42. Max
Max
The water came up already steaming, smelling of roses that weren’t grown in Hell.
Everything here ran on magic alone. No Stormglass cores humming in the walls, no engines, nothing like the surface. Just my father’s will, and I could taste it in every stone and beam of steel, the whole realm shaped around one superior being’s intention like Earth orbiting the sun.
And the realm was already reaching for me, seeking connection. If I stayed, Hell would obey me too.
But I knew better than to stay. Blood wasn’t everything. I’d chosen my family.
The heat worked knots out of my body I hadn’t known were tied, and with nothing left to distract me, Greta’s second condition came and sat down on my shoulders.
It must be your heart’s desire. Both hearts.
It would have been easier with any of the other heirs, wouldn’t it?
I’d given Aelindor everything there was to give a man. He was my first, and he’d claimed me in front of three kingdoms. “Nothing changes. Max is ours.”
And they were mine.
Only none of them were here. Three of them were on the other side of a realm, holding a war together, and they didn’t know what was about to happen here.
I missed all of them so much my chest ached with it.
And the one who was here had never declared that he wanted me. I’d dragged him into this, and I still had no idea what was inside his head.
There was chemistry between us, and not even Drakken could deny or hide it. What I was afraid of was that it wasn’t enough. If it was only physical, then the rite would fail.
The Mistress of Rites had said hearts’ desire. Not performance.
The old scenes came up through the water like silt. Gray eyes going flat with loathing across an interrogation table, the spotlight burning my face. The Sorting fire, built with me in mind. And his voice, cold and harsh, calling me warlock boy.
His hate for me couldn’t have just evaporated without a trace.
We’d failed before we started. I’d be Xander’s slave forever.
And what was the point of going through a public consummation and humiliation for nothing?
Tears rolled down my face and dropped into the bathwater, and I let them fall until they were done. Then I told myself the rest of it.
I might never have the heirs again. I might have to let them go, all four, every future I’d let myself want. But Xander, my half-brother, would never have me. I’d erase that sadistic pervert fucker from the face of the earth, even if I burned with him.
My spine straightened in the jade tub. Determination settled in my middle like a poured rod of Coldiron.
The knock came, urgent.
“I’m not decent,” I called out.
“I’ve seen you naked before,” Drakken said on the other side of the door. “We need to talk now, Max.”
“Wait.”
The dragon didn’t wait. He pushed the door open just as I pulled my knees to my chest.
I didn’t tell him to get the fuck out.
His gray eyes roamed over me, and heat lived in them.
“Hi,” he said.
I nodded.
“I just want to talk.” He ran a hand back over his hair.
He was in his own clothes, hair damp, jaw shaved, fresh from a fast shower and still a little wild with it. None of that dimmed him. Drakken’s beauty had never been the warm kind. It was harsh, cold, cut instead of grown.
Disheveled only made him look touchable, and he’d never once been touchable.
“There’s something I haven’t told you. I came to say it.”
“I know you hate the idea,” I said, steadying my breath.
“Of us. It’s okay. I can live with that.
We don’t need to go through the rite. We’ll fly back to the base tonight.
” I swallowed, and the fire came up behind my eyes where the tears had been.
“We’ll deal with whatever comes, and I’ll kill Xander.
I’ll bring him the fuck down with me. I swear it. ”
“You’ll have to wait in line, Spartan girl,” he said, a faint smile ghosting his lips. “But we can’t kill him while you’re linked to him. I won’t allow any harm to come to you.”
I blinked at him. He’d protected me, on a bridge, at a border, in the academy. But he’d never once put it into words like that.
“I’m an asset,” I said, nodding my understanding. “But it’s still worth it, dragging Xander down. Even if I have to be the sacrifice, General. I’ll have no regrets.”
“I won’t allow you to sacrifice yourself for anyone, any cause, or any kingdom,” he swore, his eyes burning. “You don’t understand, Max. If you die, my world goes dark.”
Was he telling me I mattered to him?
“But that’s not why I came,” he said. “I haven’t been honest with you, or with my brothers, or with myself. Not completely, anyway. Not when it comes to you.”
He crossed to the bath’s edge and crouched down so we were level, forearms on his knees. He fought to keep his eyes on my face, and mostly won. But he’d seen me already, the top curve of my breasts above my folded knees, and he’d lingered there a beat too long on the way up.
The heir who’d never knelt to anything was down at the lip of my bath, eye to eye.
“I was the jerk who forced you into a fire,” he said.
“From your first day at the fortress, I was hostile toward you. I was cruel. I told myself I’d put you to the sword the moment I proved whose blood ran in your veins.
And then the proof landed in front of me, worse than my worst suspicion, and all I wanted was to guard you and protect you.
That was when my own truth stared back at me. Nothing matters except you.”
He drew a rough breath. “I’ve wanted you for so long, and I fought it harder than I’ve fought anything else.
I wanted you from the first day I saw you, before I knew you were a woman, and I hated myself for it, and I took the hating out on you.
I don’t deserve your forgiveness, Max. But I want to do better, and I can, if you let me.
Even if you can’t find it in you to forgive me, I’ll still do right by you.
Always. But if you’ll have me, I’ll mate you, and claim you, and there won’t be anyone else. ”
I breathed in and breathed out as the truth sat between us, and it rearranged everything it touched.
Every cold look I’d cataloged got a second meaning filed behind the first. All that hostility had been a man fighting a war on the inside of his own ribs, and losing, and I’d been the front line the whole time without knowing it.
The water swayed against my ribs. Through the view window, far below, the burning ocean raised slow amber waves.
“Hundreds of strangers will be watching,” I said. “The entire high demon court.”
“I don’t give a fuck, and I’ll show them all how much I want you.”
My face flamed, not from the steaming water.
“And if I say no?” I ventured.
He reached for my hand where it rested on my knee and lifted it. He pressed his mouth to my knuckles, and the pleasure of that one small touch sank into my bones. I gasped before I could stop it, at how much my body wanted him, at how loud the wanting was.
My breasts grew heavy, my nipples turning taut, and worst of all was the ache throbbing between my thighs.
“You call the shots,” he said against my fingers. “If you say no, we go home with the geas on, and we find another road. And I’ll carry you every mile of it.”
I gazed at him, at the harsh, cold, beautiful face that had finally stopped hiding, and the last thread in the snarl pulled free.
I smiled. “Let’s do it, dragon.”
I stood up out of the tub.
Water sheeted off me, and I made no move to cover anything. I let Drakken look. We’d come a long way to this, the two of us, through fire and interrogation rooms and a war, and he looked like a man starved.
He rose slowly, gray eyes traveling from my face to my breasts to my thighs, and staying on my aching, wet sex. His eyes had gone molten gold, and his lips parted as if all he’d ever wanted was to feast on my pussy, right here, right now.
All I wanted was to writhe beneath him.
The heat coming off him could have dried me where I stood.