So he kissed her again. Held her glorious weight in his arms and devoured her mouth until she went soft and pliant again. Until his ravenous cock was straining harder than ever against the fall of his trousers. Until she made a breathy sound of surrender that told him she had forgotten her objections. He began lowering her back to the bed, because he had taken her in a chair as if she were no better than a common strumpet, and because he wanted to pleasure her as she deserved, in the greatest comfort this damned prison of a chamber would afford them.
But she stiffened again, tearing her mouth from his. “Maxim.”
There was protest in her voice and in the stubborn set of her jaw. He kissed her there, nuzzling her silken skin and wishing hehad her in his bedchamber at home in Varros. His bed had been built specifically for him, the size immense. How beautiful she would look in his sheets, naked and his. Yes, he would have her there and everywhere else he could.
“Not in her bed,” she repeated. “We can’t.”
Damn it.
He groaned and lifted his head, thwarted lust making his voice low and raspy. “Not the cot, spitfire. I’ll break it, and then how will we explain that to the guards?”
She nodded. “You are very large.”
His chest puffed up with pride. He couldn’t help it.
She caressed his cheek. “The floor? We can spread some counterpanes.”
He kissed her palm, then couldn’t resist running his tongue along the lined surface, tasting her. “It will have to do until I have you where I want you.”
He could have cursed himself for mentioning the future, when he wanted to keep her agile mind very much in the present. So he kissed her again before she could further ponder what he’d said or find new reasons why they shouldn’t make love.
He gave her ravishing kisses, hard and swift and deep and passionate kisses. Kisses that he intended to banish every modicum of resistance in her body. All the loyalty that belonged to anyone other than him, too.
Maxim walked toward the fireplace and deposited her gently in a chair. She looked wide-eyed and dazed, thoroughly kissed, and deliciously beddable. He paused for a moment, even as lust licked through him, and stared at the vision she presented.
His.
New pride rose inside him, along with another feeling that was far more than lust. He cupped her cheek and kissed her again for good measure and then reluctantly turned awayto retrieve some coverlets from the abandoned bed she had decreed they couldn’t make use of.
Anything to please her.
He scooped up as much of it as he could in his arms and turned back to her, feeling every inch the triumphant warrior about to claim his prize. Sweet, gray-eyed, devoted, beautiful, stubborn Tansy, who possessed a fouler vocabulary than some men he knew. The corner of his lips tugged up as he remembered her Boritanian curse the day he had first come to the town house and found her alone.
May God rot your cock.
“You’re smiling,” she said, as if his levity were a thing of wonder.
And perhaps it was.
Maxim couldn’t recall the last time he’d felt so damned content.
“I was hoping you aren’t wishing for any deities to curse a certain portion of my anatomy now that you’ve enjoyed it for yourself,” he confessed softly, teasingly.
There was a strange lightness within him now that had no business lingering. A dizzying glow that tempted him mightily to believe in fanciful notions he’d long thought nothing more than blatant falsehoods.
Happiness.
Love.
Hope.
All emotions he’d known once. Emotions he’d vowed never to allow himself again after they had been so ruthlessly snatched away. Emotions he had no right to entertain in his present position. But he couldn’t help himself as he spread the blankets before the fire.
Tansy had risen, her fingers chasing his, delicate and fine-boned in his massive paws. “Let me.”
“No.” Here was another rare indulgence, the ability to do something for someone else. Ordinarily, everyone else did for him. Servants, privy council, even the fawning courtiers and the men who had fought at his side. He brought her hand to his lips for a reverent kiss, then her wrist, holding her gaze. “Allow me. I want to.”
Another admission. It seemed he was full of them today.
