Duke of Midnight (Maiden Lane #6)(89)

Perhaps that was why his voice was overloud when he demanded, “You let him out, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” She sat up. “Did you truly expect anything else?”

“I expected you to obey me when I told you that he must remain locked up.”

“Obey.” Her face had gone white and blank, save for the blaze within her eyes.

She was withdrawing and he couldn’t let her. “Yes. I would’ve found a safe place for him—a place away from people he might hurt. You—”

She made a scoffing sound and threw back the covers. Underneath she was nude, her skin rosy and delicious from sleep. “You want me to obey like all your other minions. To fit neatly in the box in which you decide to place me. Can’t you see? I’ll rot in that box. I cannot be contained by your expectations of me.”

He felt the argument spiraling out of his control. He was adept at debate within the House of Lords, but this was no logical political argument—this was emotions laid raw between a man and a woman.

He looked at her helplessly, knowing somehow that this argument encompassed far more than the difficulty of what to do with her brother. “Artemis—”

“No.” She rose, as martial as any Greek goddess, and grabbed her chemise. “This is my brother we’re talking about, Maximus.”

“You’ll take his part before mine?” Oh, he knew it was a mistake even before the words left his lips.

Her shoulders squared. “If I must. We shared a womb. We’re flesh and blood, tied together forever, both physically and spiritually. I love my brother.”

“As you don’t me?”

She stopped, her chemise in her hands before her. For a moment her shoulders slumped and then she raised her head. His goddess.

His Diana.

“When you’ve tired of me,” she said softly, precisely, “Apollo will still be my brother. Will still be there for me.”

“I’ll never tire of you,” he said, knowing with every thread of his soul that he spoke the absolute truth.

“Then prove it.”

He knew what she asked with such an open and vulnerable face. Something within him shriveled and died. She deserved this. Deserved a husband and a home and children. His children. But he’d been on the rack too long for a penance he wasn’t sure he could ever entirely pay. The dukedom… his father.

“You know…” His voice was hoarse, the croaking of a dying man. He licked his lips. “You know why I cannot. I owe him my life, my service, the duty of being the duke.”

She shrugged one delicate, bare shoulder. “Well, I do not owe your father’s memory anything.”

He staggered as if she’d slapped him. “You cannot—”

“No,” she said. “I cannot. I thought I could do this, truly I did, but I’m not brave enough, you see. I can’t hurt everyone around me, can’t hurt Penelope, can’t hurt me any longer.” She held out a trembling hand. “I don’t fit into the pretty little box you’ve made for me. I can’t watch you rise from my bed knowing you’ll visit another woman’s. I’m not a saint.”

“Please.”

He was pleading. He who had never bowed before anyone before.

She shook her head and he broke, grasping her hand, pulling her body against his. “Please, my Diana, please don’t go.”

She made no spoken answer, but she tilted her face up to his, parting her lips so sweetly when he pressed his mouth to hers. He cradled her face in his palms, holding her like the precious thing she was as he sipped from her lips. She was his, in this world and the next, and if he could only convince her of that one, immutable fact, then he could still save this.

Could still live and breathe with her by his side.

So he slid his fingers into her hair, resting his thumbs at her temples as he licked into her mouth. He claimed her, gently, slyly, using all the sexual wiles that he’d ever learned.

She moaned and arched her neck and he crowed inside, even as he moved his mouth to her throat, licking down that slim column, tasting woman and need.

She tried to break away, to turn her head, groaning. “Maximus, I can’t—”

“Hush,” he whispered, his hands shaking as he slid them down to her waist. “Please. Please let me.”

He walked backward, making no sudden, jarring movement as he drew her with him, until he found a chair and lowered himself into it.

“Oh, Maximus,” she sighed as he pulled her down, holding her tenderly across his lap.

“Yes, sweet,” he murmured as he opened his mouth over her nipple.

“Darling,” she said and caught his face between her hands, making him meet her eyes.

He didn’t want to. He didn’t like the look in her eyes—a grim determination.

“I love you,” she whispered and his soul soared until she uttered her next words. “But I must leave you.”

“No.” He clutched at her hips as if he were a child of three refusing to give up his toy sword. “No.”

“Yes,” she replied.

Something cruel rose in him then, born of grief and rage. He caught the back of her head and brought her mouth to his. Would she deny this? How could she find it possible?

She twined her arms about his neck and let him ravish her mouth, sighing as he parted her legs, settling them on either side of his hips. His cock pounded, a crude symbol of his desires, between them. He thumbed the head, pressing it toward her until he rubbed against her pretty cunny with the base thing. She was wet on the back of his fingers, open and hot, and his soul sang with vicious joy when she moaned helplessly.