Her fond smile at the cross warmed him.
He caught her elbow. “The water’s hot. Go in.”
Dree hugged the bra and corset thing to her bosom, squeezing the front of it together as she removed it from her body and allowed her breasts to swing free, his favorite part of watching her undress. When she laid the corset on the floor, she did it gently instead of flinging it away.
Perhaps it was her favorite undergarment, and Maxence should take note of that for when he got her some other ones.
He handed her into the shower, and she sighed a breathy moan in her throat as the hot water sprayed over her face and she shook it through her hair.
Maxence stripped off his own clothes and stepped in beside her, reaching for her soft, plump skin.
Ah, Dree, his chérie, his beating heart.
His mind could not fathom how close he’d come to losing her.
Pain wracked his heart again.
Only one thing could relieve it.
Chapter Sixteen
Whispers
Dree
Hot water streamed through Dree’s hair and trickled over her scalp, washing away the fear-sweat and grime from that awful, disgusting warehouse in France. She grabbed the soap and a washcloth and began to scrub the dust and probably some mouse poop off of her shoulders and face.
She was okay now that they were safe. She really was. When the rage and anger had revealed itself as terror in disguise, Dree had fallen apart, and she hated that.
So, she was okay. Because they were safe now.
Somehow, she had to get some antibiotic ointment on Maxence’s shoulders, though. She hadn’t meant to get that rough with him. Maybe she could make the excuse that she’d been clinging to his shoulders for dear life, but that was too stupid even to rationalize it in her own brain.
Safe now.
Maxence kept saying they were safe, and Dree needed to believe it.
Safe now.
She would keep repeating that over and over until it got through.
Safe now.
The tone of the water spraying from the shower changed as the glass door opened and Maxence stepped into the shower behind her. As he turned to close the shower door, the enormous tattoo on his back of a fallen angel’s broken wings flashed into view, the splintered feathers dripping down his triceps and past the dimples below his muscular back.
Inking a demon’s wings on his own skin seemed like an act of self-punishment like she’d never seen before, and she hated that he’d been driven to do that by his own broken heart.
Dree dropped the washrag onto the shower stall floor with a soggy plop and rushed into his arms, pressing her face against his heavy pectorals.
Maxence’s arms closed around her.
One of his hands calmed her head and pressed her cheek more firmly against his muscled chest, and he bent to wrap his other arm around her waist. He rocked gently from side to side, not saying anything, and not telling her to stop being upset.
If anyone understood being upset after being kidnapped, it was Maxence.
The light, masculine hair sprinkled on his chest was rough under her cheek, but his tight waist and narrow hips were smooth under her arms where she clung to him. As usual, a scent wafted from his skin like he’d been baking an orange and citrus tart with cinnamon in a kitchen filled with freshly chopped oak wood.
Dree leaned backward. “When did you have time to shower?”
Maxence gestured to the showerhead that was streaming steaming hot water over her back. “I’m showering right now.”
“No, seriously. I’d been kidnapped and maybe being killed or tortured or something, and you smell great. There is no way that you haven’t showered since yesterday afternoon, especially if you were kidnapped and were beating people up this morning.”
Maxence shrugged, his slippery skin shifting under her arms. “After Arthur and Casimir picked me up in a helicopter from the ship, we were figuring out how to find you. While Arthur and Twist—”
“He was the middle guy on the helicopter, right?”
“Yes. They used Twist’s computer equipment to do something that had to do with my phone. We were hoping you still had it or at least that it was still in the same building as you were.”
Dree pointed at her destroyed dress and underwear laying on the bathroom floor outside of the shower. “Oh, yeah. And I’ve got—”
“I had a few minutes while those two were hashing out the details, and we were near the Monaco Yacht Club. I got some clothes from the palace and availed myself of the club’s guest suite because I would not want to offend. If they’d found you in the three minutes I was in the shower, they would’ve had to come back to the yacht club to get on the helicopter, so I still would’ve been right there.”
Dree nodded. “You are scrupulous about being clean, aren’t you?”
He went rock-still for an instant and then curved around her again. “No one’s ever complained about it before.”
Dree chuckled at that. “I’d better soap up, too. I also would not want to offend.”
Instead, Maxence soaped a washcloth and stroked it over her arms and torso, and then he bent to wash her legs as if he were cleaning his personal plaything that had gone missing and been found in a mud puddle, which was as good an analogy as Dree was going to come up with that afternoon.
She did feel like a lost toy that had been found in a mud puddle.
Her skin was gross and grimy, and she would be sneezing foul slop out of her sinuses for a week. When she’d been imprisoned and tied up in the closet, she’d felt abandoned and lost, like no one cared that she’d been carried off.
But Maxence had come looking for her.
How much worse must it have been for Maxence as a child, when no one really had cared enough to notice that he’d been kidnapped?
When Maxence had washed every intimate part of her and then steered her back into the shower stream to rinse her off, he lifted the showerhead and hose off the hook that it hung on, rinsing every part of her with the spray.
As he reached for the shampoo, Dree grabbed him around the waist, holding on again.
He held her in his arms again and murmured, “No matter what I have to do, I will make sure no one ever takes you again. We have private bodyguards now, Rogue Security. If you would like your own private mercenaries hanging around you for the rest of your life, we can do that. Even though I am assured Magnus Jensen will ferret out anyone who has been brainwashed or blackmailed from Monaco’s forces, I will hire whomever and however many separate security people you need so you will feel safe.”
Because no one had ever done that for him. His parents had chucked him back into boarding school in Switzerland, and no one had made him feel safe.
Dree whispered, “I’m okay. I’ll be okay.”
Maxence said, “You will. I’ll make sure you’re okay.”
He tilted her chin up and kissed her, his mouth caressing hers in the warm spray from the showerhead.
Max washed her hair gently, his fingers massaging her scalp and then rinsing the shampoo out while his fingers trailed lower, sometimes cradling her against his big male body while her fingers traced over his muscular thighs and arms.
He soaped up and rinsed quickly. Dree tried to help, but he was too quick. After they got out, he dried her off and wrapped her up in a big fluffy towel, tousling her hair so that it fell in waves.
Then Maxence carried her to the bedroom and laid her down in the sheets, crawling in next to her and pulling the comforter over them.
Dree wound around his body, her arms and legs finding his warm, hard flesh to tendril around.
He held her for what felt like hours because she could have sworn that she’d heard a thousand of the two-stroke beats of his heart under her ear, and his lips touched her temple as he murmured that he loved her.
His first whisper was so soft that she almost didn’t hear it.
Maxence had told Dree he loved her before of course. He’d announc
ed it to everyone in the middle of the Sea Change Gala, and he’d listed things about her that he loved. He’d said he loved her spirit, that he loved her laugh, and that he loved the wiggle of her chubby ass.
But this quiet exhalation that carried his voice was different. “You’re my entire world. When we watched the surveillance video from the Sea Change Gala, where Kir Sokolov grabbed you and dragged you off with him, I couldn’t imagine living without you because I love you.”
His fingers brushed her shoulders and her breasts, and her soft body molded against his hard flesh.
He whispered, “I was empty for those moments that felt like a lifetime when I couldn’t find you. It took twenty minutes to find the pings from my cell phone and for the computer to render Kir Sokolov’s face so we knew what had happened. My chest was hollow, and yet, I was bursting with desperation to find you because I love you.”
Dree moved to lie on top of him, her body finding and taking him into herself. His hands rested on her hips, encouraging her to move on top of him, and his eyes closed.
The tips of the broken feathers from the tattoo on his back trailed over his shoulders and arms, and she wanted to brush them away and tell him he was an angel, not a fallen one.
His skin gathered between his brows, and his next breath was almost a gasp. “The sea and the sky fell away. I couldn’t fathom creation without you in it. We’ve only had a few months together, and yet this time we’ve spent is everything to me. I’ve lived my whole life in these last few months. I want to make a new life with you. I want every minute of my life to be with you because I love you.”
His words in her mind and the friction of their bodies overwhelmed her.
She was a spark and a gasp and a billowing swell of her heart returning his words, and her body became light and soared.
When she settled, Dree found herself lying on Maxence’s chest, his arms tightly clutching her.
She whispered, “I love you, too.”
Chapter Seventeen
Heaven
Maxence
Maxence had traveled from his own personal definition of Hell on the ship this morning to his conception of Heaven in six hours.
Dree’s soft body pressed him into the mattress, and he was surrounded by one of the few places he’d ever thought of as home.
To Maxence, people made a home, not a particular building or room.
As a child, he’d never been able to become attached to a particular Le Rosey dormitory room or another. His home had been the triple that he’d shared with Casimir and Arthur for most of his time at the boarding school. When he’d been assigned to the Democratic Republic of Congo, he traveled between the orphanage and the rectory, and a few other residences associated with the Catholic Church. Home was where the good sisters Ndaya and Disanka had adopted him into their little circle, and then where he’d cared for Majambu and Mpata after they’d arrived.
Buildings meant nothing to Maxence, even when the building was a palace. But here, in this small apartment where Dree Clark was usually waiting for him, where a few of her clothes hung in his closet and more were folded into two drawers of his dresser, where he looked forward to sleeping with her in their bed, this was home.
He tried to slow everything down and let the moment shimmer in the air, slow his breath to not live through this moment too fast, calm his pulse lest his heart explode from being too full, but the furniture’s shadows slid sideways as the sun traveled outside the windows.
Dree was still lying on his chest, the top of her head just below his chin, and her breathing was so measured and deep that he thought she must be asleep. With a quick glance at his Patek Philippe watch, a gift from Arthur which he now knew was a homing beacon, he saw that the watch’s hands had moved to the right side of its face, and the time was five minutes after three o’clock.
Nearly three hours remained until the Crown Council meeting.
Maxence should call some people, especially ones he suspected might be wavering in their support of him and his ambitious plan to elect someone else as the Prince of Monaco. He should hold a press conference. He should call a journalist friend and schedule an interview for a half-hour hence for publicity before the election.
Maxence almost dozed.
An odd whir, like a windowpane rattling in a windstorm, buzzed from the living room.
Maxence had left the door to the living room ajar when he’d carried Dree to the shower.
There it was again.
He closed his eyes and almost rested for a moment.
The odd sound continued, paused, and then continued again.
From underneath his chin, Dree mumbled, “What is that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it’ll go away.”
“I’m so tired. I don’t think I slept any because I kept trying to get away.”
“Me, too.”
The brittle rattle was not stopping its intermittent fizz.
“Dammit.” Dree started to slither off of his chest.
“You stay here.” Maxence reached for the floor with one foot. “I’ll go see what it is. You stay under the covers.”
“Okay.” Dree wrapped the duvet more tightly under her chin.
Maxence snagged a discarded towel off the floor and tucked it around his waist as he walked toward the living room, idly hoping Rogue Security hadn’t stationed someone in his front room. If they had, they’d probably just heard something they could never unhear, but Maxence wasn’t ashamed of his performance.
He closed the bedroom door behind himself. Dree might actually die of embarrassment, so maybe he could shuffle the mercenary out if that was the case.
But no one was in his living room.
As usual, the sitting areas were unoccupied. The piano was likewise. His preferred reading chair was also empty.
Maxence waited for the rattle again and followed the buzz to its source, which was his phone, lying face down on the coffee table of the living room. “What the hell is that?”
He walked over, feeling the strain in his hamstrings, and picked up his phone.
A message in capital letters filled the short preview area. When he swiped the phone open, the most recent text from his cousin Alexandre read, WHERE THE LIVING HELL ARE YOU?
Maxence scrolled back to read other texts.
Max, where are you? It’s starting NOW.
That asshole, Uncle Jules, picked off a few of my coalition. He’s called a Crown Council meeting for THREE O’CLOCK. I can’t hold him off any longer. Where are you? I’m trying. Jesus, where are you?
Maxence, are you getting these? Christine said you came back to the palace in a helicopter and took right back off again. So at least you’re alive even though YOU’RE NOT ANSWERING ME. What’s going on?
Before that, a long string of texts from Alexandre asking, and then demanding, and then begging to know if Max was all right after the mass shooting at the Sea Change Gala.
Maxence texted to him, On my way.
He jogged back to the bedroom, grabbing trousers and a shirt out of his closet and yanking them on. “The council meeting started.”
“What?” She gestured toward the sunlit window. “It’s not even four o’clock.”
Maxence tossed his phone on the bed beside her so she could read the texts. “The Crown Council meeting started ten minutes ago. I have to go now.” He lifted his phone to his ear to call Magnus Jensen to arrange for security.
Dree vaulted out of the bed and sprinted for her drawer, flailing as she pulled a white sundress over her head and stretched white panties over her ankles. “I’m coming with you.”
“I need to leave now.”
She trotted into the bathroom, and Max heard some fabric rustling. Then she returned and ran to the living room, ruffling her damp hair with her fingers and jamming her feet in the high-heeled pumps lying on the floor on the way.
Maxence told Magnus Jensen over his phone, “The council meeting was moved up. We need to go to the throne room immediately.”
Dree snagged the key fobs that Magnus had left them, shoving one in her sundress’s pocket and one in Max’s pants pocket, and then grabbed her wrinkled jacket from last night’s formal dress off the floor. “You’re not going anywhere without me.”
Chapter Eighteen
Crown Council
Dree
The high-heeled pumps Dree had been wearing for the last eighteen hours were killing her feet. Her left pinkie toe might be mangled forever.
Why, oh why, hadn’t she left her running shoes in Maxence’s apartment? Not that she ever went running. Or her hiking boots from Nepal?
She was trying not to limp as they sped through the corridors of the palace.
OMG, this was it, the Crown Council meeting.
But Max’s hand-picked successor, his cousin Nico, was dead.
This might not go well.
Dree wanted to shine a spotlight in Max’s eyes and demand answers from him about what the hell had happened to him last night, whether he’d been the victim of a kidnapping or a capture or just a mistake or what. But, as soon as Max had talked to Magnus Jensen on the phone, those mercenary guys had swarmed into Maxence’s living room and announced they could immediately escort them to the Crown Council election meeting.
Dammit.
She wished she could have at least grabbed different shoes from her room downstairs. She’d barely gotten her girls tucked into a bra she’d had in his bathroom and the white sundress she’d stuffed in a drawer in Max’s apartment for less obvious walks of shame, shoved that panic-button key fob in her pocket because the sundress had pockets, and then the door had popped open, and then they were leaving.
Maxence had sucked on her right nip so hard that she might have a hickey on it, which was totally worth it, but the loose cotton of her sundress rubbed it the wrong way.
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