“I need to make certain you’re protected,” he said sternly, frowning down at her. “Until you’re in my court at home in Varros, this is the best I can do.”
She nodded, a sudden rush of tenderness overwhelming her. He was an arrogant, cold man in many senses, but with her, he was caring in a way she had never expected him to be. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me.” A muscle tensed in his jaw beneath the dark shadow of his stubble. He looked forbidding and fearsome. “It’s my duty to protect you. I wish I could do more, but with you being here guarded by Gustavson’s men and the princess’s position being so damned precarious, my hands are tied. Promise me that you will take great care with yourself and that you’ll go to my guards should anything happen.”
“I promise.”
He was always somber, a man clearly haunted by his past and the years he had spent waging war, but there was no denying how serious he was now. Maxim reached for her then, drawing her against his big body, the warmth and strength ofhim radiating into her. Despite herself, Tansy twined her arms around him, holding him close. He was in danger as well, and although he hadn’t provided much detail, she hated the notion of anything befalling him. He nuzzled her temple, his breath falling hotly over her ear.
“I need you safe, spitfire.”
She inhaled deeply of his scent, wishing their circumstances were not so hopeless, not daring to speak. For if she did, it would be to tell him that she needed him safe too, that she loved him, and those were words she had no right to speak.
CHAPTER 12
He shouldn’t have revealed such weakness to her.
Maxim regretted the admission the moment it left his lips, not because it wasn’t true. For he did need Tansy. Needed her so much it terrified him.Him, a man who hadn’t known fear on the battlefield even with death all but imminent.
But she was warm and soft and sweet-scented in his arms, and he may have been born to be king, but he was also man. Fallible, weak, susceptible man. Far too fallible where she was concerned.
No, he regretted his admission because he understood what it meant. He hadn’t known this deep, inexorable pull to anyone since Mina, and if he were brutally honest with himself, he would acknowledge that not even his feelings for Mina had been as strong as this all-consuming desire and deep, abiding…ye gods, he didn’t even have a name for it. His mind struggled to form a word, but he could find nothing to encompass all that he felt for Lady Tansy Francis. It was vast and frightening.
She turned her face toward him, and there was a look of such tenderness in her eyes, tenderness that was all for him. Tenderness that melted all the hard angles inside him intosomething molten and smooth. And then she cupped his cheek, the soft warmth of her skin setting him alight, and her lips angled over his. Tansy kissed him sweetly, tentatively at first and then with greater determination. A bolt of desire shot through him, making his cock instantly hard.
All his good intentions, his worries, were burned to ash. Nothing that wasn’t her mouth, her lush body, existed to him. He was lost in her, on fire for her, his need for her only increasing with every furious pump of his heart. His hands moved with a will of their own, molding to her waist, caressing. He shouldn’t be here with her now like this, inviting danger when there was already a perilous amount surrounding them.
Enough to drown in.
And yet, how could he be anywhere else? How could he not take her into his arms and carry her across the room to where the bed was still generously stuffed with blankets and pillows beneath the counterpane to resemble the missing princess?
He had to. Like his quest to regain the throne, Tansy had become a part of him, not so different from blood and bone. His booted strides were taking them across the chamber, their lips still fused. He kissed her like she was air and water and every other requirement of life in one. He kissed her like he was going to battle and feared he would never return—a kiss to last an eternity.
Kissed her and carried her to the bed, showing her wordlessly that she was his. That she meant far more to him than he had ever dared to imagine she could. That the flames burning hotly between them were inevitable. His legs met with the edge of the bed and he began lowering her to the mattress, intending to join her there.
But she broke the kiss, her breathing harsh, her lips painted dark from his mouth on hers. “Not in her bed. We can’t.”
He growled, staying himself mid-motion. “Why not? We made use of it previously.”
“We shouldn’t have. I wasn’t thinking properly.”
But she was now? Clearly, he would need to remedy that problem.
Maxim sighed. “Where, then?”
He would take her on the floor if necessary.
A terrible silence descended during which he feared she would deny him, deny them both what they so obviously wanted. But then she spoke, so quietly he could scarcely hear her past the blood rushing in his ears.
“My cot.”
He looked around furiously, a man possessed by the need to be inside his woman, and spied the small, portable bed in a corner of the room. Very small. By God, the frame looked as if it might bend and break beneath a strong wind.
He frowned. “I’ll never fit on there.”
She stiffened in his arms. “We shouldn’t.”
Not the words he wanted to hear.
