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She brought her hands up on either side of his lean, upside-down face. “But what a strange idea.”
He shrugged. “I’ve sometimes wondered if Sir Stanley hadn’t been the Ghost of St. Giles in his youth. The legend is older than my tenure.”
“Your tenure?”
“The boys who sparred with me. They were Ghosts as well. All three of us, at different times, and sometimes at the same time.”
“Were?” She swallowed. “Are they dead?”
“No,” he said lazily. “Merely retired. I’m the only Ghost of St. Giles remaining.”
“Mmm.” He sounded so lonely. She bent over him, nearly near enough to kiss. “Maximus?”
His eyes were watching her lips. “Yes?”
“Why were you in St. Giles when your parents died?”
There was a second when she knew she’d pried too far. When his gaze froze and his sable eyes iced over.
Then he was pulling her head down. “I don’t remember,” he murmured against her lips just before he kissed her.
Chapter Fourteen
For a year Lin rode pillion behind King Herla in his awful wild hunt. The phantom horse between her legs labored and strained but did not make a sound. She saw King Herla bring down great stags and mighty boars, but he never once celebrated his success. Only sometimes, after she had bagged a hare or small hart, did he turn his head and she felt the weight of his gaze upon her. Then she would see that he watched her, his pale eyes cold and bleak and so very, very lonely.…
—from The Legend of the Herla King
It was odd kissing a man upside down—odd, but also oddly erotic. Artemis could feel Maximus’s lips slanted across hers, the shadow of his beard on his chin scratching faintly against her nose. In this position, their lips didn’t quite fit together properly, so to compensate she had to open her mouth wide, as did he. It wasn’t elegant, this strange twisting of tongues, this driven mingling of mouths. This was passion made elemental, even though there was no hurry at all.
She felt his hand reach up, grasping her head to hold her in place for the ravishment of her mouth. He broke away for a second and she saw a flash of determined sable eyes, then he twisted his torso to face her. He leaned into her widespread legs and wrapped one arm about her waist as the other brought her face back to his. She thought she heard him murmur, “Diana,” and then he was kissing her again.
Slowly, thoroughly.
She let her lips fall apart on a gasp and felt the sure thrust of his tongue into her mouth. He didn’t hurry, as if he had all the time in the world to hold her thus and explore her inner depths. She made a sound, a sort of low groan that in any other circumstances would’ve caused her embarrassment, but she was so drugged, so heady with the wine of his kiss, that she didn’t even think about it. Nothing existed but his mouth, his lips, the thick intrusion of his tongue. She couldn’t imagine wanting anything else ever.
But he broke from her, withdrawing his tongue, his lips, though she whimpered and made an aborted move to follow him.
She opened her eyes to find him watching her like a predator. Calculating, waiting.
He held her gaze, and she saw a faint smirk curl one corner of his mouth. The rug was suddenly gone from her lap, and then she felt the slide of her skirts up her legs.
“Do you remember that morning?” he asked, his voice impossibly deep. “You emerged from the pond like a goddess triumphant. You’d flaunted your ankles the day before”—he brushed warm fingers over her left ankle, making her shiver—“but that morning I saw the tender curve of your inner thigh, the sweet bend of your knee, the shy sweep of your calf. You revealed them as coyly as a siren singing a man to his ecstatic death—and you didn’t even know it, did you? By the time you reached the shore I was hard as iron.”
She blushed at his words, remembering that morning. She had no idea she’d affected him so. To think that they’d talked calmly and all the time his penis had been engorged with want for her.
The very thought made her wet.
Her gaze darted down to his hands on her thighs and then back up to meet those knowing, watchful eyes. He smiled as if he could hear her thoughts. He was bunching the skirts of her wrap and thin chemise in his big fists, slowly drawing the fabric up, revealing her legs—and if she didn’t protest, much more.
And this time she knew exactly what the sight of her legs did to him.
He silently cocked an eyebrow in challenge.
But if he was a predator, all masculine danger, then she was his rightful mate. She’d roamed the forest alone as a child. Had swum the pond, stalked squirrels, climbed trees like a wanton. Deep inside, hidden by the bland costume of a lady’s companion, she was just as dangerous as he.
Just as daring.
So she let her own mouth curl as she leaned back in the chair. If he expected maidenly fear or outrage from her, he’d be disappointed.
