AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He watched her even as she gasped at the intimate intrusion. She was still a little sore from the day before, and she stiffened.
He paused, his fingers stroking the small of her back through the frail materials of her chemise and wrap. “Easy.”
She nodded as her flesh accepted him, and he seemed to understand it as the permission it was. Slowly he impaled her on his cock. She was aware of the fluttering of her heart, of the short, staccato pants of her breath, of the way his face was set and grim as if it took all of his considerable control to keep from simply thrusting up into her.
But the soreness was fading now, being replaced by the lovely feeling of being stretched full. She bit her lip, arching her head back, staring at the ceiling as she rotated her hips gently, screwing herself down on him until she felt the smooth silk of his breeches against her bottom.
He groaned, deep and very male, and bowed his head against her for a moment, his hot breath panting across the slopes of her breasts. She ran her hands over his upper arms soothingly and felt when they bunched beneath her fingers.
That was her only warning.
He shoved her up, his cock sliding exquisitely through her tunnel as he withdrew, then he set his feet flat on the floor and drove his hips into her. Fast and hard, he set a punishing pace.
She’d once imagined lovemaking as a sweet joining of souls, a gentle wave surging and retreating. An act both respectful and honored.
What Maximus was doing to her was anything but sweet. He gasped, his great chest working as if he fought off demons. Sweat beaded on his brow and shone in the fine hairs on his chest. His movements were sharp and abrupt as he drove himself into her again and again. He was nothing like the sophisticated aristocrat he was in front of others. One corner of his mouth twisted in a sneer, his eyes a glaring furnace. He used her body for his own pleasure, for his own need, working her up and down on his cock. He was little more than an animal now.
And she gloried in it. She—she—had driven him to this. Had made a man who captured kings and foreign diplomats with the surety of his eloquence quite simply lose his mind.
He pushed up with all his might, shoved to the hilt within her, and froze, head thrown back in an agony of pleasure.
She leaned forward and delicately licked the salt sweat from his lips as his seed flooded her.
THE NEXT MORNING Craven attended Maximus in his rooms and was excruciatingly correct until Artemis left to dress herself in her own rooms.
The door had hardly closed behind her lovely bottom when the valet turned slowly to Maximus and pinned him with a gaze that would’ve done justice to the King in one of his fouler moods. “Pardon me, Your Grace, but I hope you’ll not mind if I speak bluntly—”
“Would it matter?” Maximus muttered under his breath, wishing he’d at least had his morning cup of tea before his own valet raked him over the coals.
Craven didn’t bother acknowledging the interruption. “I wonder if you’ve quite lost your bloody mind?”
Maximus began soaping his face in a rather vicious manner. “If I wanted your opinion, I would’ve—”
“Much as it pains me to speak to you in this manner,” Craven said, “I feel I must. Your Grace.”
Maximus snapped his mouth shut and snatched up his razor, making sure his hand was steady before setting the blade to his jaw. He could feel Craven behind him and he knew without turning that the valet would be standing at attention, shoulders back, head held high.
“A gentleman does not ravish a lady,” Craven said. “A lady, moreover, living under his own roof and therefore in his protection.”
Maximus banged the razor against the wash basin, feeling irritated at both Craven and himself. “I’ve never ravished a woman in my life.”
“What else to call the seduction of an unmarried lady of gentle birth?”
It was a well-aimed volley and Maximus felt the hit. She’d already told him that she’d been hurt previously by her ass of a fiancé—was he, in the end, any better? No, of course not. At least that doctor’s son hadn’t gone so far as to seduce her.
As Maximus had.
Was he hurting her, his goddess? Did she hide a heart bruised from his careless actions? The mere thought made him want to punch walls. No one should hurt her so, least of all him. Craven was right: he was a cad and a rogue, and if he were any sort of gentleman at all, he’d give her up. Break off the thing and set her free.
And yet he wouldn’t. Quite simply, he could not bear to let her go.
He took a deep breath and said tightly, “Craven, what is between Miss Greaves and myself is of no concern of yours.”
“Isn’t it?” The other man’s voice had an edge Maximus had rarely heard in it before. “If not my business, then whose? Do you listen to your sisters, Miss Picklewood, the men you call friends in Parliament?”
Maximus turned slowly to look at the valet. No one spoke to him thus.
Craven’s face was sagging and he looked every inch of his years. “You are a law unto yourself, Your Grace. You always have been. It’s what helped you to survive the tragedy. It’s what made you a great man in Parliament. But it also means that when you are wrong there is no one to make you pause.”
