Except marriage. He couldn’t give her that, and they both knew it. The acknowledgment lay between them, unspoken and ugly. But he wasn’t free to wed her, not with so much at stake. He had to make every decision on behalf of his kingdom with painstaking care.
He reached for her hands, taking them in his, and she didn’t protest. Maxim took that as a sign that her resolve was waning, and he pressed his advantage, lifting first her left, then her right to his lips for a lingering, worshipful kiss.
“Please,” he added when she hesitated, not giving him an answer but instead watching him with a gaze that seared him to his marrow.
“What would you have me say?” she murmured, looking as torn as she sounded.
“Say that you’ll have me.” Another kiss, this time to her inner wrist, where her skin was warm and velvet-soft. “Give yourself to me.”
He found the pale blue of her veins and traced them with his lips, his tongue. Desire, so long suppressed, roared to thunderous life. He was aching, his cock hard, his knees beginning to hurt from kneeling for so long, his mind and heart in an agony of waiting.
“Until you’re married,” she said suddenly.
“Forever,” he countered, selfish and greedy when it came to Tansy.
He hadn’t known how much he needed her, how much she completed him, until he’d been forced to spend two weeks without her.
“Until you’re married,” she repeated firmly.
His stubborn spitfire. He shouldn’t be surprised. He smiled into her palm as he laid a kiss there, for he considered this a battle won between them, and he had every intention of emerging the victor in the war. He would change her mind. He would keep her in his bed day and night, pleasuring her so well that she never wanted to leave him.
Perhaps he could delay the marriage indefinitely.
Hmm, yes. He did like the sound of that, he thought as he flicked his tongue over her, tasting the salt of her skin. A potent wave of lust overwhelmed him. He wanted to taste her everywhere. To bury his face between her legs and lick her until she screamed.
“Until then,” he agreed, running his nose along her inner forearm, inhaling the scent of her skin, floral and delicate and so damned sweet.
“You’re…” Her words trailed off, as if her thoughts had escaped her, and her voice was breathless.
Good.
He kissed to her elbow, grateful she was wearing an afternoon gown with little capped sleeves so that he had more of her to kiss and touch. “I’m…” he prompted.
“You’re agreeing,” she said, her chest rising and falling in shallow breaths that drew attention to the ripe fullness of her breasts straining against her bodice.
He would agree to anything in this moment, as long as he could have her.
“Beginning now,” he clarified, releasing her to grasp fistfuls of muslin and begin lifting them to her waist.
“What…Maxim…” He shoved her petticoats and gown into her lap, giving her stocking-clad legs a leisurely caress. “Oh. Now? Truly?”
He skimmed his touch lightly past her knees, intent upon spreading those pale, well-curved thighs. “Now. Truly.”
“But…”
Maxim kissed one knee, then the other, fingers trailing higher. Beyond her silken garters so neatly tied with perfect bows. He was touching bare, glorious skin now. She was so warm and soft, so pliant and beautiful. He guided her legs apart with ease. She had loved his tongue on her; he had thought of scarcely anything but the way she had tasted, how wet she had been, the breathy sounds she’d made, how responsive she was.
“I’ve been dreaming of licking your cunny every night we’ve been apart,” he told her, his fingers daring to venture closer to the heat at her center. “Are you going to deny me, or do you want my tongue on you?”
It wasn’t the practiced question of a seducer, but he was no charmer. He never had been. He was rough and ragged and brutal. He was the man his life had fashioned him into. He could only hope that man would prove enough for her.
“Yes,” she said.
“Elaborate, sweeting. Tell me.”
“You like it when I tell you what I want.” Her voice had a husky tenor of pleasure that made his cock even harder.
Maxim smiled, kissing her other knee. “Few things please me more.”
