sure that they could do some nasty damage if they get mad enough, but rage-filled hamsters are just so cute.”
“Do not make me mad, Your Serene Highness. I will drop a scorpion in your boots.”
Maxence looped a tie around his neck and began to flip the ends around each other. “As much as I would love to sit here and listen to you threaten further bodily harm, I have to go to the office. While we plan these events, the daily business of Monaco must be attended to.”
“You hang on just a second, there. Zip me up.” Dree turned her back to him.
Maxence slid his hands over her hips and upper back in a way that also managed to get the zipper fastened, and then he kissed the back of her neck. “You don’t have to be my secretary anymore. It was all a ruse to keep you close.”
“What, you don’t want me to be close anymore?”
“Luckily, we have sufficient bodyguards that I can trust now.” He motioned to the bedroom door, beyond which two mercenaries were sitting in the front room, presumably guarding against anything that might come through the door at them.
“But I like being your secretary. I like knowing all the stuff that goes on and how we run Monaco. I know I don’t have to.”
Sitting in Max’s office and pretending to take notes was a lot more fun than hanging out in the palace apartment and watching the new bodyguard guy, Magnus Jenson, sit on the couch stiffly upright, his hands placed on his thighs, motionless for hours at a time while he guarded her.
Their commute to the office was precisely seven minutes of sauntering through the palace’s corridors, occasionally greeting people, and waiting for the coffee cart to be wheeled in by the hospitality staff before they began work for the day.
And then the appointments began in earnest, one after another, and they rolled through the day with practiced ease.
Max’s receptionist called in and announced that his next appointment had arrived. The guy was shown in, the introductions were made, and then the guy turned and looked at Dree. “And who is this lovely lady? I’d like to steal her away from you and take her back to my boat for a couple of days.”
Dree was pretty sure it was the word steal that made Maxence nearly vault across the desk at him, but probably any kidnapping reference would’ve sufficed.
Maxence stood, and his wheeled chair pushed off his legs and slammed into the low bookcases under the windows. “Get out.”
The guy stood, his hands open and at chest-height. “I didn’t mean anything by it. Besides, I thought you were engaged.” His furtive glance at Dree was lascivious.
Maxence leaned on the desk, bracing himself on his long arms. His eyes were a mountain on fire at midnight. He bared his teeth. “I said, get out.”
The guy got out so fast that he didn’t even click the door closed behind him.
Maxence told Dree, his gaze level and his voice hushed with repressed rage, “Close and lock that door.”
She trotted down there and did what she was told, not because she was afraid of Maxence, but because she was worried about him.
“Is it locked?” he asked.
“Yes, but are you—”
“Stop there and take your clothes off.”
“But your next appointment—”
Without taking his dark eyes off of hers, Maxence reached over and pushed a button on his phone. “Hold all my calls and appointments.” He lifted his finger off the phone.
Through the speaker of the phone, a woman’s voice said, “Yes, sir.”
Maxence said to Dree, “Clothes off, right now.”
Dree unzipped her dress down the back and tugged it off over her head. She held out the dress with two fingers—her scarlet manicure glinting against the dark fabric—at an arm’s length and let it drop onto the floor.
The navy-blue fabric fell like a waterfall to the thick Oriental rug and lay there like a deep pool.
He wasn’t watching the fabric. His gaze didn’t move from her fingers.
Dust motes danced in a beam of sunlight from the windows behind Maxence.
He didn’t move.
Dree took a step.
“All your clothes, right now.”
She unhooked her bra and added it to the pile on the floor. Her breasts, which were always a little pendulous because of their size, felt swollen as if she could feel Maxence’s gaze slither on her skin like a tongue.
Nudging her shoes off her feet with her toes was next, and her beige pumps lay beside her navy-blue dress on the floor. Maxence was as still as a brass statue as she hooked her thumbs in the sides of her panties and tugged them down over her hips. The white lace dropped to her ankles, and she stepped out.
Now that she was completely naked and grateful that this office was never chilly, she began to walk toward him.
“On your hands and knees.”
Maxence was usually in control when they had sex, and she usually felt afterward like she was his little sex doll he’d played with for a few hours at a time.
That wasn’t a problem. It was just the way she felt.
But crawling was a level of subservience he hadn’t asked of her yet, so she paused.
Maxence didn’t move. He didn’t raise an eyebrow. His lips did not twitch in a smile or anything else. His finger did not tap the desk. He simply waited for her to obey him.
And she did.
Dree lowered herself to her knees and put her hands on the antique carpet, cream with ornate blue and gold swirls under her fingers.
The sunlight from the window touched her bare back, warming her skin.
Dree crawled to the desk and stopped in front of it.
The centuries-old rug under her hands was in perfect condition and appeared brand-new except for the exquisite attention to details that no machine-manufactured rug could have copied.
The office chair creaked, and soft footfalls padded around the desk. Brown leather shoe tips appeared at the corner of her vision, but Dree stared straight down at the carpeting.
The tips of his shoes did not move, and Dree didn’t either.
She did hear the whisper of leather on fabric.
Dree curled her fingers into the carpet, her heart pounding in her chest.
Maxence had never taken off his belt like that before.
Cool leather bounced on the skin of her behind, a gentle stroke that could not be considered a slap.
She braced herself, tightening her thighs and digging into the carpet with her fingernails. Anything might happen next.
“Don’t tense up.”
“Why? I don’t understand.”
The pop of the belt on her butt had a little more force this time. “If you tense the muscles and make them hard, you’ll bruise. If you keep everything relaxed—”
His warm hand stroking the back of her buttocks made her flinch.
“—the belt will sink farther into the softness of your flesh before it stops. It’s the difference between you holding out your hand in the air and someone slaps it away, and holding your hand on a desk while someone hits it with a ruler, crushing it against the wood.”
Maxence’s dark blue suit jacket, red tie, and his shirt and undershirt fell to the carpet beside Dree’s hand. The crisp white cotton of his shirt covered her pinky. The warmth of his body lingered in the cloth.
The tips of his shoes finally moved, and the legs of the chair whispered against the carpet.
He was sitting behind her and staring at her butt and her opening.
She asked, “Am I being punished for that guy flirting with me?”
Maxence’s dark chuckle was scarier than anything else going on at the moment. “No, of course not. You aren’t responsible for him. I’m just blowing off some steam with you because it would be inadvisable for me to chase him down and beat the living daylights out of him.”
“You’re not mad at me?”
“If I were, we would not be doing what you’re doing right now. As I said,” he ran his hand over her hip and down her thigh, and she felt his lips on the small of her back, “I need a distraction, and your squeals and screams distract me like nothing else in the world. You remember your safe words?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
The slap of his belt on her hip was a little more solid this time, just beginning to sting. And he followed it up with another slap to her other butt cheek. The small gasp she couldn’t hold in was more surprise than hurt.
“Stay relaxed.”
Little pops of the belt peppered her back over her ribs and her ass again.
And then the warmth of Maxence’s hand smoothed even that small sting away.
He scattered slaps over her back and ass and then stroked his palm over her skin again, and her muscles relaxed under his massage. “The point of this is to spank your lush bottom until it turns a pretty rosy pink, not purple and blue.”
The next time, the smacks had more authority, each one a snap like a thick rubber band on her skin. She couldn’t help but gasp when each one landed on the flesh of her ass or her back.
He smoothed both of his palms over her, rubbing up and down her back like he was languorously kneading bread.
His hands slid farther down over the cheeks of her ass, kneading those muscles too, and then his thumbs slid toward her center, massaging her soft folds of flesh there.
Intense pleasure spiraled up her as his thumb rolled over her clit, contrasting the nip of his belt.
But he stopped too soon, as she’d suspected he would.
His next strikes with the belt flipped up to her shoulders and curled around her ribs to tweak her nipples like a hard pinch.
She gasped.
“Stand up and turn around.”
She did, and he grabbed her around her waist and made her stand between his knees while he sucked on her raw breasts until she couldn’t help herself and ran her fingers through his hair.
He forced her head down to kiss him, locking their mouths together and stroking her tongue with his.
Maxence broke it off and leaned back, examining his handiwork where her nipples had blossomed dark pink from his mouth. “Back down on your knees.”
His belt bit her ass harder this time, and when he smoothed the burn away, he slipped his thumb inside her channel and rubbed, squeezing her clit in his hand.
Her body was tightening around him, but he removed his thumb and smacked her again with the belt, each slap feeling like the pleasure that was to come next.
When he slid his thumb inside her next time, she was so wet that there was almost no resistance, and his fingers were slippery as he toyed with every pleasure point between her legs.
The next lashes were harder still, forcing gasps and muffled squeaks out of her with each blow.
Maxence said, “Yes, pretty and pink, just like that.”
She felt movement behind her as her skin stung.
Instead of his hands on her ass, Dree felt the hardness of his er
ection on her back, and he withdrew slowly and moved down, brushing her asshole and then slowly pressing into her center.
His slow pace pushed his massive cock into her and then smoothly pulled back, pausing before he did it again. He filled her up with his maleness, his hands gripping her shoulders as he held her in place while he took her.
It was meant to frustrate her, and with him holding her down like that, she couldn’t even push back and grind against him. Her skin became more sensitive to each brush of his body, of his balls on her clit, of his hips gently bouncing off the raw skin of her ass.
Dree ducked her head, trying to push back against him, but he wouldn’t allow it.
In minutes, she was sobbing with frustration, trying to find release, but he wouldn’t let her.
She jerked and yanked herself, trying to press her swollen, throbbing clit back against him, but he pinned her in place between his hands and his rod inside her.
Just as she was getting ready to rebel and flip around, he pulled out of her entirely and commanded, “On your back.”
Dree collapsed and flipped over, desperate. The harsh carpet tortured the raw skin on her back.
Maxence attacked her like an animal, like he’d been holding back even more than she had, jamming himself between her legs and ramming himself into her, balls deep, so that his body ground against her clit.
Her body clenched around him, instantly at the point of release. She grabbed onto him with her arms and her hands and her fingernails as the orgasm crashed through her, rending her mind from her flesh and ripping her apart.
He thrust and she pulsed, and it kept going on. She was clinging to him like he was the last solid cliff face in the universe and she would be destroyed if she fell.
Maxence gasped in her arms, and his body went rigid. His arms clamped as he shuddered against her.
As Dree drifted, slowly beginning to feel his weight upon her and the carpet under her back as much as his erection throbbing inside of her, she heard him whisper, “I will never let anyone steal you again.”
[***]
Later, Dree found blood under her fingernails again. She scrubbed it away in the sink, using paper towels to scrape under her nails to clean the last rusty flecks.
Reign (A Royal Romantic Suspense Royal Secret Billionaire Novel) Page 4