Now I laughed a little too, grateful for the brief respite from the honey-thick tension that seemed always between us.
“That was from you, wasn’t it? The crossbow.”
After a pause, he nodded into my shoulder.
“All of it,” he said, his voice low and thick with emotion. I felt the rumble of his words through my body as much as I heard them with my ears. “It was all from me.”
I gripped his forearms and blinked, seeing but also not quite seeing the dancing flames. I knew I should thank him. I knew I should say something. But I found myself quite literally speechless, completely swept away by the realization that Maria had been right. He had been watching over me and caring for me all this time, without my ever knowing it.
“Do you know what happens, when a man and woman are married?” Very slowly, he slid his right hand out of our tangled embrace, and placed his first finger on the inside of my thigh.
My cheeks flushed hotly. His words and his touch together made me feel woozy, like I was in a dream. But this was no dream. I was in his arms. We were alone together. And his thick finger was inch-inch-inching its way toward my…
“Yes, I… I know a little.” A little was exactly right; all I really knew, for certain, was what I had gleaned from Maria’s sources at the gossip mill in the kitchens. But yet again, I may not know the words, I may not know the facts, but I knew the feelings. I knew what my body was asking for. Him.
Maksim trailed his finger further up my thigh, dragging his fingers over my flesh and tightening our embrace with his other arm. Beneath my own fingertips, his bicep bulged and I found myself mesmerized by the thick fibers of his shoulder muscles. It was all I could do not to moan out loud.
His finger slid closer to my sex. As he touched the soft curve of my upper thigh, so very close to where it met my hip, I felt a rush of wetness spill from inside me. I was embarrassed at first, horrified that my body gave my desire for my own stepbrother away. I could even smell it—somehow salty and sweet together. But as the scent of my juices met Maksim’s nose, he let out a low, hungry growl. In response, he tipped his hips slightly, pushing his hard cock into my back.
“Would you want to be wed in the old way?”
It took true concentration to bring my thoughts into any sort of logical order. At that moment, I was nothing but hot, and wet, and aching for him to touch me between my legs.
“The old way,” I said, searching my memory. I knew about it from stories. Sometimes, it was still done, but not often. “Yes, I would.”
“Would you be proud to have your husband hang the stained sheets of your marriage bed from your window, Princess?”
Now, I did actually moan. As he said that word, the word he’d used as ammunition against me so many times, he finally touched me where I was throbbing to be touched. I melted back into him, but as his touch strengthened, my body responded with a wave of overpowering pleasure.
“Oh my god, Maksim,” I panted. “What are you…”
He nudged my cheek with his jaw. “Answer the fucking question.”
The question. What was the…. “Please don’t stop.”
He rubbed me more firmly and I gasped out in pleasure and need. “Answer. The. Question.”
I sucked in a brain-clearing breath. “Yes, of course. I would be overjoyed. Proud to have given my virtue to the man I love.”
“Fuck virtue,” he growled, talking low and soft as he massaged my clit. It fluttered at his touch and my toes curled with pleasure. He was making my body throb in a way I didn’t know it could throb. With an expert touch, he massaged me there, drawing me closer and closer to…
I didn’t know what. Something. Everything. Heaven itself.
I was so lost in the feeling that it took me a moment to realize that there was silence. Had he asked me something? I couldn’t even remember. So I just repeated the words that I remembered hearing him say last.
“Fuck virtue,” I echoed.
His growl of approval came from deep in his throat. “Now we’re fucking talking.” With renewed intensity, he worked my most sensitive spot with small circles that made my eyes roll back in my head.
I didn’t know what was happening to me and I didn’t care. Wherever he was taking me, I was going with him. No questions asked. Except for one.
“Whose wife would I become?” I whispered between gasps.
“Mine,” he growled. “All fucking mine.”
Chapter 9
Maksim
“But how…” Anika said, trailing off as my fingers on her clit stole her words. She let her head fall back against my shoulder. Lips parted. Cheeks flushed. I slipped my finger further down between her folds, until my fingertip was just at the edge of her pussy’s tight little opening. “But they’d never let us marry,” she managed to say. “Never.”