Duke of Midnight

She tore her mouth from his, panting. “Faster.”

“Like this?” he asked, and flicked with his thumb.

“Yes.” She closed her eyes, her words slurred as she felt the lovely warmth. “Yes, oh, yes.”

His long fingers explored her intimately, each touch sparking her passion higher as he kissed her with leisurely thoroughness. She felt something building beneath her surface, like water over a fire just before it comes to a boil. She closed her eyes, lost in the sensations, feeling wanton.

Feeling free.

He broke their kiss and suddenly took her nipple between his lips just as he sped up his flicks against her clitoris, and she felt as if something inside her detonated. She shuddered, arching into his mouth, his hand, waves of fiery bliss spreading to her toes and fingertips.

It was like finding a new world.

She opened her eyes to see him delicately licking the tip of her nipple as he watched her. “Did you like that?”

She nodded, voiceless with pleasure.

He suddenly closed his own eyes, his hips tilting into her as if involuntarily, and he ground against her. “God. I cannot wait any longer.”

He shifted and suddenly his thick cock was between her over-sensitive folds, sliding exquisitely, making her gasp.

“Just…” He grunted and took hold of her knees, bringing them up on either side of his hips, making a wider space between her legs. He was hot and heavy against her, bearing her into the mattress with his solid bulk. He propped himself up on one arm and reached between their bodies. She felt his fingers on her belly and then the nudge of something wide at her entrance.

She held her breath.

His eyes flicked open to look at her. “Be brave.”

She raised an eyebrow, waiting.

He grinned.

There was a pinch, a growing pressure. She tensed. It hurt. He was so big and she felt suddenly small and fragile. Was this truly meant to be?

He leaned down and brushed his lips against her nose. “Sweet Diana.”

Then he shoved hard.

She inhaled. It burned, but that didn’t matter. She was called Artemis, and a huntress could withstand pain. More importantly he was a part of her now, in her now. This intimacy, this closeness with him, was something she would remember forever. All her life seemed to turn upon this point, here, now. She lay very still, but couldn’t help running her hands over his back. He was so powerful and at this moment, he was only hers, pain or no.

Then, still watching her, he shifted, pulling out before slowly shoving back into her again.

His movement lit a spark within her. Not the fire of before, but something warm and nearly sweet. She framed his face with her palms, widening her legs.

He grunted as if pained. “Wrap your ankles about me, Diana.”

She did, the different position making him sink deeper into her. She stroked his high cheekbones, liking the lines on his brow, the sweat that gathered at his hairline. He was moving faster now, the thud of his body against hers on each of his downstrokes firm and strong.

“Diana,” he whispered. “My Diana.”

She touched the corner of his lips, and he opened, taking her thumb into his mouth, biting tenderly on her flesh.

She felt his belly rubbing against hers, the wet slide of his hard flesh in hers, the brush of his chest against her nipples, and she liked it. There was no pain now, only a feeling of closeness. Of animal intimacy. Perhaps she’d been wrong: perhaps this was the moment a woman was nearest to the wild animal: when she was without constraints or thought, no society telling her what she must do and what she must not. Free from civilization.

They were bound together in this primitive act.

He shuddered, like a horse at the point of collapse, his head thrown back, his strong throat working, and she watched his face as he thrust into her one last time, holding himself deep within her as she felt the hot spill of his seed.

Whatever else came tomorrow and for the rest of her life, she would have this moment: this one point in time when she was intimately linked to Maximus.

Maximus the man.

WHEN HE FIRST woke, Apollo thought he had died.

For just a moment.

He was warm. His arms and legs and face and indeed his entire body seemed to ache, but the wonder of the warmth and, now that he considered it, some type of soft material beneath him, made him think he might—he just might—be in a better place.

Then he remembered Ripley.

The turnkey’s eyes as he’d unbuttoned his fall, the unmerciful smirk twisting his lips. The bolt that shot through Apollo’s chest was part fear, part horror, and overlaying both was a cast of shrinking shame.

He rolled and heaved over the side of whatever he lay on. Or at least his stomach attempted to heave. Bile, green and disgusting, drooled from his mouth as his belly cramped, trying to expel what wasn’t there.

A voice exclaimed nearby, and then gentle hands took his shoulders.

Apollo flinched. The hands were male.

He turned fast, shoving them off, and glared at the offender.

The man threw up his hands in a gesture meant to placate. He was tall and rather stringy. Not someone Apollo would fear in the normal way, but this wasn’t normal.

Perhaps nothing would ever be normal again.

“My lord,” the man said gently, “I am Craven, the Duke of Wakefield’s valet. You’re in his home and you’re safe.”

He said the words as if trying to calm a wild animal—or a madman.

Apollo was quite used to the tone, so he disregarded it as he glanced about him. He lay on a low bed or cot in a vast, dim room. Besides the cot and Craven’s chair was an iron brazier, filled with burning coals. A few flickering candles sent shadows dancing over ancient arched stone and pillars. There was the distinct smell of damp.

If this place was part of Wakefield’s home, then Apollo was much mistaken in how he imagined dukes lived.

He turned back to the valet to ask how he’d come to be here, what had happened, and where the duke was… but other than a very sharp pain in his throat, nothing happened.

Which was when he realized that he couldn’t speak.

Chapter Twelve

Now Tam was an ordinary lad in all respects save one: he’d been born a twin, and he and his twin sister, Lin, were as close as two petals furled inside a rosebud. When Lin heard how her brother had been caught by the Herla King on harvest night, she screamed with grief. Then she sought out all who knew anything about King Herla and his hunt until eventually she sat before a strange little man who lived all by himself in the mountains. And from him she learned what she must do if she were to save her beloved Tam.…

—from The Legend of the Herla King

“Your Grace.”

The voice was low and deferential—the voice of a supremely trained manservant. The voice that meant that Craven was incandescently angry.

Maximus opened his eyes to see the valet standing by his bedside, holding a candle and very obviously not looking at the woman in the bed beside him.

“What?”

“Viscount Kilbourne has awakened, Your Grace.”

Both men had kept their voices low enough that a normal person shouldn’t have been disturbed.

But then Artemis had long proved that she was no normal woman. “How long?”

Maximus’s head snapped around at her voice. A normal woman would’ve been blushing, looking scared or shamefaced or appalled at having been discovered in the bed of a man she was not married to. Some women of his acquaintance would’ve swooned—or at least had had the grace to pretend to swoon. Artemis merely looked at Craven as she waited for an answer.

Even Craven seemed a bit startled. “Miss?”

Artemis blew out an impatient breath. “My brother. How long has he been awake?”

Craven actually blinked before regaining his aplomb. “Only a few minutes, ma’am. I came at once.”

“Good.” She nodded and sat up, the coverlet clutched to her magnificent bosom.

Maximus scowled.

“Would you please turn, Craven?” she asked and then barely waited for the valet to give his back before tossing aside the covers and emerging naked. “Is he well?” she asked as she bent, presenting her delicious arse to Maximus’s gaze as she picked up her stockings from the floor. She sat on the edge of the bed to quickly roll them on.

Craven cleared his throat. “Lord Kilbourne appears to be in some pain, ma’am, but he understood when I told him I was going to fetch you.”

She nodded. “Thank you.” She bent for her stays, struggling into them, before trying to tighten the laces.

Maximus muttered an ugly oath and rose from the bed, ignoring the disapproving set of Craven’s back. “Let me.”

She turned her head to the side, giving him her profile, before stilling as he touched her shoulders. She pulled her hair over one breast so he could see the laces. This wasn’t how he’d meant to spend their morning together. She’d been a virgin—a virgin goddess, of course, but even the most brave of females must feel a bit delicate the morning after her deflowering. He glanced at the windows, still barely gray with predawn. They hadn’t even been able to share a breakfast.

He cleared his throat as he swiftly pulled her laces tight, trying not to let himself think too deeply about the tender, curling hairs at the back of her neck. “What time is it, Craven?”

“Not yet six of the clock, Your Grace,” the valet said with perfect, stony politeness.

Maximus’s mouth tightened, but he said not a word as he tied the laces. He threw on his breeches, shirt, waistcoat, and coat. Artemis was dressing just as swiftly, and he wondered if she did this every day: dressed without help. She must, though. She hadn’t a lady’s maid unless Penelope lent her hers. The thought made him more irritable. His own mother and most ladies he knew couldn’t dress themselves without the aid of another. They weren’t supposed to have to do it themselves.

That was the chore of the lower classes.

He snatched up a candlestick and led the way from his rooms. He’d made the trek to his hidden cellar so many times he could’ve done it without the light, but Artemis would need it. His heels clacked loudly on the steps as he descended, and it wasn’t until he stood before the door to the crypt that it occurred to him:

Kilbourne was a murderer thrice over.

They hadn’t bothered to chain the madman because he’d been insensible. Now Maximus bitterly damned his own stupidity. Who knew what waited beyond the door?

“Stay here,” he told Artemis curtly.

She frowned, watching him put the key to the door. “No.”

His head reared back, his eyes narrowing. He simply wasn’t used to anyone disobeying his orders. He took a breath to still his immediate impulse to order her back to his rooms. “We don’t know what his disposition is like.”

Her look was withering. “Which is why I’m coming inside.”

Maximus darted a look at Craven. The valet was examining the ancient graffiti on the wall as if he’d never seen it before and was considering writing an academic paper on it.

“He might be dangerous.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Not to me.”

“Artemis.”

She simply reached out and covered his hand with hers to turn the key and push open the door. Artemis started to enter the room, but Maximus was damned if he’d let her go in first. He might not be able to stop her from seeing her lunatic brother, but he could protect her at the very least.

He ducked his head and went inside ahead of her.

The cellar was very quiet. The brazier still glowed with the embers of the coals and a single candle flickered, casting light on the man in the cot. He was still, lying on his side, facing away from the door.

Maximus approached cautiously. Artemis might think her brother harmless, but he’d been found with the bloody bodies of three of his friends. A man capable of that was capable of anything.

He was within a stride of the bed when its occupant reared up like a sleeping giant awakened. Maximus had been aware that Viscount Kilbourne was a big man—he’d carried his dead weight out of Bedlam after all—but somehow Kilbourne seemed to have gained bulk along with his senses. His shoulders were as broad and thick as those of a smith, his head shaggy with untrimmed hair. His beard had grown, and now Kilbourne looked like nothing so much as a green man. Something big, feral, and ancient that haunted gloomy woods and knew not the language of men.