She flew and was reborn.
When she at last opened her eyes, she saw him watching her, his mouth still between her thighs, the heat of his gaze enough to scald her newborn skin.
She swallowed, caressing his cheek, and tried to think of some way to express her gratitude, but she’d lost the art of language.
He lifted his head then, and she couldn’t even find the stamina to resent the self-satisfied curl of his lips. He put his hands on her waist and pulled her, gently helping her to fall into his lap, her legs straddling his. He placed one hand at the back of her head and kissed her and when she tasted a kind of tang on his lips, she knew where it had come from.
Without speaking he kicked the chair away so that they sat together in front of the fire all alone.
He leaned into her, softly kissing the tender skin under her ear, and whispered, “Wrap your legs about me.”
She shifted languidly, for there was no reason as far as she could see to hurry this. But when her softness was open and exposed by her position, she could feel how hard he was. How insistent. He might not have the same mind as she about the urgency of the matter.
When he slid a hand between them, she twined her arms around his neck for balance and leaned back to watch. He was working at the falls to his breeches. She cocked her head as he fumbled one handed, his other hand braced against the floor to keep them both upright.
She looked back up at him from beneath her lashes. “Would you like some help?”
He punished her for her amusement by nipping at her mouth. For a moment she became lost in their play, in the impatient kisses he gave her.
She leaned away and unbuttoned his falls with calm deliberation.
He, sadly, was not as calm as she.
“Diana,” he growled, cutting off his own words with an oath as she worked his penis free of his falls and breeches. It was the first time she’d held him—held any man—and she took the opportunity to examine the prize in her hands. His skin was soft, and it surprised her that this most masculine part of him was so velvety. She stroked him with her fingers, marveling at the hardness under the skin, the thick ropes of veins climbing the length. His foreskin had retreated back from the broad head, and a bead of liquid pearled at the tiny slit. She delicately touched her finger to the drop, stroking the liquid over his ruddy head. The column in her hand flexed at her touch and she wanted to laugh. To sing, though her voice wasn’t anything wonderful. This was so special, so curious, how he was built. That he would let her play with him.
She shot him a look from under her brows and saw that he had an extraordinary expression on his face—a kind of fond hunger.
“Diana,” he breathed, and caught her lips with his.
Suddenly she no longer wanted to play. There was a coiling within her, drawing her body tight again, building to what she now knew was unbearable pleasure.
She shifted closer, rucking her skirts up and bringing the tip of his hard penis against her folds. They still kissed as she rolled her hips, her breath stuttering when she used him to rub herself.
He opened wide his mouth and kissed her deeply, shoving his own hips up. She knew what he wanted—what he probably needed at this point—but she, too, needed.
Just a little more.
She caught her breath, writhing as she slid him through her slippery folds. He was so hard, so wide, so absolutely perfect, he might’ve been made expressly for her.
Well, in a way he was, wasn’t he?
But his patience broke.
He grasped her waist and raised her, looking her in the eye fiercely. “Hold me there.”
So she reluctantly put him to her entrance, holding him steady as he let her weight bear down.
As he joined with her.
He watched her even as she gasped at the intimate intrusion. She was still a little sore from the day before, and she stiffened.
He paused, his fingers stroking the small of her back through the frail materials of her chemise and wrap. “Easy.”
She nodded as her flesh accepted him, and he seemed to understand it as the permission it was. Slowly he impaled her on his cock. She was aware of the fluttering of her heart, of the short, staccato pants of her breath, of the way his face was set and grim as if it took all of his considerable control to keep from simply thrusting up into her.
But the soreness was fading now, being replaced by the lovely feeling of being stretched full. She bit her lip, arching her head back, staring at the ceiling as she rotated her hips gently, screwing herself down on him until she felt the smooth silk of his breeches against her bottom.
He groaned, deep and very male, and bowed his head against her for a moment, his hot breath panting across the slopes of her breasts. She ran her hands over his upper arms soothingly and felt when they bunched beneath her fingers.
That was her only warning.
He shoved her up, his cock sliding exquisitely through her tunnel as he withdrew, then he set his feet flat on the floor and drove his hips into her. Fast and hard, he set a punishing pace.
She’d once imagined lovemaking as a sweet joining of souls, a gentle wave surging and retreating. An act both respectful and honored.
What Maximus was doing to her was anything but sweet. He gasped, his great chest working as if he fought off demons. Sweat beaded on his brow and shone in the fine hairs on his chest. His movements were sharp and abrupt as he drove himself into her again and again. He was nothing like the sophisticated aristocrat he was in front of others. One corner of his mouth twisted in a sneer, his eyes a glaring furnace. He used her body for his own pleasure, for his own need, working her up and down on his cock. He was little more than an animal now.
And she gloried in it. She—she—had driven him to this. Had made a man who captured kings and foreign diplomats with the surety of his eloquence quite simply lose his mind.
He pushed up with all his might, shoved to the hilt within her, and froze, head thrown back in an agony of pleasure.
She leaned forward and delicately licked the salt sweat from his lips as his seed flooded her.
THE NEXT MORNING Craven attended Maximus in his rooms and was excruciatingly correct until Artemis left to dress herself in her own rooms.
The door had hardly closed behind her lovely bottom when the valet turned slowly to Maximus and pinned him with a gaze that would’ve done justice to the King in one of his fouler moods. “Pardon me, Your Grace, but I hope you’ll not mind if I speak bluntly—”
“Would it matter?” Maximus muttered under his breath, wishing he’d at least had his morning cup of tea before his own valet raked him over the coals.
Craven didn’t bother acknowledging the interruption. “I wonder if you’ve quite lost your bloody mind?”
Maximus began soaping his face in a rather vicious manner. “If I wanted your opinion, I would’ve—”
“Much as it pains me to speak to you in this manner,” Craven said, “I feel I must. Your Grace.”
Maximus snapped his mouth shut and snatched up his razor, making sure his hand was steady before setting the blade to his jaw. He could feel Craven behind him and he knew without turning that the valet would be standing at attention, shoulders back, head held high.
“A gentleman does not ravish a lady,” Craven said. “A lady, moreover, living under his own roof and therefore in his protection.”
Maximus banged the razor against the wash basin, feeling irritated at both Craven and himself. “I’ve never ravished a woman in my life.”
“What else to call the seduction of an unmarried lady of gentle birth?”
It was a well-aimed volley and Maximus felt the hit. She’d already told him that she’d been hurt previously by her ass of a fiancé—was he, in the end, any better? No, of course not. At least that doctor’s son hadn’t gone so far as to seduce her.
As Maximus had.
Was he hurting her, his goddess? Did she hide a heart bruised from his careless actions? The mere thought made him want to pu
nch walls. No one should hurt her so, least of all him. Craven was right: he was a cad and a rogue, and if he were any sort of gentleman at all, he’d give her up. Break off the thing and set her free.
And yet he wouldn’t. Quite simply, he could not bear to let her go.
He took a deep breath and said tightly, “Craven, what is between Miss Greaves and myself is of no concern of yours.”
“Isn’t it?” The other man’s voice had an edge Maximus had rarely heard in it before. “If not my business, then whose? Do you listen to your sisters, Miss Picklewood, the men you call friends in Parliament?”
Maximus turned slowly to look at the valet. No one spoke to him thus.
Craven’s face was sagging and he looked every inch of his years. “You are a law unto yourself, Your Grace. You always have been. It’s what helped you to survive the tragedy. It’s what made you a great man in Parliament. But it also means that when you are wrong there is no one to make you pause.”
Maximus’s eyes narrowed. “And why should I pause?”
“Because you know what you have done—what you are doing—is not right.”
“It was she who came to my bed, not the other way ’round,” Maximus muttered, feeling heat flush his neck even as he gave the feeble excuse.
“A gentleman has full control over his urges—all his urges,” Craven said with just a hint of sarcasm. “Would you blame the lady for your own fault?”
“I blame no one.” Maximus turned back to his dresser, unable to meet his valet’s eyes. He scraped the stubble from his right cheek.
“And yet you should.”
“Craven.”
Craven’s voice sounded old. “Tell me you mean to marry the lady and I’ll gladly celebrate.”
Maximus froze. What he wanted and what was best for the dukedom was entirely separate. “You know I cannot. I plan to marry Lady Penelope Chadwicke.”
“And you know, Your Grace, that Lady Penelope is a frivolous fool not worth half of you. Not worth half of Miss Greaves, for that matter.”
“Have care,” Maximus said, frost dripping from his lips. “You malign my future duchess.”
“You haven’t asked her.”
“Yet.”
Craven held out pleading hands. “Why not make this right? Why not marry the lady you’ve already bedded?”
“Because, as you well know, her family is diseased with madness.”
“So are half the aristocratic families of England.” Craven snorted. “More than half if we count the Scots. Lady Penelope herself is related to Miss Greaves and her family. By your estimation she is not fit to be your duchess, either.”
Maximus gritted his teeth and breathed out slowly. Craven had been there at his christening. Had taught him how to shave. Had stood behind him when he’d laid his mother and father in a cold crypt. Craven wasn’t just a servant to him.
Which was why Maximus made sure to keep his voice level as he discussed something so utterly private with the man. “Lady Penelope doesn’t have a brother who is a murderous madman. To take Miss Greaves as my duchess would taint the dukedom. I owe it to my forebears, to my father—”
“Your father would never have made you marry Lady Penelope!” Craven cried.
“Which is why I shall marry her,” Maximus whispered.
Craven simply looked at him. It was the same look he’d given Maximus when he’d snapped at one of his sisters as a youth, when Maximus had drunk too much wine for the first time, when he’d refused to speak for that fortnight after his parents’ death. It was the look that said, This is not behavior becoming of the Duke of Wakefield.
That look had always stopped Maximus.
But not this time. This time he was the one who was right and Craven who was in the wrong. He could not marry Artemis—his debt to his father’s memory, to what he must be as the duke in order to make something right, did not allow it—but he could have her and keep her and make her his most secret desire.
Because he wasn’t sure at this point that he could live without her.
He looked at Craven and he knew his face had assumed the cold, stony mask that made other men glance away. “I will marry Lady Penelope, and I will continue bedding Miss Greaves as I see fit, and if you are unable to reconcile yourself to those facts you may leave my employment.”
For a moment Craven merely looked at him and Maximus was reminded suddenly of his first sight the day he woke after his parents’ murder: it had been Craven’s face as he’d slept in a chair by Maximus’s bedside.
Craven turned away and left the bedroom, shutting the door gently behind him.
It might as well have been a gunshot to Maximus’s soul.
Chapter Fifteen
Now Tam rode behind the Herla King, and though she tried to talk to him, never in that year did he speak to her or make a sign that he knew her. Still, when the night of the autumn harvest next came, Lin took a deep breath and did as the little man in the hills had bid her: she reached back and dragged her brother from his ghostly horse, gripping him tightly. Immediately Tam turned into a monstrous wildcat.…
—from The Legend of the Herla King
The steps to Maximus’s cellar were damp. Artemis climbed down carefully, for she held Apollo’s breakfast in her hands: tea, bread thickly spread with butter and jam, and a huge dish of coddled eggs. The maid had looked at her a little oddly when she’d requested such a large breakfast but was obviously too well trained to inquire about her unladylike appetite.
Now Artemis balanced the wooden tray on one hip as she fumbled with the key to the door. It seemed rather odd to lock Apollo in like this—surely no one would dare investigate the duke’s cellar—but both Maximus and Craven had insisted it was for the best.
Inside, nothing seemed to have changed since she’d bid Apollo good night only hours before. The brazier still cast a dull light and Apollo sat upon the narrow cot. But as she drew nearer she saw there was one very large difference: Apollo had a ball and chain around one ankle.
She stopped short only feet from him. “What’s this?”
He might be half-starved, beaten near to death, and for some reason still unable to speak, but her brother had never had any trouble expressing his thoughts to her.
He rolled his eyes.
Then he looked down and started theatrically at the ball as if he’d never seen it before. The skittish movement was quite silly when made by such a large man.
Her lips twitched, but she stilled them. This was a serious matter.
“Apollo,” she said warningly, setting the tray on the bed next to him. The chain was long enough that he could easily reach a covered commode not that far away and the brazier, but nothing else. “Who did this? Maximus?”
He didn’t deign to reply, tearing into the bread before halting for a moment and then beginning to eat again almost daintily.
Artemis frowned at his odd behavior, but was distracted by the chain clinking against the stone floor as he shifted to reach for the teacup. “Apollo! Answer me, please. Why would he chain you?”
He gazed at her over his teacup’s rim as he sipped before shrugging and putting down the cup. He picked up the notebook that had been left on the floor by the cot and scratched something out with a pencil before handing it to her.
Artemis glanced at what he’d written.
I’m mad.
She scoffed, thrusting the notebook back at him. “You know you’re not.”
He paused, his fingers upon the little book, to flick his eyes at her, and she saw them soften. Then he pulled the notebook from her hands and wrote something else.
She sat beside him to read.
Only you, sister dear, think me sane. I love you for it.
She swallowed and leaned over to buss him on the cheek. At least he’d shaved. “And I love you, too, though you drive me half mad.”
He snorted and dug into the eggs.
“Apollo?” she asked softly. “What happened in Bedlam? Why were you beaten so badly?”
She sighed and watched him. Even if he was too stubborn to recount what had caused a boot to be thrust into his throat, she was glad that he was safe and had enough food.
She glanced again at the chain on his ankle. He might be safe, but he was chained like an animal again, and that simply wouldn’t do. “I’ll talk to Maximus. He’ll understand that you were wrongly accused and not mad at all.” She said it confidently, even though she was beginning to doubt that Maximus would ever change his mind. And if he didn’t? She couldn’t leave her brother chained here—it was little better than Bedlam.
He chewed, looking at her narrowly, and for some reason his expression made her nervous.
He picked up the notebook and wrote one word: MAXIMUS?
She could feel heat climbing her cheeks. “He’s a friend.”
He cocked a sardonic eyebrow as he scribbled, the pencil hitting the paper with an audible thump when he made the period. He must accord you a very good friend indeed to rescue me from Bedlam on your word.
“I suppose he thought it a good deed.”
He arched an incredulous eyebrow before writing, I’ve lost my voice, not my power of reason.
“Well, of course not.”
But he kept writing. I don’t like such closeness with a duke.
She lifted her chin. “Would you have me only associate with earls and viscounts, then?”
He bumped her shoulder with his, and wrote, Very funny. You know what I mean.
He was the dearest person in the world to her, and she hated to lie to him. Still, the truth would do nothing but anger him. “Don’t worry about me, darling. A duke would never be interested in a lady’s companion. You know Lady Phoebe is my friend. I’m here to act as her companion while her cousin, Miss Picklewood, is away. Nothing more.”
He stared at her suspiciously until she pointed out that his tea would grow cold if he didn’t finish his breakfast. After that they sat together in companionable silence as she watched him eat.
But she couldn’t shake her own words, for without meaning to she’d spoken the truth: a duke truly didn’t have any reason to consort with her. Maximus had never said anything about making their arrangement more permanent. What if he only wished to bed her for a few nights and nothing more? What would she do then? What they’d done made it impossible for her to live again as Penelope’s companion—even if her cousin never found out the truth. Artemis simply couldn’t deceive Penelope in such an awful manner.
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