Rogue

by Blair Babylon

  Dear God, she was wearing some sort of a matching corset underneath the dress, a scarlet, boned contraption that nipped in her waist and pushed up her breasts and was altogether feminine and powerful and sexy.

  Maxence fumbled with his tie and shirt. As soon as he had that abominable tie and a few buttons of his collar undone, he yanked the tuxedo shirt and his undershirt off over his head and tossed them aside.

  “Your back,” Dree murmured against his lips. “Come on, I want to see what that tattoo is.”

  There’d be time for that later. He craved the touch and taste of her skin.

  He wrestled with the cummerbund and enclosure on his tuxedo pants. The stupid thing wouldn’t come off. There was some sort of a clasp in the back, but he couldn’t undo it. “The stupid cummerbund,” he whispered to her.

  Dree reached around his back, her curvaceous body a temptation that he could not believe was in his arms, and she fiddled with the cloth strip until it loosened and half-fell off of him. She pulled it from around his waist with a flourish and almost flung it behind her. “Got it!”

  “Excellent.” He was reaching for her corset, ready to figure out how to take it off her. He hoped it would unlace or be released in some complicated manner. Hooks, maybe. Or a long row of tiny buttons. Something womanly and female.

  Dree asked, “Hey, what’s wrong with this cummerbund?”

  “What about it?” he growled, grasping her hair and raking his teeth down her neck.

  “It’s stiff or something.” She scrutinized the clasp and picked at something with her fingernail. “It feels like it’s part plastic, but it’s nice fabric when you touch it.”

  Maxence leaned back. “Let me see it.”

  “I’ve just about got it.” She seized something with her fingernails and pulled on it, unsheathing a long, thin metallic strip with a silk-wrapped handle on one end. The metal made a wah-wah sound as she whipped it through the air. “Whoa!”

  Maxence ducked. “Be careful!”

  The end of the metallic strip sliced the couch.

  White feathers flew everywhere in a flurry.

  Dree slammed the strip onto the floor. “Oh my God! It’s dangerous!”

  Maxence inspected it, noting the razor-sharp edges along both sides and the wicked point at the tip. “It was in the cummerbund. I’ll bet there’s another one in his belt.”

  Dree was aghast. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Maxence considered his options as to what he could say. “As I mentioned, my friend Arthur left clothes here for me because I didn’t have time to pack before I left Monagasquay. Arthur has unusual talents.”

  “Considering all the weird stuff that happened to us in the last couple of days, I don’t want to know anything more about Arthur, if this really is about Arthur and not your thing.”

  Maxence raised his hands and laughed. “I swear on everything that is holy, this cummerbund belongs to Arthur, and this is Arthur’s little toy.”

  “What, is he an assassin?”

  “I would never dare ask.”

  “Never mind. I don’t want to know.” She grabbed Max’s hand and tugged, leading him toward the bedroom while wearing that scarlet teddy that accentuated her curves.

  Dear Lord, she was still wearing the exquisite high heels that flashed their red soles at him when she walked. Her hips swung as she towed him toward the bed, and he had eyes only for her.

  Maxence sat on the side of the bed, legs spread, with his chest bare. He braced his hands on his knees and stared at her, his eyes steady.

  He said, “Strip.”

  Dree looked aside, uncomfortable or embarrassed by his command.

  Maxence drew her attention back to him and said, “Strip.”

  He was careful not to be too convincing with women until after he’d made sure they wanted him, but after that, the convincing was part of the fun. He knew some men in his position liked compliant women. They wanted submissives who would do anything they wanted with a snap.

  Maxence liked sexy, powerful women, and he liked them on their knees, or their hands and knees, or tied up for him to pillage.

  He liked to make them fall. If they weren’t a challenge, they didn’t interest him.

  He liked to win.

  Dree started to use her toes to pry her shoes off her feet, but Maxence told her, “The corset first. Leave the shoes on.”

  Dree reached around her back, her elbows akimbo and biting her lower, red lip. “I can’t get this off.”

  Maxence lowered his voice and said, “Come here. Turn around.”

  She did, and Maxence took a long look at her curves from her shoulders to her waist and then outward over her hips, frankly female and gorgeous.

  The bow at the top of the back of the corset had become knotted, and Maxence carefully picked it apart and then drew the silken ribbons through each of the wire grommets until the corset loosened. Oh, God, yes.

  The silk loosened, and it fell away from her creamy skin.

  She grabbed it with her hands and held it to her chest.

  Maxence told her, “Let it fall.”

  She did, but she let it fall slowly.

  Maxence appreciated it even more.

  She stood in front of him, her glorious breasts free, still wearing little satin ribbons that held her stockings up and those sexy high heels.

  He couldn’t help himself any longer. He reached with his hands for her hips and drew Dree toward him, his lips meeting the soft skin of her chest and then angling to kiss her neck.

  Her soft moan encouraged him, and Maxence turned her to lie down on the bed and clambered over her, kissing her mouth and running his hands over her curves.

  Within minutes, she was panting and nipping his neck when he gave her room to lift her head. Every time she took a breath her body heaved toward his, and he reached down to take her breasts in his mouth and suckle them.

  Her hands were threading through his hair and fluttering over the skin on his back. He grabbed both her wrists and pinned them above her head so he could kiss her deeply, his tongue invading her mouth and licking her until she was gasping and trying to twist her arms away from him.

  He released her hands for just a moment to tongue farther down her body and run his mouth between her legs. He pushed her knees aside, French-kissing her deeply and sucking on her clit.

  Her gasps became sharper, but he didn’t want to let her release too soon. He wanted to be inside her when she came.

  He backed off, keeping her legs apart so that she couldn’t find relief from his torment. She was reaching for him, begging for him, but he captured her hands and pinned them above her head again.

  “You like to hold me down, don’t you?” Dree groaned.

  Oh, she had no idea.

  He kissed her and made her wait some more, tweaking her nipples with the fingers of his other hand, while she writhed on the bed and her hands twisted in his, trying to get free.

  When he thought he had her absolutely at the peak of frenzy, he slowly pressed himself inside of her, making her wait even for his full length.

  The heat and slickness of her body as he pushed in was almost too much for him.

  He gritted his teeth and slowed further.

  Her body bucked underneath him, but Maxence pulled away, holding her back.

  Slower.

  Maybe minutes later, maybe hours, he was trembling from restraining himself. He continued to move slowly, torturing her by inches, not giving her the satisfaction she wanted until she was on the brink of madness.

  Closer.

  Maxence told her, “Don’t scream. Don’t make a sound.”

  He knew what she would do instead.

  She whimpered with closed lips, her eyes squeezed shut as he rocked into her, feeling her silken body along the length of himself.

  Her fists rolled where he had pinned her hands above her head, the slim muscles in her wrists flexing in his grip.

  Almost.

  He pushed in
to her, rolling his hips, digging himself deeper inside her. She bucked under him, sweat misting her skin as their musk filled the room like the fresh scent of a blue sea.

  He buried his cock deeply inside her.

  Her eyes clenched as she tried to comply with what he wanted, but her throat worked with unvoiced screams, and her fists tightened.

  Now.

  He released her hands, braced himself on his elbows, and drove himself into her.

  She arched under him, her hot flesh pressed against his and slipping along his length.

  And her hands—

  Her hands floated down to the skin on his back.

  And alighted there like birds.

  Her talons pressed his flesh.

  And dug in.

  His suffocating soul inhaled the pain with a frantic gasp.

  “Don’t scream,” he whispered in her ear as he barreled into her.

  Her fingernails raked the skin on his back.

  She pierced his skin, clinging to him, straining for release and not to scream.

  Lines of ice rose on his shoulders and lats.

  Panic and rage escaped his body.

  More.

  Beads of sweat and blood trickled over his ribs and fell to the bed around them.

  She arched, a keening scream, her body clenching him as she came, and her fingernails doing more damage.

  Max sparked and caught fire.

  His balls clenched. Blinding white light slammed through him, and unfolded within him, and he hung suspended in the unthinking bliss. His body and soul flooded through himself and into her.

  Her breath whispered in his ear, slid around the curls of his ear, and trickled into his mind. Her words, her pleadings, her prayers.

  Her hands brushed his hair away from his eyes.

  Guilt and remorse thundered like storm clouds on a far horizon as they had been for days, but they didn’t roll in. He turned away from them, toward her.

  Max tightened his arms around her, holding her, pressing his lips to her temple, her cheek, and her open, eager mouth. These final kisses were everything to him, a moment of connection when the tides of lust receded.

  Her arms folded around his neck, and she kissed him back, murmuring things he shouldn’t hear but strained to hold onto.

  “That was amazing,” she said.

  “So are you.”

  He tilted off her and rolled to the bed, where he got rid of the condom, turned out the light, and wrapped her in his arms.

  He didn’t want her to see.

  “Don’t leave,” she pleaded.

  “I won’t,” he said. “Not for a while. My flight is early in the morning, though.”

  “Mine is later,” she said. “I need to leave the hotel about ten.”

  “I’ll be gone when you wake.”

  Her small fingers crawled into his. “You’re amazing. I had the time of my life these few days. Thank you for everything.”

  He squeezed her soft body. “You have enchanted me. I hope you find what you’re looking for, and I wish we could meet again someday.”

  “But we can’t.”

  “I know,” he sighed.

  “I’m sorry about that.”

  “Me, too,” he said, pouring all the meaning he could into those words.

  “Who are you, really?” she asked in the darkness.

  “Prince Augustine of Monagasquay, second in line to the throne and the spare heir who will never inherit,” he said. “Because while I’ve been with you, I’ve felt more myself than I have in years. Any other name that I have been called isn’t me anymore.”

  “Okay, fine, Prince Auggie. What do your tattoos mean?” she asked sleepily.

  He stretched one arm into a slice of Paris’s light that peeked in through the curtains and lay across the bed. The ink on the inside of his forearm above his wrist looked gray and black in the moonlight, but it wasn’t. “My friends, Arthur and Casimir, have the same tattoo, but rotated,” he said. “The red and white harlequin pattern, the diamond checkerboard here, represents me because I am a prince of Monagasquay.”

  She snorted, and Maxence smiled in the darkness.

  He said, “Casimir is a Dutch prince, so the orange field and white lion is a symbol of the Dutch royal family.”

  “Uh, I hate my junior-high geography teacher, Mrs. Galbraith, right now. Where’s Dutch-land?”

  “The Netherlands, actually,” Max told her.

  “Not just a place in Minecraft, huh?” she asked.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a video game. You learn some weird things when you have an autistic nephew. I babysit Victor a couple of times a month so Mandi can go grocery shopping in peace. What’s the other one, the one with three crowns?”

  “Not crowns but coronets.”

  “They look like crowns.”

  “Arthur would tell you that there is a significant difference because the coronet signifies that he is an earl, not a prince or a king. This is very important to him, that he is an English nobleman.”

  “Oh, he’s the Sir Arthur Sumpin’-Sumpin’ who rented the hotel room.”

  “The very one. He’s the Earl of Severn.”

  “Oh, Lord Severn. I get it.” Dree nodded. “Like Severn Snape.”

  “Close, and I would bet that Arthur’s house would be Slytherin, were it not named Spencer House.”

  Dree laughed. “I only read the slashfic anymore because, you know. Hermione and Draco forever.”

  Maxence smiled more in the darkness.

  She didn’t believe him.

  She didn’t have to. The night was perfect because he could tell her anything.

  He could tell her everything.

  He could tell her about when he had been kidnapped when he was nine and held for two weeks on a rusty freighter ship off the coast of Europe, and about how he’d finally gotten away because his family hadn’t done jack shit to get him back.

  Max could tell her all the people who might kill him, if they had the chance.

  The list was long.

  Estebe Fournier, the mafia boss, because Max had rescued his wife, Simone. Estebe held grudges.

  Max’s older brother Pierre, probably, because Max existed.

  His uncle Jules, who had over a billion reasons to kill Maxence, if he could, if it even mattered.

  More.

  Maxence held Dree Clark more tightly in his arms.

  The beds at the Four Seasons George V were so comfortable.

  “And what’s the tattoo on your back?”

  Maxence tried to answer her.

  Darkness settled around him.

  Darkness and silence.

  Maxence breathed in her scent, clutching this moment.

  He breathed, “Estebe, Pierre, Jules, Pope Celestine the Sixth—”

  “They’re on your back?” Dree murmured, but she was falling asleep, too.

  In his mind, he told her what they were, but then he was flying over Paris’s lights and the Eiffel Tower with Pope Celestine the Sixth chasing him, and then he broke out into the moonlight.

  Too soon, the sounds of the traffic outside the hotel crept through the curtains, and dawn leaked into the room.

  His phone buzzed.

  Your plane leaves in two hours from Orly. Be on it this time.

  Chapter Nineteen

  A One-Way Trip to Nowhere

  Dree

  Dree woke up alone in the feather-soft bed at the Four Seasons in Paris when room service knocked on the door with breakfast and coffee. “Monsieur said that you should have a dozen croissants.”

  “I can’t eat them all,” Dree told the woman.

  The Black woman pressed her lips together primly and spoke with a Caribbean accent. “I would never judge, but I can tell you that the hotel’s croissants are worth the calories if you do.”

  “Can I ask you a question, ma’am?”

  “Of course, madam. What would you like to know?”

  “Is there a balance?”
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br />   Dree was praying that Augustine hadn’t swindled her, too. If he had left the hotel and stuck her with the bill, she couldn’t pay back what all of this must’ve cost in her lifetime.

  The room service waiter cocked her head quizzically, her ponytail leaning to one side. “I beg your pardon?”

  Dree asked, “Is there a balance on the bill? How much do I owe the hotel?”

  The waiter’s dark eyes brightened as she figured out what Dree was talking about. She held her hands out in front of herself and did a jazz-hands thing, shaking them. She was obviously skilled at communicating with hotel guests when everyone was trying to make do with their third language.

  She said, “No, no. The gentleman has settled the bill. He said his account was to be left open until you leave the hotel. He has scheduled you for late check-out, up until four in the afternoon. If you want anything from room service or to order something from a store, it will all be on the hotel bill. It is all taken care of. He has tipped us generously and said that you are not to be bothered.”

  “Okay. Um, thanks. The coffee smells heavenly.”

  “Please ring if there is anything else you require.”

  And then Dree was alone in the hotel room.

  She packed her clothes and carefully tucked the napkin with her bucket list inside one of the zippered side pockets. Ten of the items had been crossed off her list, which was amazing for four days. Her life was changing.

  Although, she and Augustine had never tried the butt stuff.

  And butt stuff was on that napkin in several variations.

  Yeah, well, Augustine may not be the guy she’d want to pick for first-time butt stuff.

  Maybe she’d want someone . . . less enormous.

  The emptiness in the room felt odd every time she turned around and no one was there.

  She just kept expecting Augustine to be around, sitting in a chair with his long legs crossed and watching her with his dark, intense stare, or asleep in the bed with a look of absolute peace smoothing his skin.

  A couple of times, when she’d awakened before him, she’d watched Augustine sleep. It wasn’t in a creepy way. Not too creepy, anyway. She was trying to memorize the perfect planes of his face, the hard angle of his jaw, the heavy muscle that lay on his shoulders and arms, and the way his black hair fell in waves across his forehead.