Chapter Twenty-Five #2
The quiver that passed through her went straight through him.
“I want you, Maxen.”
The words tore something loose inside him, old and primal, and what replaced it was dangerous in another way his mind could not begin to grasp: a tenderness so sharp it nearly felled him. An overwhelming need to claim her roared through his veins, fierce as the very pulse that kept him alive.
She wriggled beneath him, lifting just enough for him to strip away her jacket and shirt, their urgency making the act clumsy, desperate, perfect.
He flung each garment aside until only her stays remained, and he could no more keep from dragging his mouth over the swell of her breast than he could stop the moon giving way for the sun.
He wanted to mark her.
Leave proof of this moment. His teeth grazed her skin, and he clenched a fist to keep from biting down. She didn’t deserve such animalistic behavior. He might be a beast. But with her, he could never be beastly. He could, however, be impatient.
He dragged his tongue over her skin. “I want you naked. Completely.”
She laughed, husky, half-daring. “Are you asking for my permission?”
His jaw tightened, eyes burning into hers. “I’m telling you what I want.” His thumb traced the curve of her breast. “Every inch of you bared to me.”
Her fingers caught at his hair, tugging. “Greedy man.”
“I am greedy. So bloody greedy.”
“So am I.” She bared her neck to him. “Aren’t you a criminal overlord who takes what he wants? So take me.”
Bloody everlasting damnation.
His cock swelled more painfully.
“You should be punished for those words,” he rasped, pulling at the ties of her stays. His mouth followed, hot and unrelenting down her skin. “Punished severely.”
“How?” She exhaled a small groan.
“With my lips. My body.”
“I’ll allow it, dark prince.”
Her stays flew across the room. Damn. Damn. Damn. He lowered his head and closed his mouth over one peak, treasuring the gasp that tore out of her.
“God, Calliope,” he muttered against her skin. “I could spend the rest of my life here.” His hand cupped the other breast, thumb teasing, dying for every sound she gave him. “Sweetest bloody punishment I’ve ever delivered.”
She arched, laughing breathlessly, tugging his hair. “You call this punishment?”
He lifted his head just enough to growl. “The night has only just started.”
His hands dragged down to her breeches, working with more urgency than skill. He cursed, low and vicious. “These damn things.”
“I quite like them,” she teased.
“I don’t,” he ground out, yanking at the stubborn cloth until he could shove breeches and drawers beneath together down her hips. He hated that his brothers had seen her in them as well. Several times now.
She lifted her sweet derriere, wriggling to help him work them down.
Her boots made it clumsy, however. Muttering another curse, he rose to his knees where he straddled her, and twisted around, tugging at the leather until he got one off, then the other, tossing them aside before stripping away the last of her clothes in one rough sweep.
This was not the polished seduction she deserved.
Just raw, desperate need, and while he knew she deserved so much more than this, Maxen didn’t know how to be anything else.
Fortunately, his luck must have been great in his past life, for this brilliant woman didn’t seem to mind.
“There,” he said as he twisted back to her. “No more damned barriers.”
“Now you.”
“Happy to oblige, love.” He tore his jacket from his shoulders, flinging it carelessly to the floor. Then he dragged his shirt over his head and threw it aside.
Her gaze locked on his chest in fascination. Something tender, hot, and dangerous to him. He paused before the corner of his mouth twitched. “Go on. You’ve already touched them.”
She did. Her fingers traced the ridges, featherlight, and his whole body jerked as if she’d struck him. Breath slammed out of his lungs, chest drawing tight.
Had anyone ever touched him like this?
No. But then, he’d never revealed these scars to anyone but her.
Heat ripped through him, violent, scorching, worse than any blade he’d ever taken when she levered herself up to place her lips over one particular scar just above his breeches.
His heart thundered. God help him, he wanted to snarl, to shove her away before she saw too much, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t move at all.
“Christ, Calliope, careful.” If she kept looking at him like that, touching him like this, she’d undo every last bolt he’d hammered into place.
“How did they happen?”
“War.” Probably not the kind she’d imagine.
She scoffed. “I should have known better than to ask.”
His gaze pinned her. So bloody beautiful, her throat and body bared, her eyes on him as if he were worth looking at. He reached for the flaps of his breeches, jaw clenched, breath sawing, every nerve near to breaking. “I need to remove my—”
“No,” she breathed, catching his wrists, eyes gone dark with urgency. “No time. I need you now, Maxen.”
God save him.
The words punched through the last splinter of discipline.
He fumbled the buttons and shoved the breeches over his hips, his cock freed, heavy, aching, and throbbing with the same need that wrecked him.
But as much as he wanted her, he couldn’t just mount her and have his way like a rutting dog.
He lowered himself between her legs, lips scraping down her body until his mouth hovered over the place he wanted most.
She gasped, sharp and breathless. “Maxen, what are you—?”
Her words cut off just as he sealed his mouth over her core, claiming her there just as ruthlessly as he’d claimed her lips above.
Her cry nearly made him explode there and then, her taste burning into him like fire and absolution.
He gripped her thighs harder, holding her to him, refusing to let her escape the truth of what he was giving her—the truth that he could worship, that he could destroy, and that she held the power of it all in the palm of her hands.
That she owned him.
Body and soul.
His thumb traced her nub while he pushed a finger into her, and her body answered him like the tides answer the moon, and the sound she made drove him to the cliff edge. And God help him, he would take it all, every gasp, every shiver, brand them onto his soul until he was ruined beyond saving.
But he was just a damn man.
He nearly lost it when she cried out his name, or perhaps it was snapped as a curse, he couldn’t tell at this point.
He could hardly hear anything other than the pulse in his damn cock threatening to explode.
He clenched his jaw and forced his mind elsewhere.
Horseflesh, the stallion coming up for sale in a month.
Anything to keep from spilling like a green boy.
Hands fisted his hair and yanked.
Her look said it all.
Take me. Now.
Maxen chuckled, bending over her, bracing his forearm beside her head, his other hand sliding to guide his cock to her entrance. “Didn’t you like that, love?”
She stilled. “It’s not that I didn’t, but shouldn’t something else go there?”
Another chuckle as he teased the tip of her breast with nose. “My lips are still part of my body, is it not?” He nudged inside.
“It’s different,” she said. “I want to be one with you. Be one with me.”
“Look at me,” he whispered.
She did.
“Tell me you want me.”
Her lips parted, before whispering, “I want you.”
He pushed into her.
She clutched at him, and he bit back a groan that sounded so much like surrender.
He sank deeper, and she rose to meet him, and somewhere in the meeting a piece of him he’d kept walled in for years broke loose and fled.
When he reached a barrier, he pressed his mouth to the hollow at her collarbone, over the beat of her pulse as he drew back and thrust through it.
Boody home.
But the word wasn’t big enough. Nothing was. He felt her open to him, stretching, reaching. She took him in as if the world had been arranged for this, and the feel of her around him—hot, tight, his—cut through every scar he’d ever worn.
“Christ.” His head dropped to hers. “I can’t lose this. I can’t.”
“Who says you will?” she whispered, the words a thread pulled straight from her core to his.
He moved, slow first, finding her rhythm, then faster as she urged him with hands and hips and those small, wrecking sounds he would hear in his sleep for the next thousand nights.
She unfurled, stretching, reaching, embedding deep into his soul.
And he was a man whose shadow could black out her stars.
Perhaps it would.
But she was the damn stars. He could never smother them. Not when she cast all her light on him. They burned too bright. She was the light that evaporated his shadow. He had no power to hide himself from her.
“I need—” His voice broke. “Calliope. I need—”
Bloody everlasting hell.
“Take it,” she voiced on a sigh. “Take me.”
He set a hand beneath her thigh and hitched her higher and drove deep, until she was shaking, until his own bones rattled from the pleasure.
Every shudder, every gasp told him where to lead.
His thumb found her, circling in the rhythm she set, taking his cue from the frantic dance of her hips, until she broke apart against his hand and his cock.
“That’s it, love.” He pounded harder. “Show me. Let me feel you.”
“Beast,” she said.
“I’m not a gentle man, love.”
“I know,” she croaked. “I chose you.”
Something in him howled at that—something young and starved and damn unworthy. He was moving harder now, drowning in the heat and clutch of her, and still it wasn’t enough. Nothing would ever be enough. He would spend the rest of his life trying to get closer and it wouldn’t be close enough.
“Promise me,” he said, the words ripped from some dark place. “Promise you’ll never leave Brighton without telling me, Calliope. Promise me.”
Promise you’ll never leave.
“I promise,” she murmured against his ear, and his whole body broke into shivers so violent he had to brace harder to keep from collapsing.
“Again,” he said, because he was greedy, because he would starve without hearing it twice.
“I promise.” Her lips brushed his jaw, his mouth, his throat—a litany of yeses.
He kissed her like he was a drowning man and her lips were air, then drew back enough to see her face as he drove them higher.
She was flushed and wild and perfect, pupils blown wide, lips swollen with his name.
He wanted to slow it, memorize every frame, but her hand slid into his hair and tugged, and that was the end of any thought of gentleness.
He felt the change gather in her—the tremor that began low and climbed, the way her breath caught and wouldn’t settle. “There,” he urged. “Come for me, love.”
He felt her tighten and his vision went white with it, the world dropping away until there was nothing but the clench of her around him. She had gifted herself to him without defense, and he would give her everything that was left of his life in return.
“Promise me again,” he growled.
She shattered on his cock.
He drove once more, twice, and the pleasure hit like a hammer, bright and obliterating. He buried his face in her neck and let it take him, every muscle strung and then undone, the release tearing through him with a violence that left him bloody shaking.
Like a damn youth.
He held there, locked deep, refusing to let the world back in. He didn’t move. He didn’t want to scare it away—the fragile, impossible peace of being where he’d never thought he’d belong.
“I promise.”