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“Almost?”
I tilt my head back and my gaze up. He’s just as responsive, ready with his encouraging eyes and full smile.
“She had a close friendship with Prince Leopold, one of Victoria and Albert’s sons,” I murmur. “Many think they were passionately in love, but the queen forbade a lasting union. Leopold was ordered to marry a princess instead.”
His face gains new tension. A rough rumble rolls in his throat. “Harsh.”
I nod, which works my chin into the soft cotton of his shirt. “It astounded me, reading that part. I was stunned to be so moved by the story of a woman I never knew, who was long dead. Looking back, that was probably my gateway drug to the power of great stories, fictional or not.” I bite my lip and glance down. “After that, I paid one of our maids to smuggle any kind of romance to me.”
There’s another low vibration from his chest as he lightly strokes my nape. “That’s my girl.”
I reach up and squeeze his neck too. “Ohhh no. Hold up there, teacher. I’m not talking Austen, Brontë, Tolstoy, and Gabaldon. I held out for the good stuff, like Jackie Collins and Danielle Steel.”
His brows scrunch low. “How old were you?”
I shrug. “Their characters were my versions of Cinderella and Rapunzel. They fought the odds in situations I could relate to. And just like them, I grew up and found my perfectly modern prince.”
Nothing about his reaction is a surprise. But I’m ready for his sheepish tension and push in closer to emphasize my point. Fighting to fit as much of my body along his as I can.
“It’s true, Maximus. Beyond true. You’re my templar and my troubadour…my savior. You believed in our love even when I mourned that we’d never have it again.” I slide my other hand up, spreading my fingers into the rugged landscape of his jaw. “You believed and you fought…and you loved deeply enough for us both. For that, and so many other amazing reasons, I’ll never stop loving you.”
There’s only one way to seal the point into him, and I’m beyond willing to offer it. With a kiss that’s as boundless as everything I feel for him and know about us. As our lips mash, I enforce it with my devoted moan. As our mouths part, I expose it with the matching doors of my heart. As our tongues collide, I imagine every drop of my passion as indelible ink, writing my truth across the beautiful sheafs in his soul.
I see the pages now in the depths of his stare as we break apart to catch our breath. And for him to arrest me with the fresh message that he readies, wrapped in the waves of feeling that flow from him. Devotion. Passion. Need.
Love.
“Show me,” he grates out at last. “Show it to me now, little demon. All your love…in all our favorite ways.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
MAXIMUS
It’s all the go-ahead Kara needs.
And every cell of my being is so grateful.
She’s eager and invigorated, as if offering her guilty reading secrets has granted a passport to other parts of her too. Parts she’s been hesitant to reveal…or perhaps hasn’t looked at herself yet. Passionate parts.Audaciousparts…
My pulse rate hardly recovers from her brazen grabs at my groin before she’s unzipped me down there. She reaches in and pulls me out.
And strokes until I’m fully swollen.
Strained sounds spill out of me, low but high, needy but seductive. The whole world quickens but slows. I’m caught between consciousness and oblivion. It’s complete heaven.
“Kara.” I drop Alice and her adventures—I have no choice—as my body slips in the big chair until I’m nearly prone. “Christ. Oh, Kara.”
And then I’m as wordless as I am motionless, my arms locked around her torso and my legs braced beneath the thighs she straddles over mine. But she’s still maneuvering in a way to keep rubbing me. Pumping me. And then squeezing me.
Right…where…it…matters.
“Good?” she whispers, her fervency another caress of its own.
I can do nothing but nod, but even that’s like telling myself to hold back the tide.
“I love you so much, Maximus.”
My head rocks back and my eyes slide shut as my mind absorbs the aural alchemy of her words. I feel them in other places too, like a wave pulled toward its destined shore. It moves me to depths just as deep and inexorable, an ocean tied to the cosmos itself. The most natural and incredible progression of all. Our primal needs. Our perfect connection.
