“Close your eyes,” he said.
Her eyelids drifted down, shuttering her eyes.
Darkness descended. A red glow shone through her eyelids above and to the left, where the crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling.
The air warmed around her temples first, and the silk of the black bow tie he’d been wearing touched the bridge of her nose. It clung to her face as he tied the soft fabric behind her head.
Maxence said, his voice low, “Hands at your sides. Head down.”
Dree squeezed her knees together and did what he told her to, waiting.
Soft susurrations drifted to her ears through the air, and she assumed the dull thuds must be his clothes dropping onto the Oriental carpet under the four-poster bed.
The warmth and humidity of his breath coasted along the side of Dree’s neck and feathered her ear as he placed a soft kiss on the shell.
A rough push on her sternum forced her backward. Her legs flipped out from underneath her as she landed on her back, bouncing on the soft mattress. The glow from the chandelier moved across her darkened field of vision.
Warmth and weight covered her like a cloud sliding over the sun, and Maxence’s cologne—a scent like clean bed linens wrapped around clove-studded oranges and stored in a cedar chest—enveloped her face and filled her nose when she breathed.
Pressure stroked up her arms, lifting them above her head, and then the vice of his hand clamped her wrists and pinned them to the silk comforter.
His mouth was gentle at first, patiently drawing at her lips when he kissed her and trailing down her throat as she arched under him.
But then his bites became harsher on her neck and shoulders, and because she couldn’t see, her gasps grated in her ears. His body was on top of her, a mountain of flesh she was buried under, the smooth skin of his chest sliding upon her chiffon nightgown.
Above her head, Maxence stroked the underside of her palms and fingers, brushing the tips of her fingernails.
He held her down, using his mouth on her throat and breasts and wedging one of his muscular thighs between her legs to press against her and drive her crazy. Even though he was still wearing his tuxedo trousers made of fine silk and wool, the fabric ground against her sheer panties, and the pressure of his thick leg rubbed her delicate skin and nub.
Her body tensed, anticipating him.
In minutes, she was moaning against his mouth and gasping as he sucked on the peak of each of her breasts, while his knee between her legs pressed against her in the same rhythm as her breathing.
He accelerated his onslaught, bracing himself on his knees and the hand pinning her wrists to the bed. His other hand stroked, grasped, and pinched her while his mouth plundered hers, his tongue stroking hers with the rough side of his. She was writhing under him, each breath a moan or a gasp as he found new ways to torment her while she waited for him to decide it was time to take her.
He’d unzipped his pants at some point because his erection pushed against her, his stiff shaft stroking between her folds even through her chiffon panties.
When he bit her breast around her nipple and then pulled back, sucking hard, the sting so intense that she nearly had an orgasm right then, she cried out, and Maxence released her hands.
Dree grabbed his shoulders, ducking her head and clinging to him, nearly crying.
The tattoo on the skin of his back was pebbled under her fingertips, the fibrous tissue pocked and contracted into ridges.
She was so wound up, wanting to die or scream if he didn’t take herhardright then, that her fingers began to curl over his skin.
Her fingernails were already pressing into his flesh, pushing back into her nail beds as she began to dig in.
His breath in her ear stuttered, and his back bowed, pressing back against her nails.
With the black fabric of his bow tie over her eyes, the texture of his skin under her fingertips felt exaggerated, like the lumps and cords of keloid tissue.
Keloid?
Those werescars.
And they couldn’t beunderneaththe tattoo. The tattoo ink would have gone over the scars if they’d been first. The scars had happenedafterthe tattoo, after the artwork had been finished.
That was why white furrows—some thick and some deep, and some of them very recent—shattered the perfectly shaded lines of the feathers and bones of the angelic wings Arthur had drawn on Maxence’s skin.
