Her eyes were still a little wide, and she was looking right at him and had her face angled away. Her lowered eyebrow looked like she was angry, not afraid.
Maxence tilted his head, smiling at her and holding out his hand. “Come on. Let me shower you. We’re home, and we’re fine now. The Crown Council meeting isn’t until six o’clock tonight. We have time.”
She paused, and his soul cringed in that flow of time until their hands touched.
But they did.
Her soft fingers slid over his palm, and he closed his hand around hers.
Maxence bent and scooped her up under her knees and shoulders and carried her to the bathroom, looking down into her eyes and smiling the whole way.
She smiled back at him.
And then her smile widened.
And then she was laughing as he shouldered open the bedroom and then bathroom doors and stood her on her feet while he twisted on the hot water in the shower and began stripping her clothes off of her.
She said, “Oh, I’ve got—”
“Shhh,”he hushed her. Maxence didn’t stop removing her clothes, peeling ragged, destroyed white silk from her skin as she giggled and spun to let him get to her zippers. “Don’t speak. Don’t even whisper. We’re safe, and you’re mine, now.”
She shrugged and nodded.
When the dress lay in a ragged heap on the tile, she was still wearing some sort of engineered underwear. He twirled her around so her back was to him and unfastened the row of hooks running down her back.
Oh, how he loved the ridiculous corsetry she wore. Undressing her was like solving a puzzle to unwrap his favorite candy bar and devour it every night. They were so feminine and girlie and delicate and everything he liked to look at and touch.
When the sides of the undergarment gaped apart, Dree caught it and seemed to be holding it against her chest, which was oddly modest for her. She knew he liked tolook.
The thin platinum chain that held the cross he’d given her for Christmas in Nepal still looped around her neck, a miracle after everything that had happened since the Sea Change Gala the night before. He reached around behind her neck and gently unclasped it, letting it coil into his palm.
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,hischérie,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,disgustingwarehouse 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.
