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“So you are,” he breathed, and bit her lip.
She tasted rain on his mouth. Rain and wine and something much darker. Something was driving him, and she needed to talk to him—about her future and about releasing Apollo. But right now, in this moment, she wanted none of reality. Reality was a screeching harridan who never could be made happy.
If she couldn’t have happiness, then she could at least have this.
She opened her mouth wide and bit her mate back, digging her nails into the nape of his neck as if to hold him as fiercely as he held her.
His chest rubbed against her nipples, and he felt warm and male. His arms braced on either side of her head, a welcome cage. And between her legs he worked his cock against her, making her slick.
He pulled back. “Like this.”
And he flipped her again.
She growled a protest and he actually laughed.
“Magnificent Diana,” he murmured into her ear, rubbing himself against her like a great tiger. “I’m going to fuck you now.”
She arched against him, part in protest at being used so cavalierly, part in sheer excitement. She felt his cock sliding into her crevasse, seeking, prodding. One day she wanted to see him—all of him. Wanted to touch and taste and explore this magnificent body, but at the moment, all she wanted was to have him in her.
She got her wish.
He thrust deep, breaching her in one violent movement, his hips coming to rest right against her bottom. She groaned, biting her lower lip.
She could hear him panting in her ear. In this position, pressed into the bed, she could hardly move, much less get the leverage to push back.
He seemed to realize her predicament. He laughed low in this throat, the sound vibrating against her back, and ground into her. She could feel him, full and rock hard, inside her, and his small deliberate movements seemed to press against something deep inside her. She felt herself growing impossibly wet, swelling with tension. She shifted her hips as much as she could, and the tiny movement prompted a growl from him. He caught her ear between his teeth as he ground deeper.
“Yield, sweet, sweet Diana,” he whispered in her ear. “You are so hot, so wet for me, I would stay here within you forever, holding you, compelling your submission.”
She tried to get her arms beneath her, to somehow push herself back against him, but he only chuckled, pulling back just enough for her to feel the head of his penis stretch her entrance before shoving back into her again. He suddenly thrust his arms under her, holding her tight as he found one breast and cupped it. His long legs braced on either side of hers, squeezing and immobilizing her.
“Diana,” he murmured in her ear, licking. “Diana, you are everything I’ve ever wanted and shall never have.”
Tears pricked at her eyes and she opened her mouth to sob.
“That’s it,” he said. “Weep for me. Bear my pain. Take my come. For I can give you nothing else.”
And he thrust into her in hard, sharp punches, each movement striking against that place within her. She gritted her teeth and bowed her head into the pillow. It was too much. Too little. A continual assault against her senses.
He laid his cheek against hers and she felt something wet between their skin. “Come, o Diana. Wash me in your passion.”
She tensed and shuddered. Once. Twice. Thrice. Like a seizure. Like a piercing of the soul.
Like the death of hope.
He sagged onto her, heavy as lead, but she was loath to make him move. Something had happened tonight to make him so wild. Something dreadful.
She turned enough so that she could stroke the back of his head, feeling the shorn hair brush her palm. “What is it? What has happened?”
He rolled off of her, but wrapped his arms around her as if he couldn’t stand not to touch her. “I met him tonight, the man who killed my parents. Met him and lost him.”
Her heart stopped. “Oh, Maximus…”
He laughed, a dry, awful sound. “He’s a highwayman who calls himself Old Scratch. My mother…” She heard him swallow before he tried again. “My mother was wearing the Wakefield emeralds the night she died—a fabulous necklace with seven emerald drops that hung off a central diamond and emerald chain. He must’ve broken it up after he stole it, for it was several years after her death before I saw the first emerald drop—on the neck of a courtesan. It’s taken me years, but I’ve collected the pieces one by one: the central chain and five of the seven drops. Last night I saw something emerald pinned to Old Scratch’s neck cloth, but I couldn’t get close enough to be sure. Tonight I did. He wears one of my mother’s emerald drops. I asked him about the other, and do you know what he said?”
“No,” Artemis whispered, a dreadful feeling welling in her chest.
Maximus’s lips twisted. “He told me to look within my own house.”
