In the mirror, she watched her fingers draw dark pink lines on his skin.
In her ear, Maxence growled, “I didn’t tell you to do it yet.”
He pulled out, grabbed her hips, and flipped her over to bend her over the bathroom counter, pressing the side of her face and her breasts that were raw from his mouth against the cold marble. Her nipples squeezed tight on the frigid stone.
Maxence kicked her ankles apart, angled himself at her entrance, and rammed himself up inside her.
Dree was already so open that the invasion of his body into hers didn’t hurt. Instead, it was a raw rush that nearly sent her over the edge. He grabbed her hips, and Dree arched her back as he slammed into her, their skin slapping together, as he growled in her ear, “You’re mine to do with as I want, understand? I tell you what to do, and you do it. I decide what to do to you, and you submit.”
Dree nodded because,oh yes,she understood. She understood, andshe craved it,and she wanted him to push her body to its limits and show her what he could do to her.
He pounded into her until she was whimpering, hanging onto the ragged edge of the cliff of her orgasm, almost going over from the force of his cock inside of her, but she couldn’t quite make it.
Tears rolled down her face from frustration, and when she arched her back, trying to find that one last bit of stimulation she craved, she opened her eyes.
In the wide mirror above the bathroom counter, Maxence’s eyes met her gaze as he drove into her. He’d been watching. The dark ferocity she saw in his eyes was a blue-hot star burning the vast darkness of space, the sharpness of a man who would burn the world down if it pleased him to do so.
When he saw the tears running down her face, his eyes lit with triumph and he reached under her, first squeezing her soft skin together until she ducked her head, pushing on the mirror with her hands to brace herself against his onslaught, and then rubbing his finger through her folds and over the bright point of her clit until her head spun, her eyes squeezed shut, and the world fell upon her.
Waves of ecstasy flooded her body and mind, cresting in her head and dragging her back under, the darkness and screaming oblivion so complete that her identity was gone.
Hours later, maybe months later, her hearing returned as Maxence thrust into her one final time. A hoarse cry tore from his throat as his body’s muscular cords strained and pulsed within her.
Oh, yeah,if this was being a ‘sub,’ shelikedit.
Chapter Thirty
The Crownless Prince
Maxence
Three months of official mourning for Maxence’s late uncle had elapsed in the latter part of March, so Maxence’s enthronement was held the following week.
Early that morning, Dree had been blow-drying her hair while Maxence shaved. The Mass would start in two hours, and the enthronement ceremony was scheduled for early in the evening, followed by the reception, a gala, and fireworks.
Dree had been studying the engraved invitation they’d sent to the world’s royalty and political leaders the previous month. She frowned with pretty little lines creasing the delicate skin between her eyes. “I thought it was called a coronation.”
Maxence glanced at her but was being careful not to cut his face before a thousand photographers took his picture that day. “Not in Monaco. We call it an enthronement, not a coronation.”
“That’s weird.” Dree began to apply the moisturizer that her stylist had left for her. “Queen Elizabeth the second had a coronation. That Spanish King a few years ago had a coronation. Why are they calling yours something different?”
Maxence stretched up his chin, carefully scraping away the thick, black stubble that sprouted on his face since he’d shaved the previous evening before those scheduled events. “Probably because we don’t have a crown.”
“What!”
He said, “We’ve never bothered to purchase one. Perhaps there is a regal requirement, where they’re not allowed to sell us one because we’re aprincelyfamily, not aroyalone. Maybe one has to be consideredroyaltyand akingbefore Van Cleef and Arpels or Cartier will sell you one. Or else maybe it must be forged from the swords of one’s defeated medieval enemies, and we missed the opportunity.”
Dree squinted at him. “But you have aCrownCouncil, and one of your medal thingies is called the Order of theCrown. How can you have a Crown Council and an Order of the Crown if you don’t have acrown?”
“I do have a chain of office like a mayoral collar, a carcanet called the Collar of the Order of Saint Charles that I’ll wear around my neck and shoulders. It will be the first time I’ve worn that andofficiallyrested my serene ass on the throne. Therefore, not coronation, butenthronement.”
She raised an eyebrow at him.“Officially?You sat on the throne before you were supposed to?”
Maxence shrugged at her. “My cousins and I used to run wild in this castle. We used to climb up on the back of the throne and jump off. It’s covered in gold, so it’sheavy.It made an excellent, sturdy base for little boys and girls to leap off of.”
Marie-Therese had been there, Maxence remembered, jumping with the rest of them. Her skirt had floated around her like a parachute.
And Pierre. He’d been a little too old to be childishly gleeful but took longer leaps entirely off the dais as a feat of strength, landing on the inlaid marble floor with both feet in a solid thump.
