Outside the gate, hundreds of people had gathered in the vast outer courtyard.
Dree held onto Maxence. “Why didn’t you tell me you were going to do that?”
He smiled. “I wasn’t sure I was going to until the very last minute, but it felt right.”
“You’re giving up your power,” she said, still smiling at him. She didn’t care. She barely cared about the tiara.
Maxence wrapped his arms around her. “It’s the right thing to do. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and I’m corrupted enough. I don’t want to see what I would become if I had the absolute power of a Sovereign Prince of Monaco. It destroyed my uncle, my cousin, and my brother.”
“I don’t think it would do that to you,” she told him.
“I don’t want to find out if you’re wrong.”
More theatrical lights blazed from the sides of the palace and the medieval buildings of Monaco-Ville, throwing thick shadows through the crowd.
The security guys walked with them of course. The redheaded Scottish operator from Rogue Security, Aiden Grier, and that other blond guy with the Irish accent, Eian Summerhays, flanked Maxence, Albert, and Alexandre. Ice-eyed Magnus Jensen walked beside Dree and Georgie. A black, curled cord led from Magnus’s collar to the earpiece inserted in his ear.
Maxence was a few yards in front of Dree, shaking hands and greeting the several hundred Monegasque citizens who had been invited to welcome their new sovereign personally. Those folks looked like just plain ordinary people who wore clothes that Dree recognized as Sunday-best suits and sports jackets for the guys and proper dresses for the ladies.
Max looked more relaxed than during the ceremony, more like himself.
With the lights glaring on him during the enthronement, especially when he had been giving that speech, Maxence had looked otherworldly, like those angel wings might unfurl from his back and he might fly above the crowd on the perfect set of white swan wings.
But afterward, meeting people he considered his friends even if he hadn’t seen them for a while, Maxence transmuted back into the glamorously handsome man with movie-star good looks that made women giggle just by looking at him. No one who liked guys could resist the perfect square of Maxence’s jaw, the sharp slashes of his cheekbones, and eyes so dark they seem to sparkle with stars.
Yep, that was Dree’s hot fiancé working the crowd, and she got to go home with him that night.
A hand touched her elbow.
She didn’t want to jerk her arm back because a lot of kids were in that crowd, so she just turned to look at who was trying to get her attention.
And then it was too late.
The hand closed on her arm and yanked her, and she stumbled into the crowd because she was wearing an evening gown that caught under her high-heeled shoes. She screamed as she was falling and then being dragged.
Magnus Jensen was reaching after her, but his big hand closed on air.
Ahead of her, Maxence turned back, his eyes widening with horror as she fell between people, and then she couldn’t see him anymore.
She fell toward the cement tiles, breaking her fall with her hands as the beige cobblestones rushed up at her. Her legs scrambled to get away, but she twisted to look up because a part of her did not believe this could be happening.
A cadaverous face leered over her. His sallow eyeballs and skin were indicative of liver or kidney malfunction.
Kir Sokolov held a gun in his hand and was swinging it down to point at Dree.
The crowd around them fell away as the screaming started.
Dree ducked her head and covered it with her arms as her legs still scrambled uselessly on the cobblestones and silk skirt of her gown, anticipating heavy metal slugs exploding into her flesh.
The world went dark, and a thousand pounds of suit landed on top of her. Her limbs were scraped off the pavement and bundled into a ball under the man.
The cologne was wrong. Didn’t smell like Max. Tang of gunpowder and citrus.
She opened her eyes, and the last of the sunset glowed red on the clothes of the man crouching over her, but she could see between his arm and neck.
Kir Sokolov still stood over her and aimed the gun toward them. His gaze met hers through the space between the arms, and he raised the gun to point directly at her eye.
His knuckles strained as he began to pull the trigger.
A black-coated missile slammed into Sokolov from the side, shoving him through the air.
His loose-limbed form bowed from the impact and crumpled, falling into a heap.
The gun skittered across the stone ground.
The missile reformed itself into Maxence, and he clambered to his feet, his hand closing over the gun as he stumbled forward.
Sokolov reached into his coat.
The fabric revealed another pistol in his fist.
A scream tore from her throat, “No!”
Maxence held out the gun, pointing it at where Kir Sokolov lay on the ground. “Drop it!”
Sokolov swung the gun’s muzzle toward Dree.
The gun jumped in Maxence’s hand.
A gunshot echoed over the tiles and reverberated from the palace walls before it dissipated over the Mediterranean Sea beyond the cliff.
Sokolov’s head rolled back. His body twitched.
Darkness oozed from his shattered skull and trickled between the cobblestones.
Above Dree, Magnus Jensen sprang to his feet, dragging her upward with him.
Rogue Security operators converged on Dree and Maxence.
Maxence grabbed Dree away from Magnus, whisking her up in his arms. She clung to his neck, where the scents of his cologne smelled like she’d been swaddled in a clean, clove-scented sheet.
Rogue Security and the French military personnel coalesced into a phalanx around them, and they were whisked back into the palace.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Rear Window
Maxence
Maxence slammed the door to their palace apartment, the wood hard against his palm, and he twisted the locks.
The Rogue Security medic had manhandled Dree when they’d gotten back, checking her over for gunshot wounds or injuries from when Magnus Jensen had mashed her into the pavement.
The other guys had swept the suite, checking closets and curtains, dipping to their toes and fingertips like humanoid spiders to peer under the bed.
They’d checked Max over, too, but no guns had been pointed at him. He hadn’t fallen or been crushed.
But they’d stayed in the room, talking to Dree, touching and manipulating her.
Maxence had stood over on the side of the room, his body quivering.
His need smoldering.
She’d caught his eye a few times over someone’s shoulder or turned to look at him when the medic was kneeling in front of her, cleaning a few bits of gravel and dust out of the scrapes on her palms with a squeeze bottle of water and gauze pads.
Her eyes were wide, almost terrified. She’d started to walk toward him twice, but the medic kept pulling her back to flash his penlight in her eyes or run his filthy fingers over the back of her skull.
Dree kept looking at Maxence.
And he couldn’t take his eyes off of her.
But she was fine.
Or she’d said she was fine.
Trembling, but fine.
The Rogue Security medic finally packed all his crap in his bag and left them the hell alone.
Maxence strode across the room in a heartbeat, standing in front of where she sat on an ottoman with his hands hovering near her shoulders. He growled, “You’re sure you’re all right? No nicks from shrapnel? No sprains or cracks to be attended to?”
She stood and nodded, the light from the chandeliers above flickering over her delicate features. “I’m fine. Shook up, yeah, but—”
Like a hard shove between his shoulder blades, Maxence grabbed Dree and drove her back against the wall. His mouth found hers, slanting his lips and plunderi
ng her with his tongue.
His soul rattled against the flesh and bone of his body, and a desperate, clawing hunger blighted his mind.
She jumped, and he caught her with his hands under her ass. Her thighs cinched around his waist.
He slammed her back against the plaster again, his cock pushing at the front of his tuxedo pants as he ground his hips against hers.
Dree whimpered and dropped her head back, and he sucked and bit the slim column of her neck.
God, that sound, that throaty whimper of surrender drove him insane. He needed to possess every inch of her and feel the wildness returned on his skin.
He bound her tightly against his chest with his arms and moved away from the wall, kicking the bedroom door out of the way as he chewed on her neck and shoulder.
Her shoes thumped onto the floor behind him as he walked.
At the bed, he climbed on the side with one knee and hurled her to the middle of the mattress, scrambling after her.
She held her arms in the air, awaiting him, and he launched himself to land with his hips between her legs, already pushing the ridge of his cock in his pants against her softness.
She moaned.
He wanted to make her scream.
He fumbled around the top of Dree’s strapless dress but couldn’t find the zipper, so he grabbed the delicate silk and chiffon with both hands and ripped, tearing the fabric off her. She gasped but didn’t stop fumbling with his white tie.
Maxence stood on his knees, and his numb fingers found the ends of his bow tie. He yanked it, unraveling the silk and flinging it off the end of the bed. He grabbed the heavy metal links of the collar of the Order of St. George and lifted it, intending to toss it over the end of the bed with the bow tie.
Dree trapped the object at the front, a badge with a crown and yet another double-G monogram of St. George, pinning it to the front of his shirt. “Leave it on.”
Maxence flipped the heavy gold chain underneath the collar of his tuxedo jacket, which he wrenched down his arms and threw behind him. The ribbon of the Order of the Crown was next, and he untied it at the back before he flung it out into the room somewhere.
Beneath him, Dree shimmied out of the ruined ball gown and kicked the floaty material off of the bed like a frantic bunny rabbit.
No wonder medieval monarchs had servants who dressed and undressed them. Formal court attire was like wooden puzzle cubes.
He unbuttoned a few of the studs on his collar, tucked the St. George’s carcanet inside, and then grabbed his tuxedo shirt and undershirt and ripped them off over his head.
The air in the room was cool on his heated skin, and the gold and enamel necklet rested heavily on his bare shoulders.
Dree was writhing with her hands behind her back, trying to unhook a white silk and lace corset-like mechanism that covered from her hips to over her breasts.
The rage inside his body spun in an inferno of need. Kir Sokolov would not hurt Dree. The world could not have her. She was his and his alone, and Max would destroy anyone who came for her ever again.
He straddled her thighs, unbuckled his belt, and whipped the leather through the loops, dropping it on the bed beside him as he flipped Dree over on her stomach.
He clutched the hooks and eyes of her corset, smashing the edges together to force the fasteners to release. He unhooked most of them by grabbing handfuls of the apparatus and flicked the last few.
She started to flip over but he shoved her shoulder, holding her down on the mattress. Her sweet voice muttered, “Oh God, yes.”
He crouched over her and growled in her ear, “Stay there.”
Dree’s hands clenched fistfuls of the duvet cover.
Maxence backed up, toeing his shoes off over the edge of the bed and then stripping himself naked.
His underwear caught on the head of his dick, and he nearly ripped the cotton trying to get it off. His knife-stiff dick flipped back and batted his abdominal muscles.
He reached over Dree and grabbed a handful of her silk panties, yanking them down her legs and off her feet in one movement.
She giggled.
He said, “Get up on your knees. Face pressed to the bed. Ass in the air.”
Dree complied, scooching her knees underneath her.
The asterisk of her tight little asshole was right there, beckoning to him.
Instead, Max grabbed his belt that he’d laid on the bed. He doubled the length, holding the buckle and the tip in his hand, and he lightly smacked the perfect globes of her ass with the leather.
The stroke wasn’t hard enough to mark her. It probably wasn’t even hard enough to sting, but she rocked forward from the shock of it, gasping.
Max crawled up beside her, covering her entire body with his. “Do you want it harder?”
“Yes,” she said. “Don’t let me think. Don’t let me remember what happened today. Whip me and hurt me and take me so hard that there is nothing left of me to be afraid.”
He ducked his head and bit the muscle on the cap of her shoulder hard enough to leave a mark.
She groaned, stretching her neck. “And I’ll do the same for you.”
She understood.
Maxence straddled her thighs again and slapped her ass three times on each side with the belt, listening to the music of her whimpers and gasps as he turned her flesh pretty and pink.
After the last one, she was arching her back, and the slit of her entrance glistened with slick dew. He threw the belt aside and used his thumb, running it through her folds and massaging the stiff nub of her clit inside until she was leaning back against his hand, trying to push herself onto his thumb.
He kneeled behind her and did the same with his cock, running the head of it through her softness, pulling away as she tried to push back onto him, until her back was arched and her forehead was pressed against the mattress, nearly sobbing with need.
Maxence bent over her back, the thick metal chain of the carcanet hanging from his neck and resting on her skin. He grabbed her hair in his fist to control her but lifted her body with his arm around her chest. He leaned back, sitting on his heels and dragging her upright with him with the head of his cock just pressed against her entrance.
As she settled back onto her knees, she was impaled on the stiff spear of his cock.
Her back arched as she lowered herself onto him, a catch in her voice as she whispered, “God, yes. Do that.”
He pressed her onto him and held her down by her hips, his upper hand dipping to cup her breasts and then pinch the tight pebbles of her nipples, letting her grind against his shaft and balls.
She reached around behind her with both hands, holding onto his waist and hips, first with her fingers and then with the sharp pinpricks of her nails.
He’d wound her up hard, and within minutes, she was writhing and crying out, her hips twisting and her nails biting into his ass as her core pulsed around him.
Maxence bit his lip and breathed down into his stomach, shutting his eyes tightly so he wouldn’t finish yet.
She collapsed, going limp in his arms, suddenly boneless and semi-conscious.
He lifted her off of him and laid her on the bed, where her arms flopped out from her sides. She was still panting, her flanks rising and falling, and her eyes were squeezed shut.
Maxence crawled on top of her, his thick shaft rubbing against her stomach.
She mumbled, “You didn’t finish?”
He whispered in her ear. “I want your ass.”
She gasped, and her eyelids fluttered and then closed. “Yes.” And then softer, “Finally.”
He backed off and reached into the drawer of the nightstand beside the bed, finding the half-empty tube of lubricant he’d utilized over the last month when he’d used toys on her, first on her clit and then her ass, getting her used to it.
She came so hard with a plug in her ass.
He wanted to see what she would do with his cock buried deep inside her.
He lifted her knees and
pressed them to her chest, folding her up so that her ass was open to him. He started with a squeeze of the gel on his fingertip, slicking it over her tiny little asshole and then pressing with just his fingertip. “Relax and push back against me. I won’t take you until you’re ready.”
With her eyes still closed, her body strained, and her ass softened as he inserted just the tip of his finger inside her and began to massage the tight ring of muscle there.
Her thighs opened, her legs widening and dropping to her sides as she stretched her neck, breathing deeply. “Oh, wow. That feels good. Why does it feel so good?”
“Nerve endings,” he said, watching his finger penetrate farther inside her as he stroked carefully and softly. He could hardly wait to see his dick pressed into her like that, and holding back was getting harder and harder.
Speaking of harder and harder—
The head of his cock was purple, he was so engorged. He resisted the urge to grab himself in his fist and finish himself off, spurting on her stomach to mark her as his.
He’d done that often enough. He was going to enjoy the sweet globes of her ass around his cock.
His temples pounded with his blood pressure, and he pressed inside her with his finger past his second knuckle.
She moaned, holding her knees up and out to the sides so he could see the pink of her pussy reddening.
He pulled his finger out and spread more lube on his hand, forming a thick bead between his first two fingers. He hovered above her, bracing himself on one arm and both knees, and then he pressed those two fingers inside of her.
Her eyebrows pinched together, and he watched her breathe through the pressure until he was stroking into her with two fingers, and her breathing quickened.
She was going to come.
He wanted her to explode.
He could take her from behind, but he wanted to watch her face as he entered that secret, forbidden place on her and then keep watching when he made her come so hard she cried out.
He pulled his fingers out and squeezed lube on the bulbous head of his cock, angling himself at the slick entrance of her ass. “Relax.”
Reign (A Royal Romantic Suspense Royal Secret Billionaire Novel) Page 17