Reign: A Royal Romantic Suspense Novel (Billionaires in Disguise: Maxence Book 5)

by Blair Babylon

  He nodded with his eyes still closed. “You weren’t far off.”

  “What else happened out there? You keep changing the subject whenever I ask.”

  Maxence bent down and wrapped his arms around her, whispering to her about the dark storage room, his plan to throw himself overboard, how he’d convinced the crew to mutiny, and how Quentin Sault had shot Michael Rossi and then himself. His soft voice hung in the air of the bathroom and absorbed into the marble.

  She tightened her arms around his waist, and he petted her hair and kissed her temple.

  He whispered, “I wasn’t truly terrified until I got back to Monaco and discovered you were missing. That’s when my heart stopped. That’s when my world came crashing down, and all I could think of was to find you. I didn’t want you to be hurt. I couldn’t stand the thought of you being afraid. I was going to rip the world apart to find you.”

  “I’ll never leave you,” she whispered. “I’ll never let you go, but you should work with someone to make it more functional.”

  “When I was in high school, I went to the health center at Le Rosey and demanded counseling, despite the secrecy my parents had insisted on years before,” Maxence said. “They were both dead by then, so maybe that’s why the school relented. I had two different counselors. One of them just listened while I talked and didn’t say much. The other one taught me about grounding, where you pick out five things you can see, three things you can hear, one thing you can touch and taste or smell.”

  “That’s one of the standard therapies,” Dree said.

  “Sometimes I go through them over and over. I kept getting stuck in those grounding ritual loops because nothing was ever enough. I still do it instinctively. When I walked into that corporate event tonight, the crowd in the dark was overwhelming. I instinctively started picking out things that I could see and hear and smell because it forced me to stay in the present moment and not flip back to those weeks I spent in a squalid, dark, metal room on the ship as a kid.”

  “There are other interventions. Medical, maybe,” Dree said.

  “I don’t want to take drugs, and some of those antianxiety medications are bad for you in the long-term. Some people need them to get through the day, but most days, I’m fine. And then other days, something happens.”

  “And that’s when you cut. Or when you have a woman rake her nails over your back, cutting by proxy.”

  “The sting makes me stop thinking. The sharpness of it distracts my mind from the fact I can’t breathe.” His arms wrapped around her more tightly. “Like when I figured out you were missing after the Sea Change Gala. Or in Phoenix when those guys in the van tried to grab you. I can’t even fathom it, Dree. I can’t imagine a world without you. I want to cut myself to ribbons just thinking about it.”

  Something about that gave Dree pause. “That makes me feel kind of trapped.”

  He expelled his breath in almost a chuckle. “I would never trap you. It’s not a passive-aggressive threat to control you. I might tie you up if you wanted me to.”

  “Yeah,” Dree said, thinking back. “For a guy who’s into some deep things, you don’t tie me up, at least not for long.”

  His voice was low. “When I tie you up, your hands aren’t free.”

  Oh.

  “But if you ever left me, then I must’ve done something catastrophically, stupidly wrong, and I should live with that. Maybe it would teach me a damn lesson. But you would be out there in the world, somewhere safe. As long as you’re out there and safe and preferably happy, I’m content. You’re not trapped with me unless you want to be. We all have our kinks. If you want me to get you a bad-girl cage, I will.”

  She leaned back. “A what?”

  “Never mind.” His sad smile looked like he was trying to force his mouth to make the shape. “The point was, you’re not trapped.”

  She’d ask Mairearad about cages the next time they went to lunch. “Okay, but I still think you need to talk to someone about it now. Maybe CBT or other therapies would help. But no matter what, I’m not going to leave you. I’m not going to demand that you stop shutting me out or see this as a stumbling block or a deal-breaker in our relationship. You’re mine now, and I’m yours. We’re a team. You’re going to be the Sovereign Prince of Monaco, and I’m going to be the chatelaine of the Grimaldi Fortress. We’ll hold this castle against any enemy that comes at us from the land or the sea together, and I’ll be by your side while we do it. But I’m worried about you, and I love you. I don’t want you to hurt yourself to get relief from the pain in your heart. I want the pain to go away.”

  “I love that you want it to,” he said.

  Dree snuggled into his chest again. “And I know a platitude when I hear it.”

  “It’s the best I can do.”

  “At least you’re telling me the truth.”

  He kissed the top of her head. “Always.” He adjusted his arms, curling them around her more securely.

  One of his hands drifted lower, smoothing his fingers over her hip.

  Oh, jeez. Dree was worried that she’d killed the mood.

  But then again, Maxence was always in the mood.

  She stretched to press her lips to Maxence’s warm neck. He’d shaved again before going to the reception that night, and his skin was still satiny.

  Maxence bent his knees as he leaned back and rested against the counter so he could press his lips to her shoulder, kissing his way up to the ticklish area behind her ear.

  She wasn’t ticklish when he did it, though.

  His soft breath, scented lightly with whiskey, feathered over her skin and the baby hairs on the back of her neck. His fingers ran up into her hair and grasped a handful into his fist. He bent her neck to the side with the leverage, breaking her lips’ contact with his skin, and then gently dragged her head backward to run his mouth over her throat.

  Dree leaned against him, pressing her stomach against his pelvis, for his erection was already a thick rod underneath the fine fabric of his tuxedo trousers. She whispered, “Do you—want me to tie you up?”

  His dark chuckle fluttered on her neck. “I let a woman tie me up once, and I lasted ten minutes before I broke her headboard and flipped her over. I’m not a switch.”

  Switch? Oh, boy, another kinky vocabulary word she would need to ask Mairearad about. “How—how rough do you want me to be?”

  Maxence cupped her breast through the chiffon baby doll nightie, laving his tongue over the peak and sucking hard enough through the fabric to make Dree arch her back and close her eyes for a moment as ecstasy wafted through her skin. He moved up and whispered near her ear, “A little. You don’t have to do too much. Things have been calm lately.”

  “Just a little,” she gasped, almost swallowing her words as Maxence’s teeth raked over her shoulder. “I’ll try to hold back.”

  He chuckled against her neck. “I didn’t say you had to do that.”

  Maxence reached lower, grabbing her thighs.

  Dree managed to push off with her toes just a little bit as he picked her up and wrapped her thighs around his waist. He turned around, resting her ass on the cold marble countertop. He pushed her back against the mirror and held her breasts in his palms, sucking her taut flesh.

  Dree clung to him, pressing her palms to the heated skin of his shoulders and whimpering as he tormented her with his mouth.

  He explored her with his hands, gripping her hips and spreading her ass cheeks on the cold marble and then reaching around to grab her inner thigh and roll his thumb on the nub of her clit. In minutes, she was shaking and arching against him, on the verge of orgasm, and yet every time she clenched, he backed off and wouldn’t let her go over.

  He plunged two fingers into her, stroking inside. When she let out one more frustrated shriek through her teeth, he yanked the thin chiffon of her panties aside and dragged her down over his cock, pushing inside of her with short, determined thrusts.

  Dree writhed, impaled on his erection and t
rying to make him press her clit against his body.

  Maxence stroked inside her, short, staccato jabs penetrating her, but he didn’t plunge farther inside.

  He was doing it on purpose, denying her. She tried to wiggle down over the edge of the counter to press onto him. He didn’t fall for it and shoved her back onto the counter, taking her at his pace, not hers.

  Over Maxence’s shoulder, a full-length mirror beside the large Jacuzzi soaking tub reflected her pale legs wrapped around his bare ass, the black fabric of his lowered tuxedo pants binding tightly around his thighs, and her arms around his neck.

  Dree’s gaze met her own eyes, slightly dazed with passion, beside the back of his head.

  She moved her hand up to his black hair, feeling the strands between her fingers and seeing her hand move in the mirror across the room.

  With her other hand, Dree reached around the back of Maxence’s shoulders and slowly dragged her fingernails over his skin and across his back horizontally.

  In the mirror, she watched her fingers draw dark pink lines on his skin.

  In her ear, Maxence growled, “I didn’t tell you to do it yet.”

  He pulled out, grabbed her hips, and flipped her over to bend her over the bathroom counter, pressing the side of her face and her breasts that were raw from his mouth against the cold marble. Her nipples squeezed tight on the frigid stone.

  Maxence kicked her ankles apart, angled himself at her entrance, and rammed himself up inside her.

  Dree was already so open that the invasion of his body into hers didn’t hurt. Instead, it was a raw rush that nearly sent her over the edge. He grabbed her hips, and Dree arched her back as he slammed into her, their skin slapping together, as he growled in her ear, “You’re mine to do with as I want, understand? I tell you what to do, and you do it. I decide what to do to you, and you submit.”

  Dree nodded because, oh yes, she understood. She understood, and she craved it, and she wanted him to push her body to its limits and show her what he could do to her.

  He pounded into her until she was whimpering, hanging onto the ragged edge of the cliff of her orgasm, almost going over from the force of his cock inside of her, but she couldn’t quite make it.

  Tears rolled down her face from frustration, and when she arched her back, trying to find that one last bit of stimulation she craved, she opened her eyes.

  In the wide mirror above the bathroom counter, Maxence’s eyes met her gaze as he drove into her. He’d been watching. The dark ferocity she saw in his eyes was a blue-hot star burning the vast darkness of space, the sharpness of a man who would burn the world down if it pleased him to do so.

  When he saw the tears running down her face, his eyes lit with triumph and he reached under her, first squeezing her soft skin together until she ducked her head, pushing on the mirror with her hands to brace herself against his onslaught, and then rubbing his finger through her folds and over the bright point of her clit until her head spun, her eyes squeezed shut, and the world fell upon her.

  Waves of ecstasy flooded her body and mind, cresting in her head and dragging her back under, the darkness and screaming oblivion so complete that her identity was gone.

  Hours later, maybe months later, her hearing returned as Maxence thrust into her one final time. A hoarse cry tore from his throat as his body’s muscular cords strained and pulsed within her.

  Oh, yeah, if this was being a ‘sub,’ she liked it.

  Chapter Thirty

  The Crownless Prince

  Maxence

  Three months of official mourning for Maxence’s late uncle had elapsed in the latter part of March, so Maxence’s enthronement was held the following week.

  Early that morning, Dree had been blow-drying her hair while Maxence shaved. The Mass would start in two hours, and the enthronement ceremony was scheduled for early in the evening, followed by the reception, a gala, and fireworks.

  Dree had been studying the engraved invitation they’d sent to the world’s royalty and political leaders the previous month. She frowned with pretty little lines creasing the delicate skin between her eyes. “I thought it was called a coronation.”

  Maxence glanced at her but was being careful not to cut his face before a thousand photographers took his picture that day. “Not in Monaco. We call it an enthronement, not a coronation.”

  “That’s weird.” Dree began to apply the moisturizer that her stylist had left for her. “Queen Elizabeth the second had a coronation. That Spanish King a few years ago had a coronation. Why are they calling yours something different?”

  Maxence stretched up his chin, carefully scraping away the thick, black stubble that sprouted on his face since he’d shaved the previous evening before those scheduled events. “Probably because we don’t have a crown.”

  “What!”

  He said, “We’ve never bothered to purchase one. Perhaps there is a regal requirement, where they’re not allowed to sell us one because we’re a princely family, not a royal one. Maybe one has to be considered royalty and a king before Van Cleef and Arpels or Cartier will sell you one. Or else maybe it must be forged from the swords of one’s defeated medieval enemies, and we missed the opportunity.”

  Dree squinted at him. “But you have a Crown Council, and one of your medal thingies is called the Order of the Crown. How can you have a Crown Council and an Order of the Crown if you don’t have a crown?”

  “I do have a chain of office like a mayoral collar, a carcanet called the Collar of the Order of Saint Charles that I’ll wear around my neck and shoulders. It will be the first time I’ve worn that and officially rested my serene ass on the throne. Therefore, not coronation, but enthronement.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him. “Officially? You sat on the throne before you were supposed to?”

  Maxence shrugged at her. “My cousins and I used to run wild in this castle. We used to climb up on the back of the throne and jump off. It’s covered in gold, so it’s heavy. It made an excellent, sturdy base for little boys and girls to leap off of.”

  Marie-Therese had been there, Maxence remembered, jumping with the rest of them. Her skirt had floated around her like a parachute.

  And Pierre. He’d been a little too old to be childishly gleeful but took longer leaps entirely off the dais as a feat of strength, landing on the inlaid marble floor with both feet in a solid thump.

  Alexandre hadn’t been allowed to play because, as always, his hands had to be protected. He might have landed with an arm down and broken his wrist.

  Christine had been jumping off with them, though, because she hadn’t been serious about the violin at the time. She’d been so little that she’d been clambering up onto the seat and hopping into the air with her body straight and rigid like a leaping dolphin before landing at the base of it.

  And Nico.

  Nico had been there, scrambling to the top of the throne with Maxence, and they’d flown through the sunlit air with their arms outstretched, trying to outdo each other.

  The people who’d always been in his life were falling away.

  But new people entered.

  He glanced over at Dree.

  She was pouting. “So wait. I don’t get a tiara? I thought princesses got tiaras. It’s kind of half the point of being a princess, you know, the tiara.”

  “Oh, no. We own several tiaras.” He dried his face. “Do you think my grandmother, Princess Grace, would’ve married my grandfather if there hadn’t been a tiara involved?”

  “She was a levelheaded Pennsylvania girl. She would’ve made sure of having a tiara.”

  “And I was rather thinking of having Cartier design a new one for you to celebrate our wedding in a few months.”

  “Well, okay then. As long as we’ve got that straight.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Malizia

  Maxence

  Maxence had attended official events since he’d been a toddler. He vaguely remembered his uncle Prince Rainier IV’s enthron
ement when Maxence had been about six. Walking through official functions while looking solemn and responsible were part of every royal’s training.

  Every moment of this day felt different to him.

  Maxence had never been supposed to be the heir. Like Henry VIII of England, he’d prepared himself to walk away graciously but now had greatness thrust upon him.

  It all seemed to be happening at a distance, the cardinal’s voice echoing like he had water in his ears.

  The Mass spun around him.

  The cardinal placed the chalky communion wafer on his tongue, and he broke it up with his teeth and swallowed the dust.

  Dree kneeled beside him, also taking the communion wafer on her tongue as the sunlight found the enormous diamond of her engagement ring and filled the air of the Saint Nicholas Cathedral with stars.

  Cardinals and bishops prayed over Maxence, imploring God to grant him wisdom and strength.

  Their hands settled on his head and shoulders like a cowl as they prayed in Latin, French, and the Monegasque dialect.

  Maxence could not shake the feeling that he had stolen this day from someone else.

  They walked back through the Place de Palais, the expansive courtyard outside the castle that overlooked the harbor. Velvet ropes lined a red carpet that led from the head of the street to the tall entrance to the palace, one of the few breaches in the fortress’s walls.

  Citizens of Monaco and tourists packed the courtyard beyond the ropes, their cheers muffled by the confusion around Maxence’s head.

  Beyond the courtyard and cannons atop the wall, the Mediterranean Sea lapped at the boats and rocky shore.

  The sun was bright overhead, and only a mild breeze plucked at the red and white field of the Monegasque flags fluttering from every spire atop the palace.