Duke of Midnight (Maiden Lane #6)(76)

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.”

Artemis sat up. “Oh, dear God.”

Chapter Sixteen

Lin held fast to her brother even as the wildcat clawed her, for she’d been told by the strange little man in the hills that if she let go of her brother before the cock’s first crow, they would both be doomed to the wild hunt forever. So Lin grasped Tam as they rode through the night sky, and the Herla King gave no word that he saw the struggle right behind him, but his fist tightened on his horse’s reins.

Then Tam turned into a writhing serpent.…

—from The Legend of the Herla King

Maximus stared at the single emerald drop in Artemis’s palm. She’d hastily donned her chemise before running back to her room without telling him why, only to appear moments later with her hand fisted around something.

Now he wondered if he should feel betrayed. “Where the hell did you get that?”

“I…” Her hand clutched the pendants protectively. “Well, it certainly isn’t what you may be thinking.”

He blinked and raised his gaze to her face at her indignant tone. Her beautiful gray eyes were wary. They’d made love not moments before, and yet the bed felt cold now. “What am I thinking?”

She raised her eyebrows haughtily. “That I’m somehow involved with the murderer of your parents.”

Stated baldly like that, it was obviously preposterous. He shook his head. “I’m sorry. Tell me.”

She cleared her throat. “My brother gave it to me on our fifteenth birthday.”

He stiffened. “Kilbourne?”

“Yes.”

Maximus looked down, thinking. The murderer had been cautious. Maximus had only discovered the first drop nearly ten years after the murder. By tracing back through the sale of the drop, he’d realized that the jewel had only been originally sold months before. Unfortunately, that drop had been a dead end—quite literally. The owner of the original pawnshop where the emerald drop had been sold was found lying in a pool of his own blood.