He stiffened above her, pounding into her one last time before he groaned into her kiss and the hot rush of his seed flooded her. The kiss turned sweeter, less frantic, and at last the tension seeped from his big body and he laid his head on her shoulder, breathing as hard as she was.
Tansy pressed another kiss to his scar.
She had never loved him more.
CHAPTER 13
The first sight that greeted him was his brother’s bare arse. The second was a pair of breasts covered in something that looked alarmingly like trifle, the avid tongue of another woman licking the syllabub layer away.
Maxim clamped a shielding hand over his eyes and averted his gaze to the floor. “Damn it, Nando.”
He had scoured half of London after reluctantly leaving Tansy earlier, intent upon finding his brother. Half fearing he would discover an assassin had claimed his life.
As it turned out, he needn’t have been so consumed with fear.
It wasn’t an assassin that had claimed Nando. Rather, it was cunny.
No fewer than three of the illustrious brothel’s women of the night surrounded his brother, who was lying prone in nary a stitch, red welts on his arse that had undoubtedly been left there by the riding crop one of the women held.
“Is that you, brother?” came Nando’s muffled query, sounding lazy and, if he knew his brother, thoroughly soused.
By God.
Nettled, Maxim removed his hand, facing the grim picture of debauchery before him. Had he thought there were only threewomen? Clearly, he had miscounted. For there were also two women making use of a strange chair on the opposite end of the chamber, one behind the other.
“Slower or faster, Nando?” cooed the woman at the rear, thrusting her hips slowly and giving her bottom a shake, undoubtedly for his brother’s benefit.
“Not at all,” Maxim interrupted sharply.
There were some aspects of his brother’s depravities that he hadn’t ever wished to know. He’d heard whispers, of course. Nando had the face of an angel and the appetite of the devil, it was said. Maxim had never stopped to ponder the implications for overly long.
The generously endowed brunette didn’t appear at all concerned by Maxim’s order. She cupped the blonde’s breasts, giving her nipples a pinch that made the other woman moan in what sounded very much like feigned enjoyment to Maxim’s ears.
“Faster,” Nando directed, as if Maxim hadn’t spoken. “Mademoiselle Jeanette likes when you’re rough.”
“Nando,” Maxim gritted out, repelled by the den of sin before him.
“You’re still here, then?” Nando drawled without turning away from the spectacle he was apparently directing. “I thought you’d be too shocked to stay. I’ve paid the ladies for another hour, Maxim. Won’t you come back then?”
Likely,hehad paid the ladies for another hour of entertainments for his ne’er-do-well brother, and not the other way around.
“They’ll thank you for the extra hour to themselves,” he snapped curtly. “Mademoiselles, I’ll thank you to dress yourselves and take your leave whilst I speak with my brother.”
“Coin’s already been spent,” said one of the women lounging on the bed.
“You’ll not be getting it back,” added the red-haired harlot bearing the riding crop.
“Keep the coin,” he ground out. “It’s yours.”
“See here,” Nando exclaimed, sounding indignant, finally craning his neck in Maxim’s direction. “You can’t send away my goddesses, Maxim. I’ve paid for them. And Mademoiselle Jeanette hasn’t come yet.”
From the looks of her, she wasn’t about to either. Any noises of enjoyment she was making had purely been to titillate his dolt of a brother.
Assassins were trying to kill Maxim and Princess Anastasia. The danger had never been more heightened. And Nando had spent the last few days frolicking with women of ill repute as if he hadn’t a care in the world. But then, this was his scapegrace brother. Therewereno worldly cares for Nando.
“Get. Out,” he commanded the strumpets succinctly. Not unkindly, for they had been paid for their presence and their efforts. They weren’t at fault for his brother’s insatiable capacity for iniquity.
And stupidity.
