Victoria tore at his tunic, pulling it up, slipping her hands under the linen to feel the slabs of muscle on his back. Warm, they shifted and rippled beneath her fingers as he lifted onto his elbows and dipped to move his face along her jaw and to the hot, sensitive part of her neck. She turned her face away, eyes closed, as he kissed, devouring her skin with his firm mouth, sending exploding sensations through her as she tried to keep from moaning like a cat in heat.
Then suddenly, he stilled, as if caught. Poised over her, his face against the side of her neck, buried in her curls, his breath moist on her skin. She felt the brush of his lashes, the sift of his hair over her cheek, the thump of his heart reverberating in his body, so close to hers . . . but his lips had lifted. His rough breathing mingled with hers in the silence.
She tightened her hands on his body beneath the linen shirt, folding her lips together, ready to speak his name.
“Don’t,” he said sharply, his mouth moving against her neck. “Don’t . . . say . . . anything.”
Tension radiated; she felt it trembling beneath her fingers on the smooth skin over his ribs, in the deep, long breath he took, expanding under her touch.
She felt it when he gathered up, ready to pull away, and she tightened her fingers on him.
And then, after another long moment, as though released, excused, sanctioned . . . something . . . he moved again with a little shudder, a release of stilled breath. He brushed her hair away, and kissed her neck, gently now, languidly, with the same skillful lips that had done so three months ago. The tension eased beneath her fingers and, when he moved again, it was to find her mouth once more with his.
Her lips were swollen and pounding from the previous onslaught, but he took his time here. It wasn’t tender, the way he kissed her now, nor desperate and angry, as before,but . . . long and slow and thorough, slick and deep, drawing so much from her that she moaned quietly behind it all.
There was no mistaking his desire for her; as their bodies arched and moved, the loose fabric left little unsaid between them. She pulled at his shirt, and he lifted away long enough for her to yank it over his head. Bare skin, at last. As he bent back to kiss her again, she saw the expression in those dark, oft unreadable eyes: burning and intense.
There was no mistaking what shone in them now.
She felt warm and heady when he lifted again, and before she could protest, or worry that he meant to leave, he picked her up, settling her against his bare chest, and brought her to the pile of cushions in the corner. Her hands smoothed over the square of his shoulders, down over the dark hair and muscle, and to the silver cross that hung from one areola.
He stilled when she touched the vis bulla, almost as if he waited for her response. The last time she’d seen it, Nedas had ordered it to be torn from her skin. She could only imagine how Max had retrieved it from the vampire. When she brushed her fingers over the silver, her amulet . . . the one forged specially for her . . . she felt a leap of power sizzle through her. A clean, familiar rush.
She flattened her hand against him, the tiny, ornate cross pressing into her palm, and remembered doing the very same thing last autumn after having been disarmed. Max had forced her hand there, under his shirt, grasping her wrist with impossibly strong fingers, risking his life as he forced her to take power from his vis bulla.
It was either her, or you.
That was what he’d said when she’d demanded to know why he’d slain Aunt Eustacia. She’d been filled with hatred and the same loathing for him she’d seen in his eyes earlier tonight, directed at her. At that time, he hadn’t told her the other reasons—that he’d been ordered to by Eustacia herself, that it was the only way to save them all from Nedas’s power, that he’d had no choice— for if he didn’t slay her, Eustacia would have died anyway. And Victoria too.
It was either her, or you.
How had it taken her so long to realize?
Unwilling to wait any longer, to give him any chance to walk away as he’d done after that kiss . . . that first kiss against the stone wall . . . she pulled away and stripped off her own tunic, and then the light chemise she wore beneath it, letting her damp hair fall over her shoulders and back. Max wasted no time; his dark hands were on her immediately, large and capable over her slender torso. They pressed her back into the mound of cushions, then smoothed down below her br**sts over the gentle swell of her belly. To the two silver crosses there.
He fingered them gently above the waistband of her trousers, shifting the vis bulla that had been his against that of Aunt Eustacia, then releasing them back into the hollow of her navel. Still silent, but for the quiet rasp of breath, he spread his hands wide to cover her belly, curling long fingers around her hips and sliding them gently up her sensitive skin to cup one hand under each breast.
His touch raised little bumps on her flesh and sent tingles through her limbs, curling into the center of her belly. She arched up into his palms, her hands back on his shoulders, her hair tangling under and around them, as he bent down to her. Her br**sts were tight, her ni**les gathered into little round peaks, and when his mouth closed over one of them, she sighed. Closed her eyes.
Sharp pleasure-pain arched down from where he sucked and teased, coiling in her belly, then shooting lower between her legs. Victoria felt the gentle burn, the gathering of desire there, and when one long-fingered hand moved down beneath the band of her trousers, she gave a soft sigh of pleasure. He found what he was looking for, and slipped in and around languidly until she had lost all shame and was moaning beneath him, pressing closer, demanding what they both wanted.
After that, there was no more waiting, no more teasing. Trousers were ripped away, and his long, strong body covered her equally bare, ready one. She wrapped her legs around him as he settled against her, and they both gasped when he moved that first time. The fullness, the long, deep stroke made her mouth dry again, her eyes flutter closed, her fingers close over his shoulders, nails digging deep.
He lifted away just as slowly, then back again, and again, and more quickly and desperately, over and over, long and filling and deep . . . and suddenly the build exploded, leaving her shuddering and gasping and arching up again in a wave of pleasure and sunlight and stars. He groaned deep in his chest, and she felt him tense and tremble against her with one last, sharp movement.
He sagged over her, his face down, eyes closed, dark lashes and brows only a breath away from hers. One hand rested on the cushion next to her shoulder, the other cupped into the curve of her neck and shoulder, fingers curled around her neck . . . as though he had to hold on to her.